[315] Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his History of Greece a valuable Appendix, on the early history of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 500-516); which contains copious information respecting the discrepant opinions of German critics, with a brief comparative examination of their reasons. I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded, to his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition of his own. Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that which appears to me the most important point in the Homeric controversy: “That before the appearance of the earliest of the poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete and well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces.” (p. 509.)
This marks out the Homeric poems as ancient both in the items and in the total, and includes negation of the theory of Wolf and Lachmann, who contend that, as a total, they only date from the age of Peisistratus. It is then safe to treat the poems as unquestionable evidences of Grecian antiquity (meaning thereby 776 B. C.), which we could not do if we regarded all congruity of parts in the poems as brought about through alterations of Peisistratus and his friends.
There is also a very just admonition of Dr. Thirlwall (p. 516) as to the difficulty of measuring what degree of discrepancy or inaccuracy might or might not have escaped the poet’s attention, in an age so imperfectly known to us.
[316] There are just remarks on this point in Heyne’s Excursus, ii. sect. 2 and 4, ad Il. xxiv. vol. viii. pp. 771-800.
[317] “Wenig Deutsche, und vielleicht nur wenige Menschen aller neuern Nationen, haben Gefühl für ein æsthetisches Ganzes: sie loben und tadeln nur stellenweise, sie entzücken sich nur stellenweise.” (Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: I transcribe this from Welcker’s Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 306.)
What ground there is for restricting this proposition to modern as contrasted with ancient nations, I am unable to conceive.
[318] The κινούμενα ὀνόματα of Homer were extolled by Aristotle; see Schol. ad Iliad. i. 481; compare Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos. Verbor. c. 20. ὥστε μηδὲν ἡμῖν διαφέρειν γινόμενα τὰ πράγματα ἢ λεγόμενα ὁρᾶν. Respecting the undisguised bursts of feeling by the heroes, the Scholiast ad Iliad, i. 349 tells us,—ἕτοιμον τὸ ἡπωϊκον πρὸς δάκρυα,—compare Euripid. Helen. 959, and the severe censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388.
The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least instructed persons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who had acquired the Greek language in addition to their own mother tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. vol. i. p. 478; Or. liii. vol. ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and perspicuity of the narrative style, implied in this extensive popularity, Porphyry made a singular remark: he said, that the sentences of Homer really presented much difficulty and obscurity, but that ordinary readers fancied they understood him, “because of the general clearness which appeared to run through the poems.” (See the Prolegomena of Villoison’s edition of the Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of the Homeric criticism. There doubtless were real obscurities in the poems, arising from altered associations, customs, religion, language, etc., as well as from corrupt text; but while the critics did good service in elucidating these difficulties, they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of their own creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and obvious meaning, they sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate innuendo, recondite motives even with regard to petty details, deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a specimen in Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. c. 15, p. 316, Reiske; nor is even Aristotle exempt from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad. iii. 441, x. 198), or a substratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages, quite perspicuous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them.
There could not be so sure a way of missing the real Homer as by searching for him in these devious recesses. He is essentially the poet of the broad highway and the market-place, touching the common sympathies and satisfying the mental appetencies of his countrymen with unrivalled effect; but exempt from ulterior views, either selfish or didactic, and immersed in the same medium of practical life and experience, religiously construed, as his auditors. No nation has ever yet had so perfect and touching an exposition of its early social mind as the Iliad and Odyssey exhibit.
In the verbal criticism of Homer, the Alexandrine literati seem to have made a very great advance, as compared with the glossographers who preceded them. (See Lehrs, De Studiis Aristarchi, Dissert. ii. p. 42.)