Читать книгу The Complete Works of Homer - Homer - Страница 11

As to determining the comparative dates of various parts of the poems, we have already noticed several possible clues. Bronze weapons are earlier than iron, openair altars earlier than temples, leathern armour earlier than metal armour, individual foot-fighting (witness 'swift-footed Achilles') earlier than chariot-fighting, and this again than riding and the employment of columns of infantry. The use of 'Argos' for the plain of Thessaly is earlier than its vague use for Greece, and this than its secondary specialisation in the Peloponnese. But all such clues must be followed with extreme caution. Not only is it always possible for a late poet to use an archaic formula -- even Sophocles can use χαλκòς for a sword -but also the very earliest and most essential episodes have often been worked over and re-embellished down to the latest times. The slaying of Patroclus, for instance, contains some of the latest work in Homer; it was a favourite subject from the very outset, and new bards kept improving' upon it.

We find Hellas' and ' Achaia' following similar lines of development with Argos. They denote first Achilles's own district in Phthia, the home of those tribes which called their settlement in the Peloponnese 'Achaia,' and that in Italy 'Great Hellas.' But through most of the Iliad 'Achaioi' means the Greeks in general, while ' Hellas' is still the special district. In the Odyssey we find ' Hellas' in the later universal sense, and in B we meet the idea ' Panhellênes.' This is part of the expansion of the poet's geographical range: at first all the actors had really been ' Achaioi' or ' Argeioi'; afterwards the old names ' Achaioi' and ' Argeioi' continued to be used to denote all the actors, though the actual area of the poems had widened far beyond the old limits and was widening still. The last parts of the Odyssey are quite familiar with Sicily and Kyrêne, and have some inklings of the interior of Russia, and perhaps of the Vikings of the far North. 16

Another gradual growth is in the marriage-customs. Originally, as Aristotle noticed, the Greeks simply bought their wives; a good-looking daughter was valuable as being άλειßοια, 'kine-winning,' because of the price, the εδνα, her suitors gave for her. In classical times the custom was the reverse; instead of receiving money for his daughter, the father had to give a dowry with her: and the late parts of the poems use εδνα in the sense of 'dowry.' There are several stages between, and one of the crimes of the suitors in the Odyssey is their refusal to pay εδνα.

Another criterion of age lies in the treatment of the supernatural. It is not only that the poems contain, as Rohde17 has shown, traces of the earliest religion, ancestorworship and propitiation of the dead, mixed with a later 'Ionic' spirit, daring and sceptical, which knows nothing of mysteries, and uses the gods for rhetorical ornament, or even for comic relief. There is also a marked development or degeneration in the use of supernatural machinery. In the earliest stages a divine presence is only introduced where there is a real mystery, where a supernatural explanation is necessary to the primitive mind. If Odysseus, entering the Phæacians' town at dusk, passes on and on safe and unnoticed, it seems as if Athena has thrown a cloud over him; if Achilles, on the very point of drawing his sword against his king, feels something within warn and check him, it seems to be a divine hand and voice. Later on the gods come in as mere ornaments; they thwart one another; they become ordinary characters in the poems. The more divine interference we get, the later is the work, until at last we reach the positively-marring masquerades of Athena in the Odyssey, and the offensive scenes of the gods fighting in E and γ. Not that any original state of the poems can have done without the gods altogether. The gods were not created in Asia; they are 'Olympian,' and have their characters and their formal epithets from the old home of the Achaioi.

The treatment of individual gods, too, has its significance-though a local, not a chronological one. Zeus and Hera meet with little respect. Iris is rather unpleasant, as in Euripides. Ares is frankly detested for a bloodthirsty Thracian coward. Aphrodite, who fights because of some echo in her of the Phoenician Ashtaroth, a really formidable warrior, is ridiculed and rebuked for her fighting. Only two gods are respectfully handled -Apollo, who, though an ally of Troy, is a figure genuinely divine; and Poseidon, who moves in a kind of rolling splendour. The reason is not far to seek: they are the real gods of the Ionian. The rest are, of course, gods; but they are 'other peoples' gods,' and our view of them depends a good deal on our view of their worshippers. Athena comes a good third to the two Ionians; in the Odyssey and K she outstrips them. Athens could manage so much, but not more: she could not make the Ionian poetry accept her stern goddess in her real grandeur; Athena remained in the epos a fighting woman, treacherous and bitter, though a good partisan. She will never be forgiven for the last betrayal of Hector.

