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HOMER  AND  THE   ILIAD 


KIUMU-Rlili:    PRINTKD  KY  THOMAS  COKSTABI.K, 


EDMONSTON  AND  DOUGLAS. 


LOSDON' HAMILTON,    ADAMS,  AND  CO. 

CAMBRIDOK MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 

IH'HLIN M'GLASHAN  AND  OIl.T.. 

OLA800W JAMES  MACLKHOSE. 


n^^h^) 


HOMER  AND   THE    ILIAD 


BY 


JOHN    STUART    BLACKIE,   RR.S.E. 

PROFESSOR   OF   GREEK   IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   EOlNBTTRtiH 


VOL    IV 
NOTES  PHILOLOGICAL  AND  AECH^:OLOGICAL 


EDINBURGH 
EDMONSTON   AND    DOUGLAS 

1  8  G  6. 


Aoxb 


1 


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> 


^ 


NOTES   TO   THE    ILIAD. 


BOOK    I. 


Ver.  1. — Pehus   so)i. 


Through  the  whole  of  Homer  we  have  occasion  to  uote  the  im- 
mense force  of  the  paternal  and  ancestral  element  in  determining 
the  value  of  the  individual.  No  notable  man  is  sufficiently  desig- 
nated by  his  own  name ;  the  name  of  his  father  is  always  added. 
The  "son  of  Peleus"  is  a  designation  of  Achilles  as  common  and 
constant  as  "  divine"  or  "  swift-footed."  And  not  only  the  father, 
but  the  grandfather  also  is  often  named,  and  a  long  genealogy 
paraded,  as  in  the  case  of  ^neas  (xx.  215).  This  might  of 
ancestry  is  seen  everjTvhere  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  in  the 
whole  political  arrangements  of  the  ancient  Athenians  and  Romans. 
The  romances  of  the  middle  ages  recognise  the  same  element  in 
the  strongest  manner.  Tn  King  Arthur,  no  knight  ever  per- 
forms deeds  of  remarkable  prowess  without  his  tm-ning  out  to  be 
a  man  of  noble  birth  (so  8ir  Beaumains,  i.  130).  The  same  aris- 
tocratic element  is  visible  in  the  proper  names  of  all  languages, 
a  great  proportion  of  which  is  manifestly  patronymic.  So  with 
us:  Richardson,  Wilson^  To  ml  in  son,  Anderson,  Dickson,  Paterson, 
and  many  others.  In  Greek,  Evpv{3Ld8y<;,  'AXKifSidS-qs,  Atoyevr;?, 
Qeayevrjs,  etc.,  are  formed  on  the  same  principle.  There  is  a  true 
instinct  of  nature,  and  a  strong  foundation,  both  of  physical  reality 
and  social  virtue,  in  this  matter,  which  the  conceits  of  modern  de- 
mocratic individualism  will  never  be  able  to  annihilate. 

VOL.  IV.  A 


2  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

Ver.  ±—The  '' Grecian  forcer 

The  word  in  the  original  is  ^^  Achcean,"  which  the  Grermans — V. 
and  D., — with  the  usual  minute  accuracy  of  that  people,  conscien- 
tiously preserve.  In  a  poetical  translation,  intended  not  for  the 
curious  scholar  but  for  the  cultivated  general  reader,  I  have  con- 
sidered it  unnecessary,  and  contrary  to  the  genius  of  our  literature, 
to  imitate  thei'*  example  in  this  matter.  The  ancient  nomenclature 
of  the  Greek  tribes  will  be  discussed  afterwards  under  Book  ii.  I 
use  Greek,  Achcean,  Danaan,  Anjive,  as  it  may  suit  my  line. 

Ver.  3. — Hades. 

This  word,  according  to  the  traditional,  and  not  improbable 
etymology,  means  '•  the  imdsible  or  unseen  world" — the  realm  of 
the  dead  generally,  and  of  com-se  does  not  at  all  correspond  to  our 
word  "hell,"  of  which  the  Greek  counterpart,  Tartarus,  is  only  one 
division  of  Hades.  The  etymology  of  the  word  has  been  in  this 
place  well  preserved  by  Ch.,  who  says, 

"  Sent  them  far  to  that  invisible  cave 
Which  no  h'ght  comforts;" 

but  this  looks  too  like  a  phrase  coined  by  modern  imagination,  not 
the  fixed  term  of  an  old  theology.  In  translating  from  the  ancients 
generally,  the  word  Hades  may  now  be  considered  as  natiu-alized. 
'SYx.  has  it  here  ;  and  even  C.  ventured  on  it  in  more  purely  Eng- 
lish days.  Trench  is  no  doubt  quite  right  in  wishing  that,  to 
prevent  certain  theological  misapprehensions,  this  word  had  been 
introduced  by  the  English  translators  of  the  Bible  for  the  Hebrew 
word  'i•\■m^  which  corresponds  to  the  Greek  ^Stjs  in  every  respect ; 
but  for  practical  purposes  I  can  see  no  reason  why  the  \'igorous  and 
emphatically  English  word  "hcU,"  should  not  still  be  used  in  all 
cases  where  its  use  would  not  involve  a  manifest  confusion ;  as 
even  in  the  New  Testament  I  should  be  sorry  to  see,  in  the  famous 
passage  about  the  Christian  Church  (Matt.  xvi.  18),  ''  the  gates 
of  helJ,''  replaced  by  "the  gates  of  hades."  Accordingly,  I  have 
retained  this  word  in  i.\.  312  and  elsewhere,  regardless  of  Y.'s  ex- 


HOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  3 

ample,  who,  with  true  German  fidelity,  sacrifices  the  poetical  force 
of  his  translation  in  that  passage  to  its  scholarly  accm'acy. 

