Lachmann and Grote. New Views.
Agreeably to my promise at the conclusion of my former article, I continue and conclude my remarks on the Homeric question.
Nitzsch, one of Wolf's most indefatigable and learned opponents, examined his theory with the closest critical nicety, and, by proving its fallaciousness, he shook the stability of it very much—not wholly, however, because disproof does not always engender disbelief; scholars were beginning to lose faith therein, when, ten years ago, the late Carl Lachmann revived it, with certain modifications, in his Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias (Abhandl. Berlin. Acad. 1841), where he has proposed the following views:—
That the Homeric poems were not composed by one man, but by several, working together; and that, after the collection of these lays by Peisistratos, the history of them is precisely as given us by classical writers.
This proposition, to use the words of Grote,[1] "explains the gaps and contradictions in the narrative, but it explains nothing else;" and is further refuted by the actual facts of the poems themselves,[2] where, as we find, no contradictions bearing on this point occur, and the whole sixteen poets (for such is Lachmann's number) concur in killing and sending off the stage, so to speak, these considerable chieftains (and all in the first battle after the secession of Achilles), Elephenor, chief of the Eubœans,[3] Tlepolemos, of the Rhodians;[4] Pandaros of the Lycians;[5] Odios, of the Halizonians;[6] Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians;[7] besides many of inferior note. None of these reappear in the whole course of the work; and it seems strange, as Mure continues, that "any number of 'independent poets' should have so harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel." And he then cites the solitary discrepancy, Pylæmenes, as the only exception,[8] whose death is related in the fifth, and who weeps at his son's funeral in the thirteenth book. This however, Mure explains as an oversight on the part of the poet (which is, however, impossible), or to the more probable cause of an interpolation of verses 658 and 659 by an early rhapsodist, "better versed in the 'Battle of the Ships,' as his habitual part in the recital, than in the 'Prowess of Diomed.'"
[1] Grote, vol. ii. p. 231.
[2] Mure, Appendix C., vol. i. p. 507.
[3] Ιλ. iv. 469.
[4] Ιλ. v. 659.
[5] Ιλ. v. 290.