The World of Homer

by Andrew Lang

The questions, therefore, arise, were these Cyclic epics older in matter (as representing a more archaic tradition) than our Homer; are they older, or more recent, in composition, or are they and our Homer coeval? Mr. Monro expresses decisively the general opinion on these points. The Cyclic poems are by "the poets who carried on the traditions of Homeric art in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C."[3] He collects from them many incidents, beliefs, usages, and proofs of geographical knowledge "of a post-Homeric type."[4] Of these, from one poem, the Cypria, he selects five sets of examples. These represent (i) human sacrifice; (2) geographical knowledge much beyond that exhibited in Iliad and Odyssey; (3) interest in magic, which is un-Homeric; (4) the introduction of a non-Homeric hero, Palamedes, of the first rank, of essential importance, and the "Cause of Wrath" of Zeus against the Achaeans; (5) hero-worship; (6) I add, introduction of a goddess unknown to Homer, but "a concrete figure of ancient Attic religion;"[5] (7) introduction of the puerile fairy element in Märchen or folk-tales. Of this trait, and of magical incidents, there are several examples. (8) loves of gods and goddesses, who take the forms of various animals. From other Cyclic poems he selects other instances of these non-Homeric types, and also un-Homeric apparitions of men who have been duly burned and buried; and cases of the purification of homicides by blood of pigs, wholly unknown to Homer.

All these traits of the Cyclic poems, with others, such as the invention of pseudo-historic genealogies, as of Thersites, are non-Homeric. Some, such as the genealogy of Thersites, due to the manie cyclique, with the extended geographical outlook, are post-Homeric. But the others, the religious and magical notions— hero-worship, the ghost belief, blood-purification,—though later in record than our Homer (we assume), are even earlier in development, and are beliefs and rites of the pre-Homeric population. (See "Who were the Ionians?" and Appendix, On "Expurgation.")

Now much confusion is caused by the term "old." The poems earlier in composition may represent Achaean ideas then new to Greece; the poems later in composition may, and do, contain ideas old in Greece, but alien to Homer's Achaeans. Meanwhile, Mr. Monro, as we saw, regards the actual Cyclic poems as works of poets of the eighth to seventh centuries B.C., who carried "on the traditions of Homeric art" in Ionia. This means that they take up Achaean themes and traditions and heroic characters, and use them in new poems "composed with direct reference to the Iliad."[6] They lead up to the Iliad by a long chronicle of previous events in the Cypria, and continue the Homeric narrative in their other epics. But they interlard the narrative with their own rites, beliefs, their own Attic goddess (Nemesis of Rhamnus), and their own non-Achaean heroes, such as the Attic sons of Theseus, and the great Nauplian, Palamedes. They also add silly elements of Märchen, and pseudo-historic genealogies. They carve and cook the great Achaean joint, and serve up with Attic and Ionian sauce and trimmings.

This is natural, for the Attic people, of the pre-Achaean population, had not, as far as I know, any epic tradition of their own. They knew that they were not engaged in any one of the alleged great collective efforts and expeditions with which the Achaeans credited themselves. Some legends were dynastic adaptations of Märchen, with kings and princesses changed into birds; or accounts of their relations with Thrace, or explanations of the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries. They had, too, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, an adventure of an individual hero of Märchen; but that ran contrary to all Achaean and Cretan traditions, as we have seen. The Cyclic poets were mere imitators of the Achaean epic: epic tradition of their own, the people of Attica and their Ionian colonists (confessedly mixed with a mongrel multitude) had none.

Mr. Leaf takes the same view. He speaks of the Cyclic epics as "the imitative poems which dealt with the old Tale of Troy, and essayed to complete Homer."[7]

But a contradictory opinion seems to be held by von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, and, as I understand, by Mr. Murray. The celebrated German scholar argued thus: Before criticism arose in Greece, almost all ancient Epic poetry, and the Hymns, were attributed to "Homer." As early as Herodotus, however, we find that historian regarding the Cypria (a chronicle of the whole events before the opening of the Iliad) as not by the author of the Iliad.

As time went on, and criticism advanced, the Iliad and Odyssey alone were assigned to Homer, while the Cyclic poems were attributed to various authors, such as Arctinus, Stasinus, and Lesches. The attributions are late, various, perhaps never "evidential"; but criticism came to recognise our Iliad and Odyssey as alone Homeric. The other epics, the Cyclics, were thought to be of a later age, and by inferior hands.

This view was evolved by Greek critics from Herodotus to Aristotle and Aristarchus.

On the other hand, according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homer and the Cyclic poems were all qualitatively equivalent, and more or less contemporaneous. A statement of this hypothesis, which deliberately rejects the views of Greek criticism, shall be quoted from von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.[8]