Great caution must be used in estimating the significance of repetitions and quotations. For instance, the disguised Odysseus begins prophesying his return in τ, 303, with the natural appeal : --

"Zeus hear me first, of gods most high and great, And brave Odysseus' hearth, where I am come."

But when he says the same in ξ, 158, not only is the prophecy imprudent when he does not mean to be recognised, but he is also not at his own hearth at all, and a slight surplusage in the first line betrays the imitator: "Zeus, hear me first of gods and thy kind board." The passage is at home in τ, and not at home in ξ.

Similarly, what we hear in κ, 136, is natural : --

"In the isle there dwelt Kirkê fair-tress'd, dread goddess full of song."

Kirkê was essentially 'dread,' and her 'song' was magic incantation; but in μ, 448, it runs : --

" Calypso in the isle Dwelleth fair-tress'd, dread goddess full of song."

Calypso was not specially 'dread' nor 'full of song,' except in imitation of Kirkê; and, above all, to 'dwell fair-tress'd,' the verb and adjective thus joined, is not a possible Homeric manner of behaviour, as to 'dwell secure' or to 'lie prostrate' would be.

In the same way the description of Tartarus in Theogony, 720 -- "As far 'neath earth as is the heaven above" -- is natural and original. Homer's "As far 'neath hell as heaven is o'er the earth" (Θ, 16) is an imitation 'going one better.'

Yet, as a matter of fact, Calypso (Celatrix, 'She who hides') is probably original in the Odysseus-saga, and Kirkê secondary. There were other legends where Kirkê had an independent existence; and she had turned the Argonauts into bears and tigers before she was impressed to turn Odysseus' companions into pigs. And the Theogony, which is here quoted by the Iliad, itself quotes almost every part of both Iliad and Odyssey. The use of this criterion of quotation is affected by two things -- first, all the passages in question may go back to an original which is now lost, sometimes to a definite passage in a lost epic, sometimes to a mere stock-in-trade formula; secondly, the big epics were so long in process of active growth that they all had plenty of time to quote one another. We have mentioned the Odyssean and Hesiodic phrases in the slaying of Patroclus (II, 380-480). But the most striking instance of all is that the Hades scene in ω, the very latest rag of the Odyssey, gives an account of the Suitor-slaying which agrees not with our version, but with the earlier account which our version has supplanted (p. 40).

Besides verbal imitations, we have more general references. For instance, the great catalogues in Homer, that of ships in B, of myrmidons in II, of women in λ, are almost without question extracts from a Bœotian or 'Hesiodic' source. Again, much of δ consists of abridged and incomplete stories about the Nostoi or Homecomings of Agamemnon, Aias the Less, and Menelaus. They seem to imply a reference to some fuller and more detailed original -- in all probability to the series of lays called the Nostoi, which formed one of the rejected epics. The story in δ, 242 ff.) about Helen helping Odysseus in Troy, is definitely stated by Proclus -- a suspected witness, it is true -- to occur in the Little Iliad.* The succeeding one (271 ff.), makes Helen hostile to the Greeks, and cannot come from the same source. But it also reads like an abridgment. So does the story of Bellerophon in Z: "Proitosfirst sent him to slay the Chimaira: now she was a thing divine and not mortal, in front a lion, and behind a serpent, and in the middle a wild goat, breathing furious fire. Yet he slew her, obeying the signs of the gods." What signs, and how? And what is the meaning of the strange lines 200 f.? "But when he, too, was hated of all the gods, then verily down the Plain of Wandering alone he wandered, eating his heart, shunning the tread of men." The original poem, whatever it was, would have told us; the resumê takes all the details for granted.

