In this case he has given us again the factors of a sum in multiplication, though not the product. Did he mean them to be taken literally? If he did, then it is indeed strange that, although he says nothing whatever on the subject of number in the Trojan Catalogue, yet he has here supplied us with all the particulars necessary for estimating the Trojan force, while as to the Greek army, we remain unable to say whether it amounted to fifty thousand, or to half, or to twice or thrice that number. But it is quite plain from the total absence of specified numbers in the Trojan Catalogue, that he had no desire, as indeed he had no occasion, to give an accurate account of the Trojan force. On the other hand it appears, from the details of the Greek Catalogue, that he did wish to describe the amount of the force on that side, as far as he could conceive or convey it. If all this be so, then nothing can show more clearly than the thousand Trojan watch-fires, with their fifty men at each, Homer’s figurative manner of employing numerical aggregations. If however we admit the figurative use, we at once find everything harmonious. He describes the Trojans by the method of bold enhancement, at a juncture of the poem where it is his purpose to make them terrible to the Greek imagination.
The instance of Proteus in the Odyssey has already been referred to: but one more marked is afforded by the description that Eumæus gives of the herds and flocks of Ulysses. This, again, is one of the instances where the spirit and gist of the passage almost required that a total should be stated. For the object is to give a telling account. The wealth of this prince, says the Poet, was boundless; none of the heroes, whether of Ithaca or of the fertile continent, had so much; no, nor had any twenty of them. Then he mentions how many herds of cattle, goats, and swine, and flocks of sheep there were, but gives no numbers of any of the herds, nor any total: though, shortly before, the poem had mentioned the three hundred and sixty fat hogs under the care of Eumæus, and had also given us the sows in the usual manner, stating that there were twelve sties with fifty in each; but not specifying anywhere the total of six hundred which these figures yield when multiplied together[816].
Again, then the result of all these passages, as well as of more which might be quoted, is, I think, to show that Homer’s conceptions of number, and his use of number, especially when beyond a very low limit, were so indeterminate, that they may not improperly be called figurative.
Hesiod’s age of the Nymphs.
In support and in illustration of this belief with respect to Homer, I would once more refer to the curious fragment ascribed to Hesiod respecting the age of the Nymphs with beauteous locks, which begins,
ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη
ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων.
In the Etymol. Magn. 13. 36, the reading is γερώντων; and Ausonius, following this authority in his Eighteenth Idyll, makes the γενεὴ no less than 96 years. But the sense of γενεὴ is fixed by Homer’s account of Nestor, and otherwise, in such a way as greatly to favour the reading ἡβώντων. The word therefore means the term between birth and the prime of life, which may well be taken at thirty years. Then comes a table as follows.
The age of the daw = 9 ages of men.