NOTES ON HOMER, NO. I.
Homeric Literature.
There has been a very great difficulty in the world of literature, which it were almost vain to think of removing. This difficulty is that usually known as "the Homeric question." After the folios and quartos of the grand old scholars of antiquity; after the octavos of Wolf, Heyne, and Knight; after the able chapters of Grote, and the eloquent volumes of Mure; after the Alexandrian Chorizontes; and after the incidental reflections on the subject scattered through thousands of volumes, it seems almost hazardous, and indeed useless, to offer any more conjectures on "the bard of ages," and (to use the phrase of the novelists) "his birth, education, and adventures." On a consideration of the question, however, it will be seen that (strange fact!) the subject is not yet exhausted; I shall therefore, with your kind assistance, submit a retrospective view of the matter to the readers of "N. & Q.," and afterwards attempt to show what results may be drawn from the united labour of so many minds. I shall then give a résumé, first, of the ancient history bearing on Homer, and, continuing the sketch to the late volumes of Mure, draw my own conclusions, which, after much patient consideration, I must say, appear to be nearer an approximation to the truth, than any theory which has yet been promulgated.
Let us cast our eyes on antiquity. This very much misunderstood period of the earth's progress offers to us the proofs of an appreciation of Homer to which literary history affords but one parallel. The magnificent flights of thought, which the Hellenes could so well accompany, the tone of colouring at once so subdued and so glorious, gained for the unknown poet a reputation everlasting and world and age-wide. But as time fled by, there arose a race of men who wrote poetry as schoolboys do Latin, by judiciously arranging (or vice versâ) appropriate lines from the earlier poets, called Cyclic poets, or cento-makers. The men who wrote thus were, probably, persons either engaged in itinerant vocal pursuits, or regular verse makers, who wrote "on a subject," as our own street writers on the present day. Indeed, I may say, that the state of the rhapsodists of Greece resembles much that of our own "itinerant violinists," as an eminent counsel once apostrophized the class which the excellent judge on the bench named, according to general custom, "blin' fiddlers." The probable reason for the introduction of passages into the original Homeric compositions was the necessity of a novelty. The Cyclic poems are to Homer what the letters of Poplicola, Anti-Sejanus, Correggio, Moderator, and the rest, were to Junius. However, they prove in a remarkable manner how great the excitement regarding "the poet," as Aristoteles calls him, ever continued to be in Hellas.
These gentlemen, whose object was not to disgrace Homer by their puling compositions, but only to practically observe the maxims subsequently instilled by Iago into Roderigo's mind (viz., to "put money in their purse"), were the precursors of another race of writers. In ancient times, we are informed by Tatian,[1] there were many writers on Homer, whose works, it is to be lamented, have perished with the nominal exception of a few fragments,—though, perhaps, scholars will once learn to use those as a clue, and find, as Burges did in the case of Thucydides,[2] that many valuable passages are lying hid in the pages of the lexicographers, who spared themselves the trouble of writing fresh matter, by merely slightly changing the expressions of their sources, and not "bothering" their lexicographical brains by attempting original composition. It is thus, that even the weaknesses of the human mind benefit after ages!
[1] Fabr. Bibl. Græc. II. 1. iii.
[2] Journ. of the Royal Soc. of Literature, vol, ii., New Series, and afterwards in a pamphlet in 1845.
The names furnished us by Tatian are these:—Theagenes of Rhegium (the earliest writer of whom we are cognizant, contemporary with Cambyses); Stesimbrotos of Thasos (contemporary with Pericles);[3] Antimachos of Claros; Herodotos, Dionysios of Olynthos, Ephoros of Cyme; Philochoros of Athens, Metacleides, Chamæleon of Heracleia;[4] Zenodotos of Ephesus, (B.C. 280); Aristophanes of Byzantium (B.C. 264); Callimachus, whose poetry, by the way, is dryer and more vapid than his prose, if the little we have left of him allows us to form an opinion; Crates of Malfus (B.C. 157); Eratosthenes of Cyrene; Aristarchos of Samothrace, and Apollodoros of Athens. The minds or pens of these men in Hellas alone, were occupied with this grand subject; and in Rome, that city of translations and "crib," we find the pens of the scribes were at work, and prolific in prolixity. Besides these authors, there are others whose attempts at illustrating the text of the writers of antiquity have been met in a most illiberal manner; I mean the Scholiasts, who have been treated most unjustly. A goodly host of scribblers looks forth from the grave of antiquity. And here, before proceeding to speak of the theories of later times, it may be permitted me to suggest that casual allusions by writers who write not expressly on the subject, and who are sufficiently accurate on those points to which they have directed their attention, are often more valuable than the folios of writers who go on the principle of book-making.
[3] Plato, Ion, p. 550. c.; Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2. § 10.; Sympos. iii. 5.; Plutarch, Themist. 2. 24.; Cim. 4. 14. 16.; Per. 8. 10. 13. 26. 36.; Strabo, x. p. 472.; Athen. xiii. p. 598. e.
[4] Quoted by Athenæus (ix. p. 374. a.) under the title of Περὶ τῆς ἀρχαίας κωμωδίας, which, however, is also the name of a work by Eumelus.
To enumerate the modern works of Homeric controversy, would be an endless and tedious task, nay, even useless, when so able and full an account exists in Engelmann's Bibliotheca Classica. The chief works, however, are Wolf's Prolegomena; Wood's Essay on the Original Genius of Homer; Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie; Hermann, Briefwechsel mit Creuzer über Homer und Hesiod; Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus; Lange, Ueber die Kyklischen Dichter und den sogenannten Epischen Kyklus der Griechen; Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias (Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841); Voss, Nitzsch, O. Müller, Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, vol. i. appendix 1. p. 500. foll.), Quarterly Review, No. lxxxvii., Grote (Hist. of Greece, pt. i. chapter xxi. vol. ii.), Mure's Critical History of the Language and Literature of Antient Greece, the article in Smith's Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 500., and Giovanni Battista Vico (Principi di Scienza nuova).
The foregoing writers are the principal who have occupied themselves with the subject. I will, in my next paper, pass on to a review of the question itself.
KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.
January 26. 1852.