Space does not allow more than a reference to that criterion of date which has actually been most used in the 'Higher Criticism' -- the analysis of the story. It might be interesting to note that the wall round the ships in the Iliad is a late motive; that it is built under impossible circumstances; that it is sometimes there and sometimes not, and that it does not alter its conduct after Apollo has flattened it into the ditch; or that Achilles in II speaks as if the events of I had 'not occurred; or that Odysseus' adventures in κ and μ, and perhaps in ι, seem to have been originally composed in the third person, not the first, while his supposed false stories in ζ and τ seem actually to represent older versions of the real Odysseus-legend; or that the poets of τ and the following books do not seem to know that Athena had transformed their hero in ν into a decrepit old man, and that he had consistently remained so to the end of σ. But in all such criticism the detail is the life. We select one point for illustration -- the Suitorslaying.

In our present version Odysseus begins with the bow, uses up all his arrows, puts down the bow, and arms himself with spear and shield and helmet, which Têlemachus has meanwhile brought (χ, 98). What were those fifty desperate men with their swords doing while he was making the change? Nearly all critics see here a combination of an old Bow-fight with a later Spearfight. As to the former, let us start with the Feetwashing in τ. Odysseus is speaking with Penelope; she is accompanied by Eurycleia and the handmaids. Odysseus dare not reveal himself directly, because he knows that the handmaids are false. He speaks to his wife in hints, tells her that he has seen Odysseus, who is in Thesprotia, and will for certain return before that dying year is out! He would like to send the handmaids away, but of course cannot. He bethinks him of his old nurse Eurycleia; and, when refreshment is offered him, asks that she and none other (τ, 343 seq.) shall wash his feet. She does so, and instantly (τ, 392) recognises him by the scar! Now, in our version, the man of many devices is taken by surprise at this; he threatens Eurycleia into silence, and nothing happens. The next thing of importance is that Penelope -- she has just learnt on good evidence that Odysseus is alive, and will return immediately -- suddenly determines that she cannot put off the suitors any longer, but brings down her husband's bow, and says she will forthwith marry the man who can shoot through twelve axe-heads with it! Odysseus hears her and is pleased! Is it not clear that in the original story there was a reason for Penelope to bring the bow, and for Odysseus to be pleased? It was a plot. He meant Eurycleia to recognise him, to send the maids away, and break the news to Penelope. Then husband and wife together arranged the trial of the bow. This is so far only a conjecture, but it is curiously confirmed by the account of the slaying given by the ghost of Amphimedon in ω. The story he tells is not that of our Odyssey: it is the old Bow-slaying, based on a plot between husband and wife (esp. 167). As to the Spear-fight, there is a passage in π, 281- 298, which was condemned by the Alexandrians as inconsistent with the rest of the story. There Odysseus arranges with Têlemachus to have all the weapons in the banquet hall taken away, only two spears, two swords, and two shields to be left for the father and son. This led up to a Suitor-slaying with spears by Odysseus and Têlemachus, which is now incorporated as the second part of our Suitor-slaying. Otto Seeck18 has tried to trace the Bow-fight and the Spear-fight (which was itself modified again) through all the relevant parts of the Odyssey.

It is curious that in points where we can compare the myths of our poems with those expressed elsewhere in literature, and in fifth-century pottery, our poems are often, perhaps generally, the more refined and modern. In the Great Eoiai,* the married pair Alkinoês and Arêtê are undisguisedly brother and sister: our Odyssey explains elaborately that they were really only first cousins. When the shipwrecked Odysseus meets Nausicaa, he pulls a bough off a tree -- what for? To show that he is a suppliant, obviously: and so a fifth-century vase represents it. But our Odyssey makes him use the branch as a veil to conceal his nakedness! And so do the vases of the fourth century. A version of the slaying of Hector followed by Sophocles in his Niptra* made Achilles drag his enemy alive at his chariot wheels. That is the cruder, crueller version. Our poems cannot suppress the savage insult, but they have got rid of the torture. How and when did this humanising tendency come? We cannot say; but it was deliberately preferred and canonised when the poems were prepared for the sacred Athenian recitation.