Ver.  3. — Stout  heroic  soul. 

'^x'Xcis  rjpiiXDv.  Whatever  the  etymology  of  the  word  i/pcos  be 
(Passow  compares  Herr,  "Hpa,  on  which  Donaldson,  N.  G.  329, 
enlarges),  it  is  certain  that  at  a  very  early  period  of  the  Greek 
language,  it  signified  a  race  of  demigods,  of  a  dignity  intermediate 
between  man  and  god,  expressly  mentioned  by  Hesiod  {Op.  et  Di. 
159),  and  alluded  to,  without  the  word  rjpwsj  inxii.  23.  In  Plato's 
time  the  gi-aduated  distinction  between  avdponros,  '}'pws,  Sa'/xwv,  and 
^eos  was  distinctly  understood  (Grot.  397  d).  These  heroes,  strictly 
so  called,  had  generally  a  god  either  for  their  ftxther  or  their  mother. 
In  Homer,  however,  as  in  the  present  passage,  the  word  is  often 
used  very  loosely,  pretty  much  as  the  word  "i?ec/ie?i"  in  the 
Niebelungen  lay  (see  Richter's  Real.,  146).  To  the  word  ''  hero" 
among  the  Greeks,  the  word  "saint"  in  the  Christian  Church 
afi"ords  a  perfect  parallel.  Applied  at  first  to  all  the  members  of 
the  Christian  Church,  it  was  gradually  confined  to  the  small  section 
of  canonized  mortals,  corresponding  to  the  rjfjLideoc  of  Hesiod  and 
Plato.  The  special  views  on  this  word  stated  in  Phil.  Mus.  ii. 
p.  90,  seem  to  me  more  erudite  than  necessary,  and  more  curious 
than  sound.     The  article  in  L.  and  S.  is  excellent. 


Ver.  5. — To  dogs  and  miltu7'es. 

1  Sam.  xvii.  44,  46;  1  Kings  xiv.  11,  xvi.  4,  xxi.  24;  Jcr.  vii. 
33,  xix.  7.  There  is  a  peculiarity  in  the  phraseology  of  the  ori- 
ginal here — 

i^i'Xds"Ai'5t  Trpotaipep 
ijpdiiwv,  avToiis  S^  eXilipia  revx^  Kvveaaiv — 

where  the  word  souls  is  not  contrasted  with  bodies,  but  with  avTov's 
— "  their  very  selves."  So,  in  Voss,  "  sie  selher.''  This  manner  of 
expression   is   not   without  interest,    as   marking  the   realism   of 


+  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

Homer's  method  of  conception,  contrasted  with  the  ultra-spiritual- 
ism afterwards  asserted  by  Plato  and  his  successors,  who  make 
common  cause  in  this  matter  with  the  asceticism  and  monachism 
which  so  early  made  themselves  felt  in  the  history  of  the  Christian 
Church.     Homer's  heroes  are  never  ashamed  of  their  bodies. 


Ver.  5. — Tlius  the  will  of  mightiest  Jove  was  done. 

In  these  words  a  mo.st  important  element  in  the  conduct  of  the 
Iliad  is  enunciated.  Modern  critics  of  the  French  school  were 
wont  to  talk  of  the  part  played  by  the  gods  in  heroic  poems  as  a 
sort  of  mere  machinery  got  up  by  the  poet  to  add  dignity  to  the 
human  actors,  and  for  the  sake  of  variety.  But  Homer's  concep- 
tion of  the  position  of  the  gods  was  very  different.  He  was  not 
ashamed — as  indeed  no  popular  poetry  is — of  the  old  healthy  notion, 
that  all  things  which  happen  in  the  world,  much  more  all  gi'eat  and 
important  matters,  are  managed  and  controlled  by  the  Supreme  Dis- 
poser of  all  events.  This  supreme  disposer  in  his  phi-aseology  was 
ZeiJs  (Lat.  DeuSj  divus,  dies),  who  therefore  constantly  appears  in  the 
Iliad  as  the  great  steward  of  the  war  (^Ta/jLcrjs  TroXefjLOLo),  and  director 
of  aU  its  movements.  In  this  respect  Granville  Penn  is  quite  right 
when  he  says  that  '•  the  will  of  Jupiter  prescribes  the  rule  of  the  action 
of  Achilles,  and  is  the  efficient  agency  of  the  main  action  of  the  poem." 
That  the  father  of  gods  and  men  with  this  high  position  does  not 
appear  so  often  upon  the  stage,  but  sits  apart  (xx.  22),  is  in  no 
respect  to  the  detriment  of  his  controlling  power,  but  in  perfect  con- 
sistency with  the  very  natural  and  true  idea,  that  a  great  sovereign 
acts  generally  through  his  subordinates,  and  only  on  rare  occasions 
personally  seizes  the  hebn.  This  very  obvious  relationship  of  the 
Olympian  powers  is  not  properly  appreciated  by  Glad.  (ii.  119), 
who,  with  a  chaste  chivalry,  seems  eager  to  plant  Minerva  on  the 
supreme  seat,  as  the  Romanists  do  the  Virgin  Mary;  and  then 
Jove  becomes,  of  course,  only  an  omnipotent  debauchee,  or  a 
"  rnp7d  mortuiuu"  (ii.  174).  Nothing  could  possibly  be  more  hetero- 
dox in  Honierio  thonlojrv  than  such  a  nntimi. 


BOOK  1.  SELECT  NOTES. 


Ver.  7. — Peleus'  (jodlike  son. 

