The World of Homer

by Andrew Lang

All this tale deeply affected the mediaeval tale of Troy. Meanwhile, we do not know why in Arctinus, Polyxena was chosen as the γέρας, or honourable gift, of the dead Achilles. The idea may only have been that, while surviving leaders received each a damsel, the spirit of the great chief should not be deprived of its reward. No idea can be less Achaean, less Homeric, but it is congenial to the Ionian spirit.

The fact of the sacrifice would easily suggest, to still later writers, that in his life days Achilles loved Polyxena, and was loved by her; for Philostratus and Tzetzes aver that heart-broken by the murder of Achilles, she slew herself above his tomb.

Thus we see how, in the Ionian epics, and onwards through Stesichorus, the tragedians, the Roman poets, Dictys, and the mediaeval makers, the poetic consciousness played freely round the Homeric data, colouring them with the rainbow hues of changing beliefs and changing tastes. There is at least as wide a gulf between the tastes and ideas of Homer, on one side, and of the Ionians on the other, as between Arctinus, on one hand, and Benoit de Troyes and Boccaccio, on the other.

That the Ionian ideas, tastes, rites, and legends, as of Theseus and Palamedes, never were intruded into the Iliad and Odyssey, considering that for so long Homer was "taught, recited, imitated in Ionia,"[38] is an undeniable and amazing fact. How were Ionian hands restrained from touching the substance of the Achaean epics? This is, in the strict sense, a paradox, but the facts are undeniable: the epics were never Ionised. Homer was falsely claimed by Athens as an Ionian poet. Is there some basis of truth in the idea that the Aeolian Homeridae of Chios guarded their own?[39]

I have now given my view of the Cyclic poems as late, post-Homeric, and Ionian in (i) geographical knowledge; (2) in hero-worship; (3) in rites of human sacrifice and purification; (4) in the mania for inventing genealogies, as of Thersites, basest born of the host; (5) in partisan attacks on great Achaeans; (6) in silly Märchen; (7) in efforts to introduce representatives of Athens, the grandsons of Theseus, into the war; (8) the Attic goddess, Nemesis.

Of these eight proofs of lateness and Ionicism, Mr. Murray takes no notice: on the whole, he thinks our Homer later than some state of the lost Epics. He supposes parts of the Iliad to be borrowed from these Epics. "We happen to know that there was an old chronicle poem which both contained a catalogue of the ships and also narrated at length the assembling of the fleet at Aulis—the so-called Cypria or Cyprian verses."[40] This piece of information may be correct, I know not; but no authority is cited for the statement that the Cypria contained a catalogue of the ships, and no such authority is known to me.[41] Von Wilamowitz—Moellendorff conjectures that the Cypria contained a catalogue of the Achaeans, but that is not evidence.

In support of his theory that our Iliad is "in a further state of development" than some poetic chronicles, Mr. Murray writes that passages in the Iliad "seem to be derived from the Cypria, the Little Iliad, and the Sack of Ilion, the so-called Acthiopis.... These, then, are all pieces of supposed history taken over from one traditional poem into another."[42]

This appears to mean that the poems named were complete before the Iliad was complete, though all of them "were growing side by side for centuries." Indeed, Mr. Murray might seem to change his ground in a later statement of his opinions. In The Rise of the Greek Epic we hear of borrowings by the Iliad from several Cyclic poems made in Asia, and from the "Eumelian" verses in Europe. (For "Eumelus," see "Homer and the Saga.") Of borrowings by the Cyclics and "Eumelus" from the Iliad we do not hear. On the other hand, in Anthropology and the Classics (lectures by various students), Mr. Murray writes, "the extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently show in their form, and sometimes even in their content, definite signs of presupposing the Iliad, just as the Iliad here and there shows signs of presupposing them...."[43] But, R. G. E. p. 160, meets the charge of changed views.

If the Cypria be earlier than the Iliad, yet presupposes the Iliad (about Palamedes it does not), I presume it may also borrow from the Iliad; whereas, previously, the Iliad was mainly credited with the borrowings from the Cyclics. Perhaps we are intended to understand that "had we seen these poems before they were made," we would find that they all borrowed from each other. My mind is not metaphysical enough to conceive what the poems were "before they were made." To me it seems that they must, before they were made, have been mere masses of materials, traditions, legends, lays of unknown extent, and Märchen that had no original connection with definite places and persons. There was no Cypria, no Iliad, no Little Iliad, no Aethiopis before these poems were made. We should not, I think, speak of any unmade poem in the making as borrowing matter from another poem which, by our theory, is also still unmade.