This moral growth is one of the marks of the last working over of the poems. It gives us the magnificent studies of Helen and Andromache, not dumb objects of barter and plunder, as they once were, but women ready to take their places in the conception of Æschylus. It gives us the gentle and splendid chivalry of the Lycians, Sarpêdon and Glaucus. It gives us the exquisite character of the swineherd Eumæus; his eager generosity towards the stranger who can tell of Odysseus, all the time that he keeps professing his incredulity; his quaint honesty in feeding himself, his guest, and even Têlemachus, on the young inferior pork, keeping the best, as far as the suitors allow, for his master (ξ, 3, 80; π, 49); and his emotional breach of principle, accompanied with much apology and justification, when the story has entirely won him: "Bring forth the best of the hogs!" (ξ, 44). Above all, it seems to have given us the sympathetic development of Hector. The oldest poem hated Hector, and rejoiced in mangling him, though doubtless it feared him as well, and let him have a better right to his name 'Man-slayer' than he has now, when not only Achilles, but Diomêdes, Aias, Idomeneus, and even Menelaus, have successively been made more than a match for him. In that aspect Hector has lost, but he has gained more. The prevailing sympathy of the later books is with him. The two most explicit moral judgments in the poems are against Achilles for maltreating him.19 The gods keep his body whole, and rebuke his enemy's savagery. The scenes in Z, the parting with Andromache, the comforting of little Astyanax frightened at his father's plume, the calm acceptance of a battle which must be fatal, and of a cause which must be lost -- all these are in the essence of great imagination; but the absolute masterpiece, one of the greatest feats of skill in imaginative literature, is the flight of Hector in X. It is simple fear, undisguised; yet you feel that the man who flies is a brave man. The act of staying alone outside the gate is much; you can just nerve yourself to it. But the sickening dread of Achilles' distant oncoming grows as you wait, till it simply cannot be borne. The man must fly; no one can blame him; it is only one more drop in the cup of divine cruelty, which is to leave Hector dead, Troy burned, Astyanax butchered, and Andromache her enemy's slave. If the old poet went with the conqueror, and exulted in Hector's shame, there has come one after him who takes all his facts and turns them the other way; who feels how far more intense the experience of the conquered always is, and in this case how far more noble.

The wonder is that Achilles is not spoilt for us. Somehow he remains grand to the end, and one is grieved, not alienated, by the atrocities his grief leads him to. The last touch of this particular spirit is where Achilles receives Priam in his tent. Each respects the other, each conquers his anguish in studied courtesy; but the name of Hector can scarcely be spoken, and the attendants keep the dead face hidden, lest at the sight of it Priam's rage should burst its control, "and Achilles slay him and sin against God" (Ω, 585). It is the true pathos of war: the thing seen on both sides; the unfathomable suffering for which no one in particular is to blame. Homer, because he is an 'early poet,' is sometimes supposed to be unsubtle, and even superficial. But is it not a marvel of sympathetic imagination which makes us feel with the flying Hector, the cruel Achilles, the adulterous Helen, without for an instant losing hold of the ideals of courage, mercifulness, and chastity?

This power of entering vividly into the feelings of both parties in a conflict is perhaps the most characSeristic gift of the Greek genius; it is the spirit in which Homer, Æschylus, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, find their kinship, and which enabled Athens to create the drama.

1 Esp. θ,74; μ, 70; α, 351.

2 Crusius, Philol. liv.

3 Athenæus, 347 e.

4 The others are the Achilles-trilogy (Myrmidons,*Nereides,*Phryges*), Penelope,*Soul-weighing.*

5 Phil. Unters. vii. p. 240.

6 One is tempted to add to this early evidence what Herodotus says (vii. 6) of the banishment of Onomacritus by Hipparchus; but he was banished for trafficking in false oracles, an offence of an entirely different sort from interpolating works of literature.

7 Hdt. v. 67.

8 Counting Alcibiades II. as spurious.

9 Grote, Plato, chap. vi.

10 Kirchoff, Alphabet, Ed. iv. p. 92.

11 See Cauer's answer to Wilamowitz, Grundfragen der Homerkritik, p. 69ff.

12 θ, 73 ff., 500 ff.; α, 326.

13 Cauer, Grundfragen, p. 203.

14 Thornton Romances, Camden Soc., 1844, esp. p. 289.

15 Duncker, Greece, chap. xiii.

16 The Laestrygones, especially κ, 82-86.

17 Psyche, pp. 35 f.

18 Quellen der Odyssee, 1887.

19 Ά, 24; X, 395; and Ά, 76; γ, 467.