1829.] The Iliad and the Odyssey. 513 



is a matter unconnected with the question. Writing existed in Asia. 

 But even if it had not existed, the habit of the time^ of committing long 

 poems to memory, as a liveliliood, could have sufficiently preserved them. 

 Even at so low a date as the time of Xenophon, there were many per- 

 sons in Athens who had both the Iliad and Odyssey by heart. — (Sympos. 

 3 5.) But the Book of Job, which was undoubtedly committed to 

 writing, was probably composed about 184 years before Abraham, and 

 2000 before our aera. 



The age of the great poet has been a more dubious matter of con- 

 troversy. The ancients seem to have ascertained nothing definitively 

 on the point. Strabo makes him Ta contemporary of Lycurgus, and an 

 adviser in forming the Spartan laws.— (Lib. x.) Cicero, himself an 

 accomplished Greek scholar, and who had studied at Athens, merely 

 observes, that " his age is uncertain, but that he lived long before the 

 foundation of Rome"— (De Clar. Orat. 10.) That Homer did not live 

 in the immediate time of the Trojan war is declared by himself. — (Iliad, 

 B. 486.) There is some evidence in the name of the Nile, which he always 

 calls ^Egyptus, the ancient name. — (Gen. xv. 18.) The great council of 

 the Greek States, the Amphyctionii, is not mentioned by him, though its 

 distinction was attained in a very remote age. The next point is to ascer- 

 tain the downward limit. The most famous and important event of 

 Greece, after the Trojan war, was the return of the Heraclida;, an event 

 which produced a general revolution of territory. But Homer makes no 

 mention of this great change. His catalogue of ships, which forms one 

 of the most curious and complete documents of the state of ancient ter- 

 ritory, is constructed wholly on the situation of the different little sove- 

 reignties before the invasion of the Herachda;. This invasion took 

 place in 824 B.C., eighty years after the Trojan war in 904 B.C. 

 Homer must have lived in this interval. But the date may be brought 

 still closer, by observing that the last event to which he alludes is the 

 possession of the Trojan sceptre by the descendants of Jineas, in the 

 third generation. Thus he would have flourished in the ninth century 

 B.C. Herodotus already fixes him at the same period, for he gives the 

 date of Homer 400 years before his own. Herodotus lived 444 B.C. 



The country of Ilomer was a celebrated source of controversy after 

 his death. But the only probable narrative of his birth and career is 

 given in a hfe attributed to Herodotus ; one-half of which seems fabu- 

 lous, yet which has undoubtedly formed the groundwork of all the 

 subsequent attempts. This life states that Homer was born in Smyrna, 

 that his mother, Crytheis, was from Cumte, and that Homer was illegiti- 

 mate, and was born suddenly, in the midst of a festival, on the banks of 

 the river Meles. The Greeks subsequently accounted for this transac- 

 tion in the national way. A descended inhabitant of the skies, as usual 

 in the case of celebrated poets, was the parent, and the mother was 

 afterwards married to a king, Micon, who took upon himself the tute- 

 lage of the illustrious child. So says Plutarch, that gi-and collector of 

 the gossip stories of his fabling country. But the more ancient narra- 

 tive is less lofty. Crytheis supported herself and her child by tlie labour 

 of her hands, and was a spinner. — (Iliad, M. 433.) She then married 

 Phemius, a schoolmaster. Homer was taught by Proncpides. After 

 the death of Phemius, he became master of his school, wliere, being 

 found by IMentes, a rich Smyrnese trader, lie was induced to take the 

 oj)i)ortunity probably of some of the traders' ships, and, fortunately far 



M.M. New Scries.— yo\..\lU. No. 47- *5 U 



