The World of Homer

by Andrew Lang

"The epos" (the whole mass of early epic poetry) "is by Homer," so says tradition. "The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go, because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of Homer. At last the Iliad alone abides. The only step that remained to be taken was to reject (athetiren) the Iliad also: this step the ancients refused to take, for fear of falling into the abyss. But the step has been taken long ago. The Iliad, as it stands, is not the work of one man, or of one century: it is not one work at all. The Iliad is nothing but a κυκλικὸν ποίημα. But we are in no abyss, no bottomless pit. On the other hand, we regain firm ground, which ancient criticism had in childish rashness abandoned. The Iliad is just as much and as little Homeric as the Cypria. There is no qualitative difference between ὁμηρικόν and κυκλικόν."

Now that careless child, Aristotle, was of a different opinion. He saw that the Iliad varies absolutely in nature from some of the Cyclics, and the fact is conspicuous. The Iliad also varies, as the scholiasts observed, from the Cyclics historically; varies in manners, rites, religion, taste, and geographical knowledge. All these facts are absolutely demonstrable. So great a critic as Aristotle, and, we may add, so unprejudiced a critic, for he lived long before Wolf, could not but remark the essential differences between the Iliad, on the one hand, and some of the Ionian Cyclic poems on the other, as far as quality is concerned. Into the differences which archaeology and anthropology detect, Aristotle did not enter, for he was writing on the Art of Poetry. Unity in a poem, he said, is not obtained merely by the selection of a single hero (the Cypria is so far like Vanity Fair that it is a chronicle "without a hero," unless the hero be Paris or Palamedes). Unity of action is, says Aristotle, essential to an Epic, and Homer observes this unity, grouping all the events round one motif, the Wrath of Achilles, or the Return of Odysseus. The Cypria has no such unity; it simply ends where the Iliad begins.

Unity, concentration, "with beginning, middle, and end," is as necessary, Aristotle holds, to epic as to dramatic poetry. The Trojan war, to be sure, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the whole could not be treated in an Epic under poetic conditions of space. One motif is therefore selected by Homer, with diversifying episodes. The author of the Cypria did not adopt the true method of epic: in the Iliad and Odyssey are subjects but for one or two tragedies; whereas the Cypria, extending over many years and dealing with many regions, yields subjects for many, and the Little Iliad for eight or more plays, which are enumerated.[9]

We would not now state the case precisely in the terms of Aristotle: and the Attic tragedians possibly chose so many topics from the Cyclics, so few from the Iliad, partly because the Athenians, as chiefs of the Ionian name, preferred Ionian versions of the legends; while, as Republicans, they used the Ionian term for Agamemnon and Menelaus as "tyrants"; and kept up the singular Ionian feud against Odysseus, preferring to him Aias, a neighbour of Athens; Philoctetes, oppressed by the "tyrants"; and Palamedes, the victim of the tyrants and of their minion Odysseus.

Such were the tastes of the Athenians; but we see that Aristotle observes the essential difference in poetic quality between the Iliad and Odyssey, which are Epics, while some of the Cyclic poems are mere metrical chronicles.

The difference between epic and versified chronicle is, I think, that which divides Barbour's The Brus and the Wallace of Blind Harry (poetical chronicles like the Heracleis, the late poem on the history of Heracles), from epics like the Chanson de Roland with its one motive, "The Wrath of Ganelon," its origins and consequences. Our Iliad, in Aristotle's opinion, then, is an epic; the Cypria, the Heracleis, and so on, are not epics, but rather are versified chronicles. In Mr. Murray's opinion, too, the Iliad is an epic, the Cypria is "an old chronicle poem." But this only proves, to his mind, that the Iliad is the further developed.[10] "They grew together side by side" or centuries; but the Iliad, as we have it, is, he thinks, of later and more accomplished art. Mr. Murray writes: "In its actual working up, however, our Iliad has reached a further stage of development than the ordinary run of poetic chronicles, if I may use the term."[11]

Now, as far as analogy serves our turn, the "poetic chronicle" is in a later stage of development than the epic. Thus Barbour's The Brus, or the Argonautic poem of the very late Apollonius, is in a much later stage of development than the old Germanic epics, or Beowulf, which selects two main events from the career of the hero. Again, versified chronicles in France are much later in development than the epic, the Chanson de Roland, "The Wrath of Ganelon."

However, as analogies are never satisfactory, let us be content to note that the Iliad confessedly differs in character from the Cypria, as the epic differs from the verse-chronicle. On this point von Wilamowitz Moellendorff appears to agree, as does Mr. Murray, who studies the subject in the spirit of the learned German. To repeat his statement, he writes, "These various books or masses of tradition in verse form were growing up side by side for centuries."[12]