It may be said that we have translations of all the best and most popular of the classical authors, and that many of these are admirable in their execution. This is quite true. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Æneid, Horace, and some of the Greek Dramatists, have lately found translators who, in point of taste and general accuracy, leave little to be desired. But the results of their work will be best enjoyed and valued by those whose acquaintance with the originals enables them to appreciate not only the positive beauty of the English version, but its relative merit as conveying the spirit and sense of the Greek or Latin author. Even the best translation (especially of the classical poets) may fail to have a continuous interest for the merely modern reader, unless he has some previous familiarity with the argument of the work, the personages introduced, and the characteristics of the age in which the scene and action lie.

The aim of the present series will be to explain, sufficiently for general readers, who these great writers were, and what they wrote; to give, wherever possible, some connected outline of the story which they tell, or the facts which they record, checked by the results of modern investigations; to present some of their most striking passages in approved English translations, and to illustrate them generally from modern writers; to serve, in short, as a popular retrospect of the chief literature of Greece and Rome. The attempt appeals, as will be seen, to a circle outside that of classical scholarship; though possibly some who have all legal claim to rank as scholars, but who now stand rather on the “retired list” of that service, may in these pages meet some old acquaintances whom they have almost forgotten. If, in any case, they find our re-introduction unsatisfactory, none would advise them more heartily than we do to renew the old personal intercourse for themselves.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
[INTRODUCTION],[1]
CHAP.[I.]THE QUARREL OF AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES,[25]
“[II.]THE DUEL OF PARIS AND MENELAUS,[48]
“[III.]THE BROKEN TRUCE,[63]
“[IV.]THE FIRST DAY’S BATTLE,[69]
“[V.]THE SECOND DAY’S BATTLE,[88]
“[VI.]THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES,[94]
“[VII.]THE THIRD BATTLE,[104]
“[VIII.]THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS,[113]
“[IX.]THE RETURN OF ACHILLES,[121]
“[X.]THE DEATH OF HECTOR,[128]
“[XI.]CONCLUDING REMARKS,[139]

It has been thought desirable in these pages to use the Latin names of the Homeric deities, as more familiar to English ears. As, however, most modern translators have followed Homer’s Greek nomenclature, it may be convenient here to give both.

Zeus=Jupiter.
Herè=Juno.
Arēs=Mars.
Poseidōn=Neptune.
Pallas Athenè =Minerva.
Aphroditè=Venus.
Hephaistos=Vulcan.
Hermes=Mercury.
Artemis=Diana.

The passages marked (D.) are from Lord Derby’s translation; (W.) from Mr Worsley’s; and (P.) Pope’s.

INTRODUCTION.

It is quite unnecessary here to discuss the question, on which the learned are very far from being agreed, whether Homer—the “Prince of Poets”—had any real existence; whether he was really the author of the two great poems which bear his name, or whether they are the collected works of various hands, dovetailed into each other by some clever editor of ancient times. Homer will still retain his personality for the uncritical reader, however a sceptical criticism may question it. The blind old bard, wandering from land to land, singing his lays of the old heroic times to a throng of admiring listeners, must always continue to be the familiar notion of the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Such was the universal creed of the world of readers until a comparatively recent date; and the speculations of modern scholars, in this as in other cases, have been much more successful in shaking the popular belief than in replacing it by any constructive theory of their own which is nearly so credible. “Homer” is quite as likely to have been really Homer, as a mere name under whose shadow the poems of various unknown writers have been grouped.