Aios  'AxtAAet's.     I  have  no  doubt  P.,  if  lie  had  any  thoughts  at 
all  on  such  matters,  imagined  that  he  had  improved  on  Ch.  by  changing 
•godlike"  into  "great."     V.  also,  and  D.  have  "eJe/,"  which  cor- 
responds to  om-  word  "  noble ;"  but  the  Germans  must  have  been 
led  into  the  use  of  this  word  from  a  convenience  of  rhythm,  as  it  is 
quite  contrary  to  the  philosophical  principles  of  translation  estab- 
lished in  their  practice  to  substitute  general  modern  epithets  for 
ancient  ones  having  a  special  significance.     That  Stos,  avrt^eos, 
^eios,  and  all  such,  are  characteristic  expressions,  and  strongly  tinged 
with  the  peculiar  coloui-  of  ancient  Greek  religious  sentiment,  can- 
not be  doubted.     The  ancient  Hellenes  had  souls  deeply  pervaded 
with  the  true  feeling,  so  beautifully  expressed  by  the  apostle  James, 
that  "  every  good  gift  and  every  perfect  gift  is  fi'om  above,  and 
cometh  down  from  the  Father  of  lights."     For  which  reason  all  men 
of  great  endowments   and  extraordinary  accomplishments  are,  in 
their  language,  most  justly  and  significantly  named  "godlike"  or 
"  divine,"  as  reflecting  somewhat  of  the  divine  glory,  in  the  splen- 
dour of  their  personal  excellence.     And  as  not  only  men,  but  the 
whole  creation,  is,  justly  considered,  as  only  one  gi'eat  and  magnifi- 
cent exhibition  of  this  excellence,  therefore  the  pious  phraseology  of 
the  Homeric  age  calls  the  earth  "sacred,"  and  the  sea  "  divine" 
(ver.  141,  infra),  and  views  all  terrestrial  beauty  and  power  as  merely 
the  outward  expression  of  one  internal,  all-pervading  divine  acti- 
vity.    To  transmute  these  phrases  into  the  stale  epithets  of  modern 
conversation,  is  to  present  the  coin  with  the  image  and  superscrip- 
tion erased,  in  which  condition,  indeed,  it  may  be  equally  valuable 
to  the  Jew  and  the  goldsmith,  but  is  utterly  devoid  of  significance 
to  the  numismatist  and  the  archaeologist.     The  occasional  use  of 
such  epithets  by  the  moderns — as  when  Spenser  (F.  Q.  in.  5.  32) 
talks  of  "  divine  tobacco" — is  quite  a  difi"erent  thing  fi'om  the  en- 
grained habit   of  thought  which   the   Hellenic   phraseology   indi- 
cates. 


SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 


Vek.  9. — Latonci'H  son. 


The  universal  opinion  of  the  ancients,  that  is,  of  all  those  who 
reflected  on  such  matters,  with  regard  to  this  god,  is,  that  he  was 
"  the  Sun,"  or  at  least,  to  use  the  language  of  Preller,  "  the 
glorious,  awe-inspiring,  and  divine  element  of  Light."  This  tradi- 
tional view  of  his  nature  was  rudely  disturbed  by  no  less  notable  a 
champion  than  Otfried  MiiUer ;  but,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case  in 
such  outbursts  of  revolutionary  negation,  the  highest  German 
authorities  on  this  subject — Welcker,  Preller,  and  G-erhard — have 
now  returned,  with  one  consenting  voice,  to  the  old  orthodox  belief. 
This  belief  stands  upon  the  surest  gi-ounds.  As  a  starting-point, 
we  may  assume  as  certain,  what  the  philosophy  of  Plato  (Crat.  397 
d)  divined,  and  the  poetic  instinct  of  Wordsworth  (Excurs.  iv.) 
recognised,  that  the  most  ancient  Greeks  worshipped  the  sun,  the 
moon,  the  sea,  the  earth,  and  the  sky,  and  other  elemental  aspects 
and  powers,  like  all  the  "  barbarians."  This  being  so,  and  it  being 
manifest  that  the  original  elemental  welkin  was,  in  the  anthro- 
morphic  period,  represented  by  Jove,  the  oi'iginal  ocean  by  Nep- 
tune, the  original  earth  by  Ceres,  and  so  on,  a  presumption  arises 
that  such  striking  and  significant  heavenly  powers  as  the  sun  and 
moon  must  also  have  undergone  a  similar  transmutation,  and  are 
to  be  sought  for  among  some  of  the  twelve  greater  deities  recog- 
nised in  after  times  both  by  Greece  and  Rome.  This  natural,  and, 
in  the  particular  case  of  Greece,  almost  necessary  presumption,  is 
changed  into  fact  when  we  discover  that  there  is  not  a  single  attri- 
bute of  Apollo,  which  may  not  be  explained  in  the  most  obvious 
way,  by  assuming  the  sun,  or  the  gladdening  and  vivifying  power 
of  light,  as  the  original  significance  of  his  godhead.  And  not  only 
so,  but  his  names  and  titles,  and  the  seasons  of  the  year  when  his 
feasts  were  observed,  and  other  pregnant  facts,  all  tally  most  exactly 
with  this  theory.  The  Doric  people  of  the  island  of  Thera,  for 
instance,  worshipped  him  as  aiyAT^TTjs  (Str.  x.  484  c),  that  is,  the 
glancer,  while  in  Chios  he  was  known  as  the  4>avaros,  or  shiner 
(Hesy.)     The  same  is  the  signification  of  the  familiar  word  $ot^os, 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  7 

which  the  lexicographers  exj)hiin  by  Xafxirpos  and  dyvds,  that  is, 
hright,  clear,  and  which  (y  and  j3  being  cognate  letters)  is  mani- 
festly connected  with  <f>av(a,  an  old  form  of  ^atvw,  of  which  ^auo-is 
(Gen.  i.  15,  ol  o')  is  a  remnant.  His  most  familiar  chciracter  in 
Homer,  that  of  an  archer-god  (iKarij/SoAos,  eK-aro?,  cKciepyos),  who 
shoots  his  arrows  from  afar,  is  the  necessary  consequence  of  an 
anthropomorphic  conception  of  the  powerful  influence  of  the  sun  in 
hot  countries.  "  The  sun  of  Greece,"  says  an  intelligent  modern 
traveller,  "  pierces  the  air  with  rays  so  keen  and  penetrating,  that 
you  understand  at  once  the  ancient  metaphor,  which  likened  them 
to  the  darts  of  Apollo.  It  is  no  longer  the  weak  wavering  radiance 
of  the  North,  but  a  quiver  full  of  arrows  from  an  immortal  bow" 
(Mount  Athos.  By  G.  F.  Bowen  ;  London,  1852).  In  fact,  there 
is  no  Hellenic  god  whose  original  elemental  nature  shines  more 
distinctly  at  once,  and  more  poetically,  through  his  anthropomorphic 
disguise,  than  his  physical  significance  speaks  through  Apollo.  For 
the  proof,  see  Welck.  g.  I ;  Prell.  Myth. ;  Gerhard's  Mytlt. 

With  regard  to  the  position  occupied  by  this  god  in  the  Iliad, 
as  a  divine  agent  in  the  Trojan  legends,  this  matter  stands  on  a 
footing  altogether  independent  of  his  original  elemental  signifi- 
cance. What  we  see  of  the  activity  of  Apollo  in  the  Iliad  may 
no  doubt  in  a  great  measure  be  referred  to  his  solar  character ;  but 
it  does  not  in  anywise  follow  that  Homer  at  all  understood  his 
identity  with  that  sun-god,  whose  separate  existence  he  recognises 
(hi.  277 ;  Od.  XII.  374),  and  from  whom  he  keeps  him  as  distinct 
as  Ocean  from  Neptune.  It  is  undeniable,  for  instance,  that  in 
warm  countries,  the  sun  is  the  author  of  agues,  fevers,  pestilence, 
in  the  hottest  and  most  insalubrious  season  of  the  year,  a  fact  which 
the  Egyptians  (Clem.  Strom,  v.  671  p)  and  the  ancients  gene- 
rally had  cause  enough  to  recognise.  That  a  pestilence  of  this 
kind  should  have  arisen  sometime  during  the  ten  years  that  the 
Greeks  were  encamped  on  the  flat  and  marshy  ground  before 
Troy,  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world ;  but  we  are  not 
therefore  to  suppose  that  Apollo  appears  on  the  stage  of  Trojan 
warfare  for  any  such  reason.     The  consciousness  that  the  anthro- 


8  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I- 

pomorphic  gods  were  originally  elemental  had  evidently  passed 
away  from  the  mind  of  Greece  long  before  the  age  of  Homer.  If 
the  Greeks  suffered  from  fever  and  pestilence  before  the  "  breezy 
Troy,"  it  was,  in  their  view,  because  they  had  in  some  way  or  other 
sinned  against  the  great  patron  deity  of  the  country,  the  natural 
protector  of  its  besieged  towns. — (Compare  Williams'  Souih  Sea 
Missions,  eh.  iii. ;  Alison's  Europe,  1815-52,  ii.  p.  208.)  The 
worship  of  Apollo  was  dominant  over  the  whole  coast  of  Asia  Minor, 
and  especially  in  the  Troad  (Miiller,  Dor.  ii.  2,  3)  ;  and  it  is  in  this 
character  that  he  appears  in  the  Iliad  as  the  special  protector  of 
Troy.  I  have  only  further  to  add,  that  the  name  "  Apollo,"  by 
which  we  designate  this  deity,  has  nothing  to  do  with  Apolhjon,  or 
aTToXXvjxi,  to  destroy ;  for  though  the  ancients,  always  fond  of  a 
play  on  words,  sometimes  pun  the  name  of  this  god  as  a  destroyer 
(vEschyl.  Agam.  1045),  his  destructive  functions  were  by  no  means 
so  prominent  as  to  justify  the  imposition  of  such  a  designation. 
On  the  contrary,  the  root  of  the  epithet  seems  rather  to  lie  in  an 
old  verb,  a7reAA.eiv  (E.  M.  in  aTr^iX-q),  with  wliich  the  oldest  form  of 
the  name  of  the  god,  'AttcAAwv,  corresponds  (W.  (j.  I.  i.  p.  460),  sig- 
nifying to  avert  or  drive  aivay  (Lat.  pello).  This  title  of  averter,  or 
dAe^tKaKos,  belonged  to  all  the  gods,  but  especially  to  Apollo,  who, 
though  essentially  joyous  and  beneficent,  might  in  his  anger  scourge 
mankind  with  the  most  terrible  calamities,  plague,  fever,  etc.,  as 
we  have  seen,  and  as  delivering  from  which  he  fell  naturally  to  be 
invoked  under  the  title  of  "  the  Averter."  The  people  of  Phigalia 
denominated  this  same  god  iinKovpios,  or  "  helper,'"  because  he 
delivered  them  from  the  plague  (Pans.  viii.  41.  5.)  Welcker 
thinks  that  the  title  eKaepyos  comes  from  e/cd?  and  el'pyo)  in  the 
same  sense ;  but  this  seems  doubtful. 

Ver.  14. — He  on  a  golden  staff,  etc. 

I  incline  to  think  that  Wr.,  Drb.,  and  the  Germans  are  right  in 
retaining  the  original  meaning  of  the  word  a-KrjTrTpov  "  staff,"  not 
"  sceptre,"  as  more  consistent  with  the  simplicity  of  the  Homeric 
times.     As  to  inknim,  Ch.  has  "  crown,"  P.  ''laurel  crown,"  Wr. 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  9 

"  chaplct,"  V.  '' Lorheerschmiick,"  Br.  "wreath."  The  sceptre  or 
staff,  as  the  general  ensign  of  authority  among  the  ancients,  be- 
longed not  only  to  kings  and  judges,  but  also  to  priests  and  diviners. 
So  in  Hades,  the  soul  of  the  Theban  soothsayer,  Teiresias,  appears 
to  Ulysses  holding  "a  golden  staff"  in  his  hand  (Od.  xi.  91);  and 
in  the  Agamemnon  of  ^schylus,  Cassandra,  about  to  die,  flings 
away  her  staff  and  the  divining-wreath  l^o-KrjirTpa  Kal  [xavriia 
a-T€(fiif)  which  she  wore  about  her  neck ;  on  which  passage,  see 
Stanley's  note.  Hesychius,  under  the  word  WwTYjpiov^  says  that  the 
soothsayer's  staff  was  made  of  laurel,  as  the  tree  sacred  to  Apollo, 
the  god  of  divination.  Poets,  as  being  a  kindred  race,  were  hon- 
oured with  the  same  ensign  of  dignity  (Hes.  TJieog.  30).  As  to 
the  o-re/x/^a,  it  may  have  been  merely  a  laurel  chaplet  characteristic 
of  the  priest  of  Apollo,  as  Eust.  and  the  schol.  seem  to  think,  or 
more  specially  a  woollen  wreath  wound  round  the  tips  of  branches, 
which  suppliants  were  in  the  habit  of  holding  in  their  hands  when 
they  claimed  protection,  or  a  combination  of  both.  Of  this  custom 
of  suppliants  mention  is  often  made  in  the  ancient  writers : ,  see 
particularly  ^sch.  Supjj.  22  ;  Gho'qjh.  1025 ;  Eumen.  43,  44 ; 
Soph.  (Ed.  Tyr.  3 ;  Plutarch,  Tlies.  18  ;  Plato,  Republic,  in.  398, 
compared  with  Suid.  Ipt(p  crrei^avTes.  The  "  tjifida  AjMllmis"  yfas 
a  wreath  of  wool  which  adorned  the  head  of  the  priests  of  Apollo. 
Virg.  ^n.  II.  430  ;  x.  538  ;  Festus,  in  voce  infidce;  Isidor.  Grig. 
XIX.  30. 

Ver.  17. — Greeks  tvith  burnished  greaves. 

The  greaves,  to  which  this  epithet  refers,  are  constantly  seen  on 
the  shins  of  warriors  in  the  painted  figures  of  Greek  vases.  Eeal 
greaves  may  be  seen  in  the  Bronze  chamber  of  the  British  Museum, 
and  other  collections  of  the  same  kind. 

Ver.  37. — Tenedus,  Ghryse,  and  GiUa. 

Tenedos,  an  island  twelve  miles  south  of  the  mouth  of  the  Dar- 
danelles (Plin.  N.  H.  V.  31),  forming  a  natural  breakwater  to  the 
coast  of  the  Troad,  south  of  Troy,  pretty  much  as  Kerrera  does  to 


10  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

the  Oban  district  of  Argyllshire,  famous  in  ancient  times  for  its  fair 
women  (Athen.  xiii.  609)  and  for  its  firm  adherence  to  Athens 
(Thuc.  VII.  57 ;  Xen.  Hist.  v.  1,  6),  whose  owl  is  sometimes  seen 
upon  its  coins  (Mionnet,  vol.  ii.  p.  671).  Its  principal  god  was  the 
Sminthian  Apollo  (Str.  xiii.  604),  and  the  many  proverbs  (Tei/eStos 
TTcAeKvs,  for  a  rigorous  merciless  way  of  doing  things,  etc.)  in 
which  its  name  occurs  testify  to  the  early  celebrity  of  the  ^oli- 
ans  who  colonized  it  (see  Leutsch,  Paroem.  Gr.  Index  ;  MliUer, 
Dor.  vol.  i.  p.  377).  The  importance  of  Chryse  springs  altogether 
out  of  its  place  in  the  Trojan  story.  It  was  a  small  town  on  the 
coast  of  the  Troad  ;  but  as  there  were  two  bearing  that  name,  the 
one  on  the  coast  of  the  ^gean,  a  little  south  o^  Alexandria  Troas, 
and  the  other  at  the  head  of  the  Adramyttian  Gulf,  south  of  Ida,  near 
Antandros,  the  ancients  disputed  about  their  respective  claims  to 
be  the  genuine  Homeric  Chryse,  or,  as  the  Glermans  would  say, 
Goldheim.  To  me  the  argmnents  of  Strabo  (xiii.  613)  in  favour  of 
the  latter  seem  quite  satisfactory.  Cilia,  one  of  the  eleven  old 
^olian  cities  (Hdt.  i.  149),  is  placed  by  Strabo,  and  appears  in 
Kiepert's  map  close  beside  Chryse.  It  had  a  temple  of  Apollo,  and 
was  washed  by  a  stream  flowing  down  from  Ida. 

