THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XIII SLICE VI
Home, Daniel to Hortensius, Quintus

Articles in This Slice

HOME, DANIEL DUNGLAS (1833-1886), Scottish spiritualist, was born near Edinburgh on the 20th of March 1833, his father being said to be a natural son of the 10th earl of Home, and his mother a member of a family credited with second sight. He went with his mother to America, and on her death was adopted by an aunt. In the United States he came out as a spiritualistic medium, though, it should be noted, he never sought to make money out of his exhibitions. In 1855 he came to England and gave numerous séances, which were attended by many well-known people. Robert Browning, the poet, went to one of these, but without altering his contempt for spiritualism, and he subsequently gave his impression of Home in the unflattering poem of “Sludge the Medium” (1864); Home, nevertheless, had many disciples, and gave séances at several European courts. He became a Roman Catholic, but was expelled from Rome as a sorcerer. In 1866 Mrs Lyon, a wealthy widow, adopted him as her son, and settled £60,000 upon him. Repenting, however, of her action, she brought a suit for the return of her money, on the ground that it had been obtained by “spiritual” influence. It was held that the burden of establishing the validity of the gift lay on Home, and as he failed to do so the case was decided against him. He continued, however, to give séances, mostly on the Continent, and in 1871 appeared before the tsar of Russia and two Russian scientists, who attested the phenomena evoked. Returning to England he submitted to a series of experiments designed to test his pretensions before Professor (subsequently Sir William) Crookes, which the latter declared to be thoroughly genuine; and Professor von Boutlerow, of the Russian Academy of Science, after witnessing a similar series of experiments, expressed the same opinion. Home published two volumes of Incidents of my Life and Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism. He married successively two well-connected Russian ladies. He died at Auteuil, France, on the 21st of June 1886.

HOME, JOHN (1722-1808), Scottish dramatic poet, was born on the 22nd of September 1722 at Leith, where his father, Alexander Home, who was distantly related to the earls of Home, filled the office of town-clerk. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, and at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A. in 1742. Though he showed a fondness for the profession of arms, he studied divinity, and was licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk (1746). With many others he was carried to the castle of Doune in Perthshire, but soon effected his escape. In July 1746 Home was presented to the parish of Athelstaneford, Haddingtonshire, vacant by the death of Robert Blair, the author of The Grave. He had leisure to visit his friends and became especially intimate with David Hume who belonged to the same family as himself. His first play, Agis: a tragedy, founded on Plutarch’s narrative, was finished in 1747. He took it to London and submitted it to Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was rejected as unsuitable for the stage. The tragedy of Douglas was suggested to him by hearing a lady sing the ballad of Gil Morrice or Child Maurice (F. J. Child, Popular Ballads, ii. 263). The ballad supplied him with the outline of a simple and striking plot. After five years’ labour he completed his play, which he took to London for Garrick’s opinion. It also was rejected, but on his return to Edinburgh his friends resolved that it should be brought out in that city. It was produced on the 14th of December 1756 with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the presbytery, who summoned Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. Home wisely resigned his charge in 1757, after a visit to London, where Douglas was brought out at Covent Garden on the 14th of March. Peg Woffington played Lady Randolph, a part which found a later exponent in Mrs Siddons. David Hume summed up his admiration for Douglas by saying that his friend possessed “the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other.” Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August, 1757), said that the author “seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years,” but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play (Boswell, Life, ed. Croker, 1848, p. 390). In 1758 Home became private secretary to Lord Bute, then secretary of state, and was appointed tutor to the prince of Wales; and in 1760 his patron’s influence procured him a pension of £300 per annum and in 1763 a sinecure worth another £300. Garrick produced Agis at Drury Lane on the 21st of February 1758. By dint of good acting and powerful support, according to Genest (Short Account &c., iv. 513 seq.), the piece kept the stage for eleven days, but it was lamentably inferior to Douglas. In 1760 his tragedy, The Siege of Aquileia, was put on the stage, Garrick taking the part of Aemilius. In 1769 his tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success in the representation; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage. In 1778 he joined a regiment formed by the duke of Buccleuch. He sustained severe injuries in a fall from horseback which permanently affected his brain, and was persuaded by his friends to retire. From 1767 he resided either at Edinburgh or at a villa which he built at Kilduff near his former parish. It was at this time that he wrote his History of the Rebellion of 1745, which appeared in 1802. Home died at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, on the 5th of September 1808, in his eighty-sixth year.

The Works of John Home were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822 with “An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr John Home,” which also appeared separately in the same year, but several of his smaller poems seem to have escaped the editor’s observation. These are—“The Fate of Caesar,” “Verses upon Inveraray,” “Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun,” “Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales, 1759” and several “Epigrams,” which are printed in vol. ii. of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen (1762). See also Sir W. Scott, “The Life and Works of John Home” in the Quarterly Review (June, 1827). Douglas is included in numerous collections of British drama. Voltaire published his Le Caffé, ou l’Écossaise (1760), Londres (really Geneva), as a translation from the work of Mr Hume, described as pasteur de l’église d’Édimbourg, but Home seems to have taken no notice of the mystification.

HOMEL, or Gomel, a town of Russia, in the government of Mogilev, and 132 m. by rail S.S.E. of the town of Mogilev, on the Sozh, a tributary of the Dnieper. Pop. (1900) 45,081, nearly half of whom are Jews. It is an important junction of the railways from Vilna to Odessa and from Orel to Poland, and is in steamer communication with Kiev and Mogilev. In front of Prince Paskevich’s castle stands an equestrian statue of the Polish general Joseph Poniatowski, and in the cathedral is the tomb of the chancellor Nikolai Petrovich Rumantsev, by Canova. The town carries on a brisk trade in hops, corn and timber; there are also paper-pulp mills and oil factories. Homel was founded in the 12th century, and after changing hands several times between Poles and Russians was annexed to Russia in 1772. In 1648 it suffered at the hands of the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki.

HOME OFFICE, a principal government department in the United Kingdom, the creation of which dates from 1782, when the conduct of foreign affairs, which had previously been divided between the northern and southern secretaries, was handed over to the northern department (see [Foreign Office]). The home department retained control of Irish and colonial affairs, and of war business until 1794, when an additional secretary of state was re-appointed. In 1801 the colonial business was transferred from the home department, which now attends only to domestic affairs. The head of the department, the principal secretary of state for home affairs, or home secretary, is a member of the government for the time being, and of the cabinet, receiving a salary of £5000 a year. He is the proper medium of communication between the sovereign and the subject, and receives petitions addressed to the crown. He is responsible for the maintenance of the king’s peace and attends to the administration of criminal justice, police and prisons, and through him the sovereign exercises his prerogative of mercy. Within his department is the supervision of lunatic asylums, reformatories and industrial schools, and it is his duty to see after the internal well-being of the country, to enforce the rules made for the health or safety of the community generally, and especially of those classes employed in special trades or dangerous occupations. He is assisted by a permanent under-secretary, a parliamentary secretary and several assistant under-secretaries.

See Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution. (1907).

HOMER[1] (Ὃμηρος), the great epic poet of Greece. Many of the works once attributed to him are lost; those which remain are the two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, thirty-three Hymns, a mock epic (the Battle of the Frogs and Mice), and some pieces of a few lines each (the so-called Epigrams).

Ancient Accounts of Homer.—Of the date of Homer probably no record, real or pretended, ever existed. Herodotus (ii. 53) maintains that Hesiod and Homer lived not more than 400 years before his own time, consequently not much before 850 B.C. From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly the dates given by later authorities, though very various, generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries B.C. But none of these statements has any claim to the character of external evidence.

The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermann’s Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores) are eight in number, including the piece called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. In all probability it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz. the 2nd century of our era.[2] The other lives are certainly not more ancient. Their chief value consists in the curious short poems or fragments of verse which they have preserved—the so-called Epigrams, which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. These are easily recognized as “Popular Rhymes,” a form of folk-lore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of proverbs.[3] In the Homeric epigrams the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities—Smyrna and Cyme (Epigr. iv.), Erythrae (Epigr. vi., vii.), Mt Ida (Epigr. x.). Neon Teichos (Epigr. i.); others relate to certain trades or occupations—potters (Epigr. xiv.), sailors, fishermen, goat herds, &c. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when “Homer” was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse.

Again, comparing the “epigrams” with the legends and anecdotes told in the Lives of Homer, we can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these Lives were derived. Thus in Epigr. iv. we find a blind poet, a native of Aeolian Smyrna, through which flows the water of the sacred Meles. Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean Life—the birth of Homer “Son of the Meles.” The epithet Aeolian implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus Smyrna became Ionian about 688 B.C. Naturally the Ionians had their own version of the story—a version which made Homer come out with the first Athenian colonists.

The same line of argument may be extended to the Hymns, and even to some of the lost works of the post-Homeric or so-called “Cyclic” poets. Thus:—

1. The hymn to the Delian Apollo ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks who is the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, the “blind man that dwells in rocky Chios; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come.” Thucydides, who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian.

2. The Margites—a humorous poem which kept its ground as the reputed work of Homer down to the time of Aristotle—began with the words, “There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo.” Hence doubtless the claim of Colophon to be the native city of Homer—a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian Antimachus.

3. The poem called the Cypria was said to have been given by Homer to Stasinus of Cyprus as a daughter’s dowry. The connexion with Cyprus appears further in the predominance given in the poem to Aphrodite.

4. The Little Iliad and the Phocaïs, according to the Herodotean life, were composed by Homer when he lived at Phocaea with a certain Thestorides, who carried them off to Chios and there gained fame by reciting them as his own. The name Thestorides occurs in Epigr. v.

5. A similar story was told about the poem called the Taking of Oechalia (Οἰχαλίας Ἅλωσις), the subject of which was one of the exploits of Heracles. It passed under the name of Creophylus, a friend or (as some said) a son-in-law of Homer; but it was generally believed to have been in fact the work of the poet himself.

6. Finally the Thebaid always counted as the work of Homer. As to the Epigoni, which carried on the Theban story, some doubt seems to have been felt.

These indications render it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands grew up after his poems had become known and famous, especially in the new and flourishing colonies of Aeolis and Ionia. The contention for Homer, in short, began at a time when his real history was lost, and he had become a sort of mythical figure, an “eponymous hero,” or personification of a great school of poetry.

An interesting confirmation of this view from the negative side is furnished by the city which ranked as chief among the Asiatic colonies of Greece, viz. Miletus. No legend claims for Miletus even a visit from Homer, or a share in the authorship of any Homeric poem. Yet Arctinus of Miletus was said to have been a “disciple of Homer,” and was certainly one of the earliest and most considerable of the “Cyclic” poets. His Aethiopis was composed as a sequel to the Iliad; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the Iliad as his model. Yet in his case we find no trace of the disputed authorship which is so common with other “Cyclic” poems. How has this come about? Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the name of Homer such epics as the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Taking of Oechalia and the Phocais. The most obvious account of the matter is that Arctinus was never so far forgotten that his poems became the subject of dispute. We seem through him to obtain a glimpse of an early post-Homeric age in Ionia, when the immediate disciples and successors of Homer were distinct figures in a trustworthy tradition—when they had not yet merged their individuality in the legendary “Homer” of the Epic Cycle.

Recitation of the Poems.—The recitation of epic poetry was called in historical times “rhapsody” (ῥαψῳδία). The word ῥαψῳδός is post-Homeric, but was known to Pindar, who gives two different explanations of it—“singer of stitched verse” (ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων ἀοιδοί), and “singer with the wand” (ῥαβδός). Of these the first is etymologically correct (except that it should rather be “stitcher of verse”); the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the reciter was accustomed to hold a wand in his hand—perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing.[4]

The first notice of rhapsody meets us at Sicyon, in the reign of Cleisthenes (600-560 B.C.), who “put down the rhapsodists on account of the poems of Homer, because they are all about Argos and the Argives” (Hdt. v. 67). This description applies very well to the Iliad, in which Argos and Argives occur on almost every page. It may have suited the Thebaid still better, but there is no need to understand it only of that poem, as Grote does. The incident shows that the poems of the Ionic Homer had gained in the 6th century B.C., and in the Doric parts of the Peloponnesus, the ascendancy, the national importance and the almost canonical character which they ever afterwards retained.

At Athens there was a law that the Homeric poems should be recited (ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι) on every occasion of the Panathenaea. This law is appealed to as an especial glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus (Leocr. 102). Perhaps therefore the custom of public recitation was exceptional,[5] and unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was introduced. The Platonic dialogue Hipparchus attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus. This, however, is part of the historical romance of which the dialogue mainly consists. The author makes (perhaps wilfully) all the mistakes about the family of Peisistratus which Thucydides notices in a well-known passage (vi. 54-59). In one point, however, the writer’s testimony is valuable. He tells us that the law required the rhapsodists to recite “taking each other up in order (ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς), as they still do.” This recurs in a different form in the statement of Diogenes Laertius (i. 2. 57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited “with prompting” (ἐξ ὑποβολῆς). The question as between Solon and Hipparchus cannot be settled; but it is at least clear that a due order of recitation was secured by the presence of a person charged to give the rhapsodists their cue (ὑποβάλλειν). It was necessary, of course, to divide the poem to be recited into parts, and to compel each contending rhapsodist to take the part assigned to him. Otherwise they would have chosen favourite or show passages.

The practice of poets or rhapsodists contending for the prize at the great religious festivals is of considerable antiquity, though apparently post-Homeric. It is brought vividly before us in the Hymn to Apollo (see the passage mentioned above), and in two Hymns to Aphrodite (v. and ix.). The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the Hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos and the Delian gathering. The earliest trace of such contests is to be found in the story of Thamyris, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could conquer even the Muses in song (Il. ii. 594 ff.).

Much has been made in this part of the subject of a family or clan (γένος) of Homeridae in the island of Chios. On the one hand, it seemed to follow from the existence of such a family that Homer was a mere “eponymus,” or mythical ancestor; on the other hand, it became easy to imagine the Homeric poems handed down orally in a family whose hereditary occupation it was to recite them, possibly to add new episodes from time to time, or to combine their materials in new ways, as their poetical gifts permitted. But, although there is no reason to doubt the existence of a family of “Homeridae,” it is far from certain that they had anything to do with Homeric poetry. The word occurs first in Pindar (Nem. 2. 2), who applies it to the rhapsodists (Ὁμηρίδαι ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων ἀοίδοί). On this a scholiast says that the name “Homeridae” denoted originally descendants of Homer, who sang his poems in succession, but afterwards was applied to rhapsodists who did not claim descent from him. He adds that there was a famous rhapsodist, Cynaethus of Chios, who was said to be the author of the Hymn to Apollo, and to have first recited Homer at Syracuse about the 69th Olympiad. Nothing here connects the Homeridae with Chios. The statement of the scholiast is evidently a mere inference from the patronymic form of the word. If it proves anything, it proves that Cynaethus, who was a Chian and a rhapsodist, made no claim to Homeric descent. On the other hand our knowledge of Chian Homeridae comes chiefly from the lexicon of Harpocration, where we are told that Acusilaus and Hellanicus said that they were so called from the poet; whereas Seleucus pronounced this to be an error. Strabo also says that the Chians put forward the Homeridae as an argument in support of their claim to Homer. These Homeridae, then, belonged to Chios, but there is no indication of their being rhapsodists. On the contrary, Plato and other Attic writers use the word to include interpreters and admirers—in short, the whole “spiritual kindred”—of Homer. And although we hear of “descendants of Creophylus” as in possession of the Homeric poems, there is no similar story about descendants of Homer himself. Such is the evidence on which so many inferences are based.

The result of the notices now collected is to show that the early history of epic recitation consists of (1) passages in the Homeric hymns showing that poets contended for the prize at the great festivals, (2) the passing mention in Herodotus of rhapsodists at Sicyon, and (3) a law at Athens, of unknown date, regulating the recitation at the Panathenaea. Let us now compare these data with the account given in the Homeric poems. The word “rhapsode” does not yet exist; we hear only of the “singer” (ἀοιδός), who does not carry a wand or laurel-branch, but the lyre (φόρμιγξ), with which he accompanies his “song.” In the Iliad even the epic “singer” is not met with. It is Achilles himself who sings the stories of heroes (κλέα ἀνδρῶν) in his tent, and Patroclus is waiting (respondere paratus), to take up the song in his turn (Il. ix. 191). Again we do not hear of poetical contests (except in the story of Thamyris already mentioned) or of recitation of epic poetry at festivals. The Odyssey gives us pictures of two great houses, and each has its singer. The song is on a subject taken from the Trojan war, at some point chosen by the singer himself, or by his hearers. Phemius pleases the suitors by singing of the calamitous return of the Greeks; Demodocus sings of a quarrel between Ulysses and Achilles, and afterwards of the wooden horse and the capture of Troy.

It may be granted that the author of the Odyssey can hardly have been just such a singer as he himself describes. The songs of Phemius and Demodocus are too short, and have too much the character of improvisations. Nor is it necessary to suppose that epic poetry, at the time to which the picture in the Odyssey belongs, was confined to the one type represented. Yet in several respects the conditions under which the singer finds himself in the house of a chieftain like Odysseus or Alcinous are more in harmony with the character of Homeric poetry than those of the later rhapsodic contests. The subdivision of a poem like the Iliad or Odyssey among different and necessarily unequal performers must have been injurious to the effect. The highly theatrical manner of recitation which was fostered by the spirit of competition, and by the example of the stage, cannot have done justice to the even movement of the epic style. It is not certain indeed that the practice of reciting a long poem by the agency of several competitors was ancient, or that it prevailed elsewhere than at Athens; but as rhapsodists were numerous, and popular favour throughout Greece became more and more confined to one or two great works, it must have become almost a necessity. That it was the mode of recitation contemplated by the author of the Iliad or Odyssey it is impossible to believe.

The difference made by substituting the wand or branch of laurel for the lyre of the Homeric singer is a slighter one, though not without significance. The recitation of the Hesiodic poems was from the first unaccompanied by the lyre, i.e. they were confessedly said, not sung; and it was natural that the example should be extended to Homer. For it is difficult to believe that the Homeric poems were ever “sung” in the strict sense of the word. We can only suppose that the lyre in the hands of the epic poet or reciter was in reality a piece of convention, a “survival” from the stage in which narrative poetry had a lyrical character. Probably the poets of the Homeric school—that which dealt with war and adventure—were the genuine descendants of minstrels whose “lays” or “ballads” were the amusement of the feasts in an earlier heroic age; whereas the Hesiodic compositions were non-lyrical from the first, and were only in verse because that was the universal form of literature.

It seems, then, that if we imagine Homer as a singer in a royal house of the Homeric age, but with more freedom regarding the limits of his subject, and a more tranquil audience than is allowed him in the rapid movement of the Odyssey, we shall probably not be far from the truth.

Time and Place of Homer.—The oldest direct references to the Iliad and Odyssey are in Herodotus, who quotes from both poems (ii. 53). The quotation from the Iliad is of interest because it is made in order to show that Homer supported the story of the travels of Paris to Egypt and Sidon (whereas the Cyclic poem called the Cypria ignored them), and also because the part of the Iliad from which it comes is cited as the “Aristeia of Diomede.” This was therefore a recognized part of the poem.

The earliest mention of the name of Homer is found in a fragment of the philosopher Xenophanes (of the 6th century B.C., or possibly earlier), who complains of the false notions implanted through the teaching of Homer. The passage shows, not merely that Homer was well known at Colophon in the time of Xenophanes, but also that the great advance in moral and religious ideas which forced Plato to banish Homer from his republic had made itself felt in the days of the early Ionic philosophers.

Failing external testimony, the time and place of the Homeric poems can only be determined (if at all) by internal evidence. This is of two main kinds: (a) evidence of history, consisting in a comparison of the political and social condition, the geography, the institutions, the manners, arts and ideas of Homer with those of other times; (b) evidence of language, consisting in a comparison with later dialects, in respect of grammar and vocabulary. To these may be added, as occasionally of value, (c) much evidence of the direct influence of Homer upon the subsequent course of literature and art.

(a) The political condition of Greece in the earliest times known to history is separated from the Greece of Homer by an interval which can hardly be overestimated. The great national names are different: instead of Achaeans, Argives, Danai, we find Hellenes, subdivided into Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians—names either unknown to Homer, or mentioned in terms more significant than silence. At the dawn of Greek history Mycenae is no longer the seat of empire; new empires, polities and civilizations have grown up—Sparta with its military discipline, Delphi with its religious supremacy, Miletus with its commerce and numberless colonies, Aeolis and Ionia, Sicily and Magna Graecia.

While the political centre of Homeric Greece is at Mycenae, the real centre is rather to be found In Boeotia. The Catalogue of the Ships begins with Boeotia; the list of Boeotian towns is much the longest; and they sail, not from the bay of Argos, but from the Boeotian harbour of Aulis. This position is not due to its chiefs, who are all of inferior rank. The importance of Boeotia for Greek civilization is further shown by the ancient worship of the Muses on Mount Helicon, and the fact that the oldest poet whose birthplace was known was the Boeotian Hesiod. Next to Boeotia and the neighbouring countries, it appears that the Peloponnesus, Crete and Thessaly were the most important seats of Greek population.

In the Peloponnesus the face of things was completely altered by the Dorian conquest, no trace of which is found in Homer. The only Dorians known in Homer are those that the Odyssey (xix. 177) places in Crete. It is difficult to connect them with the Dorians of history.

The eastern shores of the Aegean, which the earliest historical records represent to us as the seat of a brilliant civilization, giving way before the advance of the great military empires (Lydia and afterwards Persia), are almost a blank in Homer’s map. The line of settlements can be traced in the Catalogue from Crete to Rhodes, and embraces the neighbouring islands of Cos and Calymnos. The colonization of Rhodes by Tlepolemus is related (Il. ii. 661 ff.), and seems to mark the farthest point reached in the Homeric age. Between Rhodes and the Troad Homer knows of but one city, Miletus—which is a Carian ally of Troy—and the mouth of one river, the Cayster. Even the Cyclades—Naxos, Paros, Melos—are unknown to the Homeric world. The disposition of the Greeks to look to the west for the centres of religious feeling appears in the mention of Dodona and the Dodonaean Zeus, put in the mouth of the Thessalian Achilles.

To the north we find the Thracians, known from the stories of Thamyris the singer (Il. ii. 595), and Lycurgus, the enemy of the young god Dionysus (Il. vi. 130). Here the Trojan empire begins. It does not appear, however, that the Trojans are thought of as people of a different language. As this is expressly said of the Carians, and of the Trojan allies who were “summoned from afar,” the contrary rather is implied regarding Troy itself.

The mixed type of government described by Homer—consisting of a king guided by a council of elders, and bringing all important resolutions before the assembly of the fighting men—does not seem to have been universal in Indo-European communities, but to have grown up in many different parts of the world under the stress of similar conditions. The king is the commander in war, and the office probably owed its existence to military necessities. It is not surrounded with any special sacredness. There were ruling families, laying claim to divine descent, from whom the king was naturally chosen, but his own fitness is the essence of his title. The aged Laertes is set aside; the young Telemachus does not succeed as a matter of course. Nor are any very definite rights attached to the office. Each tribe in the army before Troy was commanded by its own king (or kings); but Agamemnon was supreme, and was “more a king” (βασιλείτερος) than any other. The assembly is summoned on all critical occasions, and its approval is the ultimate sanction. A king therefore stands in almost as much need of oratory as of warlike skill and prowess. Even the division of the spoil is not made in the Iliad by Agamemnon, but by “the Achaeans” (Il. i. 162, 368). The taking of Briseïs from Achilles was an arbitrary act, and against all rule and custom. The council is more difficult to understand. The “elders” (γέροντες) of the Iliad are the same as the subordinate “kings”; they are summoned by Agamemnon to his tent, and form a small council of nine or ten persons. In Troy we hear of elders of the people (δημογέροντες) who are with Priam, and are men past the military age. So in Ithaca there are elders who have not gone to Troy with the army. It would seem therefore that the meeting in Agamemnon’s tent was only a copy or adaptation of the true constitutional “council of elders,” which indeed was essentially unfitted for the purposes of military service. The king’s palace, if we may judge from Tiryns and Mycenae, was usually in a strong situation on an “acropolis.” In the later times of democracy the acropolis was reserved for the temples of the principal gods.

