The Odyssey of Homer

H >> Homer, translated by Alexander Pope >> The Odyssey of Homer

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INTRODUCTION

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of
scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the
most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very
gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and
emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set
aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must
be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour
and anxiety to acquire.

And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which
progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which
persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu
of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept
away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the
revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from
attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in
society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another,
finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the
healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams
of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the
Church. History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively
recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that
which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere
statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form
as important an ingredient in the analysis or his history, as the
facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and
it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical
evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting
in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than
mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an introduction of extended
experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history.
Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which
human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To
form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming
parts of a great whole--we must measure them by their relation to the
mass of beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the
incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down
to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole
narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know
least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere have, perhaps,
contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than
any other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of
all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which
has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or
theories we will follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps,
the only thing in which critics will allow us to believe without
controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the authorship of
plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we
know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow
us to know. He was one of the dramatis personae in two dramas as
unlike in principles as in style. He appears as the enunciator of
opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have
handed them down. When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we
know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined
both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant.

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient of late years, to deny
the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and
condition were too much for our belief. This system--which has often
comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of
Strauss for those of the New Testament--has been of incalculable
value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries.
To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more
excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact
related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory
developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in
the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured
old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized--Numa
Pompilius.

Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,
and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free
permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all
written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and
Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily
dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. "This
cannot be true, because it is not true; and that is not true, because
it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which testimony
upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and
oblivion.

It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer
are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in
which truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief
review of the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice
must be taken of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been
attributed to Herodotus.

According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia was, at an
early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of
Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.
Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl
named Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under
the guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of
this maiden that we "are indebted for so much happiness." Homer was
the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of
Melesigenes from having been born near the river Meles in Boeotia,
whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her
reputation.

"At this time," continues our narrative, "there lived at Smyrna a man
named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being
married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax
he received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory
was her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he
made proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further
inducement, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become
a clever man, if he were carefully brought up."

They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which
nature had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows
in every attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in
wisdom. Phemius died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his
mother soon followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father's
school with great success, exciting the admiration not only of the
inhabitants of Smyrna, but also of the strangers whom the trade
carried on there, especially in the exportation of corn, attracted to
that city. Among these visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the
modern Santa Maura, who evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely
found in those times, persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and
accompany him on his travels. He promised not only to pay his
expenses, but to furnish him with a further stipend, urging, that,
"While he was yet young, it was fitting that he should see with his
own eyes the countries and cities which might hereafter be the
subjects of his discourses." Melesigenes consented, and set out with
his patron, "examining all the curiosities of the countries they
visited, and informing himself of everything by interrogating those
whom he met." We may also suppose, that he wrote memoirs of all that
he deemed worthy of preservation. Having set sail from Tyrrhenia and
Iberia, they reached Ithaca. Here Melesigenes, who had already
suffered in his eyes, became much worse; and Mentes, who was about to
leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical superintendence of a
friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor. Under his hospitable
and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became acquainted with the
legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed the subject of
the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it was here that
Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophonians make their city the
seat of that misfortune. He then returned to Smyrna, where he
applied himself to the study of poetry.

But poverty soon drove him to Cumae. Having passed over the Hermaean
plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumae.
Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of
one Tychias, an armourer. "And up to my time," continues the author,
"the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a
recitation of his verses; and they greatly honoured the spot. Here
also a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since
Melesigenes arrived."

But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as
being the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an
epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with
greater probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.

Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the conversaziones of the old men,
and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this
favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a
public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously
renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure
he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. Having made
the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to
acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the
answer to be given to his proposal.

The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's
demand, but one man "observed that if they were to feed Homers, they
would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people." "From this
circumstance," says the writer, "Melesigenes acquired the name of
Homer, for the Cumans call blind men Homers." With a love of economy,
which shows how similar the world has always been in its treatment of
literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented his
disappointment in a wish that Cumae might never produce a poet
capable of giving it renown and glory.

At Phocaea Homer was destined to experience another literary
distress. One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical
genius, kept Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on
condition of the verses of the poet passing in his name. Having
collected sufficient poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some
would-be literary publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had
sucked, and left him. At his departure, Homer is said to have
observed: "O Thestorides, of the many things hidden from the
knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human
heart."

Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some
Chian merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard
him recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was
pursuing a profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same
poems. This at once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel
happened then to be setting sail thither, but he found one ready to
start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he
prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having
embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be
able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of
hospitality, had drawn down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.

At Erythrae, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in
Phocaea, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,
reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,
which we will continue in the words of our author. "Having set out
from Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that
were pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out.
Glaucus (for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran
up quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For
some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such
a place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went
up to him and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate
places and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by
recounting to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him
with compassion; and he took him and led him to his cot, and, having
lit a fire, bade him sup.

"The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according
to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O
Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs
their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,
whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.

"Glaucus was pleased with the advice and marvelled at its author.
Having finished supper, they banqueted afresh on conversation, Homer
narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had visited.

"At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning,
Glaucus resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his
meeting with Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a
fellow-servant, he left Homer at home, promising to return quickly.
Having arrived at Bolissus, a place near the farm, and finding his
mate, he told him the whole story respecting Homer and his journey.
He paid little attention to what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his
stupidity in taking in and feeding maimed and enfeebled persons.
However, he bade him bring the stranger to him.

"Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,
assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon
showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general
knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake
the charge of his children."

Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the
island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town
of Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of
poetry. "To this day," says Chandler, "the most curious remain is
that which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is
on the coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears
to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock.
The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the
head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The
chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is
bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole
is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the
most remote antiquity."

So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable
fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,
the other married a Chian.

The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the
personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has
already been mentioned:--

"In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards
Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has inserted in his
poem as the companion of Ulysses, in return for the care taken of him
when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to
Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction."

His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to
visit Greece whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is
said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the
vanity of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no
mention, he set out for Samos. Here, being recognized by a Samian,
who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and
invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited
some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the
Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence,
visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was very
popular.

In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,
now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his
death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an
enigma proposed by some fishermen's children.

Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we
possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical
worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in
detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a
persevering, patient, and learned--but by no means consistent--series
of investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward
statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.

"Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in
doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who
have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The
majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the
Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the
Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed."

Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics
has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the
Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he
proceeds:--

"It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature
of things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is
the region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The
creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for
the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we
were in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could
wholly explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their
origin, in all essential points, must have remained the secret of the
poet."

From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of
human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic
investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was
Homer an individual? or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an
ingenious arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?

Well has Landor remarked: "Some tell us there were twenty Homers;
some deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake
the contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are
perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our
devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know
what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our
admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do."

But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests
contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been
nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of
first impressions by minute analysis, our editorial office compels us
to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the
Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief
period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend
to dry details. Before, however, entering into particulars respecting
the question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the
Iliad,) I must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in
the following remarks:--

"We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the
better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its
original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that
its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice
to assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is
not the best qualification for the profound feeling, the
comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite
anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame; and we
would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions
and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir
Astley Cooper.

"There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines
of Pope:--

"'The critic eye--that microscope of wit--
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
How parts relate to parts, or they to whole.
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.'"

Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning
the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and
cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo, the
authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics.
Longinus, in an oft-quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion
touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad;
and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names it would be
tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of
Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in
favour of our early ideas on the subject: let us now see what are the
discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim.

At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on
the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that "Homer wrote a sequel
of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and
good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose
songs were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till
about Peisistratus' time, about five hundred years after."

Two French writers--Hedelin and Perrault--avowed a similar scepticism
on the subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of Battista Vico,
that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended
by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the
Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following
bold hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:--

"Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A.
Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been
recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the
history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation
(though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the
position, previously announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the
separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been
cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order, until
the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a
step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies
of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier
times, to which their composition is referred; and that without
writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could
have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him,
transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and
convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long
manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in
Wolf's case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey.
By Nitzsch, and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of
the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally
put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those who defended
the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain
that they were written poems from the beginning.

"To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf
to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric
poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained
towards that view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in
order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting
long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera.
Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne
Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no
less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the
seventh century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling.
We have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad,
and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can
we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus,
Kallinus Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric
poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the
practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which
authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is
in the famous ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at
the Panathenaea: but for what length of time previously manuscripts
had existed, we are unable to say.

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