A NOTE ON HOMER AND ULYSSES
The uncertainty which prevails as to the actual birthplace of Homer also extends to the exact period at which he flourished. Doubts have been expressed by some modern scholars as to whether the poet ever existed as a personality. The view that the Iliad and Odyssey were not the work of an individual, but merely a collection of old folklore verse welded into a whole by many hands, made compact by ages, a self-born epic rising from crystallised tradition, is, however, not a tenable one, and need not be discussed here.
As far as we are able to place the poet in his period correctly, we can say with some certainty that he flourished at a time between 800 and 900 years before the birth of Christ.
The Arundelian marbles fix his era at 907 years before the dawn of Christianity. About the life of the most ancient of all poets nothing whatever is known. There is a tradition that he had a school of followers in the Island of Chios, and we have early records of celebrations held there in his honour every few years. But no proof whatever exists of the truth of the supposition, though up to quite modern times the islanders maintained and believed in it.
In the same way must be treated the story of Homer’s blindness. It is a legend which cannot be proved or disproved. Yet at a time when literature must have been almost purely oral, his blindness need have been no bar to the exercise of his talent. It has been said, and the theory is at least an interesting one, that the music and sonance of Homer’s lines came from the fact that they were composed to be spoken rather than read. That the blindness of Milton did not in any way detract from the grandeur of his verse is an undoubted fact, and yet Milton had to speak every line before he could have it recorded by others.
We can deduce something of Homer from his work. That he must have been a travelled man seems indubitable. To this day the modern Ulysses or Menelaus, standing on the bridge of his tramp steamer, can see the headlands, islands, and capes, unchanged from 3000 years ago. That Homer was a man of deep feeling, was possessed of the “artistic temperament” in a very marked degree, seems equally clear. Nothing can be more delicate and touching than his handling of Penelope. Other ancient writers have represented the wife of Ulysses as an abandoned harlot, and said that her husband repudiated her for incontinence during his absence. Homer, with a far surer, finer touch, made her a model for wives to emulate and husbands to desire. The whole of the home-coming scenes in the Odyssey could only have been written by a man who was no mere materialist.
When Homer wrote, human nature was much less profound a thing than it has since become. And yet, though men’s motives were entirely different, men’s actions sprang from less subtle causes than now. Homer was a psychologist of the first class. He knew his fellow-men. In all Romance no one can point to a finer and more consistent character-study than that of Ulysses. Shakespeare has drawn no more vivid picture of a single temperament. Homer must have mixed with mankind, observed them closely, been an acute and untiring observer.
The absolutely original temper of his mind is extraordinary. For we must remember that Homer could hardly have had any models to inform his choice of subjects or direct his style. Yet none of his imitators, and there have been many, were able, even in their happiest moments, even to approach him. As he was the first poet, so he was the greatest, and we may well conclude he will remain so until men themselves are things of the past.
In the ancient world, when we get into the actual periods of recorded history, we find a worship of Homer universally existing. His works reposed under the pillow of Alexander together with the sword which had made him great. The conqueror enshrined the Iliad in the richest casket of the vanquished Persian king. Altars smoked in Homer’s honour all over Greece, he was venerated as a god. But speculations about Homer have, after all, but little value. We know nothing, and we shall never now know anything about him.
He remains a glorious and mysterious fact. We have the priceless legacy of this Being, and that is enough.