Priesthood in Homer is found in the case of particular temples, where an officer is naturally wanted to take charge of the sacred inclosure and the sacrifices offered within it. It is perhaps an accident that we do not hear of priests in Ithaca. Agamemnon performs sacrifice himself, not because a priestly character was attached to the kingly office, but simply because he was “master in his own house.”

The conception of “law” is foreign to Homer. The later words for it (νόμος, ῥήτρα) are unknown, and the terms which he uses (δίκη and θέμις) mean merely “custom.” Judicial functions are in the hands of the elders, who “have to do with suits” (δικασπόλοι), and “uphold judgments” (θέμιστας εἰρύαται). On such matters as the compensation in cases of homicide, it is evident that there were no rules, but merely a feeling, created by use and wont, that the relatives of the slain man should be willing to accept payment. The sense of anger which follows a violation of custom has the name of “Nemesis”—righteous displeasure.

As there is no law in Homer, so there is no morality. That is to say, there are no general principles of action, and no words which indicate that acts have been classified as good or bad, right or wrong. Moral feeling, indeed, existed and was denoted by “Aidos”; but the numerous meanings of this word—shame, veneration, pity—show how rudimentary the idea was. And when we look to practice we find that cruel and even treacherous deeds are spoken of without the least sense that they deserve censure. The heroes of Homer are hardly more moral agents than the giants and enchanters of a fairy tale.

The religious ideas of Homer differ in some important points from those of later Greece. The Apollo of the Iliad has the character of a local Asiatic deity—“ruler of Chryse and goodly Cilla and Tenedos.” He may be compared with the Clarian and the Lycian god, but he is unlike the Apollo of Dorian times, the “deliverer” and giver of oracles. Again, the worship of Dionysus, and of Demeter and Persephone, is mainly or wholly post-Homeric. The greatest difference, however, lies in the absence of hero-worship from the Homeric order of things. Castor and Polydeuces, for instance, are simply brothers of Helen who died before the expedition to Troy (Il. iii. 243.)

The military tactics of Homer belong to the age when the chariot was the principal engine of warfare. Cavalry is unknown, and the battles are mainly decided by the prowess of the chiefs. The use of the trumpet is also later. It has been supposed indeed that the art of riding was known in Homer’s own time, because it occurs in comparisons. But the riding which he describes (Il. xv. 679) is a mere exhibition of skill, such as we may see in a modern circus. And though he mentions the trumpet (Il. xviii. 219), there is nothing to show that it was used, as in historical times, to give the signal for the charge.

The chief industries of Homeric times are those of the carpenter (τέκτων), the worker in leather (σκυτοτόμος), the smith or worker in metal (χαλκεύς)—whose implements are the hammer and pincers—and the potter (κεραμεύς); also spinning and weaving, which were carried on by the women. The fine arts are represented by sculpture in relief, carving in wood and ivory, embroidery. Statuary is later; it appears to have come into existence in the 7th century, about the time when casting in metal was invented by Rhoecus of Samos. In general, as was well shown by A. S. Murray,[6] Homeric art does not rise above the stage of decoration, applied to objects in common use; while in point of style it is characterized by a richness and variety of ornament which is in the strongest contrast to the simplicity of the best periods. It is the work, in short, not of artists but of skilled workmen; the ideal artist is “Daedalus,” a name which implies mechanical skill and intricate workmanship, not beauty of design.

One art of the highest importance remains. The question whether writing was known in the time of Homer was raised in antiquity, and has been debated with especial eagerness ever since the appearance of Wolf’s Prolegomena. In this case we have to consider not merely the indications of the poems, but also the external evidence which we possess regarding the use of writing in Greece. This latter kind of evidence is much more considerable now than it was in Wolf’s time. (See [Writing] elsewhere in these volumes.)

The oldest known stage of the Greek alphabet appears to be represented by inscriptions of the islands of Thera, Melos and Crete, which are referred to the 40th Olympiad (620 B.C.). The oldest specimen of a distinctively Ionian alphabet is the famous inscription of the mercenaries of Psammetichus, in Upper Egypt, as to which the only doubt is whether the Psammetichus in question is the first or the second, and consequently whether the inscription is to be dated Ol. 40 or Ol. 47. Considering that the divergence of two alphabets (like the difference of two dialects) requires both time and familiar use, we may gather from these facts that writing was well known in Greece early in the 7th century B.C.[7]

The rise of prose composition in the 6th century B.C. has been thought to mark the time when memory was practically superseded by writing as a means of preserving literature—the earlier use of letters being confined to short documents, such as lists of names, treaties, laws, &c. This conclusion, however, is by no means necessary. It may be that down to comparatively late rimes poetry was not commonly read, but was recited from memory. But the question is—From what time are we to suppose that the preservation of long poems was generally secured by the existence of written copies? Now, without counting the Homeric poems—which doubtless had exceptional advantages in their fame and popularity—we find a body of literature dating from the 8th century B.C. to which the theory of oral transmission is surely inapplicable. In the Trojan cycle alone we know of the two epics of Arctinus, the Little Iliad of Lesches, the Cypria, the Nostoi. The Theban cycle is represented by the Thebaid (which Callinus, who was of the 7th century, ascribed to Homer) and the Epigoni. Other ancient epics—ancient enough to have passed under the name of Homer—are the Taking of Oechalia, and the Phocaïs. Again, there are the numerous works attributed to Hesiod and other poets of the didactic, mythological and quasi-historical schools—Eumelus of Corinth, Cinaethon of Sparta, Agias of Troezen, and many more. The preservation of this vast mass can only be attributed to writing, which must therefore have been in use for two centuries or more before there was any considerable prose literature. Nor is this in itself improbable.

The further question, whether the Iliad and Odyssey were originally written, is much more difficult. External evidence does not reach back so far, and the internal evidence is curiously indecisive. The only passage which can be interpreted as a reference to writing occurs in the story of Bellerophon, told by Glaucus in the sixth book of the Iliad. Proetus, king of Corinth, sent Bellerophon to his father-in-law the king of Lycia, and gave him “baneful tokens” (σήματα λυγρά, i.e. tokens which were messages of death), “scratching on a folded tablet many spirit-destroying things, and bade him show this to his father-in-law, that he might perish.” The king of Lycia asked duly (on the tenth day from the guest’s coming) for a token (ᾔτεε σῆμα ἰδέσθαι), and then knew what Proetus wished to be done. In this account there is nothing to show exactly how the message of Proetus was expressed. The use of writing for the purpose of the token between “guest-friends” (tessera hospitalis) is certainly very ancient. Mommsen (Röm. Forsch. i. 338 ff.) aptly compares the use in treaties, which are the oldest species of public documents. But we may suppose that tokens of some kind—like the marks which the Greek chiefs make on the lots (Il. vii. 175 ff.)—were in use before writing was known. In any system of signs there were doubtless means of recommending a friend, or giving warning of the presence of an enemy. There is no difficulty, therefore, in understanding the message of Proetus without alphabetical writing. But, on the other hand, there is no reason for so understanding it.

If the language of Homer is so ambiguous where the use of writing would naturally be mentioned, we cannot expect to find more decisive references elsewhere. Arguments have been founded upon the descriptions of the blind singers in the Odyssey, with their songs inspired directly by the Muse; upon the appeals of the poet to the Muses, especially in such a place as the opening of the Catalogue; upon the Catalogue itself, which is a kind of historical document put into verse to help the memory; upon the shipowner in the Odyssey, who has “a good memory for his cargo,” &c. It may be answered, however, that much of this is traditional, handed down from the time when all poetry was unwritten. Moreover it is one thing to recognize that a literature is essentially oral in its form, characteristic of an age which was one of hearing rather than of reading, and quite another to hold that the same literature was preserved entirely by oral transmission.

The result of these various considerations seems to be that the age which we may call the Homeric—the age which is brought before us in vivid outlines in the Iliad and Odyssey—lies beyond the earliest point to which history enables us to penetrate. And so far as we can draw any conclusion as to the author (or authors) of the two poems, it is that the whole debate between the cities of Aeolis and Ionia was wide of the mark. The author of the Iliad, at least, was evidently a European Greek who lived before the colonization of Asia Minor; and the claims of the Asiatic cities mean no more than that in the days of their prosperity these were the chief seats of the fame of Homer.

This is perhaps the place to consider whether the poems are to be regarded as possessing in any degree the character; of historical record. The question is one which in the absence of satisfactory criteria will generally be decided by taste and predilection. A few suggestions, however, may be made.

1. The events of the Iliad take place in a real locality, the general features of which are kept steadily in view. There is no doubt about Sigeum and Rhoeteum, or the river Scamander, or the islands Imbros, Lemnos and Tenedos. It is at least remarkable that a legend of the national interest of the “tale of Troy” should be so definitely localized, and that in a district, which was never famous as a seat of Greek population. It may be urged, too, that the story of the Iliad is singularly free from the exaggerated and marvellous character which belongs as a rule to the legends of primitive peoples. The apple of discord, the arrows of Philoctetes, the invulnerability of Achilles, and similar fancies, are the additions of later poets. This sobriety, however, belongs not to the whole Iliad, but to the events and characters of the war. Such figures as Bellerophon, Nïobe, the Amazons, which are thought of as traditions from an earlier generation, show the marvellous element at work.

2. Certain persons and events in the story have a distinctly mythical stamp. Helen is a figure of this kind. There was another story according to which she was carried off by Theseus, and recovered by her brothers the Dioscuri. There are even traces of a third version, in which the Messenian twins, Idas and Lynceus, appear.

3. The analogy of the French epic, the Chanson de Roland, favours the belief that there was some nucleus of fact. The defeat of Roncevaux was really suffered by a part of Charlemagne’s army. But the Saracen army is purely mythical, the true enemy having been the Gascons. If similarly we leave, as historical, the plain of Troy, and the name Agamemnon, we shall perhaps not be far wrong.

(b) The dialect of Homer is an early or “primitive” form of the language which we know as that of Attica in the classical age of Greek literature. The proof of this proposition is to be obtained chiefly by comparing the grammatical formation and the syntax of Homer with those of Attic. The comparison of the vocabulary is in the nature of things less conclusive on the question of date. It would be impossible to give the evidence in full without writing a Homeric grammar, but a few specimens may be of interest.

1. The first aorist in Greek being a “weak” tense, i.e. formed by a suffix (-σᾰ), whereas the second aorist is a “strong” tense, distinguished by the form of the root-syllable, we expect to find a constant tendency to diminish the number of second aorists in use. No new second aorists, we may be sure, were formed any more than new “strong” tenses, such as came or sang, can be formed in English. Now in Homer there are upwards of 80 second aorists (not reckoning aorists of “Verbs in μι,” such as ἕστην, ἔβην), whereas in all Attic prose not more than 30 are found. In this point therefore the Homeric language is manifestly older. In Attic poets, it is true, the number of such aorists is much larger than in prose. But here again we find that they bear witness to Homer. Of the poetical aorists in Attic the larger part are also Homeric. Others are not really Attic at all, but borrowed from earlier Aeolic and Doric poetry. It is plain, in short, that the later poetical vocabulary was separated from that of prose mainly by the forms which the influence of Homer had saved from being forgotten.

2. While the whole class of “strong” aorists diminished, certain smaller groups in the class disappeared altogether. Thus we find in Homer, but not in the later language:—

(a) The second aorist middle without the “thematic” ε or ο: as ἕβλη-το, was struck; ἔφθι-το, perished; ᾶλ-το, leaped.

(b) The aorist formed by reduplication: as δέδαεν, taught; λελαβέσθαι, to seize. These constitute a distinct formation, generally with a “causative” meaning; the solitary Attic specimen is ἤγαγον.

3. It had long been known that the subjunctive in Homer often takes a short vowel (e.g. in the plural, -ομεν, -ετε instead of -ωμεν, -ητε, and in the Mid. -ομαι, &c. instead of -ωμαι, &c.). This was generally said to be done by “poetic licence,” or metri gratia. In fact, however, the Homeric subjunctive is almost quite “regular,” though the rule which it obeys is a different one from the Attic. It may be summed up by saying that the subjunctive takes ω or η when the indicative has ο or ε, and not otherwise. Thus Homer has ἴ-μεν, we go, ἴ-ο-μεν, let us go. The later ἴ-ω-μεν was at first a solecism, an attempt to conjugate a “verb in μι” like the “verbs in ω.” It will be evident that under this rule the perfect and first aorist subjunctive should always take a short vowel; and this accordingly is the case, with very few exceptions.

4. The article (ὁ, ἡ, τό) in Homer is chiefly used as an independent pronoun (he, she, it), a use which in Attic appears only in a few combinations (such as ὁ μὲν ... ὁ δέ, the one ... the other). This difference is parallel to the relation between the Latin ille and the article of the Romance languages.

5. The prepositions offer several points of comparison. What the grammarians called “tmesis,” the separation of the preposition from the verb with which it is compounded, is peculiar to Homer. The true account of the matter is that in Homer the place of the preposition is not rigidly fixed, as it was afterwards. Again, “with” is in Homer σύν (with the dative), in Attic prose μετά with the genitive. Here Attic poetry is intermediate; the use of σύν is retained as a piece of poetical tradition.

6. In addition to the particle ἄν, Homer has another, κεν, hardly distinguishable in meaning. The Homeric uses of ἄν and κεν are different in several respects from the Attic, the general result being that the Homeric syntax is more elastic. And yet it is perfectly definite and precise. Homer uses no constructions loosely or without corresponding differences of meaning. His rules are equally strict with those of the later language, but they are not the same rules. And they differ chiefly in this, that the less common combinations of the earlier period were disused altogether in the later.

7. In the vocabulary the most striking difference is that many words appear from the metre to have contained a sound which they afterwards lost, viz. that which is written in some Greek alphabets by the “digamma” ϝ Thus the words ἄναξ, ἄστυ, ἔργον, ἔπος, and many others must have been written at one time ϝάναξ, ϝάστυ, ϝέργον, ϝέπος. This letter, however, died out earlier in Ionic than in most dialects, and there is no proof that the Homeric poems were ever written with it.

These are not, speaking generally, the differences that are produced by the gradual divergence of dialects in a language. They are rather to be classed with those which we find between the earlier and the later stages of every language which has had a long history. The Homeric dialect has passed into New Ionic and Attic by gradual but ceaseless development of the same kind as that which brought about the change from Vedic to classical Sanskrit, or from old high German to the present dialects of Germany.

The points that have been mentioned, to which many others might be added, make it clear that the Homeric and Attic dialects are separated by differences which affect the whole structure of the language, and require a considerable time for their development. At the same time there is hardly one of these differences which cannot be accounted for by the natural growth of the language. It has been thought indeed that the Homeric dialect was a mixed one, mainly Ionic, but containing Aeolic and even Doric forms; this, however, is a mistaken view of the processes of language. There are doubtless many Homeric forms which were unknown to the later Ionic and Attic, and which are found in Aeolic or other dialects. In general, however, these are older forms, which must have existed in Ionic at one time, and may very well have belonged to the Ionic of Homer’s time. So too the digamma is called “Aeolic” by grammarians, and is found on Aeolic and Doric inscriptions. But the letter was one of the original alphabet, and was retained universally as a numeral. It can only have fallen into disuse by degrees, as the sound which it denoted ceased to be pronounced. The fact that there are so many traces of it in Homer is a strong proof of the antiquity of the poems, but no proof of admixture with Aeolic.

There is one sense, however, in which an admixture of dialects may be recognized. It is clear that the variety of forms in Homer is too great for any actual spoken dialect. To take a single instance: it is impossible that the genitives in -οιο and in -ου should both have been in everyday use together. The form in -οιο must have been poetical or literary, like the old English forms that survive in the language of the Bible. The origin of such double forms is not far to seek. The effect of dialect on style was always recognized in Greece, and the dialect which had once been adopted by a particular kind of poetry was ever afterwards adhered to. The Epic of Homer was doubtless formed originally from a spoken variety of Greek, but became literary and conventional with time. It is Homer himself who tells us, in a striking passage (Il. iv. 437) that all the Greeks spoke the same language—that is to say, that they understood one another, in spite of the inevitable local differences. Experience shows how some one dialect in a country gains a literary supremacy to which the whole nation yields. So Tuscan became the type of Italian, and Anglian of English. But as soon as the dialect is adopted, it begins to diverge from the colloquial form. Just as modern poetical Italian uses many older grammatical forms peculiar to itself, so the language of poetry, even in Homeric times, had formed a deposit (so to speak) of archaic grammar. There were doubtless poets before Homer, as well as brave men before Agamemnon; and indeed the formation of a poetical dialect such as the Homeric must have been the work of several generations. The use of that dialect (instead of Aeolic) by the Boeotian poet Hesiod, in a kind of poetry which was not of the Homeric type, tends to the conclusion that the literary ascendancy of the epic dialect was anterior to the Iliad and Odyssey, and independent of the influence exercised by these poems.

What then was the original language of Homer? Where and when was it spoken? [The answer given to this question by Aug. Fick (in 1883) and still held, with modifications, by some European scholars can no longer be maintained. Fick’s original statement was that in or about the 6th century B.C. the poems, which had originally worn an Aeolic dress, were transposed into Ionic. To this it is easily answered that such an event is not only unique in history, but contrary to all that we know of the Greek genius. At the period in question an Aeolic literature, the lyrics of Sappho and Alcaeus, were in existence. If it was found necessary to transpose the Aeolic Homer, why did the Aeolic lyric verse escape? If, however, as is the view of some of Fick’s followers, the transposition took place several centuries earlier, before species of literature had appropriated particular dialects, then the linguistic facts upon which Fick relied to distinguish the “Aeolic” and “Ionic” elements in Homer disappear. We have no means of knowing what the Aeolic and Ionic of say the 9th century were, or if there were such dialects at all. Certain prominent historical differences between Aeolic and Ionic (the digamma and α) are known to be unoriginal. The view that Homer underwent at any time a passage from one dialect to another may be dismissed. The tendency of modern dialectologists is to divide the Greek dialects into Dorian and non-Dorian. The non-Dorian dialects, Ionic, Attic and the various forms of Aeolic, are regarded as relatively closely akin, and go by the common name “Achaean.” They formed the common language of Greece before the Doric invasion. As the scene which Homer depicts is prae-Dorian Greece, it is reasonable to call his language Achaean. The historical divergences of Achaean into Aeolian and Ionic were later than the Migration, and were due to the well-known effects of change of soil and air.

To what local variety of Achaean Homeric Greek belonged it is idle to ask. Thessaly, Boeotia and Mycenae have equal claims. It seems clearer that when once this local variety of Achaean had been used by poets of eminence as their vehicle for national history, it established its right to be considered the one poetical language of Hellas. As the dialect of the Arno in Italy, of Castille in Spain, by the virtue of the genius of the singers who used them, became literary “Italian” and “Spanish,” so this variety of Achaean elevated itself to the position of the volgare illustre of Greece.[8]]

(T. W. A.)

(c) The influence of Homer upon the subsequent course of Greek literature is a large subject, even if we restrict it to the centuries which immediately followed the Homeric age. It will be enough to observe that in the earliest elegiac poets, such as Archilochus, Tyrtaeus and Theognis, reminiscences of Homeric language and thought meet us on every page. If the same cannot be said of the ancient epic poems, that is because of the extreme scantiness of the existing fragments. Much, however, is to be gathered from the arguments of the Trojan part of the Epic Cycle (preserved in the Codex Venetus of the Iliad, a full discussion of which will be found in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884, pp. 1-40). An examination of these arguments throws light on two chief aspects of the relation between Homer and his “cyclic” successors.

1. The later poets sought to complete the story of the Trojan war by supplying the parts which did not fall within the Iliad and Odyssey—the so-called ante-homerica and post-homerica. They did so largely from hints and passing references in Homer. Thus the successive episodes of the siege related at length in the Little Iliad, and ending with the story of the Wooden Horse, are nearly all taken from passages in the Odyssey. Much the same may be said of the Nosti.

2. With this process of expansion and development (so to speak) of Homeric themes is combined the addition of new characters. Such, in the Little Iliad (e.g.), are the story of the Palladium and of the treachery of Sinon. Such, too, in the Cypria are the new legendary figures—Palamedes, Iphigenia, Telephus, Laocoon. These new elements in the narrative are evidently due not only to the natural growth of legend in a people highly endowed with imagination, but in a large proportion also to the new races and countries with which the Greeks came into contact, as well as to their own rapid advance in wealth and civilization. It will be observed that the two poems of Arctinus are remarkable for the proportion of new matter of the latter kind. The Aethiopis shows us the allies of Troy reinforced by two peoples that are evidently creations of oriental fancy, the Amazons and Memnon with his Aethiopians. The Iliu Persis, again, was the oldest authority for the story of Laocoon and of the consequent escape of Aeneas—a story which connected a surviving branch of the house of Priam with the later inhabitants of the Troad. On the other hand the fate of Creusa (sed me magna deum genetrix his detinet oris) is a link with the worship of Cybele. The journey of Calchas to Colophon and his death there, as told in the Nosti, is another instance of the kind. These facts point to a familiarity with the Greek colonies in Asia which contrasts strongly with the silence of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Study of Homer.—The Homeric Question.—The critical study of Homer began in Greece almost with the beginning of prose writing. The first name is that of Theagenes of Rhegium, contemporary of Cambyses (525 B.C.), who is said to have founded the “new grammar” (the older “grammar” being the art of reading and writing), and to have been the inventor of the allegorical interpretations by which it was sought to reconcile the Homeric mythology with the morality and speculative ideas of the 6th century B.C. The same attitude in the “ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy” was soon afterwards taken by Anaxagoras; and after him by his pupil Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who explained away all the gods, and even the heroes, as elementary substances and forces (Agamemnon as the upper air, &c.).

The next writers on Homer of the “grammatical” type were Stesimbrotus of Thasos (contemporary with Cimon) and Antimachus of Colophon, himself an epic poet of mark. The Thebaid of Antimachus, however, was not popular, and seems to have been a great storehouse of mythological learning rather than a poem of the Homeric school.

Other names of the pre-Socratic and Socratic times are mentioned by Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle. These were the “ancient Homerics” (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι Ὁμηρικοί), who busied themselves much with the hidden meanings of Homer; of whom Aristotle says, with his profound insight, that they see the small likenesses and overlook the great ones (Metaph. xii.).

The text of Homer must have attracted some attention when Antimachus came to be known as the “corrector” (διοθωτής) of a distinct edition (ἔκδοσις), Aristotle is said himself to have made a recension for the use of Alexander the Great. This is unlikely. His remarks on Homer (in the Poetics and elsewhere) show that he had made a careful study of the structure and leading ideas of the poems, but do not throw much light on the text.

The real work of criticism became possible only when great collections of manuscripts began to be made by the princes of the generation after Alexander, and when men of learning were employed to sift and arrange these treasures. In this way the great Alexandrian school of Homeric criticism began with Zenodotus, the first chief of the museum, and was continued by Aristophanes and Aristarchus. In Aristarchus ancient philology culminated, as philosophy had done in Socrates. All earlier learning either passed into his writings, or was lost; all subsequent research turned upon his critical and grammatical work.

The means of forming a judgment of the Alexandrine criticism are scanty. The literary form which preserved the works of the great historians was unfortunately wanting, or was not sufficiently valued, in the case of the grammarians. Abridgments and newer treatises soon drove out the writings of Aristarchus and other founders of the science. Moreover, a recension could not be reproduced without new errors soon creeping in. Thus we find that Didymus, writing in the time of Cicero, does not quote the readings of Aristarchus as we should quote a textus receptus. Indeed, the object of his work seems to have been to determine what those readings were. Enough, however, remains to show that Aristarchus had a clear notion of the chief problems of philology (except perhaps those concerning etymology). He saw, for example, that it was not enough to find a meaning for the archaic words (the γλῶσσαι, as they were called), but that common words (such as πόνος, φόβος) had their Homeric uses, which were to be gathered by due induction. In the same spirit he looked upon the ideas and beliefs of Homer as a consistent whole, which might be determined from the evidence of the poems. He noticed especially the difference between the stories known to Homer and those given by later poets, and made many comparisons between Homeric and later manners, arts and institutions. Again, he was sensible of the paramount value of manuscript authority, and appears to have introduced no readings from mere conjecture. The frequent mention in the Scholia of “better” and “inferior” texts may indicate a classification made by him or by the general opinion of critics. His use of the “obelus” to distinguish spurious verses, which made so large a part of his fame in antiquity, has rather told against him with modern scholars.[9] It is chiefly interesting as a proof of the confusion in which the text must have been before the Alexandrian times; for it is impossible to understand the readiness of Aristarchus to suspect the genuineness of verses unless the state of the copies had pointed to the existence of numerous interpolations. On this matter, however, we are left to conjecture.

