634 ANNUM, REPORT SMIT.HSONTAN INSTITUTION, W13. 



naturalistic spirit of that brilliant dawn of art, Ave may well ask how, 

 according to any received theory, such perfect glimpses into the life of 

 that long-past age could have been presented. The detailed nature of 

 many of the parallels excludes the idea that we have here to do with 

 the fortuitous working of poets' imagination. We are continually 

 tempted to ask, could such descriptive power in poetry go side by 

 side with its antithesis in art, the degraded, conventional art of the 

 period in which the Homeric epos took its final form ? 



But if a combination of such contradictory qualities seems in the 

 highest degree improbable, how are we to explain this phenomenon? 

 By what means could this undimmed reflection of a pure, great age 

 have been perpetuated and preserved ? 



Only in one way, I again repeat, could such passages, presenting 

 the incidents and life of the great days of Mycenae and instinct with 

 the peculiar genius of its art, have been handed down intact. They 

 were handed down intact because they Avere preserved in the em- 

 balming medium of an earlier epos — the product of that older non- 

 Hellenic race to whom alike belong the glories of Mycenae and of 

 Minoan Crete. Thus only could the iridescent wings of that earlier 

 phantasy have maintained their pristine form and hues through days 

 of darkness and decline to grace the later, Achaean world. 



Where, indeed, would be the fly without the amber? Hoav could 

 the gestes and episodes of the Minoan age have survived for incor- 

 poration in later epic lays without the embalming element supplied 

 by a more ancient poetic cycle? But the taking over and absorption 

 of these earlier materials would be greatly simplified by the existence 

 of such bilingual conditions as have been above postulated. The 

 process itself may have begun A'^ery early, and the long contact of the 

 Arcadian branch, whose language most approaches the original 

 speech of Greek epic with the dominant Mycenaeans may have greatly 

 contributed to its elaboration. Even in its original Minoan elements, 

 moreoA'^er, we may expect stratification — the period, for instance, of 

 the body shield and the period of the round targe and cuirass may 

 have both left their mark. 



The Homeric poems in the form in which they finally took shape 

 are the result of this prolonged effort to harmonize the old and the 

 new elements. In the nature of things this result was often incom- 

 pletely attained. The evidence of patchwork is frequently patent. 

 Contradictory features are found such as could not have coexisted at 

 any one epoch. It has been well remarked by Prof. Gilbert Murray ^ 

 that " even the similes, the very breath of the i3oetry of Homer, are 

 in many cases — indeed, usually — adopted ready-made. Their vivid- 



iThe Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 219. Prof. Murray remarks (op. cit, p. 215) : " Tlie 

 poets of our ' Iliad ' scarcely need to have seen a lion. They have their stores of tradi- 

 tional similes taken from almost every moment of a lion's life.'" 



