On the track of Ulysses; Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus of Melos / Two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise among the Greek islands

by William James Stillman

The two low hills which were included in the city of Cythera are covered with fragments of building and traces of tombs, but, so far as I could find, no wall. This is all that is left of Aphrodite, Helen, and Menelaus in their land of fabled existence. The coming ashore of Aphrodite undoubtedly indicates, like that of Europa at Gortyna in Crete, the landing of a colony from Phœnicia, bearing the worship of Astarte, who became later assimilated to Aphrodite. Of the presence here of Helen and Menelaus there is no evidence in any trustworthy tradition. The subjection of Cythera to Sparta is of historic date. My conclusion as to the island is that in Homeric times it was Phœnician in its relations as Melos was at one time, as well as Santorin and other eastern islands, and that, like Corfu, it did not come into the Greek system.

Opposite Cerigo, and with its snowy peaks glistening under the noonday sun, lies Crete. The strangest omission of the Odyssey would have been that of the island of Minos from its reminiscences, if the author had known of it; but, as we have seen in his interviews with Athene, Ulysses did not fail to include it in his geography though he had apparently never visited it, and like Egypt and Lotophagitis it was known by report. Of Egypt we had heard mention through the visit of Helen and Menelaus. Of the country where subsequently was established the Great Greek-African colony, Cyrene, we have no hint, yet the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus knew of Libya earlier than the Dorian invasion—as early, in fact, as 1500 B. C., as we know by the Karnac inscriptions. The story of Eumæus shows knowledge of the ways of that race of merchants and pirates, the Phœnicians, but nothing of their country.

The questions of the personality and date of Homer and of the reality of the Trojan war are utterly diverse, and not, in fact, interdependent. As to the latter we have thus far no direct evidence whatever, beyond poetic traditions in which the supernatural is so strongly and inextricably involved with the pretense or actuality of history that no inferences can be drawn from any part of the narrative, though from its ensemble we are assured that in its ancient form it was accepted as history by the entire Greek world as early as we know anything of that world with historical certainty. But that is no criterion. Even at this day myths grow and crystallize in the Oriental mind with a rapidity which leaves the ancients without any advantage. The universal belief from the first to the eighth century B. C. that the Iliad was history need not weigh with us. Scientific investigators differ so widely that we have no general inference to draw from their arguments. The most recent excavations leave a grave doubt whether any of the ruins excavated in the Troad can by any reasoning be admitted to be as old as the Iliad, and the remains on Hissarlik hill which Schliemann more suo has identified with Homer’s Troy are clearly the remains of the city of Crœsus, being of brick, which does not appear in the classic traditions or structures until his time, and we know by authentic history that he did build a city on this hill. Professor Jebb, one of the most acute of the literary investigators of the question, is convinced that the topography of the Iliad is eclectic, some of its indications suiting only Hissarlik and others only Bunarbashi; Max Müller maintains that the whole story is a solar myth; while Nicolaïdes, a patient and thorough Greek student of the Iliad, believes that he can follow the whole strategy of the poem on the plain of Troy. But the main questions involved in the Odyssey are of a different character and determined by different criteria. I offer my suggestions as to some of them with the deference due my masters in archæology.

LANDING-PLACE OF THE CYPRIAN APHRODITE OR ASTARTE.

The general knowledge shown in the Odyssey divides itself into kinds: that which was part of the general geography of the day, and this included the coasts shown on our route map; and that of which the poet had personal cognizance, which is limited to Corfu, Ithaca, Nericus, and possibly Pylos; and this exclusiveness suggests to us that Homer, a stranger in the West, had come, as I did, simply to follow and study the traces of Ulysses’ wanderings, and that he did so in obedience to a clearly preserved tradition as to his great exemplar, which was almost impossible without the still remembered personal presence. What he describes is admirably told, even to the “sandy shore” of Pylos, in a world whose sandy shores are rare; but Homer does not seem to have any mental vision of the lands and islands of which Ulysses only speaks in his story—the lands of the Cimmerians, of the Læstrygonians, the Cyclops, the Lotophagi, the homes of Circe and Calypso, are only heard of. Cythera, close by, is not named, and Crete and Egypt are only named. This kind of fulfillment, as well as this kind of omission, gives a tone of personality to the poem, as the composition of one person, and that one familiar with the scene of its major events, and it strengthens my belief in the hypothesis of the presence of Homer in Ithaca, and of the early date of the Odyssey, and by a certain implication argues for a logical relation between the hero and the Trojan war, implying the actuality of both.

THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS.

In the year 1820, before the struggle between the Hellenic population of the Turkish empire and the Porte had begun, and when all that attracted the notice of the civilized world to modern Greece was the little preserved to us of her art,—occasionally and fragmentarily found in the ruins of her great communities,—a peasant of Melos whose name was Theodore Kondros Botoni, working in his field to enlarge it by clearing away the débris of the walls and structures of ancient Melos (which had been built on a steep hill-side, on a series of terraces, more or less natural or artificial, so that the ruins of one terrace fell down upon and encumbered that below it), saw, to his great bewilderment, the heap of rubbish which he was digging away at the bottom suddenly crumble down and display the upper part of an antique statue. The peasant hastened to the French consul to inform him of the discovery, and the latter negotiated the purchase of it for five hundred piastres and a complete dress of the fashion of the country. This was the statue known as the Venus of Melos.

So far, there are no variations of the history, but one account says that the first or upper part was found several days before the lower, and the other, that they were found together; but the inexactitude of the documentary contemporary evidence is clear from the examination of the ground to-day, and from the contradictions contained in it. Dumont d’Urville, the commander of the Chevrette, a French man-of-war which visited Melos after the statue was found, alluding to the discovery of the theatre, says: “All the ground is covered with drums of columns and fragments of statues. One finds here and there great pieces of wall of a very solid construction, and many important tombs have been opened through the curiosity of strangers, and the cupidity of the inhabitants.” But neither the wall nor the tombs, nor any drum of column or fragment of statue (if any was found), could have had anything to do with the theatre. The theatre is very late work, and was never nearly finished, so could have possessed neither columns nor statues. This shows that the idea the commandant carried away was confused and untrustworthy as to details. He goes on to say: “Three weeks before our arrival at Melos, a Greek peasant, digging in his field inclosed in this circuit, struck some pieces of cut stone. As these stones, employed by the inhabitants, have a certain value, this induced him to dig farther, and he thus happened to uncover a species of niche, in which he found a marble statue, two Hermes, and some other marble fragments. The statue was in two pieces, joined by two strong iron clamps. The Greek, fearing to lose the fruit of his labor, had carried the upper part to a stable. The other was still in the niche.... It represented a naked woman, whose left hand raised an apple and the right held a drapery,[8] well composed and falling negligently from the hips to the feet. For the rest, they are both mutilated, and actually detached from the body.”

I note by italics the points which are to be contrasted with other evidence.