The Heroic Age

by H. Munro Chadwick

It may perhaps be said that these conclusions show an inadequate recognition of the results attained by modern investigations in the history of Greek heroic tradition. But we may fairly ask how many definite results have been attained in this field—results, I mean, which command the unanimous approval, or anything like the unanimous approval, of present-day scholars. It is a common opinion, at least in this country, that the general effect has been rather to obscure than to solve the real problems presented by the poems. If we put aside the opinions of more conservative scholars we may indeed find a common element—namely the belief that the attitude of the ancients themselves to stories of the Heroic Age was mistaken. But this belief cannot be regarded as a result established by the investigations; it is rather their starting point.

By 'the ancients' I do not mean merely the poets and mythographers of antiquity. It is admitted that "the basis of fact in Homer is fully as real to Thucydides as to Herodotus." Now the work undertaken by Thucydides was not a history of the Trojan War; but he had evidently considered that story. Apparently it did not occur to him to doubt that the war had taken place, or even that the expedition had been commanded by Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. What he had reflected on was the question whether the expedition was really on so large a scale as is stated in the Iliad; and the result to which his reflections brought him was that there was not a sufficient case for scepticism (οὔκουν ἀπιστεῖν εἰκός). We are at liberty to form a different opinion. Yet Thucydides was a man no whit inferior intellectually to the best of modern scholars. Moreover he had the advantage of being a native; and he was separated from the Heroic Age by some six centuries, whereas we are separated from it by nearly thirty. There can be little doubt that many sources of information were open to him—traditions, poems and even monuments—which are entirely lost to us. It seems to me therefore that before we disregard the opinions of such persons we shall do well to consider carefully in what respects we are better qualified for forming a judgment.

So far as I can see we have the advantage in two respects only. Firstly, there is the evidence of the Egyptian monuments and of that prehistoric Aegean civilisation which has been revealed to us by the discoveries of Schliemann, Dörpfeld, Evans, Halbherr and many others. It is at least improbable that Thucydides was as well acquainted with either of these sources of information as we are. If he had seen Dr Dörpfeld's excavations at Troy he might perhaps have modified his opinion about the numbers of the Achaean army, although he had noted the dimensions of Mycenae. But that after all is a trifle. Can it be said that the general effect of the new evidence has been to discredit the tradition? The records of Rameses II and his successors have definitely disposed of the idea that Agamemnon's expedition was anything impossible, while the discoveries in Crete have shown once for all that 'early' does not mean the same thing as 'primitive.' It is a significant fact therefore that in many investigations of the type we are discussing little or no use has been made of this new evidence. The evidence on which they rely is evidence which was at least as accessible to Thucydides as it is to us.

Secondly, it is in our power, probably far more than it was in that of Thucydides and his contemporaries, to compare the Homeric stories with others of the same type. It is here that our great advantage lies. But can it be said that this advantage has been turned to account by modern writers? Many works contain no reference to any poetry other than Greek and Latin—the latter of which, owing to its dependence upon Greek, is of little value for our purpose. Many others, it is true, have used the evidence of Teutonic heroic poetry. But only by taking a single poem belonging to the latest stratum, without reference to its history or its connections in the poetry of other Teutonic peoples, and by using precarious hypotheses as to the origin of the story as a foundation for similar hypotheses in relation to the Homeric stories. The earlier strata of Teutonic heroic poetry have been ignored as much as the heroic poetry of other European peoples.

I have no doubt that much which is obscure in Homeric poetry and tradition may be illuminated by a historical study of heroic poetry elsewhere—not merely Teutonic but also Celtic, Slavonic and even non-European. For the story of the Iliad in particular I suspect that a fairly close parallel—perhaps the closest of all—is to be found in those Servian poems which deal with the battle of Kossovo[467]. My object however in this book is to bring to light the relations of Greek and Teutonic heroic poetry—or rather to make a start in that direction, for the object is by no means one which can be accomplished in a single attempt. So much however may be said with confidence even now: all that we know, apart from hypotheses, with regard to the origin of the Teutonic heroic stories corresponds to the views held by Thucydides and his contemporaries.