Our knowledge of Alexandrian criticism is derived almost wholly from a single document, the famous Iliad of the library of St Mark in Venice (Codex Venetus 454, or Ven. A), first published by the French scholar Villoison in 1788 (Scholia antiquissima ad Homeri Iliadem). This manuscript, written in the 10th century, contains (1) the best text of the Iliad, (2) the critical marks of Aristarchus and (3) Scholia, consisting mainly of extracts from four grammatical works, viz. Didymus (contemporary of Cicero) on the recension of Aristarchus, Aristonicus (fl. 24 B.C.) on the critical marks of Aristarchus, Herodian (fl. A.D. 160) on the accentuation, and Nicanor (fl. A.D. 127) on the punctuation, of the Iliad.

These extracts present themselves in two distinct forms. One series of scholia is written in the usual way, on a margin reserved for the purpose. The other consists of brief scholia, written in very small characters (but of the same period) on the narrow space left vacant round the text. Occasionally a scholium of this kind gives the substance of one of the longer extracts; but as a rule they are distinct. It would seem, therefore, that after the manuscript was finished the “marginal scholia” were discovered to be extremely defective, and a new series of extracts was added in a form which interfered as little as possible with the appearance of the book.[10]

The mention of the Venetian Scholia leads us at once to the Homeric controversy; for the immortal Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf[11] appeared a few years after Villoison’s publication, and was founded in great measure upon the fresh and abundant materials which it furnished. Not that the “Wolfian theory” of the Homeric poems is directly supported by anything in the Scholia; the immediate object of the Prolegomena was not to put forward that theory, but to elucidate the new and remarkable conditions under which the text of Homer had to be settled, viz. the discovery of an apparatus criticus of the 2nd century B.C. The questions regarding the original structure and early history of the poems were raised (forced upon him, it may be said) by the critical problem; but they were really originated by facts and ideas of a wholly different order.

The 18th century, in which the spirit of classical correctness had the most absolute dominion, did not come to an end before a powerful reaction set in, which affected not only literature but also speculation and politics. In this movement the leading ideas were concentrated in the word Nature. The natural condition of society, natural law, natural religion, the poetry of nature, gained a singular hold, first on the English philosophers from Hume onwards, and then (through Rousseau chiefly) on the general drift of thought and action in Europe. In literature the effect of these ideas was to set up a false opposition between nature and art. As political writers imagined a patriarchal innocence prior to codes of law, so men of letters sought in popular unwritten poetry the freshness and simplicity which were wanting in the prevailing styles. The blind minstrel was the counterpart of the noble savage. The supposed discovery of the poems of Ossian fell in with this train of sentiment, and created an enthusiasm for the study of early popular poetry. Homer was soon drawn into the circle of inquiry. Blackwell (Professor of Greek at Aberdeen) had insisted, in a book published in 1735, on the “naturalness” of Homer; and Wood (Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, London, 1769) was the first who maintained that Homer composed without the help of writing, and supported his thesis by ancient authority, and also by the parallel of Ossian. Both these books were translated into German, and their ideas passed into the popular philosophy of the day. Everything in short was ripe for the reception of a book that brought together, with masterly ease and vigour, the old and the new Homeric learning, and drew from it the historical proof that Homer was no single poet, writing according to art and rule, but a name which stood for a golden age of the true spontaneous poetry of genius and nature.

The part of the Prolegomena which deals with the original form of the Homeric poems occupies pp. xl.-clx. (in the first edition). Wolf shows how the question of the date of writing meets us on the threshold of the textual criticism of Homer and accordingly enters into a full discussion, first of the external evidence, then of the indications furnished by the poems. Having satisfied himself that writing was unknown to Homer, he is led to consider the real mode of transmission, and finds this in the Rhapsodists, of whom the Homeridae were an hereditary school. And then comes the conclusion to which all this has been tending: “the die is cast”—the Iliad and Odyssey cannot have been composed in the form in which we know them without the aid of writing. They must therefore have been, as Bentley had said, “a sequel of songs and rhapsodies,” “loose songs not collected together in the form of an epic poem till about 500 years after.” This conclusion he then supports by the character attributed to the “Cyclic” poems (whose want of unity showed that the structure of the Iliad and Odyssey must be the work of a later time), by one or two indications of imperfect connexion, and by the doubts of ancient critics as to the genuineness of certain parts. These, however, are matters of conjecture. “Historia loquitur.” The voice of antiquity is unanimous in declaring that “Peisistratus first committed the poems of Homer to writing, and reduced them to the order in which we now read them.”

The appeal of Wolf to the “voice of all antiquity” is by no means borne out by the different statements on the subject. According to Heraclides Ponticus (pupil of Plato), the poetry of Homer was first brought to the Peloponnesus by Lycurgus, who obtained it from the descendants of Creophylus (Polit. fr. 2). Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus (c. 4) repeats this story, with the addition that there was already a faint report of the poems in Greece, and that certain detached fragments were in the possession of a few persons. Again, the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus (which though not genuine is probably earlier than the Alexandrian times) asserts that Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, first brought the poems to Athens, and obliged the rhapsodists at the Panathenaea to follow the order of the text, “as they still do,” instead of reciting portions chosen at will. The earliest authority for attributing any work of the kind to Peisistratus is the well-known passage of Cicero (De Orat. 3. 34: “Quis doctior eisdem temporibus illis, aut cujus eloquentia litteris instructior fuisse traditur quam Pisistrati? qui primus Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic disposuisse dicitur ut nunc habemus”). To the same effect Pausanias (vii. p. 594) says that the change of the name Donoessa to Gonoessa (in Il. ii. 573) was thought to have been made by “Peisistratus or one of his companions,” when he collected the poems, which were then in a fragmentary condition. Finally, Diogenes Laertius (i. 57) says that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited with the help of a prompter so that each rhapsodist should begin where the last left off; and he argues from this that Solon did more than Peisistratus to make Homer known. The argument is directed against a certain Dieuchidas of Megara, who appears to have maintained that the verses about Athens in the Catalogue (Il. ii. 546-556) were interpolated by Peisistratus. The passage is unfortunately corrupt, but it is at least clear that in the time of Solon, according to Diogenes, there were complete copies of the poems, such as could be used to control the recitations. Hence the account of Diogenes is quite irreconcilable with the notices on which Wolf relied.

It is needless to examine the attempts which have been made to harmonize these accounts. Such attempts usually start with the tacit assumption that each of the persons concerned—Lycurgus, Solon, Peisistratus, Hipparchus—must have done something for the text of Homer, or for the regulation of the rhapsodists. But we have first to consider whether any of the accounts come to us on such evidence that we are bound to consider them as containing a nucleus of truth.

In the first place, the statement that Lycurgus obtained the poems from descendants of Creophylus must be admitted to be purely mythical. But if we reject it, have we any better reason for believing the parallel assertion in the Platonic Hipparchus? It is true that Hipparchus is undoubtedly a real person. On the other hand it is evident that the Peisistratidae soon became the subject of many fables. Thucydides notices as a popular mistake the belief that Hipparchus was the eldest son of Peisistratus, and that consequently he was the reigning “tyrant” when he was killed by Aristogiton. The Platonic Hipparchus follows this erroneous version, and may therefore be regarded as representing (at best) mere local tradition. We may reasonably go further, and see in this part of the dialogue a piece of historical romance, designed to put the “tyrant” family in a favourable light, as patrons of literature and learning.

Again, the account of the Hipparchus is contradicted by Diogenes Laërtius, who says that Solon provided for the due recitation of the Homeric poems. The only good authorities as to this point are the orators Lycurgus and Isocrates, who mention the law prescribing the recitation, but do not say when or by whom it was enacted. The inference seems a fair one, that the author of the law was really unknown.

With regard to the statements which attribute some work in connexion with Homer to Peisistratus, it was noticed by Wolf that Cicero, Pausanias and the others who mention the matter do so nearly in the same words, and, therefore, appear to have drawn from a common source. This source was in all probability an epigram quoted in two of the short lives of Homer, and there said to have been inscribed on the statue of Peisistratus at Athens. In it Peisistratus is made to say of himself that he “collected Homer, who was formerly sung in fragments, for the golden poet was a citizen of ours, since we Athenians founded Smyrna.” The other statements repeat these words with various minor additions, chiefly intended to explain how the poems had been reduced to this fragmentary condition, and how Peisistratus set to work to restore them. Thus all the authority for the work of Peisistratus “reduces itself to the testimony of a single anonymous inscription” (Nutzhorn p. 40). Now, what is the value of that testimony? It is impossible of course to believe that a statue of Peisistratus was set up at Athens in the time of the free republic. The epigram is almost certainly a mere literary exercise. And what exactly does it say? Only that Homer was recited in fragments by the rhapsodists, and that these partial recitations were made into a continuous whole by Peisistratus; which does not necessarily mean more than that Peisistratus did what other authorities ascribe to Solon and Hipparchus, viz. regulated the recitation.

Against the theory which sees in Peisistratus the author of the first complete text of Homer we have to set the absolute silence of Herodotus, Thucydides, the orators and the Alexandrian grammarians. And it can hardly be thought that their silence is accidental. Herodotus and Thucydides seem to tell us all that they know of Peisistratus. The orators Lycurgus and Isocrates make a great deal of the recitation of Homer at the Panathenaea, but know nothing of the poems having been collected and arranged at Athens, a fact which would have redounded still more to the honour of the city. Finally, the Scholia of the Ven. A contain no reference or allusion to the story of Peisistratus. As these Scholia are derived in substance from the writings of Aristarchus, it seems impossible to believe that the story was known to him. The circumstance that it is referred to in the Scholia Townleiana and in Eustathius, gives additional weight to this argument.

The result of these considerations seems to be that nothing rests on good evidence beyond the fact that Homer was recited by law at the Panathenaic festival. The rest of the story is probably the result of gradual expansion and accretion. It was inevitable that later writers should speculate about the authorship of such a law, and that it should be attributed with more or less confidence to Solon or Peisistratus or Hipparchus. The choice would be determined in great measure by political feeling. It is probably not an accident that Dieuchidas, who attributed so much to Peisistratus, was a Megarian. The author of the Hipparchus is evidently influenced by the anti-democratical tendencies in which he only followed Plato. In the times to which the story of Peisistratus can be traced, the 1st century B.C., the substitution of the “tyrant” for the legislator was extremely natural. It was equally natural that the importance of his work as regards the text of Homer should be exaggerated. The splendid patronage of letters by the successors of Alexander, and especially the great institutions which had been founded at Alexandria and Pergamum, had made an impression on the imagination of learned men which was reflected in the current notions of the ancient despots. It may even be suspected that anecdotes in praise of Peisistratus and Hipparchus were a delicate form of flattery addressed to the reigning Ptolemy. Under these influences the older stories of Lycurgus bringing Homer to the Peloponnesus, and Solon providing for the recitation at Athens, were thrown into the shade.

In the later Byzantine times it was believed that Peisistratus was aided by seventy grammarians, of whom Zenedotus and Aristarchus were the chief. The great Alexandrian grammarians had become figures in a new mythology. It is true that Tzetzes, one of the writers from whom we have this story, gives a better version, according to which Peisistratus employed four men, viz. Onomacritus, Zopyrus of Heraclea, Orpheus of Croton, and one whose name is corrupt (written ἐπικόγκυλος). Many scholars (among them Ritschl) accept this account as probable. Yet it rests upon no better evidence than the other.

The effect of Wolf’s Prolegomena was so overwhelming that, although a few protests were made at the time, the true Homeric controversy did not begin till after Wolf’s death (1824). His speculations were thoroughly in harmony with the ideas and sentiment of the time, and his historical arguments, especially his long array of testimonies to the work of Peisistratus, were hardly challenged.

The first considerable antagonist of the Wolfian school was G. W. Nitzsch, whose writings cover the years 1828-1862, and deal with every side of the controversy. In the earlier part of his Meletemata (1830) he took up the question of written or unwritten literature, on which Wolf’s whole argument turned, and showed that the art of writing must be anterior to Peisistratus. In the later part of the same series of discussions (1837), and in his chief work (Die Sagenpoesie der Griechen, 1852), he investigated the structure of the Homeric poems, and their relation to the other epics of the Trojan cycle. These epics had meanwhile been made the subject of a work which for exhaustive learning and delicacy of artistic perception has few rivals in the history of philology, the Epic Cycle of F. G. Welcker. The confusion which previous scholars had made between the ancient post-Homeric poets (Arctinus, Lesches, &c.) and the learned mythological writers (such as the “scriptor cyclicus” of Horace) was first cleared up by Welcker. Wolf had argued that if the cyclic writers had known the Iliad and Odyssey which we possess, they would have imitated the unity of structure which distinguishes these two poems. The result of Welcker’s labours was to show that the Homeric poems had influenced both the form and the substance of epic poetry.

In this way there arose a conservative school who admitted more or less freely the absorption of pre-existing lays in the formation of the Iliad and Odyssey, and also the existence of considerable interpolations, but assigned the main work of formation to prehistoric times, and to the genius of a great poet. Whether the two epics were by the same author remained an open question; the tendency of this group of scholars was decidedly towards separation. Regarding the use of writing, too, they were not unanimous. K. O. Müller, for instance, maintained the view of Wolf on this point, while he strenuously combated the inference which Wolf drew from it.

The Prolegomena bore on the title-page the words “Volumen I.”; but no second volume ever appeared, nor was any attempt made by Wolf himself to carry his theory further. The first important steps in that direction were taken by Gottfried Hermann, chiefly in two dissertations, De interpolationibus Homeri (Leipzig, 1832), and De iteratis Homeri (Leipzig, 1840), called forth by the writings of Nitzsch. As the word “interpolation” implies, Hermann did not maintain the hypothesis of a congeries of independent “lays.” Feeling the difficulty of supposing that all the ancient minstrels sang of the “wrath of Achilles” or the “return of Ulysses” (leaving out even the capture of Troy itself), he was led to assume that two poems of no great compass dealing with these two themes became so famous at an early period as to throw other parts of the Trojan story into the background, and were then enlarged by successive generations of rhapsodists. Some parts of the Iliad, moreover, seemed to him to be older than the poem on the wrath of Achilles; and thus in addition to the “Homeric” and “post-Homeric” matter he distinguished a “pre-Homeric” element.

The conjectures of Hermann, in which the Wolfian theory found a modified and tentative application, were presently thrown into the shade by the more trenchant method of Lachmann, who (in two papers read to the Berlin Academy in 1837 and 1841) sought to show that the Iliad was made up of sixteen independent “lays,” with various enlargements and interpolations, all finally reduced to order by Peisistratus. The first book, for instance, consists of a lay on the anger of Achilles (1-347), and two continuations, the return of Chryseis (430-492) and the scenes in Olympus (348-429, 493-611). The second book forms a second lay, but several passages, among them the speech of Ulysses (278-332), are interpolated. In the third book the scenes in which Helen and Priam take part (including the making of the truce) are pronounced to be interpolations; and so on. Regarding the evidence on which these sweeping results are founded, opinions will vary. The degree of smoothness or consistency which is to be expected on the hypothesis of a single author will be determined by taste rather than argument. The dissection of the first book, for instance, turns partly on a chronological inaccuracy which might well escape the poet as well as his hearers. In examining such points we are apt to forget that the contradictions by which a story is shown to be untrue are quite different from those by which a confessedly untrue story would be shown to be the work of different authors.

Structure of the Iliad.—The subject of the Iliad, as the first line proclaims, is the “anger of Achilles.” The manner in which this subject is worked out will appear from the following summary in which we distinguish (1) the plot, i.e. the story of the quarrel, (2) the main course of the war, which forms a sort of underplot, and (3) subordinate episodes.

Such is the “action” (πρᾶξις) which in Aristotle’s opinion showed the superiority of Homer to all later epic poets. But the proof that his scheme was the work of a great poet does not depend merely upon the artistic unity which excited the wonder of Aristotle. A number of separate “lays” might conceivably be arranged and connected by a man of poetical taste in a manner that would satisfy all requirements. In such a case, however, the connecting passages would be slight and weak. Now, in the Iliad these passages are the finest and most characteristic. The element of connexion and unity is the story of the “wrath of Achilles”; and we have only to look at the books which give the story of the wrath to see how essential they are. Even if the ninth book is rejected (as Grote proposed), there remain the speeches of the first, sixteenth and nineteenth books. These speeches form the cardinal points in the action of the Iliad—the framework into which everything else is set; and they have also the best title to the name of Homer.

The further question, however, remains,—What shorter narrative piece fulfilling the conditions of an independent poem has Lachmann succeeded in disengaging from the existing Iliad? It must be admitted that when tried by this test his “lays” generally fail. The “quarrel of the chiefs,” the “muster of the army,” the “duel of Paris and Menelaus,” &c., are excellent beginnings, but have no satisfying conclusion. And the reason is not far to seek. The Iliad is not a history, nor is it a series of incidents in the history, of the siege. It turns entirely upon a single incident, occupying a few days only. The several episodes of the poem are not so many distinct stories, each with an interest of its own. They are only parts of a single main event. Consequently the type of epic poem which would be produced by an aggregation of shorter lays is not the type which we have in the Iliad. Rather the Iliad is itself a single lay which has grown with the growth of poetical art to the dimensions of an epic.

But the original nucleus and parts of the incidents may be the work of a single great poet, and yet other episodes may be of different authorship, wrought into the structure of the poem in later times. Various theories have been based on this supposition. Grote in particular held that the original poem, which he called the Achilleïs, did not include books ii.-vii., ix., x., xxiii., xxiv. Such a view may be defended somewhat as follows.

Of the books which relate the events during the absence of Achilles from the Greek ranks (ii.-xv.), the last five are directly related to the main action. They describe the successive steps by which the Greeks are driven back, first from the plain to the rampart, then to their ships. Moreover, three of the chief heroes, Agamemnon, Diomede and Ulysses, are wounded, and this circumstance, as Lachmann himself admitted, is steadily kept in mind throughout. It is otherwise with the earlier books (especially ii.-vii.). The chief incidents in that part of the poem—the panic rush to the ships, the duels of Paris and Menelaus, and of Hector and Ajax, the Aristeia of Diomede—stand in no relation to the mainspring of the poem, the promise made by Zeus to Thetis. It is true that in the thirteenth and fourteenth books the purpose of Zeus is thwarted for a time by other gods; but in books ii.-vii. it is not so much thwarted as ignored. Further, the events follow without sufficient connexion. The truce of the third book is broken by Pandarus, and Agamemnon passes along the Greek ranks with words of encouragement, but without a hint of the treachery just committed. The Aristeia of Diomede ends in the middle of the sixth book; he is uppermost in all thoughts down to ver. 311, but from this point, in the meetings of Hector with Helen and Andromache, and again in the seventh book when Hector challenges the Greek chiefs, his prowess is forgotten. Once more, some of the incidents seem to belong properly to the beginning of the war. The joy of Menelaus on seeing Paris, Priam’s ignorance of the Greek leaders, the speeches of Agamemnon in his review of the ranks (in book iv.), the building of the wall—all these are in place after the Greek landing, but hardly in the ninth year of the siege.

On the other hand, it may be said, the second book opens with a direct reference to the events of the first, and the mention of Achilles in the speech of Thersites (ii. 239 sqq.) is sufficient to keep the main course of events in view. The Catalogue is connected with its place in the poem by the lines about Achilles (686-694). When Diomede is at the height of his Aristeia Helenus says (Il. vi. 99), “We did not so fear even Achilles.” And when in the third book Priam asks Helen about the Greek captains, or when in the seventh book nine champions come forward to contend with Hector, the want of the greatest hero of all is sufficiently felt. If these passages do not belong to the period of the wrath of Achilles, how are we to account for his conspicuous absence?

Further, the want of smoothness and unity which is visible in this part of the Iliad may be due to other causes than difference of date or authorship. A national poet such as the author of the Iliad cannot always choose or arrange his matter at his own will. He is bound by the traditions of his art, and by the feelings and expectations of his hearers. The poet who brought the exploits of Diomede into the Iliad doubtless had his reasons for doing so, which were equally strong whether he was the poet of the Achilleïs or a later Homerid or rhapsodist. And if some of the incidents (those of the third book in particular) seem to belong to the beginning of the war, it must be considered that poetically, and to the hearers of the Iliad, the war opens in the third book, and the incidents are of the kind that is required in such a place. The truce makes a pause which heightens the interest of the impending battle; the duel and the scene on the walls are effective in bringing some of the leading characters on the stage, and in making us acquainted with the previous history. The story of Paris and Helen especially, and the general position of affairs in Troy, is put before us in a singularly vivid manner. The book in short forms so good a prologue to the action of the war that we can hardly be wrong in attributing it to the genius which devised the rest of the Iliad.

The case against the remaining books is of a different kind. The ninth and tenth seem like two independent pictures of the night before the great battle of xi.-xvii. Either is enough to fill the space in Homer’s canvas; and the suspicion arises (as when two Platonic dialogues bear the same name) that if either had been genuine, the other would not have come into existence. If one of the two is to be rejected it must be the tenth, which is certainly the less Homeric. It relates a picturesque adventure, conceived in a vein more approaching that of comedy than any other part of the Iliad. Moreover, the language in several places exhibits traces of post-Homeric date. The ninth book, on the other hand, was rejected by Grote, chiefly on the grounds that the embassy to Achilles ought to have put an end to the quarrel, and that it is ignored in later passages, especially in the speeches of Achilles (xi. 609; xvi. 72, 85). His argument, however, rests on an assumption which we are apt to bring with us to the reading of the Iliad, but which is not borne out by its language, viz. that there was some definite atonement demanded by Achilles, or due to him according to the custom and sentiment of the time. But in the Iliad the whole stress is laid on the anger of Achilles, which can only be satisfied by the defeat and extreme peril of the Greeks.[12] He is influenced by his own feeling, and by nothing else. Accordingly, in the ninth book, when they are still protected by the rampart (see 348 sqq.), he rejects gifts and fair words alike; in the sixteenth he is moved by the tears and entreaties of Patroclus, and the sight of the Greek ships on fire; in the nineteenth his anger is quenched in grief. But he makes no conditions, either in rejecting the offers of the embassy or in returning to the Greek army. And this conduct is the result, not only of his fierce and inexorable character, but also (as the silence of Homer shows) of the want of any general rules or principles, any code of morality or of honour, which would have required him to act in a different way.

Finally, Grote objected to the two last books that they prolong the action of the Iliad beyond the exigencies of a coherent scheme. Of the two, the twenty-third could more easily be spared. In language, and perhaps in style and manner, it is akin to the tenth; while the twenty-fourth is in the pathetic vein of the ninth, and like it serves to bring out new aspects of the character of Achilles.

Dr E. Kammer has given some strong reasons for doubting the genuineness of the passage in book xx. describing the duel between Achilles and Aeneas (79-352). The incident is certainly very much out of keeping with the vehement action of that part of the poem, and especially with the moment when Achilles returns to the field, eager to meet Hector and avenge the death of his friend. The interpolation (if it is one) is probably due to local interests. It contains the well-known prophecy that the descendants of Aeneas are to rule over the Trojans,—pointing to the existence of an Aenead dynasty in the Troad. So, too, the legend of Anchises in the Hymn to Aphrodite is evidently local; and Aeneas becomes more prominent in the later epics, especially the Cypria and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Arctinus.

