A second consequence, which must be drawn from the foregoing conclusions, is this; that we shall do wrong to search the poems of Homer for any scheme of chronology. The minute enumerations of the Mosaic books have perhaps given the tone to our ordinary historical inquiries: but, at least with respect to Homer, it must appear an erroneous course to use his numerical statements as literal, when they are applied to time, after we have had so much evidence of their generally ornamental and figurative character.
When Homer has occasion to define distance, he does not attempt to do it by a fixed measure, but by reference always to human or other action: it is as far as a man can throw a spear, (δουρὸς ἐρώη); or as far as a man’s cry can be heard (ὅσον τε γέγωνε βόησας); or as far, when we come to larger spaces, as we can sail within a certain time; if I make a good passage, says Achilles[820], I may get to Phthia on the third day: and again, we hear of the distance that a ship can perform within the day[821]. The horses of the gods in Homer clear, at each bound, a space as large as the eye can cover along the surface of the sea. As he comes to speak of points more remote and less known, he becomes greatly more vague, and says of Egypt, that even the birds do not get back from it within the year[822]: without doubt drawing his idea from those birds which periodically migrate.
No scheme of Chronology in Homer.
As with spaces, so with times. The year indeed by its revolution forms itself into a natural whole, and is thus in a manner self-defined. So the waxing and waning moon defines the month. But even with these well marked terms Homer deals loosely; for the birth of infants is promised to take place after the revolution of a year from the time of conception[823].
Case of the three decades of years.
I do not remember that he ever mentions a very high number of days or of years, but his use of both days and years, when it does not embrace terms defined by custom, has the marks of being highly poetical. Take for instance the principal and almost only statements of the poem, that can claim to be called chronological. They are those which represent the period of the siege as a decade of years, preceded by a decade of preparation, and followed by a third decade for the vicissitudes of the Return. Here are three terms of years, all found in a Poet, who does not elsewhere deal in terms of years at all. Of history, or what purports to be such, Homer has given us a great deal, and he has placed it in the exactest and clearest order. But in no one instance, out of all his prior history, does he found himself on any numerical definitions of time. Moreover, these three terms of years are all exactly equal, which heightens the unlikelihood of their being historical. Lastly, the three terms are just of the number of years required to make up what was, according to all appearances, the Homeric term of a γενεὴ, or generation of men.
The passage, on which the proof of this last assertion must principally be founded, is that in the First Book[824], which describes the age of Nestor;
τῷ δ’ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
ἐφθίαθ’, οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ’ ἐγένοντο
ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν.