255 
, H O M E R. 
provinces which feverally fet up a claim, to collect all to account for the prefervation of his works. And if it 
the ridiculous affections and documents which have been be urged, that of the twenty-four letters of the Ionic al- 
advanced as proofs from each, would require the minute 
curiofity and patient elaboration of his ancient commen¬ 
tator Didymus. If the queftion was involved in fo much 
obfcurity, as to induce the emperor Adrian to apply to 
the gods themfelves for an explanation, it was not to be 
expeded that all the efforts of the critics fliould be able 
to elucidate it. To dired us in this iitquiry, we have 
no certain guide in the poems themfelves. The city of 
Smyrna, and the illand of Chios, appear to prefent the 
leaft objedionable claims to the honour for which they 
contended. Of the numerous candidates, thefe are the 
only two, whofe pretentions can be ferioufly examined. 
Each had its authors to record its title. The inhabitants 
of Chios relied on the teffimony of Simonides and Theo¬ 
critus. They had their Homerida;, whom they confidered 
as the del’cendants of Homer, and a temple ereded to his 
memory in the environs of Boliffus. They could boaft 
the indirect authority of Thucydides, who afcribes to him 
the Hymn to Apollo, in which he reprefents himfelf as 
the blind man inhabiting Chios. Leo Allatius, who wrote 
exprefslyon this fubjed, after weighing the pretentions 
of all the candidates, decides for Chios. But the claim 
of Smyrna was ftill better founded. All the profeffed 
lives of Homer, by Herodotus, Plutarch, and Proclus, con¬ 
cur in reprefenting him as a native of that city. This is 
confirmed by the general belief afterwards entertained, 
and exprefl'ed in the different writings of Cicero, Strabo, 
and A. Gellius. Indeed fo violent were the Smyrnaeans 
in maintaining this honour, that it was neceffary for all, 
who wifhed to efcape the fate of Zoilus, to give it im¬ 
plicit credit. But the claim of Smyrna admits, we think, 
a ftill clearer proof from the poems themfelves, which 
abound in metaphorical defcriptions, congenial to a native 
of Afia. The earth refounding with the march of the 
army, like the thunders of Jove on the mountain which 
covered the giant Typhoeus; the defcription of a wind, 
blacker than night, Shooting along the air with tempefts 
in its train ;—of infatiate Dilcord beftriding the earth, and 
lifting its head into the Ikies;—thefe, and many other 
fuch images, which are to be found in the Iliad, atteft 
their Afiatic origin, and do not accord with what we may 
prefume to have been the chaffer ftyle and feverer man¬ 
ners of the Greeks of that age. 
It has been much agitated by modern critics, whether 
the art of v'riting W'as known in Homer’s time; and, if 
not, by what means a poem of fuch length was originally 
preferved, and has iince been fo miraculoufly banded to 
pofterity, in its prefent ftate. That fuch a poem could 
have been ever retained in the memory of man, and thus, 
by oral tradition alone, be tranfinitted fronffone generation 
to another, it is impoffibie to affert. It is equally diffi¬ 
cult to contend, that the works of Homer were collected 
together at different times, and in detached portions, and 
that they were not finally completed till at a very late 
period, and with very considerable difficulty. There is a 
connection throughout the. Iliad at leaft, a clear deduction 
of events, a lucidus ordo in the arrangement and distribu¬ 
tion of all its parts, that effectually deftroy fuch a fuppo- 
fiton, and make it no prefumption to fay, that the poem 
is nearly fuch as it came from the pen or dictation of its 
aluthor. If we adopt the common notion, that Homer 
was accuftomed to ling or recite his poems in the affem- 
blies of the Greeks, and that the frequency of fuch reci¬ 
tals imprinted them on the memory of his auditors; we 
are not at liberty to rejeCt other paffages of his fuppofed 
life, equally improbable and uncertain. That fuch a 
cuffom was familiar in the earlier ages of Orpheus, Linus, 
and Mufaeus, is poffibie, and is confirmed by the .fact, 
that, of thefe poets, the Works, of the two laft are entirely 
loft, and of the firft we have only fome trifling fragments. 
But in placing Homer at a later period, a period of greater 
civilization, and when the art of writing was known and 
cultivated, it is no longer neceffary to reiort to fuch tales, 
phabet, only twenty were known m Homer’s time, it may 
be contended that the four letters afterwards added by 
Simonides were not effential to pronunciation; two of 
them being the vowels H and fJ, to diltinguiffi thefe long 
founds from the fame vowels E and O ; the other two 
were Z and T, the founds of which could juft as well 
have been exprefl'ed by 2 and ns, as the S is even ftill 
in Engliffi, French, and Italian, often pronounced like Z, 
though all thefe languages have the character Z to denote 
its particular found. The want therefore of thefe four 
letters was no impediment to Homer’s knowing the Greek 
alphabet as W'ell as we do. And when it is recolleCted, 
that he was fuppofed to be a native of Ionia, a province 
on the confines of Perfia, and other eaftern nations, where 
the arts and fciences were earlier cultivated than in Greece, 
it is reafonable to fuppofe, as far as any hypothefis can 
now be eftablilhed, that the Iliad and the Odyffey, the 
only poems which can with any certainty be attributed 
to him, immediately, or very foon, received that form in 
which we now fee them; and were preferved by the ad¬ 
miration of cotemporaries and of lucceeding ages, by 
multiplied copies and tranfcriptions. It is to this anxiety 
to preferve unimpaired the writings of Homer, fays the 
learned Wolfius, that we are indebted for their prefent 
perfedion ; while the works of fo many and more recent 
authors have defcended to us impeded, or are irrecover¬ 
ably loft. 
It has been generally fuppofed that Lycurgus, the great 
legiflator of Lacedaemon, was the firft who introduced 
thefe poems into Greece. It is pretended by Plutarch, 
that he had the firft fight of Homer’s poems while tra¬ 
velling in Afia, and that he obtained .them from the 
defcendants of Creophilus, a fuppofed cotemporary and 
companion of Homer. Lycurgus, in the view he enter¬ 
tained of giving a new fyftem of laws to his countrymen, 
might probably fuppofe that poetry would have great 
effeCt in influencing and civilizing their minds; and this-, 
idea had already engaged him to patronize the fongs of 
Thales the Cretan, which infpired obedience and concord. 
As the conftitution he meditated was to be entirely of a 
martial nature, the poems of Homer might be of confi- 
derable ufe to him: they encouraged his defign, the mo¬ 
ral they inculcated was unity, the air they breathed was 
military, and their ftory had this particular recommenda¬ 
tion to the Spartans, that they fhowed Greece in arms, 
and Afia fubdued, under the banners and condud of one 
of their own monarchs, who commanded all the Grecian 
kings. For three centuries after the time of Lycurgus, 
we colled: nothing concerning them. Athens at length 
claimed the honour of refcuing the father of letters from 
the injuries of time, and of reftoring Homer to himfelf. 
In the days of Solon his works were divided into two 
diftind poems, and received the arrangement in which 
we now behold them. This divifion of the two poems 
into one, and of each into books, has been attributed by 
Plato to Hipparchus, the fon of Pififtrates, though Ci¬ 
cero gives the honour entirely to Pififtrates himfelf; and 
this is confirmed by Paufanias, Jofephus, FElian, and 
Suidas. From this period, we are enabled to fpeak of them 
with hiftorical certainty, without having recourfe to con- 
jedures. The works of this great poet now became the 
care of kings. Alexander affifted at a ftrid review of 
them by Anaxarchus and Callilthenes; either becaufe he 
probably confidered them as a treafure of military know¬ 
ledge; or, as has been conjedured, he promoted the 
propagation of them, as a book, which, treating of the 
ions of the gods, might make the intercourle between 
them and mortals become a familiar notion, at a time 
when he himfelf was ambitious of being thought the fon 
of Jupiter. See the article Alexander, vol. i. p. 268. 
Egypt, under the Ptolemies, was the country which af¬ 
terwards held the works of Homer in the greateft efteem. 
Thefe kings were defcended from Greece, and retained a 
i paffionate 