Vek.  39. — Sminthcus, 

That  is,  according  to  Apion  and  Strabo  (xiii.  613),  god  of 
mice,  or  god  that  protects  from  rats  and  mice  (Apoll.  Lex.  Horn. 
and  E.  M.  in  voce  'Efiivdev?.  Clem.  Al.  Prot.  ii.  34  p).  So 
Jupiter  was  called  a7ro/i,vios  in  Olynipia,  from  having  pro- 
tected Hercules  from  these  troublesome  animals  when  performing 
sacrifices  to  him  on  the  banks  of  the  Alpheus  (Pans.  v.  14.  2). 
For  a  similar  reason  Baal  was  worshipped,  with  the  addition  of 
Zehuh  (2  Kings  i.  2),  that  is,  god  of  flies  (Gesen.  ^y^-  5).  Quite 
analogous  are  the  epithets  epvOi^ios  and  irapvoirLiav  given  to 
Apollo  (Str.  xni.  613).  The  extraordinary  fecundity  of  field-mice 
(hence  perhaps  this  animal  Priapean,  Payne  Knight,  Symbol,  128), 
and  the  ravages  often  made  by  them  on  the  hopes  of  the  farmer, 
are   prominently  mentioned  by   Aristotle    (77.    A.    vi.    30).      The 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  1  1 

country  about  Troy  iu  ancient  times  seems  to  have  been  peculiarly 
exposed  to  their  depredations  (Pliny,  N.  H.  x.  65).  Strabo  (xiii. 
604  and  18)  informs  us  that  the  name  Smintheus  was  not  confined  to 
one  district  of  the  Troad,  but  was  of  very  general  use  iu  various 
parts  of  Asia  Minor ;  and  that  in  the  town  of  Chrysa,  near  Troy,  there 
was  a  temple  of  the  Sminthian  Apollo,  in  which  the  significance  of 
the  epithet  was  made  manifest  to  the  eye  by  a  mouse  sculptured, 
beneath  the  foot  of  the  statue  of  the  god;  and  in  the  coins  of 
Alexandria,  in  the  Troad,  a  similar  emblem  occurs.  It  is  notice- 
able that  the  geographer,  on  occasion  of  this  Sminthian  Apollo, 
narrates  a  story  of  a  troop  of  field-mice  having  in  a  single  night 
devoured  all  the  leather  of  the  arms  of  the  Cretan  settlers  in  the 
Troad,  a  narrative  which  recalls  the  cm*ious  history  in  Herodotus 
(ii.  141).  Welcker,  to  whose  paragraph  on  this  subject  (fj.  I.  i. 
p.  482)  I  am  largely  indebted,  mentions  that  in  the  very  dry  summer 
of  1821,  in  Germany,  he  himself  saw  the  people  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Bonn  kneeling  before  a  crucifix  in  the  metropolitan  church, 
and  praying  fervently,  0  Lord^  destroy  the  mice  !  destroy  the  mice  ! 
In  Klausen's  Ai^neas  und  die  Pen.  (i.  557)  will  be  found  a  curious 
church  formula  used  in  the  middle  ages  for  exorcising  the  Norway 
rats,  whose  ravages  are  well  known.  The  temple  of  Apollo  Smin- 
theus has,  I  find  in  my  interleaved  Homer,  recently  been  discovered 
by  Spratt,  but  I  cannot  give  the  exact  reference. 

Ver.  50. — The  nimhle  clogs. 

The  scholiasts,  who  have  seldom  any  judgment,  say  dpyov?  = 
Ta^ets  or  XevKovs ;  but  common  sense,  one  should  think,  might  in  this 
passage  have  preserved  Kop.  and  Br.  from  following  Eust.  in  choos- 
ing the  latter  rendering  for  this  passage.  Unquestionably  ''white"  is 
the  common  meaning  of  the  root  dpy6<s,  as  it  appears  in  many  words 
both  G-reek  and  Latin  (Curt.  121).  But  here  we  have  manifestly 
a  diff"erent  word,  which  may  indeed  by  a  little  ingenuity  be  traced 
to  the  same  root  (see  Passow,  and  after  him  L.  and  S.),  but  for 
practical  purposes  stands  distinct.  Passow's  idea  might  be  ex- 
pressed by  the  \ford  flickering-footed,  as  "  mica"  in  Latin  signifies 


12  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

both  to  move  ijmcJdy  and  to  twinkle  hriyJUli/.  Whether  Passow  is 
right  in  his  ingenious  attempt  to  unite  the  two  ideas  of  siuift  and 
ivhite  in  the  comm6n  notion  of  a  bright  flickering  motion,  may 
remain  doubtful. 

Ver.  63. — Or  cue  that  readeth  dreams. 

Not  only  in  Homer's  time,  but  in  the  middle  ages  (see  King 
Arthur,  c.  7),  and  even  in  ages  of  grave  history,  we  find  the  sooth- 
sayer and  dream-reader  persons  of  no  small  importance  in  public 
life.  Alexander  the  Great  always  carried  one  about  with  him  in 
his  camp,  of  whom  Arrian  reports  that,  being  present  at  the  cir- 
cumscription of  the  boundary  line  of  Alexandria,  he  prophesied  the 
future  prosperity  of  the  town  from  a  remarkable  incident  (Anab. 
III.  2).  As  to  the  special  method  of  arriving  at  a  knowledge  of 
futurity  through  means  of  dreams,  this  was  universally  practised 
by  the  ancients  (Num.  xii.  G  ;  1  Sam.  xxviii.  6 ;  Tuch  on  Grenesis 
XV.  1;-Ewald,  Ges.  des  Is.  Volks,  i.  p.  121  ;  Herm.,  Bel.  Alt.  41, 
2-22).  It  was,  however,  never  regarded  as  of  equal  authority  with 
a  distinct  declaration  of  the  Divine  will  by  an  oracle  (compare 
Numbers  xii.  6,  7).  As  to  the  source  of  dreams,  they  could  only 
come  from  Jove,  as  the  supreme  moral  governor  of  the  world. 
He  accordingly  sends  the  dream  in  the  beginning  of  the  next 
book  of  this  poem  ;  and  in  perfect  consistency  with  this  we  find 
that  the  function  of  prophecy  and  divination  which  afterwards  be- 
came more  peculiarly  characteristic  of  Apollo  was  exercised  by  him 
only  through  delegation  from  his  all-wise  father  (^sch.  Eian.  19). 