Structure of the Odyssey.—In the Odyssey, as in the Iliad, the events related fall within a short space of time. The difficulty of adapting the long wanderings of Ulysses to a plan of this type is got over by the device—first met with in the Odyssey—of making the hero tell the story of his own adventures. In this way the action is made to begin almost immediately before the actual return of Ulysses. Up to the time when he reaches Ithaca it moves on three distinct scenes: we follow the fortunes of Ulysses, of Telemachus on his voyage in the Peloponnesus, and of Penelope with the suitors. The art with which these threads are woven together was recognized by Wolf himself, who admitted the difficulty of applying his theory to the “admirabilis summa et compages” of the poem. Of the comparatively few attempts which have been made to dissect the Odyssey, the most moderate and attractive is that of Professor A. Kirchhoff of Berlin.[13]

According to Kirchhoff, the Odyssey as we have it is the result of additions made to an original nucleus. There was first of all a “Return of Odysseus,” relating chiefly the adventures with the Cyclops, Calypso and the Phaeacians; then a continuation, the scene of which lay in Ithaca, embracing the bulk of books xiii.-xxiii. The poem so formed was enlarged at some time between Ol. 30 and Ol. 50 by the stories of books x.-xii. (Circe, the Sirens, Scylla, &c.), and the adventures of Telemachus. Lastly, a few passages were interpolated in the time of Peisistratus.

The proof that the scenes in Ithaca are by a later hand than the ancient “Return” is found chiefly in a contradiction discussed by Kirchhoff in his sixth dissertation (pp. 135 sqq., ed. 1869). Sometimes Ulysses is represented as aged and worn by toil, so that Penelope, for instance, cannot recognize him; sometimes he is really in the prime of heroic vigour, and his appearing as a beggarly old man is the work of Athena’s wand. The first of these representations is evidently natural, considering the twenty eventful years that have passed; but the second, Kirchhoff holds, is the Ulysses of Calypso’s island and the Phaeacian court. He concludes that the aged Ulysses belongs to the “continuation” (the change wrought by Athena’s wand being a device to reconcile the two views), and hence that the continuation is the work of a different author.

Ingenious as this is, there is really very slender ground for Kirchhoff’s thesis. The passages in the second half of the Odyssey which describe the appearance of Ulysses do not give two well-marked representations of him. Sometimes Athena disguises him as a decrepit beggar, sometimes she bestows on him supernatural beauty and vigour. It must be admitted that we are not told exactly how long in each case the effect of these changes lasted. But neither answers to his natural appearance, or to the appearance which he is imagined to present in the earlier books. In the palace of Alcinous, for instance, it is noticed that he is vigorous but “marred by many ills” (Od. viii. 137); and this agrees with the scenes of recognition in the latter part of the poem.

The arguments by which Kirchhoff seeks to prove that the stories of books x.-xii. are much later than those of book ix. are not more convincing. He points out some resemblances between these three books and the Argonautic fables, among them the circumstance that a fountain Artacia occurs in both. In the Argonautic story this fountain is placed in the neighbourhood of Cyzicus, and answers to an actual fountain known in historical times. Kirchhoff argues that the Artacia of the Argonautic story must have been taken from the real Artacia, and the Artacia of the Odyssey again from that of the Argonautic story. And as Cyzicus was settled from Miletus, he infers that both sets of stories must be comparatively late. It is more probable, surely, that the name Artacia occurred independently (as most geographical names are found to occur) in more than one place. Or it may be that the Artacia of the Odyssey suggested the name to the colonists of Cyzicus, whence it was adopted into the later versions of the Argonautic story. The further argument that the Nostoi recognized a son of Calypso by Ulysses but no son of Circe, consequently that Circe was unknown to the poet of the Nostoi, rests (in the first place) upon a conjectural alteration of a passage in Eustathius, and, moreover, has all the weakness of an argument from silence, in addition to the uncertainty arising from our very slight knowledge of the author whose silence is in question. Finally, when Kirchhoff finds traces in books x.-xii. of their having been originally told by the poet himself instead of being put in the mouth of his hero, we feel that inaccuracies of this kind are apt to creep in wherever a fictitious story is thrown into the form of an autobiography.

Inquiries conducted with the refinement which characterizes those of Kirchhoff are always instructive, and his book contains very many just observations; but it is impossible to admit his main conclusions. And perhaps we may infer that no similar attempt can be more successful. It does not indeed follow that the Odyssey is free from interpolations. The Νεκυία of book xi. may be later (as Lauer maintained), or it may contain additions, which could easily be inserted in a description of the kind. And the last book is probably by a different hand, as the ancient critics believed. But the unity of the Odyssey as a whole is apparently beyond the reach of the existing weapons of criticism.

Chorizontes.—When we are satisfied that each of the great Homeric poems is either wholly or mainly the work of a single poet, a question remains which has been matter of controversy in ancient as well as modern times—Are they the work of the same poet? Two ancient grammarians, Xeno and Hellanicus, were known as the “separators” (οἱ χωρίζοντες); and Aristarchus appears to have written a treatise against their heresy. In modern times some of the greatest names have been on the side of the “Chorizontes.”

If, as has been maintained in the preceding pages, the external evidence regarding Homer is of no value, the problem now before us may be stated in this form: Given two poems of which nothing is known except that they are of the same school of poetry, what is the probability that they are by the same author? We may find a fair parallel by imagining two plays drawn at hazard from the works of the great tragic writers. It is evident that the burden of proof would rest with those who held them to be by the same hand.

The arguments used in this discussion have been of very various calibre. The ancient Chorizontes observed that the messenger of Zeus is Iris in the Iliad, but Hermes in the Odyssey; that the wife of Hephaestus is one of the Charites in the Iliad, but Aphrodite in the Odyssey; that the heroes in the Iliad do not eat fish; that Crete has a hundred cities according to the Iliad, and only ninety according to the Odyssey; that προπάροιθε is used in the Iliad of place, in the Odyssey of time, &c. Modern scholars have added to the list, especially by making careful comparisons of the two poems in respect of vocabulary and grammatical forms. Nothing is more difficult than to assign the degree of weight to be given to such facts. The difference of subject between the two poems is so great that it leads to the most striking differences of detail, especially in the vocabulary. For instance, the word φόβος, which in Homer means “flight in battle” (not “fear”), occurs thirty-nine times in the Iliad, and only once in the Odyssey; but then there are no battles in the Odyssey. Again, the verb ῥήγνυμι, “to break,” occurs forty-eight times in the Iliad, and once in the Odyssey,—the reason being that it is constantly used of breaking the armour of an enemy, the gate of a city, the hostile ranks, &c. Once more, the word σκότος, “darkness,” occurs fourteen times in the Iliad, once in the Odyssey. But in every one of the fourteen places it is used of “darkness” coming over the sight of a fallen warrior. On the other side, if words such as ἀσάμινθος, “a bath,” χέρνιψ, “a basin for the hands,” λέσχη, “a place to meet and talk,” &c., are peculiar to the Odyssey, we have only to remember that the scene in the Iliad is hardly ever laid within any walls except those of a tent. These examples will show that mere statistics of the occurrence of words prove little, and that we must begin by looking to the subject and character of each poem. When we do so, we at once find ourselves in the presence of differences of the broadest kind. The Iliad is much more historical in tone and character. The scene of the poem is a real place, and the poet sings (as Ulysses says of Demodocus) as though he had been present himself, or had heard from one who had been. The supernatural element is confined to an interference of the gods, which to the common eye hardly disturbs the natural current of affairs. The Odyssey, on the contrary, is full of the magical and romantic—“speciosa miracula,” as Horace called them. Moreover, these marvels—which in their original form are doubtless as old as anything in the Iliad, since in fact they are part of the vast stock of popular tales (Märchen) diffused all over the world—are mixed up in the Odyssey with the heroes of the Trojan war. This has been especially noticed in the case of the story of Polyphemus, one that is found in many countries, and in versions which cannot all be derived from Homer. W. Grimm has pointed out that the behaviour of Ulysses in that story is senseless and foolhardy, utterly beneath the wise and much-enduring Ulysses of the Trojan war. The reason is simple; he is not the Ulysses of the Trojan war, but a being of the same world as Polyphemus himself—the world of giants and ogres. The question then is—How long must the name of Ulysses have been familiar in the legend (Sage) of Troy before it made its way into the tales of giants and ogres (Märchen), where the poet of the Odyssey found it?

Again, the Trojan legend has itself received some extension between the time of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey. The story of the Wooden Horse is not only unknown to the Iliad, but is of a kind which we can hardly imagine the poet of the Iliad admitting. The part taken by Neoptolemus seems also to be a later addition. The tendency to amplify and complete the story shows itself still more in the Cyclic poets. Between the Iliad and these poets the Odyssey often occupies an intermediate position.

This great and significant change in the treatment of the heroic legends is accompanied by numerous minor differences (such as the ancients remarked) in belief, in manners and institutions, and in language. These differences bear out the inference that the Odyssey is of a later age. The progress of reflection is especially shown in the higher ideas entertained regarding the gods. The turbulent Olympian court has almost disappeared. Zeus has acquired the character of a supreme moral ruler; and although Athena and Poseidon are adverse influences in the poem, the notion of a direct contest between them is scrupulously avoided. The advance of morality is shown in the more frequent use of terms such as “just” (δίκαιος), “piety” (ὁσίη), “insolence” (ὕβρις), “god-fearing” (θεουδής), “pure” (ἁγνός); and also in the plot of the story, which is distinctly a contest between right and wrong. In matters bearing upon the arts of life it is unsafe to press the silence of the Iliad. We may note, however, the difference between the house of Priam, surrounded by distinct dwellings for his many sons and daughters, and the houses of Ulysses and Alcinous, with many chambers under a single roof. The singer, too, who is so prominent a figure in the Odyssey can hardly be thought to be absent from the Iliad merely because the scene is laid in a camp.

Style of Homer.—A few words remain to be said on the style and general character of the Homeric poems, and on the comparisons which may be made between Homer and analogous poetry in other countries.

The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer have been pointed out once for all by Matthew Arnold. “The translator of Homer,” he says, “should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author—that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble” (On Translating Homer, p. 9).

The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of the hexameter verse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought—that is, the grammatical form of the sentence—is guided by the structure of the verse; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the grammar—the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divided by tolerably uniform pauses—produces a swift flowing movement, such as is rarely found when the periods have been constructed without direct reference to the metre. That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults—that is, without becoming either “jerky” or monotonous—is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetical skill. The plainness and directness, both of thought and of expression, which characterize Homer were doubtless qualities of his age; but the author of the Iliad (like Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed the national gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.

Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression and plainness of thought, these are not the distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets—Virgil, Dante, Milton. On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed. The proof that Homer does not belong to that school—that his poetry is not in any true sense “ballad-poetry”—is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems (already discussed), and as regards style by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold—the quality of nobleness. It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of “ballad-poetry” and “popular epic.”[14]

But while we are on our guard against a once common error, we may recognize the historical connexion between the Iliad and Odyssey and the “ballad” literature which undoubtedly preceded them in Greece. It may even be admitted that the swift-flowing movement, and the simplicity of thought and style, which we admire in the Iliad are an inheritance from the earlier “lays”—the κλέα ἀνδρῶν such as Achilles and Patroclus sang to the lyre in their tent. Even the metre—the hexameter verse—may be assigned to them. But between these lays and Homer we must place the cultivation of epic poetry as an art.[15] The pre-Homeric lays doubtless furnished the elements of such a poetry—the alphabet, so to speak, of the art; but they must have been refined and transmuted before they formed poems like the Iliad and Odyssey.

A single example will illustrate this. In the scene on the walls of Troy, in the third book of the Iliad, after Helen has pointed out Agamemnon, Ulysses and Ajax in answer to Priam’s questions, she goes on unasked to name Idomeneus. Lachmann, whose mind is full of the ballad manner, fastens upon this as an irregularity. “The unskilful transition from Ajax to Idomeneus, about whom no question had been asked,” he cannot attribute to the original poet of the lay (Betrachtungen, p. 15, ed. 1865). But, as was pointed out by A. Römer[16], this is exactly the variation which a poet would introduce to relieve the primitive ballad-like sameness of question and answer; and moreover it forms the transition to the lines about the Dioscuri by which the scene is so touchingly brought to a close.

Analogies.—The development of epic poetry (properly so called) out of the oral songs or ballads of a country is a process which in the nature of things can seldom be observed. It seems clear, however, that the hypothesis of epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey having been formed by putting together or even by working up shorter poems finds no support from analogy.

Narrative poetry of great interest is found in several countries (such as Spain and Servia), in which it has never attained to the epic stage. In Scandinavia, in Lithuania, in Russia, according to Gaston Paris (Histoire poétique de Charlemagne, p. 9), the national songs have been arrested in a form which may be called intermediate between contemporary poetry and the epic. The true epics are those of India, Persia, Greece, Germany, Britain and France. Most of these, however, fail to afford any useful points of comparison, either from their utter unlikeness to Homer, or because there is no evidence of the existence of anterior popular songs. The most instructive, perhaps the only instructive, parallel is to be found in the French “chansons de geste,” of which the Chanson de Roland is the earliest and best example. These poems are traced back with much probability to the 10th century. They are epic in character, and were recited by professional jongleurs (who may be compared to the ἀοιδοί of Homer). But as early as the 7th century we come upon traces of short lays (the so-called cantilènes) which were in the mouths of all and were sung in chorus. It has been held that the chansons de geste were formed by joining together “bunches” of these earlier cantilènes, and this was the view taken by Léon Gautier in the first edition of Les Épopées françaises (1865). In the second edition, of which the first volume appeared in 1878, he abandoned this theory. He believes that the epics were generally composed under the influence of earlier songs. “Our first epic poets,” he says, “did not actually and materially patch together pre-existent cantilènes. They were only inspired by these popular songs; they only borrowed from them the traditional and legendary elements. In short, they took nothing from them but the ideas, the spirit, the life; they ‘found’ (ils ont trouvé) all the rest” (p. 80). But he admits that “some of the old poems may have been borrowed from tradition, without any intermediary” (ibid.); and when it is considered that the traces of the “cantilènes” are slight, and that the degree in which they inspired the later poetry must be a matter of impression rather than of proof, it does not surprise us to find other scholars (notably Paul Meyer) attaching less importance to them, or even doubting their existence.[17]

When Léon Gautier shows how history passes into legend, and legend again into romance, we are reminded of the difference noticed above between the Iliad and the Odyssey, and between Homer and the early Cyclic poems. And the peculiar degradation of Homeric characters which appears in some poets (especially Euripides) finds a parallel in the later chansons de geste.[18]

The comparison of Homer with the great literary epics calls for more discursive treatment than would be in place here. Some external differences have been already indicated. Like the French epics, Homeric poetry is indigenous, and is distinguished by this fact, and by the ease of movement and the simplicity which result from it, from poets such as Virgil, Dante and Milton. It is also distinguished from them by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil’s poetry a sense of the greatness of Rome and Italy is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the “chosen delicacy” of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics are pervaded by the sentiment of fear and hatred of the Saracens. But in Homer the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political event; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad. Even the heroes are not the chief national heroes of Greece. The interest lies wholly (so far as we can see) in the picture of human action and feeling.

Bibliography.—A complete bibliography of Homer would fill volumes. The following list is intended to include those books only which are of first-rate importance.

The editio princeps of Homer, published at Florence in 1488, by Demetrius Chalcondylas, and the Aldine editions of 1504 and 1517, have still some value beyond that of curiosity. The chief modern critical editions are those of Wolf (Halle, 1794-1795; Leipzig, 1804-1807), Spitzner (Gotha, 1832-1836), Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858), La Roche (Odyssey, 1867-1868; Iliad, 1873-1876, both at Leipzig); Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889-1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 1907): W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886-1888; 2nd ed. 1900-1902); Merry and Riddell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886); Monro (Odyssey xiii.-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901); Monro and Allen (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford). The commentaries of Barnes, Clarke and Ernesti are practically superseded; but Heyne’s Iliad (Leipzig, 1802) and Nitzsch’s commentary on the Odyssey (books i.-xii., Hanover, 1826-1840) are still useful. Nägelbach’s Anmerkungen zur Ilias (A, B 1-483, Γ) is of great value, especially the third edition (by Autenrieth, Nuremberg, 1864). The unique Scholia Veneta on the Iliad were first made known by Villoison (Homeri Ilias ad veteris codicis Veneti fidem recensita, Scholia in eam antiquissima ex eodem codice aliisque nunc primum edidit, cum Asteriscis, Obeliscis, aliisque signis criticis, Joh. Baptista Caspar d’Ansse de Villoison, Venice, 1788); reprinted, with many additions from other MSS., by Bekker (Scholia in Homeri Iliadem, Berlin, 1825-1826). A new edition has been published by the Oxford Press (Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem, ed. Gul. Dindorfius); six volumes have appeared (1875-1888), the last two edited by Professor E. Maass. The vast commentary of Eustathius was first printed at Rome in 1542; the last edition is that of Stallbaum (Leipzig, 1827). The Scholia on the Odyssey were published by Buttmann (Berlin, 1821), and with greater approach to completeness by W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1855). Although Wolf at once perceived the value of the Venetian Scholia on the Iliad, the first scholar who thoroughly explored them was C. Lehrs (De Aristarchi studiis Homericis, Königsberg, 1833; 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1865). Of the studies in the same field which have appeared since, the most important are: Aug. Nauck, Aristophanis Byzantii fragmenta (Halle, 1848); L. Friedländer, Aristonici περὶ σημείων Ἰλιαδος reliquiae (Göttingen, 1853); M. Schmidt, Didymi Chalcenteri fragmenta (Leipzig, 1854); L. Friedländer, Nicanoris περὶ Ἰλιακῆς στιγμῆς reliquiae (Berlin, 1857); Aug. Lentz, Herodiani Technici reliquiae (Leipzig, 1867); J. La Roche, Die homerische Textkritik im Alterthum (Leipzig, 1866) and Homerische Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1869); Ad. Römer, Die Werke der Aristarcheer im Cod. Venet. A. (Munich, 1875); A. Ludwich, Aristarch’s Homerische Textkritik (2 vols. Leipzig, 1884-1885); and Die Homervulgata als vor-Alexandrinisch erwiesen (Leipzig, 1898).

The literature of the “Homeric Question” begins practically with Wolf’s Prolegomena (Halle, 1795). Of the earlier books Wood’s Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer is the most interesting. Wolf’s views were skilfully popularized in W. Müller’s Homerische Vorschule (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1836). G. Hermann’s dissertations De interpolationibus Homeri (1832) and De iteratis apuà Homerum (1840) are reprinted in his Opuscula. Lachmann’s two papers (Betrachtungen über Homer’s Ilias) were edited together by M. Haupt (2nd ed., Berlin, 1865). Besides the somewhat voluminous writings of Nitzsch, and the discussions contained in the histories of Greek literature by K. O. Müller, Bernhardy, Ulrici and Th. Bergk, and in Grote’s History of Greece, see Welcker, Der epische Cyclus oder die homerischen Dichter (Bonn, 1835-1849); on Proclus and the Cycle reference may also be made to Wilamowitz-Möllendorf p. 328 seq.; E. Bethe, Rhein. Mus. (1891), xxvi. p. 593 seq.; O. Immisch, Festschrift Th. Gomperz dargebracht (1902), p. 237 sq.; Lauer, Geschichte der homerischen Poesie (Berlin, 1851); Sengebusch, two dissertations prefixed to the two volumes of W. Dindorf’s Homer in the Teubner series (1855-1856); Friedländer, Die homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote (Berlin, 1853); Nutzhorn, Die Entstehungsweise der homerischen Gedichte, mit Vorwort von J. N. Madvig (Leipzig, 1869); E. Kammer, Zur homerischen Frage (Königsberg, 1870); and Die Einheit der Odyssee (Leipzig, 1873); Ä. Kirchhoff, Die Composition der Odyssee (Berlin, 1869); Volkmann, Geschichte und Kritik der Wolf’schen Prolegomena (Leipzig, 1874); K. Sittl, Die Wiederholungen in der Odyssee (München, 1882); U. v. Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1884); O. Seeck, Die Quellen der Odyssee (Berlin, 1887); F. Blass, Die Interpolationen in der Odyssee (Leipzig, 1905). The interest taken in the question by English students is sufficiently shown in the writings of W. E. Gladstone, F. A. Paley, Henry Hayman (in the Introduction to his Odyssey), P. Geddes, R. C. Jebb and A. Lang (see especially the latter’s Homer and his Age, 1907).

The Homeric dialect must be studied in the books (such as those of G. Curtius) that deal with Greek on the comparative method. The best special work is the brief Griechische Formenlehre of H. L. Ahrens (Göttingen, 1852). Other important works are those of Aug. Fick: Die homerische Odyssee in der ursprünglichen Sprachform wiederhergestelt (Göttingen, 1883); Die homerische Ilias (ibid., 1886); W. Schulze, Quaestiones epicae (Güterslohe, 1892). On Homeric syntax the chief book is B. Delbrück’s Syntactische Forschungen (Halle, 1871-1879), especially vols. i. and iv.; on metre, &c., Hartel’s Homerische Studien (i.-iii., Vienna); Knös, De digammo Homerico quaestiones (Upsala, 1872-1873-1878); Thumb, Zur Geschichte des griech. Digamma, Indogermanische Forschungen (1898), ix. 294 seq. The papers reprinted in Bekker’s Homerische Blätter (Bonn, 1863-1872) and Cobet’s Miscellanea Crilica (Leiden, 1876) are of the highest value. Hoffmann’s Quaestiones Homericae (Clausthal, 1842) is a useful collection of facts. Buttmann’s Lexilogus, as an example of method, is still worth study.

The antiquities of Homer—using the word in a wide sense—may be studied in the following books: Völcker, Über homerische Geographie und Weltkunde (Hanover, 1830); Nägelsbach’s Homerische Theologie (2nd ed., Nuremberg, 1861); H. Brunn, Die Kunst bei Homer (Munich, 1868); W. W. Lloyd, On the Homeric Design of the Shield of Achilles (London, 1854); Buchholz, Die homerischen Realien (Leipzig, 1871-1873); W. Helbig, Das homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert (Leipzig, 1884; 2nd ed., ibid., 1887); W. Reichel, Über homerische Waffen (Vienna, 1894); C. Robert, Studien zur Ilias (Berlin, 1901); W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece (Cambridge, 1901); V. Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée (Paris, 1902-1903); C. Robert, “Topographische Probleme der Ilias,” in Hermes, xlii., 1907, pp. 78-112.

Among other aids should be mentioned the Index Homericus of Seber (Oxford, 1780); Prendergast’s Concordance to the Iliad (London, 1875); Dunbar’s id. to the Odyssey and Hymns (Oxford, 1880); Frohwein, Verbum Homericum, (Leipzig, 1881); Gehring, Index Homericus (Leipzig, 1891); the Lexicon Homericum, edited by H. Ebeling (Leipzig, 1880-1885) and the facsimile of the cod. Ven. A (Sijthoff; Leiden, 1901), with an introduction by D. Comparetti.

(D. B. M.)

[1] This article was thoroughly revised by Dr D. B. Monro before his death in 1905; a few points have since been added by Mr. T. W. Allen.

[2] See a paper in the Diss. Philol. Halenses, ii. 97-219.

[3] Compare the Popular Rhymes of Scotland, published by Robert Chambers.

[4] Compare the branch of myrtle at an Athenian feast (Aristoph., Nub., 1364).

[5] The Iliad was also recited at the festival of the Brauronia, at Brauron in Attica (Hesych. s.v. βρανρωνίοις).

[6] Contemporary Review, vol. xxiii. p. 218 ff.

[7] The fact that the Phoenician Vau (ϝ) was retained in the Greek alphabets, and the vowel υ added, shows that when the alphabet was introduced the sound denoted by ϝ was still in full vigour. Otherwise ϝ would have been used for the vowel υ, just as the Phoenician consonant Yod became the vowel ι. But in the Ionic dialect the sound of ϝ died out soon after Homer’s time, if indeed it was still pronounced then. It seems probable therefore that the introduction of the alphabet is not later than the composition of the Homeric poems.

[8] See D. B. Monro’s Homer’s Odyssey, books xiii.-xxiv. (Oxford, 1901, p. 455 sqq.), and the abstract of his paper on the Homeric Dialect read to the Congress of Historical Sciences at Rome, 1903: Atti del Congresso internazionale di scienze storiche, ii. 152, 153, 1905, “Il Dialetto omerico.”

[9] See the chapter in Cobet’s Miscellanea critica, pp. 225-239.

[10] The existence of two groups of the Venetian Scholia was first noticed by Jacob La Roche, and they were first distinguished in the edition of W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1875). There is also a group of Scholia, chiefly exegetical, a collection of which was published by Villoison from a MS. Ven. 453 (s. xi.) in his edition of 1788, and has been again edited by W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1877). The most important collection of this group is contained in the Codex Townleianus (Burney 86 s. xi.) of the British Museum, edited by E. Maass, (Oxford, 1887-1888). The vast commentary of Eustathius (of the 12th century) marks a third stage in the progress of ancient Homeric learning.

[11] Prolegomena ad Homerum, sive de operum Homericorum prisca et genuina forma variisque mutationibus et probabili ratione emendandi. scripsit Frid. Aug. Wolfius, volumen i. (1795).

[12] On this point see a paper by Professor Packard in the Trans. of the American Philological Association (1876).

[13] Die Composition der Odyssee (Berlin, 1869). A full discussion of this book is given by Dr E. Kammer, Die Einheit der Odyssee (Leipzig, 1873).

[14] “As a poet Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images” (Shelley, Essays, &c., i. 51, ed. 1852).

[15] “The old English balladist may stir Sir Philip Sidney’s heart like a trumpet, and this is much; but Homer, but the few artists in the grand style, can do more—they can refine the raw natural man, they can transmute him” (On Translating Homer, p. 61).

[16] Die exegetischen Scholien der Ilias, p. vii.

[17] “On comprend que des chants populaires nés d’un événement éclatant, victoire ou défaite, puissent contribuer à former la tradition, à en arrêter les traits; ils peuvent aussi devenir le centre de légendes qui se forment pour les expliquer; et de la sorte leur substance au moins arrive au poëte épique qui l’introduit dans sa composition. Voilà ce qui a pu se produire pour de chants très-courts, dont il est d’ailleurs aussi difficile d’affirmer que de nier l’existence. Mais on peut expliquer la formation des chansons de geste par une autre hypothèse” (Meyer, Recherches sur l’épopée française, p. 65). “Ce qui a fait naître la théorie des chants ‘lyrico-épiques’ ou des cantilènes, c’est le système de Wolf sur les poëmes homériques, et de Lachmann sur les Nibelungen. Mais, au moins en ce qui concerne ce dernier poëme, le système est détruit.... On tire encore argument des romances espagnoles, qui, dit-on, sont des ‘cantilènes’ non encore arrivées à l’épopée.... Et c’est le malheur de cette théorie: faute de preuves directes, elle cherche des analogies au dehors: en Espagne, elle trouve des ‘cantilènes,’ mais pas d’épopée; en Allemagne, une épopée, mais pas de cantilènes!” (Ibid. p. 66).

[18] A. Lang, Contemporary Review, vol. xvii., N.S., p. 588.

HOMER, WINSLOW (1836-1910), American painter, was born in Boston, U.S.A., on the 24th of February 1836. At the age of nineteen he was apprenticed to a lithographer. Two years later he opened a studio in Boston, and devoted much of his time to making drawings for wood-engravers. In 1859 he removed to New York, where he studied in the night-school of the National Academy of Design. During the American Civil War he was with the troops at the front, and contributed sketches to Harper’s Weekly. The war also furnished him with the subjects for the first two pictures which he exhibited (1863), one of which was “Home, Sweet Home.” His “Prisoners from the Front”—perhaps his most generally popular picture—was exhibited in New York in 1865, and also in Paris in 1867, where he was spending the year in study. Among his other paintings in oil are “Snap the Whip” (which was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, and, in company with “The Country Schoolroom,” at the Paris Salon the following year), “Eating Water-melon,” “The Cotton Pickers,” “Visit from the Old Mistress, Sunday Morning,” “The Life-Line” and “The Coming of the Gale.” His genius, however, has perhaps shown better in his works in water-colour, among which are his marine studies painted at Gloucester, Mass., and his “Inside the Bar,” “The Voice from the Cliffs” (pictures of English fisherwomen), “Tynemouth,” “Wrecking of a Vessel” and “Lost on the Grand Banks.” His work, which principally consists of genre pictures, is characterized by strength, rugged directness and unmistakable freshness and originality, rather than by technical excellence, grace of line or beauty of colour. He was little affected by European influences. His types and scenes, apart from his few English pictures, are distinctly American—soldiers in blue, New England children, negroes in the land of cotton, Gloucester fishermen and stormy Atlantic seas. Besides being a member of the Society of Painters in Water-color, New York, he was elected in 1864 an associate and the following year a member of the National Academy of Design.

HOMESTEAD, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, 8 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 7911; (1900) 12,554, of whom 3604 were foreign-born and 640 were negroes; (U.S. census, 1910) 18,713. It is served by the Pennsylvania and the Pittsburg & Lake Erie railways, and by the short Union Railroad, which connects with the Bessemer & Lake Erie and the Wabash railways. The borough has a Carnegie library and the C.M. Schwab Manual Training School. Partly in Homestead but chiefly in the adjoining borough of Munhall (and therefore not reported as in Homestead by the U.S. Census) is one of the largest plants in the United States for the manufacture of steel used in the construction of bridges and steel-frame buildings and of steel armour-plate, and this is its chief industry; among Homestead’s other manufactures are glass and fire-bricks. The water-works are owned and operated by the municipality. Homestead was first settled in 1871, and it was incorporated in 1880. In 1892 a labour strike lasting 143 days and one of the most serious in the history of the United States was carried on here by the National Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers of the United States against the Carnegie Steel Company. The arrival (on the 6th of July) of a force of about 200 Pinkerton detectives from New York and Chicago resulted in a fight in which about 10 men were killed, and to restore order two brigades of the state militia were called out. See [Strikes and Lockouts].

HOMESTEAD AND EXEMPTION LAWS, laws (principally in the United States) designed primarily either to aid the head of a family to acquire title to a place of residence or to protect the owner against loss of that title through seizure for debt. These laws have all been enacted in America since about the middle of the 19th century, and owe their origin to the demand for a population of the right sort in a new country, to the conviction that the freeholder rather than the tenant is the natural supporter of popular government, to the effort to prevent insolvent debtors from becoming useless members of society, and to the belief that such laws encourage the stability of the family.

By the cessions of several of the older states, and by various treaties with foreign countries, public lands have been acquired for the United States in every state and territory of the Union except the original thirteen, and Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas. For a time they were regarded chiefly as a source of revenue, but about 1820, as the need of revenue for the payment of the national debt decreased and the inhabitants of an increasing number of new states became eager to have the vacant lands within their bounds occupied, the demand that the public lands should be disposed of more in the interest of the settler became increasingly strong, and the homestead idea originated. Until the advent of railways, however, the older states of the North were opposed to promoting the development of the West in this manner, and soon afterwards the Southern representatives in Congress opposed the general homestead bills in the interests of slavery, so that except in isolated cases where settlers were desired to protect some frontier, as in Florida and Oregon, and to a limited extent in the case of the Pre-emption Act of 1841 (see below), the homestead principle was not applied by the national government until the Civil War had begun. A general homestead bill was passed by Congress in 1860, but this was vetoed by President James Buchanan; two years later, however, a similar bill became a law. The act of 1862 originally provided that any citizen of the United States, or applicant for citizenship, who was the head of a family, or twenty-one years of age, or, if younger, had served not less than fourteen days in the army or navy of the United States during an actual war, might apply for 160 acres or less of unappropriated public lands, and might acquire title to this amount of land by residing upon and cultivating it for five years immediately following, and paying such fees as were necessary to cover the cost of administration; a homestead acquired in this manner was exempted from seizure for any debt contracted prior to the date of issuing the patent. A commutation clause of this act permitted title to be acquired after only six months of residence by paying $1.25 per acre, as provided in the Pre-emption Act of 1841. Act of 1872, amended in 1901, allows any soldier or seaman, who has served at least ninety days in the army or navy of the United States during the Civil War, the Spanish-American War or in the suppression of the insurrection in the Philippines, and was honourably discharged, to apply for a homestead, and permits the deduction of the time of such service, or, if discharged on account of wounds or other disability incurred in the line of duty, the full term of his enlistment, from the five years otherwise required for perfecting title, except that in any case he shall have resided upon and cultivated the land at least one year before the passing of title. Since 1866 mineral lands have been for the most part excluded from entry as homesteads.

In accordance with the provisions of the homestead law, 718,930 homesteads, containing 96,495,414 acres, were established in forty-two years, and besides this principal act, Congress has passed several minor ones of a like nature, that is, acts designed to benefit the actual settler who improves the land. Thus the Pre-emption Act of 1841 gave to any head of a family or any single person over twenty-one years of age, who was a citizen of the United States or had declared his intention to become one, permission to purchase not to exceed 160 acres of public lands after he had resided upon and improved the same for six months; the Timber-Culture Act of 1873 allowed title to 160 acres of public prairie-land to be given to any one who should plant upon it 40 acres of timber, and keep the same in good growing condition for ten years; and the Desert-Land Act of 1877 gave to any citizen of the United States, or to any person who had declared his intention to become one, the privilege of acquiring title to 640 acres of such public land as was not included in mineral or timber lands, and would not without irrigation produce an agricultural crop, by paying twenty-five cents an acre and creating for the tract an artificial water-supply. These several land acts, however, invited fraud to such an extent that in time they promoted the establishment of large land holdings by ranchmen and others quite as much as they encouraged settlement and cultivation, and so great was this evil that in 1891 the Timber-Culture and Pre-emption Acts were repealed, the total amount of land that could be acquired by any one person under the several land laws was limited to 320 acres, the Desert-Land Act was so amended as to require an expenditure of at least three dollars an acre for irrigation, and the original Homestead Act was so amended as to disqualify any person who was already proprietor of more than 160 acres in any state or Territory of the Union for acquiring any more land under its provisions; and in 1896 a residence of fourteen months was required before permitting commutation or the purchase of title. But even these measures were inadequate to prevent fraud. In 1894 Congress, in what is known as the Carey Act, donated to California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and the Dakotas so much of 1,000,000 acres each of desert-lands as each should cause to be irrigated, reclaimed and occupied within ten years,[1] not less than 20 acres of each 160 acres to be cultivated by actual settlers; and in several of these states and territories irrigating companies have been formed and land offered to settlers in amounts not exceeding 160 acres to each, on terms requiring the settler to purchase ample and perpetual water-rights. In 1902, Congress appropriated the proceeds of the sales of public lands in these states and territories to form a reclamation fund to be used for the construction and maintenance of irrigation works, and lands reclaimed by this means are open to homestead entries, the entry-man being required to pay for the cost of reclamation in ten equal annual instalments without interest. When Texas was admitted to the Union the disposal of its public lands was reserved to the state, and under its laws every person who is the head of a family and without a homestead may acquire title to 160 acres of land by residing upon and improving it for three years; every unmarried man eighteen years of age or over may acquire title to 80 acres in the same way.

A short time before the National Homestead Act for aiding citizens to acquire homesteads went into operation, some of the state legislatures had passed homestead and exemption laws designed to protect homesteads or a certain amount of property against loss to the owners in case they should become insolvent debtors, and by the close of the century the legislature of nearly every state in the Union had passed a law of this nature. These laws vary greatly. In most states the exemption of a homestead or other property from liability for debts can be claimed only by the head of a family, but in Georgia it may be claimed by any aged or infirm person, by any trustee of a family of minor children, or by any person on whom any woman or girls are dependent for support; and in California, although the head of a family may claim exemption for a homestead valued at $5000, any other person may claim exemption for a homestead valued at $1000. In some states exemptions may be claimed either for a farm limited to 40, 80, 160 or 200 acres, or for a house and one or more lots, usually limited in size, in a town, village or city; in other states the homestead for which exemption may be claimed is limited in value, and this value varies from $500 to $5000. With the homestead are usually included the appurtenances thereto, and the courts invariably interpret the law liberally; but many states also exempt a specified amount of personal property, including wearing apparel, furniture, provisions, tools, libraries and in some cases domestic animals and stock in trade. A few states exempt no homestead and only a small amount of personal property; Maryland, for example, exempts only $100 worth of property besides money payable in the nature of insurance, or for relief, in the event of sickness, injury or death. To some debts the exemption does not usually apply; the most common of these are taxes, purchase money, a debt secured by mortgage on the homestead and debts contracted in making improvements upon it; in Maryland the only exception is a judgment for breach of promise to marry or in case of seduction. If the homestead belongs to a married person, the consent of both husband and wife is usually required to mortgage it. Finally, some states require that the homestead for which exemption is to be claimed shall be previously entered upon record, others require only occupancy, and still others permit the homestead to be designated whenever a claim is presented.

Following the example of either the United States Congress or the state legislatures, the governments of several British colonial states and provinces have passed homestead laws. In Quebec every settler on public lands is allowed, after receiving a patent, an exemption of not to exceed 200 acres from that of his widow, of his, her or their children and descendants in the direct line. In Ontario an applicant for a homestead may have not to exceed 200 acres of unappropriated public land for farming purposes by building a house thereon, occupying it for five years, and bringing at least fifteen acres under cultivation; the exemption of such a homestead from liability to seizure for debts is, however, limited to twenty years from the date of application for the land, and does not extend even during that period to rates or taxes. Manitoba, British Columbia, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, West Australia and New Zealand also have liberal homestead and exemption laws.

See J. B. Sanborn, “Some Political Aspects of Homestead Legislation,” in The American Historical Review (1900); Edward Manson, “The Homestead Acts,” in the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (London, 1899); S. D. Thompson, A Treatise on Homesteads and Exemptions (San Francisco, 1886); P. Bureau, Le Homestead ou l’Insaisissabilité de la petite propriété foncière (Paris, 1894), and L. Vacher, Le Homestead aux États-Unis (Paris, 1899).

(N. D. M.)

[1] In 1901 it was provided that the ten years should date from the segregation of the lands from the public domain.

HOMEYER, KARL GUSTAV (1795-1874), German jurist, was born on the 13th of August 1795 at Wolgast in Pomerania. After studying law at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg (1813-1817), he settled as a Privatdocent, in 1821, at the university of Berlin, where he became ordinary professor of law in 1827. His principal works are his edition of the Sachsenspiegel (in 3 vols., 1827, 3rd ed., 1861, containing also some other important sources of Saxon or Low German law), which is still unsurpassed in accuracy and sagacity of research, and his book on Die Haus- und Hofmarken (1870), in which he has given a history of the use of trade-marks among all the Teutonic nations of Europe, and which is full of important elucidations of the history of law and also contains valuable contributions to the history of art and civilization. In 1850 Homeyer was elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, in the Transactions of which he published various papers exhibiting profound learning (Über die Heimat, 1852; Genealogie der Handschriften des Sachsenspiegels, 1859; Die Stadtbücher des Mittelalters, 1860; Der Dreissigste, 1864, &c.). He died on the 20th of October 1874.

HOMICIDE (Lat. homicidium), the general and neutral term for the killing of one human being by another. The nature of the responsibility of the slayer to the state and to the relatives of the slain has been one of the chief concerns of all systems of law from the earliest times, and it has been variously considered from the points of view of the sanctity of human life, the interests of the sovereign, the injury to the family of the slain and the moral guilt, i.e. the motives and intentions, of the slayer.

The earliest recorded laws (those of Khammurabi) do not contain any sweeping general provision as to the punishment of homicide. The death penalty is freely imposed but not for homicide. “If a man strike a gentleman’s daughter that she dies, his own daughter is to be put to death, if a poor man’s the slayer pays ½ mina.” In the Mosaic law the general command “Thou shalt not kill” of the Decalogue is in terms absolute. In primitive law homicide, however innocent, subjected the slayer to the lawful vengeance of the kindred of the slain, unless he could make some composition with him. This lex talionis (a life for a life) resulted: (1) in a course of private justice which still survives in the vendetta of Corsica and Albania, and the blood feuds arising out of “difficulties” in the southern and western parts of the United States; (2) in the recognition of sanctuaries and cities of refuge within which the avenger of blood might not penetrate to kill an innocent manslayer; and (3) in the system of wite, bote and wer, by which the life of every man had its assessed price payable to his chief and his next of kin.

It took long to induce the relatives of the slain to appreciate anything beyond the fact of the death of their kinsman or to discriminate between intentional and accidental homicide. By the laws of Khammurabi (206, 208) striking a man in a quarrel without deadly intent but with fatal effect was treated as a matter for compensation according to the rank of the slain. The Pentateuch discriminates between the man “who lieth in wait for” or “cometh presumptuously” on “his neighbour to slay him with guile” (Exodus xxi. 13, 14), and the man “who killeth his neighbour ignorantly whom he hated not in time past” (Deut. xix. 4). But even killing by misadventure exposed the slayer to the avenger of blood. “As a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down a tree and the head slippeth from the helve and lighteth upon his neighbour that he die: he shall flee into one of these cities (of refuge) and live” (Deut. xix. 5).

Under the early laws of Teutonic and Celtic communities the inconveniences of the blood feud were gradually mitigated (see [Criminal Law]) by the system of wite and wer (or eric), but the blood feud continued long in Friesland and Lower Saxony, and in parts of Switzerland until the 16th century. In England under the Norman system homicide became a plea of the crown, and the rights of the kindred to private vengeance and to compensation were gradually superseded in favour of the right of the king to forfeitures where the homicide amounted to a crime (felony).

Though homicide was thus made a public offence and not a matter for private vengeance, it took long to discriminate between those forms of homicide which should and those which should not be punished.

The terms of act in English law used to describe criminal homicide are murder (mord, meurtre, murdrum), manslaughter and felo de se (or suicide by a person of sound mind).

The original meaning of the word “murder” seems to have been secret homicide,—“Murdrum proprie dicitur mors alicujus occulta cujus interfector ignoratur” (Dialogus de Scaccario i, x.); and Glanville says: Duo sunt genera homicidii, unum est quod dicitur murdrum quod nullo vidente nullo sciente clam perpetratur, ita quod non assignatur clamor popularis (hue and cry), est et aliud homicidium quod diciter simplex homicidium. After the Conquest, and for the protection of the ruling race, a fine (also called murdrum) was levied for the king on the hundred or other district in which a stranger was found dead, if the slayer was not brought to justice and the blood kin of the slain did not present Englishry, there being a presumption (in favour of the Exchequer) that the deceased was a Frenchman. After the assize of Clarendon (1166) the distinction between the killing of Normans and Englishmen gradually evaporated and the term murder came to acquire its present meaning of deliberate as distinct from secret homicide. In 1267 it was provided that the murder fine should not be levied in cases of death by “misadventure” (per infortunium).[1] But at that date and for long afterwards homicide in self-defence or by misadventure or even while of unsound mind involved at the least a forfeiture of goods, and required a pardon. These pardons, and restitution of the goods, became a matter of course, and the judges appear at a later date to have been in the habit of directing an acquittal in such cases. But it was not until 1828 that the innocence of excusable homicide was expressly declared. The rule is now expressed in s. 7 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861: “No punishment or forfeiture shall be incurred by any person who shall kill another by misfortune, or in his own defence, or in any other manner without felony.”

The further differentiation between different degrees of criminal homicide was marked by legislation of Henry VIII. (1531) taking away benefit of clergy in the case of “wilful murder with malice prepensed” (aforethought), and that phrase is still the essential element in the definition of “wilful murder,” which is committed “when a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature or being and under the king’s peace with malice aforethought either express or implied” (3 Co. Inst. 47). The whole development of the substantive law as to murder rests on judicial rulings as to the meaning of malice prepense coupled with the extrajudicial commentaries of Coke, Hale and Foster; for parliament, though often tempted by bills and codes, has never ventured on a legislative definition. Much discussion has ranged round the phrase “malice aforethought,” and it has undoubtedly been expanded by judicial decision so as to create what is described as “constructive” murder. According to the view of the criminal code commissioners of 1879 (Parl. Pap., 1879, c. 23, 45, p. 23) the term “malice aforethought” is now a common name for all the following states of mind:—

1. An intent, preceding the act, to kill or do grievous bodily harm to the person or to any other person:

2. Knowledge that the act done is likely to produce such consequences, whether coupled with an intention to produce them or not:

3. An intent to commit any felony: or

4. An intent to resist an officer of police in the execution of his duty.

The third form of malice aforethought has been much controverted. When it was first recognized as creating a liability for wilful murder almost all felonies were capital offences: but even at the end of the 17th century Lord Holt expressed a view that it should be limited to felonies involving violence or danger to life, e.g. assault with intent to rob, or setting fire to a dwelling-house. And Sir James Stephen’s opinion is that, to justify conviction of murder by an act done with intent to commit a felony, the act done must be one dangerous to life or known to be likely to cause death.

Starting with the definition above given, English law still retains so much of its medieval character as to presume all homicide to be “malicious, and therefore murder, unless it is either justified by the command or permission of the law, excused on the ground of accident or self-preservation, or alleviated into manslaughter by being the involuntary consequence of some act not strictly lawful or occasioned by some sudden and sufficiently violent provocation.” The truth of the facts alleged in justification, excuse or alleviation, is for the jury to determine: the question whether if true they support the plea for which they are put forward is for the court.

In the administration of the English criminal law as to homicide the consequences of too strict an adherence to the technical definitions of the offences are avoided (a) by the exercise of the jury of their powers to convict of manslaughter only even in cases where they are directed that the offence is murder or nothing; (b) by the report of the judge as to the particular circumstances of each case in which a conviction of murder has been followed by the statutory sentence of death; (c) by the examination of all the evidence in the case by the Home Office in order to enable the secretary of state to determine whether the prerogative of mercy should be exercised.

Homicide is justifiable and not criminal when the killing is done in the execution of the law. The most important case of justifiable homicide is the execution of a criminal in due course of public justice. This condition is most stringently interpreted. “To kill the greatest of malefactors deliberately, uncompelled, and extrajudicially is murder.... And further, if judgment of death be given by a judge not authorized by lawful commission, and execution is done accordingly, the judge is guilty of murder” (Stephen’s Commentaries, book vi. c. iv.). The execution must be carried out by the proper officer or his deputy: any person executing the sentence without such authority, were it the judge himself, would be guilty of murder. And the sentence must be strictly pursued: to execute a criminal by a kind of death other than that to which he has been judicially condemned is murder.

Homicide committed by an officer of justice in the course of carrying out his duty, as such, is also justifiable; e.g. where a felon resists a legal arrest and is killed in the effort to arrest him (see 2 Pollock and Maitland, 476); where officers in dispersing a riotous assemblage kill any of the mob, &c. (see [Riot]). In these cases the homicide must be shown to have been absolutely necessary. Again, homicide is justifiable if committed in the defence of person or property against forcible and heinous crime, such as murder, violent robbery, rape or burglary. In this connexion there has been much discussion as to whether the person attacked is under a duty to retreat: and in substance the justification depends on the continuous necessity of attack or defence In order to prevent the commission by the deceased of the crime threatened.

Homicide is excusable and not criminal at all when committed either by misadventure or in self-defence. In the former case the homicide is excused; where a man in the course of doing some lawful work, accidentally and without intention kills another, e.g. shooting at a mark and undesignedly hitting and killing a man. The act must be strictly lawful, and death by misadventure in unlawful sports is not a case of excusable homicide. Homicide in self-defence is excusable when the slayer is himself in immediate danger of death, and has done all he could to avoid the assault. Accordingly, if he strikes and kills his assailant after the assault is over, this is not excusable homicide. But if the assault has been premeditated, as in the ease of a duel, the death of either antagonist has under English law always been held to be murder and not excusable homicide. The excuse of self-defence covers the case in which a person in defence of others whom it is his duty to protect—children, wife, master, &c.—kills an assailant. It has been considered doubtful whether the plea of self-defence is available to one who has himself provoked a fray, in the course of which he is so pressed by his antagonist that his only resource is to kill him.

In English law the term “manslaughter” is applied to those forms of homicide which though neither justifiable nor excusable are attended by alleviating circumstances which bring them short of wilful murder. The offence is not defined by statute, but only by judicial rulings. Its punishment is as a maximum penal servitude for life, and as a minimum a fine or recognizances to be of good behaviour. The quantum of punishment between the limits above stated is in the discretion of the court, and not, as under continental codes, with fixed minima; and the offence includes acts and omissions of very varying gravity, from acts which only by the charitable appreciation of a jury fall short of wilful murder, to acts or omissions which can only technically be described as criminal, e.g. where one of two persons engaged in poaching, by pure accident gets caught in a hedge so that his gun goes off and kills his fellow-poacher. This may be described as an extreme instance of “constructive crime.”

There are two main forms of “manslaughter”:—

1. “Voluntary” homicide under grave and sudden provocation or on a sudden quarrel in the heat of passion, without the slayer taking undue advantage or acting in an unusual manner. The substance of the alleviation of guilt lies in the absence of time for cool reflection or the formation of a premeditated design to kill. Under English law the provocation must be by acts and not by words or gestures, and must be serious and not trivial, and the killing must be immediately after provocation and while the slayer has lost his self-control in consequence of the provocation. The provocation need not be by assault or violence, and perhaps the best-recognized example is the slaying by a husband of a man found committing adultery with the slayer’s wife. In the case of a sudden quarrel it does not matter who began or provoked the quarrel. This used to be called “chance medley.”

2. “Involuntary” homicide as a result of great rashness or gross negligence in respect of matters involving danger to human life, e.g. in driving trains or vehicles, or in dealing with dangerous weapons, or in performing surgical operations, or in taking care of the helpless.

The innumerable modes in which criminal liability for killing others has been adjudged under the English definitions of murder and manslaughter cannot be here stated, and can only be studied by reference to the judicial decisions collected and discussed in Russell on Crimes and other English text-books, and in the valuable work by Mr J. D. Mayne on the criminal law of India, in which the English common law rulings are stated side by side with the terms and interpretations of the Indian penal code. Much labour has been expended by many jurists in efforts to create a scientific and acceptable classification of the various forms of unlawful homicide which shall properly define the cases which should be punishable by law and the appropriate punishment. Their efforts have resulted in the establishment in almost every state except the United Kingdom of statutory definitions of the crime, beginning with the French penal code and going down to the criminal code of Japan. In the case of England, as a result of the labours of Sir James Stephen, a code bill was submitted to parliament in 1878. In 1879 a draft code was prepared by Blackburn, Lush and Barry, and was presented to parliament. It was founded on and prepared with Sir J. Stephen, and is a revision of his digest of the criminal law.

After defining homicide and culpable homicide, the draft code (cl. 174) declares culpable homicide to be murder in the following cases: (a) if the offender means to cause the death of the person killed; (b) if the offender means to cause to the person killed any bodily injury which is known to the offender to be likely to cause death, and if the offender, whether he does or does not mean to cause death, is reckless whether death ensues or not; (c) if the offender means to cause death or such bodily injury as aforesaid to one person, so that if that person be killed the offender would be guilty of murder, and by accident or mistake the offender kills another person though he does not mean to hurt the person killed; (d) if the offender for any unlawful object does an act which he knows or ought to have known to be likely to cause death, and thereby kills any person, though he may have desired that his object should be effected without hurting any one.

Further (cl. 175), it is murder (whether the offender means or not death to ensue, or knows or not that death is likely to ensue) in the following cases:—“(a) if he means to inflict grievous bodily injury for the purpose of facilitating the commission of any of the offences hereinafter mentioned, or the flight of the offender upon the commission or attempted commission thereof, and death ensues from his violence; (b) if he administers any stupefying thing for either of the purposes aforesaid and death ensues from the effects thereof; (c) if he by any means wilfully stops the breath of any person for either of the purposes aforesaid and death ensues from such stopping of the breath.” The following are the offences referred to:—“high treason and other offences against the king’s authority, piracy and offences deemed to be piracy, escape or rescue from prison or lawful custody, resisting lawful apprehension, murder, rape, forcible abduction, robbery, burglary, arson.” Cl. 176 reduces culpable homicide to manslaughter if the person who causes death does so “in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation”; and “any wrongful act or insult of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive any ordinary person of the power of self-control may be provocation if the offender acts upon it on the sudden, and before there has been time for his passion to cool. Whether any particular wrongful act or insult amounts to provocation and whether the offender was deprived of self-control shall be questions of fact; but no one shall be deemed to give provocation by doing that which he had a legal right to do, or which the offender incited him to do in order to provide an excuse for killing him or doing grievous bodily harm to any person.” Further, “an arrest shall not necessarily reduce the offence from murder to manslaughter because an arrest was illegal, but if the illegality was known to the offender it may be evidence of provocation”; (cl. 177) “culpable homicide not amounting to murder is manslaughter.”

The definitions embodied in these clauses though not yet accepted by the British legislature, have in substance been embodied in the criminal codes of Canada (1892 ss. 227-230), New Zealand (1893, ss. 163-166), Queensland (1899, ss. 300-305), and Western Australia (1901, ss. 275-280).

From the point of view of civil as distinct from criminal responsibility homicide does not by the common law give any cause of action against the person causing the death of another in favour of the wife or blood relations of the deceased. In early law this was otherwise; and the wer or eric of the deceased came historically before the right of chief or state. But under English law the rights of relations, except by way of appeal for felony,[2] were swept aside in favour of the crown, on the principle that every homicide is presumed felonious (murder) unless the contrary is proved, and that in all cases of homicide not justifiable by law a forfeiture was incurred. The rights of the relatives were also defeated by application of the maxim “actio personalis moritur cum personâ” (“a personal action dies with the person”) to all proceedings for injury to the person or to reputation. In Scotland the old theory was preserved in the law as to assythement.

In England the law was altered at the instance of Lord Campbell in 1846 (9 & 10 V. c. 93) so as to give a right of a claim by the husband, wife, parent or child of a person killed by a wrongful (or even criminal) act, neglect or default by another which would have given the deceased if he had survived a cause of action against the wrongdoer. The compensation payable is what the surviving relative has lost by the death, and under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1906 (in all cases to which it applies) the employer is liable even without negligence to compensate the dependants of an employee killed by an accident arising out of and in the course of the employment; and in such cases even if the death was due to serious and wilful misconduct by the employee, compensation is payable.

In the Indian penal code the definitions of murder are so drawn as to limit the offences to cases where it was actually intended to cause death or bodily injury by the acts or omissions of the slayer, and the definition of culpable homicide short of murder is so drawn as to exclude the forms of unintentional manslaughter due to neglect of duty, e.g. in the conduct of trains or ships or vehicles. This last omission was supplied in 1870. The Indian code does not treat as murder either duelling or helping Hindu widows to commit suttee (s. 301, exception 5). In most of the British possessions in Asia and in east Africa the Indian definitions of homicide have been adopted. In the rest of the colonies, except South Africa, the law of homicide depends on the English common law as modified by colonial codes or statutes. In South Africa it rests mainly on the Roman Dutch law.

Europe.—In European codes distinctions corresponding to those of the English law are drawn between premeditated and other forms of criminal homicide; but more elaborate distinctions are drawn between the degrees of deliberation or criminality manifested in the slaying, and the minimum or maximum penalty is varied accordingly.

In the French penal code voluntary homicide is called murder (meurtre, art. 295): but if committed with premeditation or lying in wait is styled assassinat (guet-apens) (296-298). Poisoning (even if the poison is not fatal), is specially punished, as is parricide (on the lines of the obsolete English offence of petty treason), and infanticide, i.e. the killing of newly-born infants. Assassination, poisoning and parricide are at present capital offences; but a bill to abolish the death sentence has been laid before the French parliament.

The German code distinguishes between voluntary homicide which is done with deliberation and such homicide committed without deliberation (ss. 211, 212), and provides for mitigation of punishment where the slaying was provoked without fault in the slayer by any wrongful act or serious insult upon the slayer or his relatives by the slain (213). Parricide and infanticide are specially punished (214, 215), as is killing another person at his express and earnest request (216)—an offence which would in England be murder—and it is a separate offence to cause the death of another, the penalty being increased if the offender was peculiarly bound by office, calling or trade to use a care which he did not use (222).

The Italian code punishes as homicide those who with intention to kill cause the death of another (364). The death penalty is not imposed, but scales of punishment are provided to deal with aggravated forms of the offence. Thus ergastolo (penal servitude for life) is the punishment in the case of homicide of ascendants and descendants, or with premeditation, or under the sole impulse of brutal ferocity or with gross cruelty (gravi sevizie), or by means of arson, inundation, drowning and certain other crimes, or to secure the gains or conceal the commission, or to secure immunity from the consequences, of another crime (366). Personal violence resulting in death inflicted without intention to kill is punishable minore poenâ (368), and it is criminal to cause the death of another by imprudence, negligence or lack of skill in an art or profession (imperitia nella propria arte o professione), or by non-observance of regulations, orders or instructions.

The Spanish code has like those of Italy and France special punishments for parricide (417) and for assassination, in which are included killing for reward or promise of reward or by inundation (418), and for aiding another to commit suicide (421). Both the Italian and the Spanish codes afford a special mitigation to infanticide committed to avoid dishonour to the mother of the infant or her family.

America.—The most notable difference between England and the United States in regard to the law on this subject is the recognition by state legislation of degrees in murder. English law treats all unlawful killing not reducible to manslaughter as of the same degree of guilt in law. American statutes seek to discriminate for purposes of punishment between the graver and the less culpable forms of murder. Thus an act of the legislature of Pennsylvania (22nd of April 1794) declares “all murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison or by lying in wait or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery or burglary shall be deemed murder of the first degree; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree.” This legislation has been copied or adopted in many if not most of the other states. There are also statutory degrees of manslaughter in the legislation of some of the states. The differences of legislation, coupled with the power of the jury in some states to determine the sentence, and the limitations on the right of the judges to comment on the testimony adduced, lead to very great differences between the administration of the law as to homicide in the two countries.

Authorities.—Stephen, Hist. Cr. Law, Digest Criminal Law; Russell on Crimes (7th ed., 1909); Archbold, Criminal Pleading (23rd ed., 1905); Bishop, American Criminal Law (8th ed.); Pollock and Maitland, Hist. English Law; Pike, History of Crime.

(W. F. C.)

[1] See Select Pleas of Crown, 1 (Selden Society Publ.); Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 458, 476, 478.

[2] Appeals remained in the law till 1819, but were long before this disused. In the middle ages they were used as a means of getting compensation.

HOMILETICS (Gr. ὁμιλητικός, from ὁμιλεῖν, to assemble together), in theology the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific department of public preaching. It may be further defined as the science that treats of the analysis, classification, preparation, composition and delivery of sermons. The formation during recent years of such lectureships as the “Lyman Beecher” course at Yale University has resulted in increased attention being given to homiletics, and the published volumes of this series are the best contribution to the subject.

The older literature is cited exhaustively in W. G. Blaikie, For the Work of the Ministry (1873); and D. P. Kidder, Treatise on Homiletics (1864).

HOMILY, a simple religious address, less elaborate than a sermon, and confining itself to the practical exposition of some ethical topic or some passage of Scripture. The word ὁμιλία from ὁμιλεῖν (ὁμοῦ, εἴλω), meaning communion, intercourse, and especially interchange of thought and feeling by means of words (conversation), was early employed in classical Greek to denote the instruction which a philosopher gave to his pupils in familiar talk (Xenophon, Memorabilia, I. ii. 6. 15). This usage of the word was long preserved (Aelian, Varia Historia, iii. 19); and the ὁμιλήσας of Acts xx. 11 may safely be taken to assign not only a free and informal but also a didactic character to the apostle Paul’s discourse in the upper chamber of Troas, when “he talked a long while, even till break of day.” That the “talk” on that occasion partook of the nature of the “exposition” (דרשה) of Scripture, which, undertaken by a priest, elder or other competent person, had become a regular part of the service of the Jewish synagogue,[1] may also with much probability be assumed. The custom of delivering expositions or comments more or less extemporaneous on the lessons of the day at all events passed over soon and readily into the Christian Church, as may be gathered from the first Apology (c. 67) of Justin Martyr, where we read that, in connexion with the practice of reading portions from the collected writings of the prophets and from the memoirs of the apostles, it had by that time become usual for the presiding minister to deliver a discourse in which “he admonishes the people, stirring them up to an imitation of the good works which have been brought before their notice.” This discourse, from its explanatory character, and from the easy conversational manner of its delivery, was for a long time called ὁμιλία rather than λόγος: it was regarded as part of the regular duty of the bishop, but he could devolve it, if he thought fit, on a presbyter or deacon, or even on a layman. An early and well-known instance of such delegation is that mentioned by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. vi. 19) in the case of Origen (216 A.D.).[2] In course of time the exposition of the lesson for the day came more frequently to assume a more elaborate character, and to pass into the category of a λόγος or even φιλοσοφία or φιλοσόφημα; but when it did so the fact was as far as possible denoted by a change of name, the word ὁμιλία being reserved for the expository or exegetical lecture as distinguished from the pulpit oration or sermon.[3] While the church of the 3rd and 4th centuries could point to a brilliant succession of great preachers, whose discourses were wont to be taken down in shorthand and circulated among the Christian public as edifying reading, it does not appear that the supply of ordinary homiletical talent kept pace with the rapidity of church extension throughout the Roman empire. In the smaller and remoter communities it not uncommonly happened that the minister was totally unqualified to undertake the work of preaching; and though, as is curiously shown by the case of Rome (Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. vii. 19), the regular exposition of the appointed lessons was by no means regarded as part of the necessary business of a church, it was generally felt to be advisable that some provision should be made for the public instruction of congregations. Even in Jerome’s time (De Vir. Ill. c. 115), accordingly, it had become usual to read, in the regular meetings of the churches which were not so fortunate as to possess a competent preacher, the written discourses of celebrated fathers; and at a considerably later period we have on record the canon of at least one provincial council (that of Vaux, probably the third, held in 529 A.D.), positively enjoining that if the presbyter through any infirmity is unable himself to preach, “homilies of the holy fathers” (homiliae sanctorum patrum) are to be read by the deacons. Thus the finally fixed meaning of the word homily as an ecclesiastical term came to be a written discourse (generally possessing the sanction of some great name) read in church by or for the officiating clergyman when from any cause he was unable to deliver a sermon of his own. As the standard of clerical education sank during the dark ages, the habit of using the sermons of others became almost universal. Among the authors whose works were found specially serviceable in this way may be mentioned the Venerable Bede, who is credited with no fewer than 140 homilies in the Basel and Cologne editions of his works, and who certainly was the author of many Homiliae de Tempore which were much in vogue during the 8th and following centuries. Prior to Charlemagne it is probable that several other collections of homilies had obtained considerable popularity, but in the time of that emperor these had suffered so many mutilations and corruptions that an authoritative revision was felt to be imperatively necessary. The result was the well-known Homiliarium, prepared by Paul Warnefrid, otherwise known as Paulus Diaconus (q.v.).[4] It consists of 176 homilies arranged in order for all the Sundays and festivals of the ecclesiastical year; and probably was completed before the year 780. Though written in Latin, its discourses were doubtless intended to be delivered in the vulgar tongue; the clergy, however, were often too indolent or too ignorant for this, although by more than one provincial council they were enjoined to exert themselves so that they might be able to do so.[5] Hence an important form of literary activity came to be the translation of the homilies approved by the church into the vernacular. Thus we find Alfred the Great translating the homilies of Bede; and in a similar manner arose Ælfric’s Anglo-Saxon Homilies and the German Homiliarium of Ottfried of Weissenburg. Such Homiliaria as were in use in England down to the end of the 15th century were at the time of the Reformation eagerly sought for and destroyed, so that they are now extremely rare, and the few copies which have been preserved are generally in a mutilated or imperfect form.[6]

The Books of Homilies referred to in the 35th article of the Church of England originated at a convocation in 1542, at which it was agreed “to make certain homilies for stay of such errors as were then by ignorant preachers sparkled among the people.” Certain homilies, accordingly, composed by dignitaries of the lower house, were in the following year produced by the prolocutor; and after some delay a volume was published in 1547 entitled Certain sermons or homilies appointed by the King’s Majesty to be declared and read by all parsons, vicars, or curates every Sunday in their churches where they have cure. In 1563 a second Book of Homilies was submitted along with the 39 Articles to convocation; it was issued the same year under the title The second Tome of Homilies of such matters as were promised and instituted in the former part of Homilies, set out by the authority of the Queen’s Majesty, and to be read in every Parish Church agreeably. Of the twelve homilies contained in the first book, four (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th) are probably to be attributed to Cranmer, and one (the 12th) possibly to Latimer; one (the 6th) is by Bonner; another (the 5th) is by John Harpsfield, archdeacon of London, and another (the 11th) by Thomas Becon, one of Cranmer’s chaplains. The authorship of the others is unknown. The second book consists of twenty-one homilies, of which the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, 16th and 17th have been assigned to Jewel, the 4th to Grindal, the 5th and 6th to Pilkington and the 18th to Parker. See the critical edition by Griffiths, Oxford, 1869. The homilies are not now read publicly, though they are sometimes appealed to in controversies affecting the doctrines of the Anglican Church.

[1] See Philo, Quod omnis probus liber, sec. 12 (ed. Mangey ii. 458; cf. ii. 630).

[2] Sozomen (Hist. Eccl. vii. 19) mentions that in Alexandria in his day the bishop alone was in the custom of preaching; but this, he implies, was a very exceptional state of matters, dating only from the time of Arius.

[3] To the more strictly exegetical lectures the names ἐξηγήσεις, ἐξηγήματα, ἐξηγητικά, ἐκθέσεις, were sometimes applied. But as no popular discourse delivered from the pulpit could ever be exclusively expository and as on the other hand every sermon professing to be based on Scripture required to be more or less “exegetical” and “textual,” it would obviously be sometimes very hard to draw the line of distinction between ὁμιλία and λόγος. It would be difficult to define very precisely the difference in French between a “conférence” and a “sermon”; and the same difficulty seems to have been experienced in Greek by Photius, who says of the eloquent pulpit orations of Chrysostom, that they were ὁμιλίαι rather than λόγοι.

[4] Manuscript copies are preserved at Heidelberg, Darmstadt, Frankfort, Giessen, Cassel and other places. It was first printed at Spires in 1482. In the Cologne edition of 1530 the title runs—Homiliae seu mavis sermones sive conciones ad populum, praestantissimorum ecclesiae doctorum Hieronymi, Augustini, Ambrosii, Gregorii, Origenis, Chrysostomi, Bedae, &c., in hunc ordinem digestae per Alchuinum levitam, idque injungente ei Carolo M. Rom. Imp. cui a secretis fuit. Though thus attributed here to Alcuin, who is known to have revised the Lectionary or Comes Hieronymi, the compilation of the Homiliarium is in the emperor’s own commission entrusted to Paul, to whom it is assigned in the earlier printed editions also. A comparison of different editions shows that the contents increased with the ever-growing number of saints’ days and festivals, new discourses by later preachers like Bernard being constantly added.

[5] Neander, Church History, v. 174 (Eng. trans. of 1851).

[6] An ancient English metrical homiliarium is preserved in the library of the university of Cambridge. Earlier versions of it have existed, and a portion of perhaps the earliest copy, dating from about the middle of the 13th century, was published in 1862 by Mr J. Small, librarian to the university of Edinburgh.

HOMOEOPATHY (from the Greek ὅμοιος, like, and πάθος, feeling). The distinctive system of therapeutics which bears the name of homoeopathy is based upon the law similia similibus curentur,[1] the originator of which was S. C. F. Hahnemann, a native of Meissen in Germany, who discovered his new principle while he was experimenting with cinchona bark in 1790, and announced it in 1796.[2] The essential tenets of homoeopathy—with which is contrasted the “allopathy” (ἄλλος, other) of the “orthodox” therapeutics—are that the cure of disease is effected by drugs that are capable of producing in a healthy individual symptoms similar to those of the disease to be treated, and that to ascertain the curative virtues of any drug it must be “proved” upon healthy persons—that is, taken by individuals of both sexes in a state of health in gradually increasing doses. The manifestations of drug action thus produced are carefully recorded, and this record of “drug-diseases,” after being verified by repetition on many “provers,” constitutes the distinguishing feature of the homoeopathic materia medica, which, while it embraces the sources, preparation and uses of drugs as known to the orthodox pharmacopoeia, contains, in addition, the various “provings” obtained in the manner above described.

Besides the promulgation of the doctrine of similars, Hahnemann also enunciated a theory to account for the origin of all chronic diseases, which he asserted were derived either directly or remotely from psora (the itch), syphilis (venereal disease) or sycosis (fig-wart disease). This doctrine, although at first adopted by some of the enthusiastic followers of Hahnemann, was almost immediately discarded by very many who had a firm belief in his law of cure. In the light of advancing science such theories are entirely untenable, and it was unfortunate for the system of medicine which he founded that Hahnemann should have promulgated such an hypothesis. It served as a target for the shafts of ridicule showered upon the system by those who were its opponents, and even at the present time there still exists in the minds of many misinformed persons the conviction that homoeopathy is a system of medicine that bases the origin of all chronic disease on the itch or on syphilis or fig-warts.

Another peculiar feature of homoeopathy is its posology or theory of dose. It may be asserted that homoeopathic posology has nothing more to do with the original law of cure than the psora (itch) theory has, and that it was one of the later creations of Hahnemann’s mind. Most homoeopathists believe more or less in the action of minute doses of medicine, but it must not be considered as an integral part of the system. The dose is the corollary, not the principle. Yet in the minds of many, infinitesimal doses of medicine stand for homoeopathy itself, the real law of cure being completely put into the background. The question of dose has also divided the members of the homoeopathic school into bitter factions, and is therefore a matter for careful consideration. Many employ low potencies,[3] i.e. mother tinctures, first, second, sixth dilutions, &c., while others use hundred-thousandths and millionths.

Some homoeopathists of the present day still believe with Hahnemann that, even after the material medicinal particles of a drug have been subdivided to the fullest extent, the continuation of the dynamization or trituration or succussion develops a spiritual acurative agency, and that the higher the potency, the more subtle and more powerful is the curative action. Hahnemann says (Organon, 3rd American edition, p. 101), “It is only by means of the spiritual influence of a morbific agent that our spiritual vital power can be diseased, and in like manner only by the spiritual operation of medicine can health be restored.” This is absolutely denied by others. Thus there exist two schools among the adherents of homoeopathy. On the one hand there are the Hahnemannians, the “Purists” or “High Potency” men, who still profess to regard the Organon as their Bible, who believe in all the teachings of Hahnemann, who adhere in their prescriptions to the single dose, the single medicine, and the highest possible potency, and regard the doctrine of the spiritual dynamization acquired by trituration and succussion as indubitable. On the other side there are the “Rational” or “Low Potency” men, who believe in the universality of the law of cure, but think that it cannot always be applied, on account of an imperfect materia medica and a lack of knowledge on the part of the physician. They believe that in many cases of severe and acute pain palliatives are required, and that they are free to use all the adjuvants at present known to science for the relief of suffering humanity—massage, balneology, electricity, hygiene, &c. The American Institute of Homoeopathy, the national body of the United States, has adopted the following resolution and ordered it to be published conspicuously in each number of the Transactions of the society: “A homoeopathic physician is one who adds to his knowledge of medicine a special knowledge of homoeopathic therapeutics. All that pertains to the great field of medical learning is his by tradition, by inheritance, by right.”

It is claimed that the effect produced upon both the laity and the general profession of medicine by the introduction of homoeopathy was salutary in many ways. It diminished the quantity of medicine that was formerly considered necessary for the eradication of disease, and thus revealed the fact that the vis medicatrix naturae is often sufficient, with occasional and gentle assistance, to cure many diseases, especially those fevers that run a definite and regular course. Corroboration of the law similia similibus curentur is seen, according to homoeopathists, in the adoption of the serum therapy, which consists in the treatment of the most malignant diseases (diphtheria, lock-jaw, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, bubonic plague) by introducing into the system a modified form (similar) of those poisons that produce them in the healthy individual. Hahnemann undoubtedly deserves the credit of being the first to break decidedly with the old school of medical practice, in which, forgetful of the teachings of Hippocrates, nature was either overlooked or rudely opposed by wrong and ungentle methods. We can scarcely now estimate the force of character and of courage which was implied in his abandoning the common lines of medicine. More than this, he and his followers showed results in the treatment of disease which compared very favourably with the results of contemporary orthodox practice.

Homoeopathy has given prominence to the therapeutical side of medicine, and has done much to stimulate the study of the physiological action of drugs. It has done service in directing more special attention to various powerful drugs, such as aconite, nux vomica, belladonna, and to the advantage of giving them in simpler forms than were common before the days of Hahnemann. But in the medical profession homoeopathy nevertheless remains under the stigma of being a dissenting sect. It has been publicly announced that if the homoeopathists would abolish the name “homoeopathy,” and remove it from their periodicals, colleges, hospitals, dispensaries and asylums, they would be received within the fold of the regular profession. These conditions have been accepted by a few homoeopathists who have become members of the most prominent medical association in the United States.

Homoeopathy as it exists to-day can, in the opinion of its adherents, stand by itself, and its progress for a century in face of prolonged and determined opposition appears to its upholders to be evidence of its truth. There are still, indeed, in both schools of medical thought, men who stand fast by their old principles. There are homoeopathists who can see nothing but evil in the practice of their brothers of the orthodox school, as there are allopathists who still regard homoeopathy as a humbug and a sham. There are, however, liberal-minded men in both schools, who look upon the adoption of any safe and efficient method of curing disease as the birthright of the true physician, and who allow every man to prescribe for his patients as his conscience may dictate, and, provided he be educated in all the collateral branches of medical science, are ready to exchange views for the good of suffering humanity.

Great Britain.—Homoeopathy is not rapidly extending in Great Britain, and its recognition has been slow. The first notice taken of the new system of therapeutics was by the Medical Society of London in 1826. In 1827 the physician of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Dr F. H. F. Quin (1799-1878), who had previously studied homoeopathy in Germany and practised it in Italy, came to England, and it was through his efforts that the system was introduced. Three other physicians, Dr Belluomini, Dr Romani and Dr Tagliani, claimed priority, but careful research established Dr Quin’s title. Quin was a successful man professionally and socially, and brought upon himself in a short time the anathema of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1844 Dr William Henderson, professor of pathology in the university of Edinburgh, embraced the Hahnemannian system. A storm of opposition arose, and Professor J. Y. Simpson (the discoverer of chloroform anaesthesia) published a volume, with the alliterative title, Homoeopathy, its Tenets and Tendencies, Theoretical, Theological, and Therapeutical. This brochure was answered by Professor Henderson, the title of his book being Homoeopathy Fairly Represented. From 1827 to 1837 there were but a dozen practitioners of homoeopathy in London, but during 1837 to 1847 the number increased to between seventy and eighty. In 1857 there were upwards of two hundred practitioners in the kingdom, with thirty-three institutions in which the law of similars was used as a basis of practice. In 1867 the increase was not so rapid, the number being 261. A society was formed about this period for “the protection of homoeopathic practitioners and students,” which proved of great value in binding the sect together. In 1870 congresses were established, and annual meetings held, which have continued to the present time. In 1901 there were over three hundred homoeopathic physicians in the British Isles, of whom between seventy and eighty were in London alone. There were seventy-nine chemists, of whom seventeen were located in London, and eighty-two towns and cities in the country contained from one to ten homoeopathic practitioners each, together with many established chemists for dispensing homoeopathic medicines. The British Homoeopathic Society was founded by Quin in 1844, and has numerous members and fellows, besides corresponding members in all portions of the world, including Australia, India and Tasmania. The London Homoeopathic Hospital was founded in 1850, also largely through the efforts of Quin, and a few years afterwards moved to Great Ormond Street. During the cholera epidemic of 1854 the statistics of this hospital showed a mortality of 16.4%, against 51.8% of other metropolitan charities. The London Homoeopathic Hospital has a convalescent home under its management at Eastbourne. There are also dispensaries in Ealing and West Middlesex, Kensington, Notting Hill and Bayswater. Similar institutions are located in Bath, Birkenhead, Birmingham, Bootle, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Bromley, Cheltenham, Cheshire, Croydon, Dublin, Eastbourne, Edinburgh, Folkestone, Hastings and St Leonards, Ipswich, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Oxford, Plymouth, Torquay, Tunbridge Wells, Weston-super-Mare. The homoeopathic journals include the Homoeopathic World, the London Homoeopathic Hospital Reports, the Journal of the British Homoeopathic Society, and the British Homoeopathic Review, the last being issued by the British Homoeopathic Association, which was founded in 1902 for the purpose of developing and extending homoeopathy in Great Britain. The British Journal of Homoeopathy was first published in 1843, and was edited by Drs Drysdale, Russell and Black. For many years it was the foremost homoeopathic journal in the world. Its motto was In certis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas. One reason why homoeopathy has not advanced as rapidly in the British Isles as in America is said to be the discrimination exercised against it by the General Medical Council, and another is want of cohesion amongst the homoeopaths themselves.

United States.—Homoeopathy was introduced into the United States by Dr Hans Birch Gram, who was born in Boston. His father being Danish, Gram in his eighteenth year went to Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1814. In 1823 he became acquainted with homoeopathy, and brought a knowledge of it to America in 1825 when he settled in New York. The first homoeopathic association was formed in 1833 in Philadelphia, the second in New York, 1834, and homoeopathy became known in the different states somewhat in the following order: New York, 1825; Pennsylvania, 1828; Louisiana, 1836; Connecticut, 1837; Massachusetts, 1837-1838; Maryland, 1837; Delaware, 1837; Kentucky, 1837; Vermont, 1838; Rhode Island, 1839; Ohio, 1839; New Jersey, 1840; Maine, 1840; New Hampshire, 1840; Michigan, 1841; Georgia, 1842; Wisconsin, 1842; Alabama, 1843; Illinois, 1843; Tennessee, 1844; Missouri, 1844; Texas, 1848; Minnesota, 1852; Nebraska, 1862; Colorado, 1863; Iowa, 1871. After 1871 the spread of the system was rapid throughout every state in the Union, and it is in the United States that homoeopathy principally flourishes. There are thousands of homoeopathic physicians, and their clients number several millions. It may be noted that departments of homoeopathy are connected with the universities of Boston, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota and Kansas City.

Canada.—The early history of homoeopathy can be traced back nearly to 1850 in the province of Quebec. In the Dominion of Canada the various provinces control the licensing of physicians, excepting in Quebec, which is the only province having a separate homoeopathic board of examiners. This is under the control of the Montreal homoeopathic Association, and is known as the College of Homoeopathic Physicians and Surgeons of Montreal. Three examiners are annually appointed by the association. Successful candidates receive the diploma of the college, and are entitled to add to their degree the letters M.C.H.P.S. A certificate of successful examination is forwarded to the lieutenant-governor at Quebec, who, “if satisfied of the loyalty, integrity and good morals of the applicant, may grant him a license to practise surgery, physic and midwifery, or either of them, in the province of Quebec.” The word “loyalty” has been decided by the provincial secretary to mean a British subject. This is the only government medical license now issued in the British empire, the others being by provincial boards or colleges of physicians and surgeons. In 1894 there was no homoeopathic institution in the province; at present the Montreal Homoeopathic Hospital is in active operation. Two homoeopathic papers are published monthly—the Homoeopathic Record in Montreal, and the Homoeopathic Messenger in Toronto. In 1870, in the province of Ontario, the three schools, allopathic, homoeopathic and eclectic, united for examining purposes into one board called the medical council, seventeen members representing the old school and five the other two systems. Finally the eclectics were merged in the old school, the board appointing five of Hahnemann’s followers for examining purposes. Grace Hospital at Toronto (erected 1892) was begun as a dispensary in 1887.

Germany.—In 1810 Hahnemann published his Organon, which was the starting-point of homoeopathy in Germany. In 1811 an endeavour was made to found an institution in Leipzig in which practitioners might learn the new method of treatment theoretically and practically, but it was not a success, as the entire tide of professional opinion was against the system. In 1829, at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Hahnemann’s doctorate, the German Central Society was organized, holding its first meeting in 1830. In the university hospital of Munich some experiments were made to test the efficacy of homoeopathic medicines, but these were not successful. In 1831 the government prohibited homoeopathists from dispensing their own medicines; this was a severe blow to the system. In 1834 there was a division among the homoeopathists themselves, which much retarded the progress of the school. A homoeopathic hospital was established about this time (January 1833) in Leipzig, but there was such constant wrangling among the physicians connected with it that its sphere of usefulness was curtailed, and it was finally converted into a dispensary. The Baden Homoeopathic Society was established in 1834. The homoeopathic hospital in Munich was established in 1836, but suffered a similar fate to that of Leipzig, and was converted into a dispensary. The rather equivocal success of these hospitals in Saxony and Bavaria was in direct contrast to the fate of two newly established hospitals in Austria, one in Vienna and the other in Linz, which were very successful, and aroused great interest both among physicians and laymen. During the political confusion of 1846 and 1849 there was complete stagnation of everything medical in Germany. But during all these years, though the public institutions were few, the literature on homoeopathic subjects became very extensive, and exercised a significant influence upon the system in all parts of the world. Hahnemann died in 1843, and on the 10th of August 1851 a bronze monument to him was unveiled at Leipzig. The Leipzig dispensary lived thirty-three years. From 1842 to 1874 there were treated in this institution 65,106 patients. In 1901 there were about 250 homoeopathic physicians in Germany; they appeared to be strongest at Berlin, in the province of Brandenburg, in Pomerania and Westphalia, Saxony, Hessen and in Württemberg.

Austria-Hungary.—Homoeopathy was introduced into Austria about 1817, and in 1819 its practice was forbidden by law. Shortly afterwards the physician attending the archduke John became a homoeopath. In 1825 the doctrine was introduced into Vienna. To test the efficacy of the system Francis I. ordered that experiments be made with homoeopathic medicines, and for this purpose a ward furnished with twelve beds was allotted. The results were satisfactory to the new system, and it made gigantic strides in Vienna. During the cholera epidemic of 1836 an increased impetus was given to the new school by the reported brilliant successes of the treatment. Societies were founded and journals published. In 1846 a second hospital was founded. In 1850 a third hospital was opened, and clinical lectures upon the system were delivered. In 1873 the Society of Homoeopathic Physicians was formed. Between the years 1873 and 1893 homoeopathy declined. In 1901, in thirty-seven cities and towns there were to be found about fifty physicians and two hospitals, and it was estimated that about seventy-five more were scattered in Moravia, Bohemia, Tirol, Salzburg and the coast provinces. There is a professorship of homoeopathy at the University of Budapest, and homoeopathic clinics are held at the new Rochus Hospital in Üllöi Street, and also in the homoeopathic department of the Hospital Bethesda of the Reformed Community. The Elizabeth Hospital, exclusively homoeopathic, has existed for many years.

Russia.—The homoeopathic system was introduced into Russia in 1823. In 1825 great impetus was given to the new doctrine by the conversion of Dr Bigel, physician to the grand duke Constantine. In 1829 the grand duke ordered a series of experiments to be conducted to prove the truth or fallacy of homoeopathy, and they demonstrated the success of the new school. In 1841 a hospital was established in Moscow, and in 1849 similar institutions were founded in Nizhniy-Novgorod. Since then homoeopathy has been steadily practised, and has penetrated to the remotest parts of Russia. In 1881 the civil engineers proposed to commemorate the virtues of the emperor Alexander II. by the erection of a hospital; a committee for collecting funds was created, and 58,064 roubles were handed to the Charity Society of the followers of homoeopathy at St Petersburg for the erection and founding of a homoeopathic hospital. The foundation stone of the edifice was laid on 19th June 1893, the emperor Alexander III. giving 5000 roubles. The inauguration of a new dispensary and a pharmacy took place on the 19th of April 1898, and the hospital itself, intended originally for fifty beds, was opened on the 1st of November 1898. There are sixteen free beds, three of them being in the name of the emperor Nicholas, the empress Maria Feodorovna, and the emperor Alexander III. On the 28th of January 1899 an imperial edict was issued granting the rights of public service to the doctors of the hospital and dispensaries of the Charity Society, thus placing them on an equality with the doctors of the prevailing medical school.

France.—Homoeopathy was first introduced into France in 1830 by Count de Guidi, doctor of medicine, doctor of science, and inspector of the university, who practised in Lyons. About the same year Dr Antoine Petroz, widely known by his Grand dictionnaire des sciences médicales, began practising homoeopathy in Paris, and his establishment became the headquarters of the new system there. In 1835 Hahnemann himself came to the capital. In 1832 the homoeopathic method of treating disease was introduced into the Hospice de Choisy, and in 1842 into the hospital of Carentan. Tessier practised the new doctrine in his wards in the Hospital St Marguérite, and in the Children’s Hospital up to the year 1862, when he retired. The first homoeopathic society was established in 1832 (the Société Gallicain), Hahnemann becoming president in 1835; in 1845 the Société de Médecine Homéopathique was organized; and in 1860 the two were united for the better interests of the school. In 1901 there were at Paris three hospitals—the Hospital St Jacques with fifty-five beds, the Hahnemann Hospital with thirty-five beds, and the new Protestant Hospital for Children with twenty-five-beds. At Lyons there is the Hospital St Luc. The medical journals include L’Art médical, La Revue homéopathique belge, Journal belge d’homéopathie, La Thérapeutique Intégrale, La Revue homéopathique française. In the year 1900 the medical officers of the republic having supervision over the medical department of the International Exhibition officially recognized the members of the homoeopathic school, and arranged for the proper accommodation and reception of the International Congress of Homoeopathic Physicians held in June. On the 30th of that month, with appropriate ceremonies, the remains of Hahnemann were removed from the cemetery of Montmartre and deposited in Père-la-Chaise, and a monument bearing a suitable inscription was erected to the memory of the founder of homoeopathy.

Italy.—The Austrians when they entered Naples in 1821 brought homoeopathy into Italy, the general in command of the army being a devoted friend of Hahnemann. In 1828 Dr Count Sebastian de Guidi came from Lyons and assisted in spreading the doctrine. During the period from 1830 to 1860 many physicians practised homoeopathy, and the literature on the subject became extensive. A homoeopathic clinic was established and a ward opened in Trinity Hospital at Naples, and a homoeopathic physician was appointed to the count of Syracuse. During the severe cholera epidemics of 1854, 1855, 1865 the success of homoeopathic treatment of that disease was so marked under the care of Dr Rubini that the attention of the authorities was directed to the system. In 1860 the homoeopathic practice was introduced into the Spedale della Cesarea, and since that period homoeopathy has been recognized with more or less favour in most of the cities. The Italian Homoeopathic Institute is recognized by royal warrant as an established institution, and its regulations are approved by the government. In Turin the legal seat of the Homoeopathic Institute, there is a hospital under the management of the State Association. The homoeopathic medical press consists of the Revista Omiopatica, established in 1855, and L’Omiopatico in Italia, the organ of the Italian Homoeopathic Institute, which first appeared in 1884.

Spain.—Homoeopathy was introduced into Spain in 1829 by a physician to the Royal Commission sent by the king of Naples to attend the marriage of Maria Christina with Don Ferdinand VII. Shortly after this, a merchant of Cadiz visited Hahnemann in Coethen, and was cured of a serious disorder; he returned to Spain with a supply of homoeopathic literature, and immediately sent a medical student to Leipzig to study the new system. In 1843 many cases of cholera were treated homoeopathically in Madrid. The civil war, which did not terminate until 1840, arrested all medical investigation in Spain, but in 1843 there still existed in Madrid five pharmacies and a number of homoeopathic physicians. About this time Dr Tosi Nuñez returned from an investigation of the new system with Hahnemann, and owing to his success in the treatment of disease was created one of the physicians of the bedchamber to the queen, who soon afterwards conferred upon him the title of marquis, with the grand crosses of the Charles III. and of the Civil Order of Beneficiencia. This recognition by high authority gave an impetus to homoeopathy which has continued ever since.

Denmark.—Homoeopathy was unknown in Denmark until the year 1821, when Hans Christian Lund, a medical practitioner, adopted it. Hahnemann, however, had been both before and after that time consulted by Danes, and consequently homoeopathic therapeutics was recognized in different parts of the country. Lund translated many of Hahnemann’s works into Danish, as well as those of other eminent members of the new school.

(W. T. H.)

[1] An interesting controversy has been carried on between the members of the homoeopathic school as to the proper construction of the Latin motto which constitutes its acknowledged basis. For many years the verb at the conclusion of the sentence was used in the indicative mood, curantur, thus making the sentence a positive one. After extended research it has been discovered that Hahnemann himself never employed the word curantur as descriptive of his law of cure, but always wrote curentur, which greatly modifies the meaning of the phrase. If the subjunctive mood be used, the motto reads, “Let similars be treated by similars,” or “similars should be treated by similars.” The reading similia similibus curentur was officially adopted as the correct reading of the sentence by the American Institute of Homoeopathy at its session held in Atlantic City, N.J., on the 20th of June 1899; and the words are so inscribed on the monument erected to the memory of Hahnemann and unveiled in Washington, D.C., on the 23rd of June 1900, and also are those carved upon the tomb of Hahnemann in Père-la-Chaise, Paris.

[2] Some points of Hahnemann’s system were borrowed from previous writers—as he himself, though imperfectly, admits. Not to mention others, he was anticipated by Hippocrates, and especially by Paracelsus (1495-1541). The identical words similia similibus curantur occur in the Geneva edition (1658) of the works of Paracelsus, as a marginal heading of one of the paragraphs; and in the “Fragmenta Medica,” Op. Omnia, i. 168, 169, occurs the following passage:

Simile similis cura; non contrarium.

“Quisquis enim cum laude agere Medicum volet, is has nugas longe valere jubeat. Nec enim ullus unquam morbus calidus per frigida sanatus fuit, nec frigidus per calida. Simile autem suum simile frequenter curavit, scilicet Mercurius sulphur, et sulphur Mercurium; et sal ilia, velut et illa sal. Interdum quidem cum proprietate junctum frigidum sanavit calidum; sed id non factum est ratione frigidi, verum ratione naturae alterius, quam a primo illo omnino diversam facimus.”

It is very remarkable that in Hahnemann’s enumeration of authors who anticipated him in regard to the doctrine of Similia, he makes no mention of the views of Paracelsus, though the very words seem to be taken from the works of that physician. The other point in Hahnemann’s doctrine—that medicines should be tried first on healthy persons—he admits to have been enunciated by Haller. Roughly it has been acted on by physicians in all ages, but certainly more systematically since Hahnemann’s time. In the most characteristic feature of Hahnemann’s practice—“the potentizing,” “dynamizing,” of medicinal substances—he appears to have been original.

[3] Two methods of preparing medicines are recognized, one on the decimal, the other on the centesimal scale. The pure tinctures are denominated “mother tinctures,” and represented by the Greek φ. To make a first decimal dilution or first decimal trituration, 10 drops of the mother tincture, or 10 grains of a crude substance, are mixed with 90 drops of alcohol, or 90 grains of saccharum lactis (sugar of milk) respectively. The liquid is thoroughly shaken, or the powder carefully triturated, and the bottles containing them marked 1 X, meaning first decimal dilution or trituration. To make the 2 X potency, 10 drops or 10 grains of this first dilution or trituration are mixed with 90 drops of pure alcohol, or 90 grains of milk sugar, and are succussed or triturated as above described, and marked 2 X dilution or trituration. This subdivision of particles may be continued to an indefinite degree. On the Hahnemannian or centesimal scale the medicines are prepared in the same manner, the difference being that 1 drop or grain is mixed with 99 drops or grains, to make the first centesimal, which is marked 1 c or 1 simply, and so on for the second and higher dilutions.

HOMONYM (Gr. ὁμώνομος, having the same name, from ὅμος, same, alike, and ὄνομα, name), a term in philology for those words which differ in sense but are alike either in sound or spelling or both. Words alike only in spelling but not in sound, e.g. “bow,” are sometimes called homographs; and words alike only in sound but not in spelling, e.g. “meat,” “meet,” homophones. Skeat (Etymol. Dict.) gives a list of English homonyms.

HOMS, or Hums (anc. Emesa or Emessa, near the Hittite Kadesh), a town of Syria, on the right bank of the Orontes, and capital of a sanjak in the vilayet of Syria (Damascus). Pop. 30,000 (20,000 Moslem, 10,000 Christian). The importance of the place arises from its command of the great north road from Egypt, Palestine and Damascus by the Orontes valley. Invading armies from the south have often been opposed near Homs, from the time of Rameses II., who had to fight the battle of Kadesh, to that of Ibrahim Pasha, who broke the first line of Ottoman defence in 1831 by his victory there. Ancient Emesa, in the district of Apamea, was a very old Syrian city, devoted to the worship of Baal, the sun god, of whose great temple the emperor Heliogabalus was originally a priest (A.D. 218). As a centre of native influences it was overawed by the Seleucid foundation of Apamea; but it opposed the Roman advance. There Aurelian crushed, in A.D. 272, the Syrian national movement led by Zenobia. Caracalla made it a Roman colony, and later it became the Capital of a small province, Phoenicia Libanesia or ad Libanum. About 630 it was captured by the Moslem leader, Khalid ibn Walid, who is buried there. It now became the capital of a jund, or military district, which under the Omayyad Caliphs extended from Palmyra to the sea. Under the Arabs it was one of the largest cities in Syria, with walls and a strong citadel, which stood on a hill, occupying perhaps the site of the great sun temple. The ruins of this castle, blown up by Ibrahim Pasha, are still the most conspicuous feature of Homs, and contain many remains of ancient buildings. Its men were noted for their courage in war, and its women for their beauty. The climate was extolled for its excellence, and the land for its fertility. A succession of gardens bordered the Orontes, and the vineyards were remarkable for their abundant yield of grapes. When the place capitulated the great church of St John was divided between the Christians and Moslems, an arrangement which apparently lasted until the arrival of the Turks. At the end of the 11th century it fell into crusading hands, but was recovered by the Moslems under Saladin in 1187. Its decay probably dates from the invasion of the Mongols (1260), who fought two important battles with the Egyptians (1281 and 1299) in its vicinity. The construction of a carriage road to Tripoli led to a partial revival of prosperity and to an export of cereals and fruit, and this growth has, in turn, been accentuated by the railway, which now connects it with Aleppo and the Damascus-Beirut line. The district is well planted with mulberries and produces much silk, most of which is worked up on the spot.

(D. G. H.)

HO-NAN, a central province of China, bounded N. partly by the Hwang-ho (which it crosses to the west of Ho-nan Fu, forming an arm northwards between the provinces of Shan-si and Chih-li), on the W. by Shen-si, on the S. by Hu-peh, and on the E. by Ngan-hui. It occupies an area of 81,000 sq. m., with a population of about 22,100,000, and contains nine prefectural cities. Its capital is K’ai-fêng Fu. The prefecture of Hwai-k’ing, north of the Hwang-ho, consists of a fertile plain, “rendered park-like by numerous plantations of trees and shrubs, among which thick bosquets of bamboo contrast with the gloomy groves of cypress.” All kinds of cereals grow luxuriantly, and the general productiveness of the district is indicated by the extreme denseness of the population. The most noticeable feature in that portion of the province which is properly called Ho-nan is the Fu-niu Shan range, which runs east and west across this part of the province. Coal is found on the south of the Hwang-ho in the districts of Ho-nan Fu, the ancient capital, Lushan and Ju Chow. The chief products of the province are, however, agricultural, especially in the valley of the Tang-ho and Pai-ho, which is an extensive and densely populated plain running north and south from the Fu-niu Shan. Cotton is also grown extensively and forms the principal article of export, and a considerable quantity of wild silk is produced from the Fu-niu Shan. Three roads from the east and south unite at Ho-nan Fu, and one from the west. The southern road leads to Ju Chow, where it forks, one branch going to Shi-ki-chên, connecting the trade from Fan-cheng, Han-kow, and the Han river generally, and the other to Chow-kia-k’ow near the city of Ch’ên-chow Fu, at the confluence of the three rivers which unite to form the Sha-ho; the second road runs parallel with the Hwang-ho to K’ai-fêng Fu; the third crosses the Hwang-ho at Mêngching Hien, and passes thence in a north-easterly direction to Hwai-k’ing Fu, Sew-wu Hien and Wei-hui Fu, at which place it joins the high road from Peking to Fan-cheng; and the western road follows the southern bank of the Hwang-ho for 250 m. to its great bend at the fortified pass known as the Tung-kwan, where it joins the great wagon road leading through Shan-si from Peking to Si-gan Fu. Ho-nan is now traversed north to south by the Peking-Hankow railway (completed 1905). The line crosses the Hwang-ho by Yung-tse and runs east of the Fu-niu Shan. Branch lines serve Ho-nan Fu and K’ai-fêng Fu.

HONAVAR, or Onore, a seaport of British India, in the North Kanara district of Bombay. Pop. (1901) 6929. It is mentioned as a place of trade as early as the 16th century, and is associated with two interesting incidents in Anglo-Indian history. In 1670, the English factors here had a bull-dog which unfortunately killed a sacred bull, in revenge for which they were all murdered, to the number of eighteen persons, by an enraged mob. In 1784 it was bravely defended for three months by Captain Torriano and a detachment of sepoys against the army of Tippoo Sultan.

