The Homer of the Odyssey, who was not improbably of Peloponnesian birth, must have travelled widely. He had undeniably some personal acquaintance with Ithaca, his topographical indications, apart from the gross blunder of planting the little island west, instead of east of Cephalonia, corresponding on the whole quite closely with reality. And he knew something besides of most parts of the mainland of Greece, of Crete, Delos, Chios, and the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. The experience of the Iliadic bard was doubtless somewhat, though not greatly, more limited. Its range extended, at any rate, from ‘Pelasgic Argos’ to the Troad, familiarity with which is shown in all sections of the Trojan epic. The cosmopolitan character of both poets is only indeed what might have been expected. The privileged members of an Achæan community must have enjoyed wide opportunities of observation. For Mycenæan culture was strongly eclectic. Elements from many quarters were amalgamated in it, Asiatic influences, however, predominating. The men of genius who acted as the interpreters of its typical ideas would hence have been unfit for their task unless they had personally tried and proved all such elements and influences. They were presumably to some extent adventurers by sea and land. But, further than this, their individuality remains shrouded in the impenetrable veil of their silence.
CHAPTER II.
HOMERIC ASTRONOMY.
The Homeric ideas regarding the heavenly bodies were of the simplest description. They stood, in fact, very much on the same level with those entertained by the North American Indians, when first brought into European contact. What knowledge there was in them was of that ‘broken’ kind which (in Bacon’s phrase) is made up of wonder. Fragments of observation had not even begun to be pieced in one with the other, and so fitted, ill or well, into a whole. In other words, there was no faintest dawning of a celestial science.
But surely, it may be urged, a poet is not bound to be an astronomer. Why should it be assumed that the author (or authors) of the Iliad and Odyssey possessed information co-extensive on all points with that of his fellow-countrymen? His profession was not science, but song. The argument, however, implies a reflecting backward of the present upon the past. Among unsophisticated peoples, specialists, unless in the matter of drugs or spells, or some few practical processes, do not exist. The scanty stock of gathered knowledge is held, it might be said, in common. The property of one is the property of all.
More especially of the poet. His power over his hearers depends upon his presenting vividly what they already perceive dimly. It was part of the poetical faculty of the Ithacan bard Phemius that he ‘knew the works of gods and men.’[[15]] His special function was to render them famous by his song. What he had heard concerning them he repeated; adding, of his own, the marshalling skill, the vital touch, by which they were perpetuated. He was no inventor: the actual life of men, with its transfiguring traditions and baffled aspirations, was the material he had to work with. But the life of men was very different then from what it is now. It was lived in closer contact with Nature; it was simpler, more typical, consequently more susceptible of artistic treatment.
[15]. Odyssey, i. 338.
It was accordingly looked at and portrayed as a whole; and it is this very wholeness which is one of the principal charms of primitive poetry—an irrecoverable charm; for civilisation renders existence a labyrinth of which it too often rejects the clue. In olden times, however, its ways were comparatively straight, and its range limited. It was accordingly capable of being embraced with approximate entirety. Hence the encyclopædic character of the early epics. Humani nihil alienum. Whatever men thought, and knew, and did, in that morning of the world when they spontaneously arose, found a place in them.
Now, some scheme of the heavens must always accompany and guide human existence. There is literally no choice for man but to observe the movements, real or apparent, of celestial objects, and to regulate his actions by the measure of time they mete out to him. Nor had he at first any other means of directing his wanderings upon the earth save by regarding theirs in the sky. They are thus to him standards of reference and measurement as regards both the fundamental conditions of his being—time and space.
This intimate connexion, and, still more, the idealising influence of the remote and populous skies, has not been lost upon the poets in any age. It might even be possible to construct a tolerably accurate outline-sketch of the history of astronomy in Europe without travelling outside the limits of their works. But our present concern is with Homer.