Ionian Language and Culture.
"The Ionian dialect, remoulded from the Asiatic forms and elements which had traveled through the North and recrossed the Ægean Sea, under the happy influences of a serene and beautiful heaven, amid the most varied and lovely scenery in nature, by a people of manly vigor and exquisite mental and physical organization—of the keenest susceptibility to beauty of sound as well as of form, of the most vivid and creative imagination, combined with a childlike impulsiveness and simplicity—this Ionian language, so sprung and so nurtured, attained a descriptive force, a copiousness and harmony, which made it the most admirable instrument on which poet ever played. For every mood of mind, every shade of passion, every affection of the heart, every form and aspect of the outward world, it had its graphic phrase, its clear, appropriate, and rich expression. Its pictured words and sentences placed the things described, and thoughts that breathe, in living form before the reader's eye and mind. It was vivid, rich, melodious; in its general character strikingly concrete and objective; a charm to the ear, a delight to the imagination; copious and infinitely flexible; free and graceful in movement and structure, having at the beginning passed over the chords of the lyre, and been modulated by the living voice of the singer; obeying the impulse of thought and feeling, rather than the formal principles of grammar.
"It expressed the passions of robust manhood with artless and unconscious truth. Its freedom, its voluble minuteness of delineation, its rapid changes of construction, its breaks, pauses, significant and sudden transitions, its easy irregularities, exhibit the intellectual play of national youth; while in boldness and splendor it meets the demands of highest invention and the most majestic sweep of the imagination, and bears the impress of genius in the full strength of its maturity. Frederic Jacobs says, fancifully yet truly, that 'the language of Ionia resembles the smooth mirror of a broad and silent lake, from whose depth a serene sky, with its soft and sunny vault, and the varied nature along its smiling shores are reflected in transfigured beauty.' In Ionia, to borrow the expressions of the same eloquent writer, the mind of man 'enjoyed a life exempt from drudgery, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of sensibility and frolic joy, innocent curiosity and childlike faith. Surrendered to the outer world, and inclined to all that was attractive by novelty, beauty, and greatness, it was here that the people listened, with greatest eagerness, to the history of the men and heroes whose deeds, adventures, and wanderings filled a former age with their renown, and, when they were echoed in song, moved to ecstasy the breasts of the hearers.
"The Ionians had from the beginning a superior natural endowment for literature and art; and when this most gifted race came into contact with the antique culture and boundless commercial wealth of Asia and Africa, the loveliest and most fragrant flowers of the intellect shot forth in every direction. Carrying with them the traditions of their race and the war-songs of their bards to the very scenes where the famous deeds of their forefathers had been performed, these local circumstances awakened a fresh interest in the old legends, and epic poetry took a new start, a bolder character, a loftier sweep, a wider range. A general expansion of the intellectual powers and the poetical spirit suddenly took place in the midst of the new prosperity and the unaccustomed luxuries of the East—in the midst of the gay and festive life which succeeded the ages of wandering, toil, hardship, and conflict, like the Sabbath repose following the weary warfare of the week. The loveliness of nature on the Ionian shores, and in the isles that crown the Ægean deep, was soon embellished by the genius of art. Stately processions, hymns chanted in honor of the gods, graceful dances before the altars, statues, and shrines, assemblies for festal or solemn purposes in the open air under the soft sky of Ionia, or within the halls of princes and nobles—these fill up the moments of the new and dazzling existence which the excitable Hellenic race are invited here and now to enjoy.
"Their first and deepest want—that which, in the foregoing periods of their existence, had been the first supplied—was the longing of the heart, the demand of the imagination, for poetry and song; and it would have been surprising if the bright genius of Ionia, under all these favoring circumstances, had not broken upon the world with a splendor which outshone all its former achievements. Poets sprang up, obedient to the call, and a new school of poetical composition rapidly developed itself, embodying the Hellenic traditions of the Trojan story, and the legends handed down by the Trojans themselves. Troops or companies of these poets—singers, as they were called—were formed, and their pieces were the delight of the listening multitudes that thronged around them. At last, among these minstrels who consecrated the flower of their lives to the service of the Muses, appeared a man whose genius was to eclipse them all. This man was Homer."
I. HOMER AND HIS POEMS.
Not only was Homer the greatest of the poets of antiquity, but he is generally admitted to be distinguished before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority. The circumstances of his life are but little known, except that he was a wandering poet, and, in his later years at least, was blind. He is supposed to have lived nearly one thousand years before the Christian era; but, strange as it may seem, nothing is known, with certainty, of his parentage or his birthplace. Although he was probably a native of the island of Chi'os, yet seven Grecian cities contended for the honor of his birth. In view of this controversy, and of the real doubt that hung over the subject, the poet ANTIP'ATER, of Sidon, who flourished just before the Christian era, as if he could not give to his great predecessor too high an exaltation, attributes his birthplace to heaven, and he ascribes to the goddess Calli'o-pe, one of the Muses, who presided over epic poetry and eloquence, the distinction of being his mother.
From Col'ophon some deem thee sprung;
From Smyrna some, and some from Chios;
These noble Sal'amis have sung,
While those proclaim thee born in Ios;
And others cry up Thessaly,
The mother of the Lap'ithæ.
Thus each to Homer has assigned
The birthplace just which suits his mind.
But if I read the volume right,
By Phoebus to his followers given,
I'd say they're all mistaken quite,
And that his real country's heaven;
While, for his mother, she can be
No other than Calliope.
—Trans. by MERIVALE.
The principal works of Homer, and, in fact, the only ones that have not been declared spurious, are the Iliad and the Odyssey. The former, as we have seen, relates some of the circumstances of the closing year of the Trojan war; and the latter tells the story of the wanderings of the Grecian prince Ulysses after the fall of Troy. The ancients, to whom the writings of Homer were so familiar, fully believed that he was the author of the two great epics attributed to him. It was left to modern critics to maintain the contrary. In 1795 Professor F. A. Wolf, of Germany, published his Prolegomena, or prefatory essay to the Iliad, in which he advanced the hypothesis that both the Iliad and the Odyssey were a collection of separate lays by different authors, for the first time reduced to writing and formed into the two great poems by the despot Pisis'tratus, of Athens, and his friends. [Footnote: Nearly all the modern German writers follow the views of Wolf against the Homeric authorship of this poem, but among the English critics there is more diversity of opinion. Colonel Mure, Mr. Gladstone, and others oppose the German view, while Grote, Professor Geddes, Professor Mahaffy and others of note adopt it, so far at least as to believe that Homer was not the sole author of the poems.] We cannot here enter into the details of the controversy to which this theory has given rise, nor can we undertake to say on which side the weight of authority is to be found. The following extracts well express the views of those who adhere to the common theory on the subject. PROFESSOR FELTON thus remarks, in the preface to his edition of the Iliad: "For my own part I prefer to consider it, as we have received it from ancient editors, as one poem—the work of one author, and that author Homer, the first and greatest of minstrels. As I understand the Iliad, there is a unity of plan, a harmony of parts, a consistency among the different situations of the same character, which mark it as the production of one mind; but of a mind as versatile as the forms of nature, the aspects of life, and the combinations of powers, propensities, and passions in man are various."