Ver.  66. — Sheep  and  gocds  full  cjrovm  and,  fair.,  reAetoji/,  i.e., 
perfect ;  that  is,  complete  in  respect  of  age,  growth,  parts,  and  pro- 
portions, as  in  the  off'erings  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  Schol. 
Yen.  Lips,  says,  TyAtKi^/,  oAoK-Avypcor,  XeXiafiijiikvov  yap  ov  ^verai. 

Ver.  69. — Calchas  the  son  of  Thestor. 

It  is  remarkable  that  tliis  famous  soothsayer,  whose  interpreta- 
tion of  the  wrath  of  Apollo  is  the  cause  of  the  plot  of  the  Iliad, 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  1 3 

appears  nowhere  else  in  the  action,  and  is  only  incidentally  men- 
tioned in  one  or  two  places.  The  part  he  played  at  Aulis  (ii.  300) 
supplied  good  materials  to  the  tragedians,  but  does  not  belong  to 
the  action  of  the  Iliad.  He  was  a  native  of  Megara,  or  at  least 
was  dwelling  there  at  the  time  when  the  Trojan  expedition  set  out 
(Paus.  1.  43).  After  the  war  was  ended,  he  did  not  return  to  Troy 
along  with  the  other  Greeks,  but  found  his  way  on  foot  to  the 
great  shrine  of  his  inspiring  god  at  Claros,  near  Colophon,  where 
he  died.  Strange  and  significant  stories  were  told  of  his  death 
(Str.  XIV.  642),  which  have  lately  been  made  to  bud  out  into  new 
life  in  the  garden  of  English  poetry,  by  the  graceful  and  versatile 
genius  of  Sir  E.  Bulwer  Lytton  (Lost  Tales  of  Miletus,  1866). 

Ver.  73. — He  with  a  friendly  mien  uprose. 

This  is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  Homer,  whenever  a  speaker 
is  not  particularly  passionate  or  excited,  in  which  case  his  phrase 
is  jxky  ox^'/cas,  or  somewhat  to  that  effect.  C.  has  here  "  in- 
telligent ;"  and  Nits.  (Od.  ii.  160)  says  that  iv4>pove(av  in  the 
frequently  recurring  formula,  signifies  the  "  wise  recognition  of 
what  is  to  be  done  in  the  existing  emergency."  Now,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  phrase  ev  cfipoveiv  has  frequently  this  meaning,  as  in 
Ar.  Ran.  1485,  where  it  is  equivalent  to  crweros  ;  but  in  Homer,  I 
agree  with  Nag.  and  W.,  that  the  formula  should  generally  be  in- 
terpreted of  that  kindly  tone  and  persuasive  manner  which  is  the 
best  recommendation  of  every  public  speaker. 

Ver.  80. — Strong  is  a  king. 

The  word  (^aa-tXev's  (Wn),  afterwards  ajiplied  to  all  foreign  despotic 
monarchs,  is  with  Homer  a  designation  of  the  highest  chiefs  or 
thanes  of  any  country,  or  district  of  a  country ;  for  even  in  the 
little  rocky  Ithaca  there  are  many  "  kings"  {Od.  i.  394.)  Compare 
Genesis  xiv.  10.  Not  all  the  chiefs,  however,  were  entitled  to  this 
title  (Glad.  iii.  p.  25).  The  common  title,  "  king  of  men,"  by  which 
Agamemnon  is  known  to  English  readers,  is  not  a  translation  of 
/Sao-tAevs,  but  of  ara^.  a  w^ord  .signifying  lord,   or  ruler,  and  con- 


1 4  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

nected  with  dvda-crio.  as  the  Latin  dominus  is  with  dominor.  The 
Sanscrit  Narpati  exactly  corresponds.  In  xxiii.  517  Drb.  is 
wrong  in  translating  avaKxa  royal.  It  is  merely  the  master  or  f<>rd 
of  the  car. 

Ver.  98. — The  maid  ivith  quick  and  glancing  ei/cs. 

