7. The Iliad of Homer, with English Notes for the use of Schools. Books I. to XII. By F. A. Paley, M.A. 12mo. London, 1867.

8. Ομήρου βίος καὶ ποιήματα. Ὑπὸ Ἰωάννου Ν. Βαλέττα. 4to. London, 1867.

9. Homer's Ilias, für den Schulgebrauch erklärt. Von K. F. Ameis. Erster Band, Erstes Heft, Gesang I.-III. Svo. Leipzig, 1868.

10. On the Comparatively late Date and Composite Character of our Iliad and Odyssey. (From the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.') By F. A. Paley, M.A. 4to. Cambridge, 1868.

W

WHEN the Homeric question has ceased, as ere long it must, to be a theme of party strife among scholars, it will still possess solid and permanent claims on their interest. Apart from the imperishable attractiveness of the poems themselves, the controversy to which they gave rise is of the highest significance as a chapter in the history of knowledge. It is the first-born of the great inquiries which have sprung from the union, in modern criticism, of the scientific with the literary spirit. The publication of Wolf's Prolegomena' is a landmark to show the meeting-point of two great intellectual movements— the impulse of learning inherited from the scholars of the Renaissance, and the impulse of physical discovery, which dates from nearly the same period, and is associated with still more familiar names. The progress of the discussion has been as fertile as its origin was propitious. Historical and philological studies have been condemned as failing in results—as turning on questions which can never be settled, or which, if settled, would add nothing of real value to human knowledge. The Homeric controversy offers a favourable field for testing the justice of such complaints. Few subjects appear at first so remote from modern interests, or so deficient in the materials of scientific inquiry. Yet we have only to glance through the series of writers on Homeric subjects to see how various and fruitful a theme it has proved to be. How far we are still from the close of the debate may be gathered from the list of new books or new editions (published within the last four years) which stands at the head of this article. Yet these are but the last stragglers of the army of students by whom this great warfare has been carried on. With each successive champion the issues in dispute have been narrowed, fresh points of view gained, fresh criteria discovered and applied. Even if the main question has not been fully solved, even if it should be thought to be

insoluble,

insoluble, still the permanent fruits of the investigation remain, both in the ideas and methods which it has suggested, and the increased knowledge of primitive history and literature which is its more immediate result. Such things are useful in the highest sense of the word, for they are the chief elements in progress towards that insight of the human race into its own nature and capacities which measures the advance from the lower and ruder to the higher and more exquisite forms of existence.

Homer, according to the legend which finally prevailed throughout Greece, was born at Smyrna, and was the son of the Meles, the 'black water' which flowed through the ancient site of that city, and formed the boundary between Æolis and Ionia. The river doubtless owed this honour to the chance likeness between its name and the word μéλos, song; but it was a just instinct which placed the germ of epic poetry on the confines of Æolic and Ionian Greece; in a city which, like the 'Iliad' itself, was debatable ground between the two races. The poem has, indeed, come down to us in a purely Ionic dialect, as the treasure of an Ionic school of reciters, the Homerids of Chios; but its heroes are especially the heroes of Æolic Greece, and its scene is laid in Æolic territory. Hence the claim which each had to share in the glory of Homer. If he was an Æolian, how came he to compose his songs in another dialect? If an Ionian, why did he choose a story in which his countrymen played no important part? How did the Tale of Troy overflow the bounds of its native Æolis, and gain fame in the mouths of Ionic singers in all the chief cities of the Ionian race? The fancy of Greek tradition was satisfied with placing the birthplace of Homer halfway between the two countries, and telling of his travels from city to city, planting, as he went, the seeds of epic poetry. Modern critics, no less struck with the union in the Iliad' of elements from different Hellenic nationalities, have generally felt that the personality of a single poet is not an adequate meeting-point even for two such streams as the influences of Æolic and Ionian life, still less a sufficient origin for the many schools in which Greek epic poetry is found to flourish in aftertimes.

The Iliad' is attached to the Eolian settlements of Asia, and to the country of olis itself, by circumstances which prove an intimate and original connexion. It belongs to the Eolians through the memories of their European ancestors and the traditions which were their title to the new seats. Of its two chief heroes, Achilles and Agamemnon, the one is a Thessalian prince, the champion of an Æolic nationality, the other

represents

represents the great Pelopid family, whose descendants were claimed as their first leaders by the Eolic colonists of Lesbos and of Cyme. The assembling of the Greek fleet at Aulis in Boeotia points still more distinctly to the Æolic migration; for it is hardly consistent with the traditional picture of Agamemnon, the king over many islands and all Argos,' but is sufficiently explained by the historical importance of Aulis as the starting-point for emigrants from Boeotia, Achæa, and the other parts of European Æolis. On the other hand, the Iliad' is no less intimately connected with the history and geography of the country to which the Æolic migration took its course. The prophecy which is put into the mouth of Poseidon, that the dynasty of Priam should perish, but that the descendants of Æneas were to rule over the Trojans in time to come, is plainly an allusion to a race of Ænead princes then reigning in the Troad. The Trojan catalogue is only less minute than the Greek; probably, therefore, it was nearly as interesting. In this and in many other ways the poet of the Iliad' is the poet of both Greek and Trojan, of Hector and Paris as well as of Achilles and Agamemnon. He is, in short, the poet the actual Æolis of his time, with its native and half-Asiatic legends embedded in the traditions of the Achæan families; as the remains of the indigenous races might still be seen in its mountains or even in its great cities.* Everything points to a war of conquest, but not of extermination, full of stirring events, and leaving a vivid impression on the memories of victors and vanquished: such a war as is capable of awakening a people to that first dim sense of its own historical existence which finds its fitting expression in epic legend. The national character of the Æolic Greeks-a combination of fiery pride with enthusiasm and romantic sentiment-was one that fitted them to be the originators of a body of heroic poetry. The same temperament which afterwards gave rise to passionate lyric poetry must have shown itself in an earlier and simpler age, in short and stirring war-songs, the recitals of real or mythical exploits.