With the affinities between Homeric poetry and the old Teutonic court-poetry we shall have to deal in the next chapter. I do not think that any true analogy to the medieval German poems is to be found in Greek literature; but I have ventured to suggest (p. [239] f.) that the poems of the Edda have something in common with those of Stesichoros and his followers. Apart from the poems however, Greek literature preserves numerous records of the Heroic Age, frequently, though not always, in the form of local traditions. Some of these are doubtless due to the influence of Homeric or 'Stesichoric' poetry; but we have no right to assume that this is universally true. There are a number which appear to be of popular origin, whether they come from poems of Stage III (cf. p. [94] ff.) or from poems which were 'popular' from the beginning or from stories which never were clothed in poetic form.

As an example we will take the story of Minos. So far as I know, there is no evidence that this hero figured prominently in any early poems of which we have record, though incidental allusions to him occur both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Yet there is no doubt that the Greeks regarded him as one of the very greatest figures of the far past. The most striking tradition recorded of him is that he possessed a powerful fleet, which enabled him to subdue the islands, to put down piracy and thus to secure safety for navigation. This thalassocracy is mentioned both by Herodotus (I 171, III 122) and Thucydides (I 4, 8); and the former adds that no such attempt to command the sea was made again until the time of Polycrates of Samos, in the latter part of the sixth century. Later writers relate the famous story of the Minotaur; they represent Minos also as the founder of cities, including Cnossos and Phaistos, the great prehistoric palaces lately excavated, and as a legislator or judge. In what is commonly regarded as one of the latest additions to the Odyssey (XI 568 ff.) we find him giving judgments among the dead.

It is obvious enough that the story of Minos contains many mythical features. But do these features constitute the original kernel of the story, or are they accretions, due to folk-tales or popular belief? We need not enter here into the story of the Minotaur, upon which Dr Evans' discoveries have thrown such a curious light. But there are other features in the story which may be illustrated from medieval beliefs regarding Dietrich von Bern. Sometimes we find this hero represented as the leader of the 'Wild Hunt,' the army of ghosts[468]—a position elsewhere occupied by Wodan or other mythical beings. In medieval German homilies and other religious works he is credited with having been the founder of several famous Roman buildings, such as the Amphitheatre at Verona and the Castle of St Angelo at Rome[469]. In such beliefs we have a close enough parallel to the traditions of Minos. There is no reason for supposing that the Greeks were better acquainted with the prehistoric Cretans than the Germans were with the ancient Romans. In both cases doubtless it seemed natural to attribute the foundation of venerable buildings to a prominent hero of their own race[470] But Dietrich von Bern (Theodric, king of the Ostrogoths) was not originally a mythical being.

Nor need the tradition of Minos' thalassocracy be regarded as altogether incredible. We have seen that in the reigns of Merenptah and Rameses III Egypt and the neighbouring lands were invaded by large forces from the Aegean or even more remote regions. After the time of Rameses III we hear little of these peoples, though it is clear that they had formed settlements on the coast of Palestine. From the following centuries we have apparently only one detailed piece of information relating to the Mediterranean, namely the story of a certain Unuamen (or Wenamon), an official belonging to the temple of Amen at Thebes, who had been sent to the Lebanon to buy timber[471]. From this story we may infer with some probability that the eastern end of the Mediterranean was policed or controlled by the fleets of some Aegean nation[472]. The time to which the story refers is either the reign of Herhor or that of his predecessor Rameses XII[473]—about the beginning of the eleventh century. That seems to be approximately the time indicated for Minos by Greek tradition; for according to Il. XIII 451 f. and Od. XIX 178 ff. he was the grandfather of Idomeneus. It is scarcely impossible that an ambitious Greek prince of this age may have been animated by the desire of regaining the supremacy of the ancient Cretans, just as Theodric was inspired by the idea of restoring under Gothic rule the power formerly held by the Roman emperors.