High excellence incompatible with artificiality.
The Homeric poems therefore mainly natural;
This it is which makes any systematic artificiality to my mind most improbable. The difference between the learned epic of a really reflective age and the Iliad is illustrated by comparing with it the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, a great poet in his way, but unmistakably and lamentably artificial. I agree, therefore, with Thirlwall, that the Homeric poets described an age not very different from that in which they lived, and that the reason why widely varying societies, such as the democratic Athenian, or the modern European, can appreciate these pictures, is that they are not artificially constructed, but adapted from a real experience, drawn from very human nature, and reflecting permanent human passions[50:1]. The most unreal thing in the poems is of course their theology; and yet this became in after days perhaps more real than the rest by its universal adoption among
the Greeks as the authoritative account of their gods.
but only generally true;
§ 26. The Homeric poems therefore give us a general picture of the state of the Greeks at a time shortly before the dawn of history; for such poems could hardly be composed and held together without writing, and when writing becomes diffused, history begins[51:1]. Still, the poets lived in an age not controlled by criticism, or subject to the verifications of study. Hence they could deal loosely with particulars, omit details that suited them not, and describe places poetically rather than topographically. So it is that the Catalogue of the Ships will not agree with the rest; and in many other cases there is evidence that the lays brought together were not weeded of
their mutual inconsistencies, or compelled to conform strictly to the final plan.
and therefore variously judged by various minds.
It is therefore certain that according as critics lay stress on the great consistency of character and feeling in these poems, they will, as Mr. Gladstone does, exaggerate their historical value, and set them down as almost sober history. When the other spirit prevails, and we attend to the many flaws in plot and inconsistencies of detail, we shall have acute scholars, like Mr. Evelyn Abbott, denying that either the assertions or the omissions in the poems are evidence worth anything for any historical purpose. Yet even such sceptics will not refrain from drawing pictures of Greek life from these false and treacherous epics.