The Ionic character of the Homeric poems rests, in the first place, upon the language in which they have reached us. It has, indeed, been supposed that the Homeric dialect is a mixture of Æolic and Ionic forms, and in particular that the digamma shows the presence of an Æolic element. Such a mixture, however, would be a mere linguistic monster, without parallel in literature. The digamma, as it is called, represents a sound which belonged at one time to all dialects of Greek; and it is

*Herod. V. 122.

known

known as an Æolic letter merely because it remained longer in Æolic than elsewhere. If, however, the poems were originally and in substance Æolic, when were they carried to Ionia and recast in the Ionic dialect? The main evidence on this subject meets us at a point in Greek history which is early as compared with the period of authentic records, but yet much later than the first outburst of epic poetry. It consists of the well-attested fact that a clan or hereditary school of rhapsodists' belonging to Chios, and claiming descent from Homer, made it their profession to preserve and recite the Homeric poems. The earliest authority for the name Homeridæ is a passage of Pindar; but the account which is given by the scholiast on that passage carries their history back to the date-unfortunately not certainof the hymn to the Delian Apollo: Homerida,' he says, 'they called at first those of the family (yévos) of Homer, who sang his poetry in hereditary succession; but afterwards also the rhapsodists who were no longer persons tracing descent from Homer.'* This passage contains in a few words the history of one of the most important social revolutions of the ancient world. The primitive system of caste which co fined every occupation within the circle of particular families was gradually relaxed in Greece, and the principle of free association in guilds or trade-brotherhoods took its place. This transition was effected, like so many others in history, by introducing the new relation under cover of the old forms. The family tie, with its rights and duties, was extended by a fiction to those who were not related by blood; and so by degrees, as the original supposition of consanguinity became more unreal, the exclusiveness of the clan was less enforced. The Gentile names of this kind which have been preserved are in most cases taken directly from the common art or calling, and not from any real person. The celebrated priestly family of the Eumolpidæ claimed descent from the mythical Eumolpus, son of Poseidon, who was the first priest of the Eleusinian mysteries, and initiated by the goddess Demeter herself. In reality, as the etymology of the name suggests, they were the sons of good chanting.' In the same way the Dædalidæ were so called from the cunning works (daídaλa) in which their skill lay; and Daedalus was imagined to account for the historical existence of the family. We may fairly suppose that the same process has taken place in the gentle craft of minstrel. The name Homerus' can hardly mean anything but 'fitted together,' harmonious; and this is an epithet as applicable to the verse of the ancient minstrel as 'dædal' to the contrivance of the

*Schol. Pind. Nem. II.

mechanician.

mechanician. If so, the Homerids, instead of being the descendants of a person Homer, are in truth united by being the 'sons of verse,' and Homer, like Eumolpus or Dædalus, is the personification of an art and the eponymous ancestor of an hereditary guild. The existence therefore of this form of social union proves their antiquity and importance as a school of reciters, but does not of necessity carry us back to the origin or earliest diffusion of the poems.

The Ionian character, formed of the pliancy of merchants and tributaries, joined perhaps to the softness of a partly Asiatic race, was one which led them rather to recount and adorn the deeds of others than to furnish the materials for a history of their own. Their dialect soon became especially that of narrative as well as of speculation, and their genius was eminently fitted for the production of great and harmonious unities in the domain of art. The passionate and, so to speak, anarchic elements were too strong in the Æolic temperament to permit them to achieve a permanently great work, either in literature or politics. Among the Dorians this side of the Greek character was forcibly restrained in at least one illustrious instance by the stern hand of discipline: among the Ionians it was subdued by the predominance of the intellectual qualities, breadth and clearness of thought. Is the 'Iliad' to be regarded as the first in the number of Ionic works? We have seen that the poem itself points with abundant evidence to the neighbouring cities of the Eolic colonists as the centres of its interest. Yet at the furthest point to which we can trace its external history it appears as a great Ionic epopee, the heirloom and the support of a guild of Ionic reciters. How are we to bridge over the gulf which lies between those two stages of its history? How can the same body of poems be Æolic in its original materials, the theatre of its action, the interests to which it was first addressed, and Ionic in its ultimate form, in its language, in the guardians and expounders of its treasures?

Although the complete solution of this problem lies beyond the range of authentic history, there are indications in the poems, as well as analogies from the epics of other nations, which enable us, at least, to narrow the conditions within which the solution must lie. The argument between the rival races, it may have been remarked, has turned chiefly on the Iliad.' The story of Ulysses is too fanciful and too devoid of local and national interest to be connected in the same way with any one part of Greece. Yet from another point of view the full and lively picture of the epic singer which we owe to the Odyssey,' offers a social problem hardly less suggestive than the question between