756 



HOMER 



several indications it may be gathered that the 

 Hellenic system was less priestly than the Troic. 

 It seems to have been an especial office of Homer 

 to harmonise and combine these diverse elements, 

 and his Thearchy is as remarkable a work of art as 

 the terrestrial machinery of the poem. He has pro- 

 foundly impressed upon it the human likeness 

 often called anthropomorphic, and which supplied 

 the basis of Greek art. He has repelled on all 

 sides from his classical and central system the 

 cult of nature and of animals ; but it is probable 

 that they kept their place in the local worships of 

 the country. His Zeus is to a considerable extent 

 a monarch, while Poseidon and several other deities 

 bear evident marks of having had no superior at 

 earlier epochs or in the countries of their origin. 

 He arranges them partly as a family, partly as a 

 commonwealth. The gods properly Olympian cor- 

 respond with the Boule or council upon earth ; 

 while the orders of less exalted spirits are only sum- 

 moned on great occasions. He indicates twenty as 

 the number of Olympian gods proper, following in 

 this the Assyrian idea. But they were far from hold- 

 ing an equal place in his estimation. For a deity such 

 as Aphrodite brought from the East, and intensely 

 tainted with sensual passions, he indicates aversion 

 and contempt. But for Apollo, whose cardinal 

 idea is that of obedience to Zeus, and for Athene, 

 who represents a profound working wisdom that 

 never fails of its end, he has a deep reverence. He 

 assorts and distributes religious traditions with 

 reference to the great ends he had to pursue ; care- 

 fully, for example, separating Apollo from the 

 sun, with which he bears marks of having been in 

 other systems identified. Of his other greater gods 

 it may be said that the dominant idea is in Zeus 

 policy, in Here nationality, and in Poseidon physical 

 force. His Trinity, which is conventional, and his 

 Under-world appear to be borrowed from Assyria, 

 and in some degree from Egypt. One licentious 

 legend appears in Olympos, but this belongs to the 

 Odyssey, and to a Phoenician, not a Hellenic circle of 

 ideas. His Olympian assembly is, indeed, largely 

 representative of human appetites, tastes, and pas- 

 sions ; but in the government of the world it works 

 as a body on behalf of justice, and the suppliant 

 and the stranger are peculiarly objects of the care 

 of Zeus. Accordingly we find that the cause which 

 is to triumph in the Trojan war is the just cause : 

 that in the Odyssey the hero is led through suffer- 

 ing to peace and prosperity, and that the terrible 

 retribution he inflicts has been merited by crime. 

 At various points of the system we trace the higher 

 traditions of religion, and on passing down to the 

 classical period we find that the course of the 

 mythology has been a downward course. 



The Troic as compared with the Achaian man- 

 ners are to a great extent what we should now call 

 Asiatic as distinguished from European. Of the 

 great chieftains, Achilles, Diomed, Ajax, Mene- 

 laos, and Patroclos appear chiefly to exhibit the 

 Achaian ideal of humanity ; Achilles especially, and 

 on a colossal scale. Odysseus, the many-sided 

 man, has a strong Phoenician tinge, though the 

 dominant colour continues to be Greek. And in his 

 house we find exhibited one of the noblest among 

 the characteristics of the poems in the sanctity and 

 perpetuity of marriage. Indeed, the purity and 

 loyalty of Penelope are, like the humility approach- 

 ing to penitence of Helen, quite unmatched in 

 antiquity. 



The plot of the Iliad has been the subject of 

 much criticism on account of the long absence 

 of Achilles, the hero, from the action of the poem. 

 But Homer had to bring out Achaian character in 

 its various forms, and while the vastness of Achilles 

 is on the stage every other Achaian hero must be 

 eclipsed. Further, Homer was an itinerating min- 



strel, who had to adapt himself to the sympathies 

 and traditions of the different portions of the 

 country. Peloponnesos was the seat of power, and 

 its chiefs acquired a prominent position in the Iliad 

 by what on these grounds we may deem a skilful 

 arrangement. But most skilful of all is the fine 

 adjustment of the balance as between Greek and 

 Trojan warriors. It will be found on close inspec- 

 tion of details that the Achaian chieftains have in 

 truth a vast military superiority ; yet by the use of 

 infinite art Homer has contrived that the Trojans 

 sliall play the part of serious and considerable antag- 

 onists, so far that with divine aid and connivance 

 they reduce the foe to the point at which the in- 

 tervention of Achilles becomes necessary for their 

 deliverance, and his supremacy as an exhibition of 

 colossal manhood is thoroughly maintained. 



The plot of the Odyssey is admitted to be con- 

 secutive and regular in structure. There are certain 

 differences in the mythology which have been made 

 a ground for supposing a separate authorship. 

 But, in the first place, this would do nothing to 

 explain them ; in the second, they find their 

 natural explanation in observing that the scene 

 of the wanderings is laid in other lands, beyond 

 the circle of Achaian knowledge and tradition, 

 and that Homer modifies his scheme to meet the 

 ethnical variations as he gathered them from the 

 trading navigators of Phoenicia, who alone could 

 have supplied him with the information required 

 for his purpose. 



That information was probably coloured more or 

 less by ignorance and by fraud. But we can trace 

 in it the sketch of an imaginary voyage to the 

 northern regions of Europe, and it has some re- 

 markable features of internal evidence supported 

 by the facts, and thus pointing to its genuineness. 

 In latitudes not described as separate we ha\v 

 reports of the solar day apparently contradictory. 

 In one case there is hardly any night, so that the 

 shepherd might earn double wages. In the other, 

 cloud and darkness almost shut out the day. But 

 we now know both of these statements to have u 

 basis of solid truth on the Norwegian coast to the 

 northward, at the different seasons of the midnight 

 sun in summer, and of Christmas, when it is not 

 easy to read at noon. 



The value of Homer as a recorder of antiquity, 

 as opening a large and distinct chapter of primitive 

 knowledge, is only now coming by degrees into 

 view, as the text is more carefully examined and 

 its parts compared, and as other branches of ancient 

 study are developed, especially as in Assyria and 

 Egypt, and by the remarkable discoveries of Dr 

 Schliemann at Hissarlik and in Greece. But the 

 appreciation of him as a poet has never failed, 

 though it is disappointing to find that a man so 

 great as Aristophanes should describe him simply 

 as the bard of battles, and sad to think that in 

 many of the Christian centuries his works should 

 have slumbered without notice in hidden reposi- 

 tories. His place among the greatest poets of the 

 world, whom no one supposes to be more than 

 three or four in number, has never been questioned. 

 Considering him as anterior to all literary aids and 

 training, he is the most remarkable phenomenon 

 among them all. It may be well to specify some 

 of the points that are peculiarly his own. One of 

 them is the great simplicity of the structure of 

 his mind. With an incomparable eye for the world 

 around him in all things great and small, he is 

 abhorrent of everything speculative and abstract, 

 and what may be called philosophies have no place 

 in his works, almost the solitary exception being 

 that he employs thought as an illustration of the 

 rapidity of the journey of a deity. He is, accord- 

 ingly, of all poets the most simple and direct. He 

 is also the most free and genial in the movement of 



