But in this matter note the adjectives in the passage quoted here from the Iliad; they are all visual.—G. H. M.
Mr. L. Lloyd, of the experimental station at Cheshunt, tells me he has seen in Rhodesia the musician and singer of a troupe of native dancers who had been blinded by his chief to prevent him leaving the village.—H. G. W.
[95] G.M.
[96] The Iliad describes what Chadwick calls a Heroic Age: i.e. a time when the barbarians or nomads are breaking up an old civilization. Men are led by chiefs who live by plunder and conquest and make themselves kingdoms. The tribe is broken up; instead comes the comitatus of casual men who attach themselves to a particular chief, as Phœnix or Patroclus to Achilles. Religion is broken up, being by origin local. Hence there is almost no religion in the Iliad or the Nibelungenlied. Almost no magic. No family life. Tremendous booty, and la carrière ouverte aux talents with a vengeance.—G. M.
[97] Some Aspects of Hindu Life in India. Paper read to the Royal Society of Arts, Nov. 28, 1918.
[98] No Greek heroes, in Homer or the heroic tradition, ever get drunk. In the comic tradition they do, and of course centaurs and barbarians do.—G. M.
[99] Babylonian expedition of the University of Pennsylvania.
[100] H. R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, says it has been found in Palestine.—S. H.
The late Mr. Aaron Aaronson found a real wild wheat upon the slopes of Mt. Hermon. See Bulletin 274, Plant Indus. Bureau, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture; and Stapf in Suppl. to the Jour. of the Board of Agri., Lond., vol. xvii, No. 3.—E. J. R.
[101] We shall use “Mesopotamia” here loosely for the Euphrates-Tigris country generally. Strictly, of course, as its name indicates, Mesopotamia (mid rivers) means only the country between those two great rivers. That country in the fork was probably very marshy and unhealthy in early times (Sayce), until it was drained by man, and the early cities grew up west of the Euphrates and east of the Tigris. Probably these rivers then flowed separately into the Persian Gulf.