Оглавление
J. A. M'Clymont. Greece
Greece
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I. THE IONIAN ISLANDS AND THE “ODYSSEY”
CHAPTER II. DELPHI AND ITS ORACLE
CHAPTER III. OLYMPIA AND ITS GAMES
CHAPTER IV. ARCADIA AND ITS ABORIGINES
CHAPTER V. SPARTA AND ITS DISCIPLINE
CHAPTER VI. ARGOLIS AND ITS ANTIQUITIES
CHAPTER VII. CORINTH AND ITS CANAL
CHAPTER VIII. ATHENS AND ITS ACROPOLIS
CHAPTER IX. ATHENS AND ITS GODDESS
CHAPTER X. ATHENS AND ELEUSIS
CHAPTER XI. ATHENS AND ITS DEMOCRACY
CHAPTER XII. ATHENS—ITS DECAY AND ITS REVIVAL
Index
Отрывок из книги
J. A. M'Clymont
Painted by John Fulleylove; described by J.A. McClymont
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due either to the accidents of compilation or to the need for adaptation to suit the varying tastes of readers in different parts of the Greek world. Perhaps the strongest proof of composite authorship is to be found in the different stages of civilisation and religion which are discernible in different parts of the poetry, and the marked inconsistencies in certain of the leading characters. It is also very significant that Mount Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, is at one time the snow-clad mountain in the north which still bears that name, and in other and later passages is a bright and gladsome region, free from rain or snow or stormy wind. It is now generally agreed that the nucleus of the Iliad was a series of ancient lays concerning Achilles, derived from Northern Greece, and moulded by Æolic art, while the remainder of the poem and the bulk of the Odyssey were of a considerably later date, and came from an Ionic source. The poems as a whole were probably touched up and put into their present form by some one living on the coast of Asia Minor (perhaps at Smyrna, the meeting-place of Æolic and Ionic traditions), who sang of the glories of a by-gone age with the patriotic pride of a colonial. Whether his name was Homer is a different question, for it is quite possible the word may have been, as some maintain, a common term, meaning “compiler.” It is well to remember that the “blind bard who dwelt in rocky Chios,” so often identified with Homer since Thucydides set the example, is merely the description applied to himself by the writer of the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom no one now believes to have been the author of the Iliad or the Odyssey. We know that the Great Unknown, whoever he may have been, was succeeded by the Homeridæ of Chios, and these again, by the Rhapsodes or professional reciters, whom we come across in the pages of Plato and Xenophon.
Another subject of controversy has been as to whether the Homeric narratives have a historic basis to rest upon. Some have gone so far as to doubt whether the Trojan War ever took place; and it has been suggested that many of the stories in the Iliad are due to solar myths. But the excavations of Schliemann at Ilium and Mycenæ have rather discredited such scepticism; and the recent explorer already mentioned (Bérard), who has sailed over the course which appears to have been taken by Odysseus,—extending from Troy to Gibraltar,—has found the topographical and maritime allusions so accurate as to come to the conclusion that the poet must have had the benefit of some ancient book of reference, corresponding to the Pilot’s Guide, and drawn up in all probability by the Phœnicians, who were masters of the Mediterranean before the Greeks. But while the main thread of the narrative in the Odyssey may be historical, the poet has worked into it many fanciful legends, like those to be found in the literature of many nations. Indeed the story of Odysseus’ adventures as a whole is perhaps no more historical than the tale of Robinson Crusoe, created by Defoe out of the experience of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez.
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