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HOME R. 



Homer, such a legislator belong to different states of society. It 

 ""Y"" 1 ' has been questioned, and indeed it appears more than 

 questionable, it' the art of writing was known in the 

 days of Homer. If we consult the poet himself upon 

 this question, we shall find that in all his comprehensive 

 picture of civil society there is nothing that decidedly 

 conveys an idea of letters, or of reading. The words 

 2(i*T Avy{, it is true, in the letter mentioned in the 

 Iliad, which Bellerophon carries to the king of Lycia, 

 have been quoted as a proof of alphabetical writing ; 

 but the generality of the term has much more the ap- 

 pearance of merely symbolical signs, or hieroglyphics, 

 than of what we call writing. That such symbolical 

 marks of thought were known in the rudest ages, there 

 can be no doubt ; and what has been already alluded 

 to in the travels of the poet as a possible and even pro- 

 bable fact, namely, his consulting the records of differ- 

 ent temples, must be taken with this understanding, 

 that such records were, in all probability, also symboli- 

 cal or hieroglyphical. The introduction of prose writ- 

 ing into Greece took place at so late a period, as to 

 leave it by much the more probable supposition, that 

 alphabetical writing was unknown to Homer ; for 

 when prose writing is of recent date, the alphabet can- 

 not have been long in use. Homer, therefore, there is 

 every reason to think, could neither read nor write ; he 

 recited his own works from memory, and hence it is 

 little wonderful that he addresses the Muses as the 

 daughters of that faculty of the mind. In modern 

 times, when the memory is at once distracted by so 

 many pursuits, and obliged to lean on so many artificial 

 assistances, we are apt to under-rate its powers when 

 employed upon a single object, and trained by habitual 

 exercise upon that object. To an ancient poet like 

 Homer, his memory was not only the mother of his 

 muse, but his constant and indispensable guardian. 

 The rhapsodists also preserved his works by oral tradi- 

 tion ; and if their subsistence depended in a profession 

 where there were rivals to detect the errors of each 

 other, upon the accuracy with which they recited those 

 poems, they were perhaps more safe from corruptions 

 and interpolations, or at all events from omissions in re- 

 citation, than we might be apt to imagine, by ascribing 

 the same lax exertions of memory to those reciters, 

 which ai'ise in modern times from the constant reliance 

 upon writing. It may be doubted whether the rhap- 

 sodists made such havock in the sense of Homer, as the 

 perverted ingenuity of writing commentators has made 

 in that of Shakespeare. 



Lycurgus, the legislator of Sparta, is said to have 

 been the first who collected the fragments of Homer's 

 poetry during his travels in Asia Minor, and on his re- 

 turn by the island of Chios. Three hundred and seven 

 years afterwards, Pisistratus, who erected at Athens the 

 first public library that is mentioned in Grecian history, 

 gave directions to a body of the learned for preparing 

 an edition of the poet more correct than that of Lycur- 

 gus, and Solon and Hipparchus are said to have assist- 

 ed in the undertaking.* At the destruction of Athens, 

 in the invasion of Xerxes, the Iliad and Odyssey were 

 taken from thence, and conveyed to Persia ; and the des- 

 pot himself seems to have respected this monument of 

 taste and genius, since a part of the collection was 

 found at Susa during the conquests of Alexander. It 

 is perhaps to this epoch that we may assign the edition 



of the Odyssey which was rectified by Aratus, and 

 which bears the name of the Arata>an edition. Alex- 

 ander's enthusiasm for the memory of Homer is one of 

 the noblest traits of his character. He charged Anax- 

 archus and Callisthenes to revise the copies of Lycur- 

 gus and Pisistratus ; and Aristotle put the last hand to 

 this precious edition, called the edition of the casket. 

 After the battle of Arbela, when the conqueror had 

 found, in the tent of Darius, a casket of gold, enriched 

 with stones of inestimable value, he there deposited the 

 two poems of Homer, and laid the treasure along with 

 his sword every night under his pillow. After the 

 death of Alexander, Zenodotus of Ephesus was charged, 

 by the first of the Ptolemies, with the task of revising 

 the edition of the casket. The last edition belonging 

 to this period of high antiquity is that which Aristar- 

 chus, the greatest critic of his age, published under the 

 auspices of Ptolemy Philometer, about nineteen centu- 

 ries and a half ago, and which has served as a model 

 for all collections of the works of Homer both in the 

 middle ages and modern times. 



The first edition of Homer since the invention of 

 printing, was that of Demetrius Chalcondylesof Athens, 

 and of Demetrius of Crete. It is entirely in Greek, is 

 very magnificent, and now exceedingly scarce. It ap- 

 peared at Florence in December 1488, in one folio, 

 and had been collated with the commentaries of Eusta- 

 thius. It was not till half a century after, that the 

 works of Homer appeared again in Greek, with the en- 

 tire commentaries of Eustathius. t This edition, the 

 only complete one of the commentary of Eustathius, 

 had long been regarded as a chef d'ceuvre of sound cri- 

 ticism and correctness, till the learned discovered innu- 

 merable faults in it, by comparing it with MSS. ; and 

 the improvement of taste at last threw contempt on the 

 barren prolixity of the commentary. Six years after 

 the Roman edition of Eustathius, there appeared at 

 Leyden the first esteemed edition of the prince of 

 poets, that had a Latin version. It contained also the 

 scholia of Didymus, a commentator assigned to the age 

 of Augustus. We notice here only those editions which 

 may be said to form an epoch in the illustration of Ho- 

 mer. Joshua Barnes brought out at Cambridge the 

 Greek and Latin texts of Didymus, with his own com- 

 mentaries. The edition of Samuel Clarke appeared at 

 London in 1734; that of Ernesti at Leipsic in 1764. 

 Villoison, who was sent to Venice by the French go- 

 vernment to collect ancient relics of literature, found in 

 the library of St Mark, an unique copy of the Iliad of 

 the 10th century, with the remarks of sixty of the most 

 famous critics of antiquity, such as Aristarchus and Ze- 

 nodotus. It appeared, that this manuscript had been 

 made from a copy in the library of the Ptolemies that 

 was burnt by the barbarian Omar. Villoison remained 

 two years at Venice to copy it with his own hand, and 

 printed it in a folio volume, entirely Greek. As the ori- 

 ginal possessor of this literary treasure had joined to it 

 many various and lost editions of the poet, this publi- 

 cation of Villpison may be called the Ilomeri variorum 

 of antiquity. Wolff and Heyne are the two latest edi- 

 tors of Homer. Their merits have been so frequently 

 treated of in the reviews and literary journals of our 

 own time, that we forbear to descant upon them. 



The memory of the great poet has received not only 

 the homage of commentators and editors of his works, 



* Diog. Laert. Plut. in Hipparcho. 



t With the following tide, Hameri Ilias et Odynea, Greece, cum Comntentarua Gracii Euttathii, Archipiacopi Tesioionicensis ; Tfo. 

 ma, upucl Bladum et Giuntum, 1542 and 1550, 4 vols. in folio. 



