Bryant.
The ancients implicitly believed the story of the Iliad, but modern scepticism has doubted its truth and questioned the authenticity of the poem itself. The German critic Wolf and others have even gone so far as to deny that any such person as Homer ever existed, contending that the name means simply a fitter together or compiler, and that the great epic is a mosaic of romantic legends by different rhapsodists, for years kept from perishing merely by oral repetition.
Such, however, is the continuity of the narrative, the identity of style, the consistency in carrying out the several characters, that this theory, ingeniously as it has been urged, lacks credibility. We see no reason to doubt that, despite a few minor discrepancies, one great intellect gave birth in the main to both these epics; that whatever foundations for them may have been laid in previous ballads, the glorious superstructures were reared by one master-builder. It is easier to believe that there was one transcendent genius, than that there were half a dozen of uniform poetic power, competent to have had a hand in works so glorious—works displaying perfect unity of design, and taste so faultless that from them, as standards, have been deduced the very principles of criticism and laws of epic poetry.
Besides the internal evidence of its authenticity, the historical facts woven into the Iliad have received unexpected confirmation in the discoveries of Doctor Schliemann, a German explorer who claims to have unearthed the Ilium of Homer, and to have found among its ruins gold and amber ornaments once worn by King Priam.
Plan of the Odyssey.—In the Odyssey, divided like the Iliad into twenty-four books, Homer has immortalized the story of the return-voyage of Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) from Troy to Ithaca. After a series of remarkable adventures and hair-breadth escapes, the hero is cast on the lovely island of the sea-nymph Calypso, who, becoming enamored of him, detains him for seven years. During this time, a number of insolent suitors force themselves upon Ulysses’ faithful wife Penelope, take up their residence at her court, and there lead a riotous life, hoping that the queen will bestow her hand on one of them and thus make him lord of Ithaca. They even plan the murder of her son Telem’achus.
Admonished by Jupiter, Calypso reluctantly allows Ulysses to depart, and he finally reaches Ithaca in safety. Disguised as a beggar, he enters his palace after an absence of twenty years, to endure the insults of the suitors, but to concert with his son for their overthrow.
On the following day, a great festival is held, and Penelope agrees to give her hand to him who shall send an arrow from Ulysses’ bow through a row of twelve rings. The suitors try in turn without success; but the beggar, obtaining possession of the bow, draws the shaft to its head and accomplishes the feat. Then turning on the trembling suitors, he showers his arrows among them, and none escape. The true-hearted Penelope is restored to him whom she had wept as lost, and husband and wife sit down together to talk over the sorrows of the past.
“She told him of the scorn and wrong
She long had suffered in her house,
From the detested suitor throng,