HONDA, or San Bartolomeo de Honda, a town of the department of Tolima, Colombia, on the W. bank of the Magdalena river, 580 m. above its mouth. In 1906 Mr F. Loraine Petre estimated the population at 7000. It is about 650 ft. above sea-level and stands at the entrance to a narrow valley formed by spurs of the Central Cordillera, through which a picturesque little stream, called the Guali, flows into the Magdalena. The town overlooks the rapids of the Magdalena, and is shut in closely by spurs of the Eastern and Central Cordilleras. The climate is hot and damp and the temperature frequently rises to 102° F. in the shade. Honda dates back to the beginning of the 17th century, and has been one of the important centres of traffic in South America for three hundred years. Within the city there is an iron bridge across the Guali, and there is a suspension bridge across the Magdalena at the head of the rapids. A railway 18 m. long connects with the landing place of La Dorada, or Las Yeguas, where the steamers of the lower Magdalena discharge and receive their cargoes (the old landing at Carocali nearer the rapids having been abandoned), and with Arrancaplumas, 1½ m. above, where navigation of the upper river begins. Up to 1908 the greater part of the traffic for Bogotá crossed the river at this point, and was carried on mule-back over the old camino real, which was at best only a rough bridlepath over which transportation to Bogotá (67 m. distant) was laborious and highly expensive; now the transshipment is made to smaller steamboats on the upper river for carriage to Girardot, 93 m. distant, from which place a railway runs to the Bogotá plateau. Honda was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1808.

HONDECOETER, MELCHIOR D’ (c. 1636-1695), Dutch painter, was born at Utrecht, it is said, about 1636, and died at Amsterdam on the 3rd of April 1695. Old historians say that, being the grandson of Gillis and son of Gisbert d’Hondecoeter, as well as nephew of J. B. Weenix, he was brought up by the last two to the profession of painting. Of Weenix we know that he married one Josina d’Hondecoeter in 1638. Melchior was, therefore, related to Weenix, who certainly influenced his style. As to Gillis and Gisbert some points still remain obscure, and it is difficult to accept the statement that they stood towards each other in the relation of father and son, since both were registered as painters at Utrecht in 1637. Both it appears had practised art before coming to Utrecht, but where they resided or what they painted is uncertain. Unhappily pictures scarcely help us to clear up the mystery. In the Fürstenberg collection at Donaueschingen there is a “Concert of Birds” dated 1620, and signed with the monogram G. D. H.; and we may presume that G. D. H. is the man whose “Hen and Chickens in a Landscape” in the gallery of Rotterdam is inscribed “G. D. Hondecoeter, 1652”; but is the first letter of the monogram to stand for Gillis or Gisbert? In the museums of Dresden and Cassel landscapes with sportsmen are catalogued under the name of Gabriel de Heusch (?), one of them dated 1529, and certified with the monogram G. D. H., challenging attention by resemblance to a canvas of the same class inscribed G. D. Hond. in the Berlin Museum. The question here is also whether G. means Gillis or Gisbert. Obviously there are two artists to consider, one of whom paints birds, the other landscapes and sportsmen. Perhaps the first is Gisbert, whose son Melchior also chose birds as his peculiar subject. Weenix too would naturally teach his nephew to study the feathered tribe. Melchior, however, began his career with a different speciality from that by which he is usually known. Mr de Stuers affirms that he produced sea-pieces. One of his earliest works is a “Tub with Fish,” dated 1655, in the gallery of Brunswick. But Melchior soon abandoned fish or fowl. He acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he represented not exclusively, like Fyt, as the gamekeeper’s perquisite after a day’s shooting, or stock of a poulterer’s shop, but as living beings with passions, joys, fears and quarrels, to which naturalists will tell us that birds are subject. Without the brilliant tone and high finish of Fyt, his Dutch rival’s birds are full of action; and, as Bürger truly says, Hondecoeter displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feeling as Raphael the maternity of Madonnas. But Fyt was at home in depicting the coat of deer and dogs us well as plumage. Hondecoeter cultivates a narrower field, and seldom goes beyond a cock-fight or a display of mere bird life. Very few of his pictures are dated, though more are signed. Amongst the former we should note the “Jackdaw deprived of his Borrowed Plumes” (1671), at the Hague, of which Earl Cadogan has a variety; or “Game and Poultry” and “A Spaniel hunting a Partridge” (1672), in the gallery of Brussels; or “A Park with Poultry” (1686) at the Hermitage of St Petersburg. Hondecoeter, in great favour with the magnates of the Netherlands, became a member of the painters’ academy at the Hague in 1659. William III. employed him to paint his menagerie at Loo, and the picture, now at the Hague museum, shows that he could at a pinch overcome the difficulty of representing India’s cattle, elephants and gazelles. But he is better in homelier works, with which he adorned the royal chateaux of Bensberg and Oranienstein at different periods of his life (Hague and Amsterdam). In 1688 Hondecoeter took the freedom of the city of Amsterdam, where he resided till his death. His earliest works are more conscientious, lighter and more transparent than his later ones. At all times he is bold Of touch and sure of eye, giving the motion of birds with great spirit and accuracy. His masterpieces are at the Hague and at Amsterdam. But there are fine examples in private collections in England, and in the public galleries of Berlin, Caen, Carlsruhe, Cassel, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dresden, Dublin, Florence, Glasgow, Hanover, London, Lyons, Montpellier, Munich, Paris, Rotterdam, Rouen, St Petersburg, Stuttgart and Vienna.

HONDURAS, a republic of Central America, bounded on the N. by the Caribbean Sea, E. by Nicaragua, S. by Nicaragua, the Pacific Ocean and Salvador, and W. by Guatemala. (For map see [Central America].) Pop. (1905) 500,136; area, about 46,500 sq. m. Honduras is said to owe its name, meaning in Spanish “depths,” to the difficulty experienced by its original Spanish explorers in finding anchorage off its shores; Cape Gracias à Dios (Cape “Thanks to God”) is the name bestowed, for analogous reasons, on its easternmost headland, which shelters a small harbour, now included in Nicaragua. Modern navigators are not confronted by the same difficulty; for, although the north coast is unbroken by any remarkable inlet except the Carataska Lagoon, a land-locked lake on the east, with a narrow entrance from the sea, there are many small bays and estuaries, such as those of Puerto Cortes, Omoa, Ulua, La Ceiba and Trujillo, which serve as harbours. The broad basin of the Caribbean Sea, bounded by Honduras, Guatemala and British Honduras, is known as the bay or gulf of Honduras. Several islets and the important group of the Bay Islands (q.v.) belong to the republic. On the Pacific the Hondurian littoral is short but of great commercial value; for it consists of a frontage of some 60 m. on the Bay of Fonseca (q.v.), one of the finest natural harbours in the world. The islands of Tigre, Sacate Grande and Gueguensi, in the bay, belong to Honduras.

The frontier which separates the republic from Nicaragua extends across the continent from E.N.E to W.S.W. It is defined by the river Segovia, Wanks or Coco, for about one-third of the distance; it then deflects across the watershed on the east and south of the river Choluteca, crosses the main Nicaraguan Cordillera (mountain chain) and follows the river Negro to the Bay of Fonseca. The line of separation from Salvador is irregularly drawn, first in a northerly and then in a westerly direction; beginning at the mouth of the river Goascoran, in the Bay of Fonseca, it ends 12 m. W. of San Francisco city. At this point begins the Guatemalan frontier, the largest section of which is delimited along the crests of the Sierra de Merendon. On the Caribbean seaboard the estuary of the Motagua forms the boundary between Honduras and Guatemala.

Physical Features.—The general aspect of the country is mountainous; its southern half is traversed by a continuation of the main Nicaraguan Cordillera. The chain does not, in this republic, approach within 50 or 60 m. of the Pacific; nor does it throughout maintain its general character of an unbroken range, but sometimes turns back on itself, forming interior basins or valleys, within which are collected the headwaters of the streams that traverse the country in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, viewed from the Pacific, it presents the appearance of a great natural wall, with many volcanic peaks towering above it and with a lower range of mountains intervening between it and the sea. It would almost seem that at one time the Pacific broke at the foot of the great mountain barrier, and that the subordinate coast range was subsequently thrust up by volcanic forces. At one point the main range is interrupted by a great transverse valley or plain known as the plain of Comayagua, which has an extreme length of about 40 m., with a width of from 5 to 15 m. From this plain the valley of the river Humuya extends north to the Atlantic, and the valley of the Goascoran extends south to the Pacific. These three depressions collectively constitute a great transverse valley reaching from sea to sea, which was pointed out soon after the conquest as an appropriate course for inter-oceanic communication. The mountains of the northern half of Honduras are not volcanic in character and are inferior in altitude to those of the south, which sometimes exceed 10,000 ft. The relief of all the highlands of the Atlantic watershed is extremely varied; its culminating points are probably in the mountain mass about the sources of the Choluteca, Sulaco and Roman, and in the Sierra de Pija, near the coast. Farther eastward the different ranges are less clearly marked and the surface of the country resembles a plateau intersected by numerous watercourses.

The rivers of the Atlantic slope of Honduras are numerous and some of them of large size and navigable. The largest is the Ulua, with its tributary the Humuya. It rises in the plain of Comayagua and flows north to the Atlantic; it drains a wide expanse of territory, comprehending nearly one-third of the entire state, and probably discharges a greater amount of water into the sea than any other river of Central America, the Segovia excepted. It may be navigated by steamers of light draught for the greater part of its course. The Rio Roman or Aguan is a large stream falling into the Atlantic near Trujillo, with a total length of about 120 m. Its largest tributary is the Rio Mangualil, celebrated for its gold washings, and it may be ascended by boats of light draft for 80 m. Rio Tinto, Negro or Black River, called also Poyer or Poyas, is a considerable stream, navigable by small vessels for about 60 m. Some English settlements were made on its banks during the 18th century. The Patuca rises near the frontier of Nicaragua, and enters the Atlantic east of the Brus or Brewer lagoon. The Segovia is the longest river in Central America, rising within 50 m. of the Bay of Fonseca, and flowing into the Caribbean Sea at Cape Gracias à Dios (see [Nicaragua]). Three considerable rivers flow into the Pacific—the Goascoran, Nacaome and Choluteca, the last named having a length of about 150 m. The Goascoran, which almost interlocks with the Humuya, in the plain of Comayagua, has a length of about 80 m. The lake of Yojoa or Taulébe is the only large inland lake in Honduras, and is about 25 m. in length, by 6 to 8 in breadth. Its surface is 2050 ft. above the sea. It has two outlets on the south, the rivers Jaitique and Sacapa, which unite about 15 m. from the lake; and it is drained on the north by the Rio Blanco, a narrow, deep stream falling into the Ulua. It has also a feeder on the north, in the form of a subterranean stream of beautiful clear water, which here comes to the surface. The Carataska or Caratasca lagoon is a shallow salt-water lake connected by a narrow channel with the Atlantic, and near the mouth of the Segovia. It contains several large sandy islands.

Honduras resembles the neighbouring countries in the general character of its geological formations, fauna and flora. Here, as in other Central American states, there are but two seasons, the wet, from May to November, and the dry, from November to May. On the moist lowlands of the Atlantic coast the climate is oppressive, but on the highlands of the interior it is delightful. At Tegucigalpa, on the uplands, a year’s observations showed the maximum temperature to be 90° F. in May, and the minimum to be 50° F. in December, the range of variation during the whole year being within 40° F.

See also [Central America]: Geology, Fauna, Flora, Climate.

Inhabitants.—The inhabitants of Honduras are in many cases of the Indian or aboriginal type, and the European element is very small, although it shares in the social, political and economic preponderance of the Spanish-speaking half-castes (Ladinos or Mestizos), who are the most numerous section of the population. Throughout the country there are many interesting relics of the native civilization which was destroyed by the Spanish invaders in the 16th century. In the eastern portion of the state, between the Rio Roman, Cape Gracias à Dios, and the Segovia river, the country is almost exclusively occupied by native Indian tribes, known under the general names of Xicaques and Poyas. In many districts the Indians are known as Lencas, a generic name which includes several tribes akin to the Mayans of Guatemala. Portions of all of these tribes have accepted the Roman Catholic religion, and live in peaceful neighbourhood and good understanding with the white inhabitants. There are, however, considerable numbers, probably about 90,000 in all, who live among the mountains and still conform closely to the aboriginal modes of life. They all cultivate the soil, and are good and industrious labourers. A small portion of the coast, above Cape Gracias, is occupied by the Sambos, a mixed race of Indians and negroes, which, however, is fast disappearing. Spreading along the entire north coast are the Caribs, a vigorous race, descendants of the Caribs of St Vincent, one of the Windward Islands. These, to the number of 5000, were deported in 1796 by the English and landed on the island of Roatan. They still retain their native language, although it tends to disappear and be replaced by Spanish and a bastard dialect of English; they are active, industrious and provident, forming the chief reliance of the mahogany cutters on the coast. A portion of them, who have a mixture of negro blood, are called the Black Caribs. They profess the Roman Catholic religion, but retain many of their native rites and superstitions. In the departments of Gracias, Comayagua and Choluteca are many purely Indian towns.

The aggregate population, according to an official estimate made in 1905, is 500,136, but a complete and satisfactory census cannot be taken throughout the country, since the ignorant masses of the people, and especially the Indians, avoid a census as in some way connected with military conscription or taxation. The bulk of the Spanish population exists on the Pacific slope of the continent, while on the Atlantic declivity the country is uninhabited or but sparsely occupied by Indian tribes, of which the number is wholly unknown. In 1905 there were fewer than 11 inhabitants per sq. m., but all the available data tend to show that the population increases rapidly, owing to the continuous excess of births over deaths. The first census, taken in 1791, gave the total population as only 95,500. There is little emigration or immigration.

Chief Towns.—The capital is Tegucigalpa (pop. 1905, about 35,000); other important towns are Jutigalpa (18,000), Comayagua (8000), and the seaports of Amapala (4000), Trujillo (4000), and Puerto Cortes (2500). These are described in separate articles. The towns of Nacaome, La Esperanza, Choluteca and Santa Rosa have upwards of 10,000 inhabitants.

Communications.—Means of communication are very defective. In 1905 the only railway in the country was that from Puerto Cortes to La Pimienta, a distance of 57 m. This is a section of the proposed inter-oceanic railway for which the external debt of the republic was incurred. For the completion of the line concessions, one after another, were granted, and expired or were revoked. Other railways are projected, including one along the Atlantic coast, an extension from La Pimienta to La Brea on the Pacific, and a line from Tegucigalpa to the port of San Lorenzo. The capital is connected with other towns by fairly well made roads, which, however, are not kept in good repair. In the interior generally, all travelling and transport are by mules and ox-carts over roads which defy description.

Honduras joined the Postal Union in 1879, The telegraph service is conducted by the government and is inefficient. Telephones are in use in Tegucigalpa and a few of the more important towns.

Commerce and Industry.—Although grants of land for mining and agricultural purposes are readily made by the state to companies and individual capitalists, the economic development of Honduras has been a very slow process, impeded as it has been by political disturbances and in modern times by national bankruptcy, heavy import and export duties, and the scarcity of both labour and capital. The natural wealth of the country is great and consists especially in its vegetable products. The mahogany and cedar of Honduras are unsurpassed, but reckless destruction of these and of other valuable cabinet-woods and dye-woods has much reduced the supply available for export. Rubber-planting, a comparatively modern industry, has proved successful, and tends to supplement the almost exhausted stock of wild rubber. Of still greater importance are the plantations of bananas, especially in the northern maritime province of Atlantida, where coco-nuts are also grown. Coffee, tobacco, sugar, oranges, lemons, maize and beans are produced in all parts, rice, cocoa, indigo and wheat over more limited areas. Cattle and pigs are bred extensively; cattle are exported to Cuba, and dairy-farming is carried on with success. Sheep-farming is almost an unknown industry. Turtle and fish are obtained in large quantities off the Atlantic seaboard. In its mineral resources Honduras ranks first among the states of Central America. Silver is worked by a British company, gold by an American company. Gold-washing was practised in a primitive manner even before the Spanish conquest, and in the 18th century immense quantities of gold and silver were obtained by the Spaniards from mines near Tegucigalpa. Opals, platinum, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, antimony, iron, lignite and coal have been found but the causes already enumerated have prevented the exploitation of any of these minerals on a large scale, and the total value of the ores exported was only £174,800 in 1904 and £239,426 in 1905. The total value of the exports in a normal year ranges from about £500,000 to £600,000, and that of the imports from £450,000 to £550,000. Apart from minerals the most valuable commodity exported is bananas (£209,263 in 1905); coco-nuts, timber, hides, deer-skins, feathers, coffee, sarsaparilla and rubber are items of minor importance. Nearly 90% of the exports are shipped to the United States, which also send to Honduras more than half of its imports. These chiefly consist of cotton goods, hardware and provisions. The manufacturing industries of Honduras include the plaiting of straw hats, cigar-making, brick-making and the distillation of spirits.

Finance.—Owing to the greater variety of its products and the possession of a metallic currency, Honduras is less affected by fluctuations of exchange than the neighbouring republics, in which little except paper money circulates. The monetary unit is the silver peso or dollar of 100 cents, which weighs 25 grammes, .900 fine, and is worth about 1s. 8d.; the gold dollar is worth about 4s. The principal coins in circulation arc the 1-cent copper piece, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50 cents, and 1 peso silver pieces, and 1, 5, 10 and 20 dollar gold pieces. The metric system of weights and measures, adopted officially on the 1st of April 1897, has not supplanted the older Spanish standards in general use. There is only one bank in the republic, the Banco de Honduras, with its head office at Tegucigalpa. Its bills are legal tender for all debts due to the state.

In July 1909 the foreign debt of Honduras, with arrears of interest, amounted to £22,470,510, of which more than £17,000,000 were for arrears of interest. The principal was borrowed between 1867 and 1870, chiefly for railway construction; but it was mainly devoted to other purposes and no interest has been paid since 1872. The republic is thus practically bankrupt. The revenue, derived chiefly from customs and from the spirit, gunpowder and tobacco monopolies reached an average of about £265,000 during the five years 1901-1905; the expenditure in normal years is about £250,000. The principal spending departments are those of war, finance, public works and education.

Constitution and Government.—The constitution of Honduras, promulgated in 1839 and frequently amended, was to a great extent recast in 1880. It was again remodelled in 1894, when a new charter was proclaimed. This instrument gives the legislative power to a congress of deputies elected for four years by popular vote, in the ratio of one member for every 10,000 inhabitants. Congress meets on the 1st of January and sits for sixty consecutive days. The executive is entrusted to the president, who is nominated and elected for four years by popular vote, and is re-eligible for a second but not for a third consecutive term. He is assisted by a council of ministers representing the departments of the interior, war, finance, public works, education and justice. For purposes of local administration the republic is divided into sixteen departments. The highest judicial power is vested in the Supreme Court, which consists of five popularly elected judges; there are also four Courts of Appeal, besides subordinate departmental and district tribunals. The active army consists of about 500 regular soldiers and 20,000 militia, recruited by conscription from all able-bodied males between the ages of twenty and thirty. Service in the reserve is obligatory for a further period of ten years.

Religion and Education.—Roman Catholicism is the creed of a very large majority of the population; but the constitution grants complete liberty to all religious communities, and no Church is supported by public funds or receives any other special privilege. Education is free, secular and compulsory for children between the ages of seven and fifteen. There are primary schools in every convenient centre, but the percentage of illiterates is high, especially among the Indians. The state maintains a central institute and a university at Tegucigalpa, a school of jurisprudence at Comayagua, and colleges for secondary education, with special schools for teachers, in each department. The annual cost of primary education is about £11,000.

History.—It was at Cape Honduras that Columbus first landed on the American continent in 1502, and took possession of the country on behalf of Spain. The first settlement was made in 1524 by order of Hernando Cortes, who had heard rumours of rich and populous empires in this region, and sent his lieutenant Christobal de Olid to found a Spanish colony. Olid endeavoured to establish an independent principality, and, in order to resume control of the settlers, Cortes was compelled to undertake the long and arduous march across the mountains of southern Mexico and Guatemala. In the spring of 1525 he reached the colony and founded the city which is now Puerto Cortes. He entrusted the administration to a new governor, whose successors were to be nominated by the king, and returned to Mexico in 1526. By 1539, when Honduras was incorporated in the captaincy-general of Guatemala, the mines of the province had proved to be the richest as yet discovered in the New World and several large cities had come into existence. The system under which Honduras was administered from 1539 to 1821, when it repudiated the authority of the Spanish crown, the effects of that system, the part subsequently played by Honduras in the protracted struggle for Central American unity, and the invasion by William Walker and his fellow-adventurers (1856-1860), are fully described under [Central America].

War and revolution had stunted the economic growth of the country and retarded every attempt at social or political reform; its future was mortgaged by the assumption of an enormous burden of debt in 1869 and 1870. A renewal of war with Guatemala in 1871, and a revolution three years later in the interests of the ex-president Medina, brought about the intervention of the neighbouring states and the provisional appointment to the presidency of Marco Aurelio Soto, a nominee of Guatemala. This appointment proved successful and was confirmed by popular vote in 1877 and 1880, when a new constitution was issued and the seat of government fixed at Tegucigalpa. Fresh outbreaks of civil war occurred frequently between 1883 and 1903; the republic was bankrupt and progress again at a standstill. In 1903 Manuel Bonilla, an able, popular and experienced general, gained the presidency and seemed likely to repeat the success of Soto in maintaining order. As his term of office drew to a close, and his re-election appeared certain, the supporters of rival candidates and some of his own dissatisfied adherents intrigued to secure the co-operation of Nicaragua for his overthrow. Bonilla welcomed the opportunity of consolidating his own position which a successful war would offer; José Santos Zelaya, the president of Nicaragua, was equally ambitious; and several alleged violations of territory had embittered popular feeling on both sides. The United States and Mexican governments endeavoured to secure a peaceful settlement without intervention, but failed. At the outbreak of hostilities in February 1907 the Hondurian forces were commanded by Bonilla in person and by General Sotero Barahona his minister of war. One of their chief subordinates was Lee Christmas, an adventurer from Memphis, Tennessee, who had previously been a locomotive-driver. Honduras received active support from his ally, Salvador, and was favoured by public opinion throughout Central America. But from the outset the Nicaraguans proved victorious, largely owing to their remarkable mobility. Their superior naval force enabled them to capture Puerto Cortes and La Ceiba, and to threaten other cities on the Caribbean coast; on land they were aided by a body of Hondurian rebels, who also established a provisional government. Zelaya captured Tegucigalpa after severe fighting, and besieged Bonilla in Amapala. Lee Christmas was killed. The surrender of Amapala on the 11th of April practically ended the war. Bonilla took refuge on board the United States cruiser “Chicago.” A noteworthy feature of the war was the attitude of the American naval officers, who landed marines, arranged the surrender of Amapala, and prevented Nicaragua prolonging hostilities. Honduras was now evacuated by the Nicaraguans and her provisional government was recognized by Zelaya. Miguel R. Davila was president in 1908 and 1909.

Bibliography.—Official documents such as the annual presidential message and the reports of the ministries are published in Spanish at Tegucigalpa. Other periodical publications which throw much light on the movement of trade and politics are the British Foreign Office reports (London, annual), United States consular reports (Washington, monthly), bulletins of the Bureau of American Republics (Washington), and reports of the Council of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders (London, annual). For a more comprehensive account of the country and its history, the works of K. Sapper, E. G. Squier, A. H. Keane and T. Child, cited under [Central America], are important. See also E. Pelletier, Honduras et ses ports: documents officiels sur le chemin-de-fer interocéanique (Paris, 1869); E. G. Squier, Honduras: Descriptive, Historical and Statistical (London, 1870); C. Charles, Honduras (Chicago, 1890); Handbook of Honduras, published by the Bureau of American Republics (1892); T. R. Lombard, The New Honduras (New York, 1887); H. Jalhay, La République de Honduras (Antwerp, 1898); Perry, Directorio nacional de Honduras (New York, 1899); H. G. Bourgeois, Breve noticia sobre Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1900).