'EAtKWTTiSa  Kovprjv,  "  black-eyed."  Ch.,  P.,  Br.,  "  dark-eyed.' 
Soth.,  Wr.,  the  "maid  of  glancing  eye."  N.,  the  "curl-eyed 
maid."  V.,  "  freudig-blicJcend."  D.,  "das  Kindmitdenleuchtenden 
Augen."  The  Lat.  have  all  "  nigros  ocidos  habens."  So,  infra  389, 
of  all  the  Greeks,  IAi/cwttcs  'A^atoi.  The  ancients  speak  doubtfully 
about  this  word  ;  but  the  weight  of  their  authority  is  in  favour  of 
"black-eyed."  But  the  more  scientific  philologers  of  the  present 
century  have  seen  reason  to  reject  this  tradition.  The  point  stands 
thus  : — There  is  no  vestige  of  a  trace,  beyond  an  unguaranteed  asser- 
tion of  one  of  the  scholiasts,  that  the  root  e'AiK,  or  e'Ai,  means  black. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  well-recognised  family  of  words  in  the 
Arian  languages,  containing  volvo  in  Latin,  wheel  in  English,  ivelt  in 
German,  and  in  Greek,  i'AAw,  eAto-o-w,  e'Ai^,  expressing  the  idea  of  a 
quick  rotatory,  or  at  least  irregular  curved  motion.  That  lAtKWTrts 
belongs  to  this  same  family  is  the  natural  inference,  if  the  etymon 
yields  a  good  sense,  and  if  there  is  no  authority  to  the  contrary. 
Now,  as  the  compound  adjective  lAiKoppoos  applied  to  a  stream, 
signifies  almost  the  same  as  8iv>^€ts,  that  is,  full  of  wreathed  sioirls 
and  eddies,  so  eAtKojTris,  applied  to  the  eyes,  yields  the  natural  and 
expressive  sense  of  easily-rolling,  quick-moving,  rapid- glancing, 
— generally,  lively,  keen,  and  bright  eyes,  as  opposed  to  eyes  with  a 
fixed,  dull,  heavy  stare.  (See  Spencer's  Circassia,  ii.  p.  243,  on 
the  singular  animation  of  the  Circassian  eye.)  In  a  certain  sense 
of  the  word,  "rolling  eyes,"  indeed,  belong  only  to  mad  or  vacant- 
minded  people  ;  but,  in  another  sense,  an  easy  wreathed  volubility 
of  motion  in  the  eyes  is  certainly  a  beauty.  However,  I  should 
not  wish  to  incur  the  responsibility  of  translating  IAikwttis  "  rolling 
eye,"  as  the  expression  is  not  free  from  ludicrous  associations  ;  but 
that  "a  rolling  eye"  of  a  certain  kind  is  popularly  considered  a 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  1 5 

beauty,  the  oldest  edition  of  the  beautiful  Scotch  song,  of  ''  Annie 
Laurie,"  bears  ample  testimony  : — 

"  She  's  backit  like  a  peacock, 
She 's  breastit  like  a  swan, 
She  's  jimp  about  the  middle. 
Her  waist  ye  weel  may  span  ; 
Her  waist  ye  weel  may  span  ; 
She  has  a  rolling  e'e, 
And  for  bonnie  Annie  Laurie 
I  'd  lay  me  doon  and  dee  I "  ^ 

If  the  eyes  of  the  Greeks  were,  as  there  is  good  reason  to  believe, 
generally  black  or  dark,  the  quick  and  glancing  vividness  of  these 
dark  eyes  would  naturally  come  to  be  confounded  with  the  black- 
ness of  which  it  was  generally  the  accompaniment,  and  so  IAikcottis 
would  receive  the  traditionary  meaning  of  "black-eyed"  which  we 
have  noted.     Similarly,  in  modern  poetry  : — 

"  A  strappin',  gracefu',  blithesome  queen, 
Wi'  coal-black  hair  and  glancing  een," 

as  Mrs.  Janet  Hamilton  sings. 

Ver.  106. — Prophet  of  harm ^  etc. 

Compare  what  the  King  of  Israel  said  to  Jehoshaphat  about 
Micaiah,  the  son  of  Imlah  (1  Kings  xxii.  8).  All  quite  natural ; 
for  the  grand  use  of  prophets  in  the  world  is  to  speak  the  truth, 
and  this  is  generally  most  necessary  at  those  critical  periods  when 
persons  in  authority  are  least  willing  to  hear  it.  Calchas,  in  the 
connexion  of  Homer's  story,  performs  the  same  part  as  the  blind 
old  Teiresias  does  in  the  Q^ldipus  Tyrannus  of  Sophocles.  Both 
speak  the  truth,  and  earn  hatred  by  doing  so ;  as,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  pleasant  jugglery  with  convenient  lies  is  often  the  great 
passport  to  popular  favour  and  applause. 

Ver.  113. — Her  I  prize  even  more  than  Clytemnestra' s  worth. 

Concubinage  seems  always  to  have  been  common  in  the  East 
(Gen.  xvi.  1,  iv.  19,  though  this  last  is  rather  regular  bigamy,  as  in 
'  Aytoun's  Ballads,  vol.  i.  p.  144. 


1 G  SELECT  NOTES.  BOOK  I. 

1  Sam.  i.  2),  at  least  in  high  places  ;  and  ancient  Greece,  which 

was  half  an  Oriental  country,  seemed  to  have  tolerated  this  as  well 

as  Palestine.     Drydcn,  in  the  famous  opening  lines  to   his  Ahsa- 

lom  and  AchitopheJ,    expresses  himself  rather  sympathetically  in 

reference   to  those   "pious  times"  before   polygamy  was  made  a 

sin  : — 

"  When  Nature  prompted,  and  no  law  denied 
Promiscuous  use  of  concubine  and  bride." 

But  whatever  a  vigorous  poet,  with  a  sarcastic  scourge  in  his  hand, 
may  be  allowed  to  rhyme  on  such  matters,  experience  has  amply 
proved  the  Avisdom  of  the  New  Testament  restriction  concerning 
the  intercourse  of  the  sexes  ;  and  indeed  Aristotle,  with  the  ancients 
generally — except  Plato,  who  had  his  crotchets, — saw  and  said 
clearly  that  marriage  is  one  of  the  grand  institutions  which  separates 
civilized  man  from  the  savage,  and  that  with  this  institution  as  the 
germ  of  that  great  social  monad,  the  family,  monogamy  is  neces- 
sarily connected. 

Ver.  144. — And  let  some  counsellor  sail  toith  you. 

An  dvi^p  f3ovXy](fi6pos  was  a  chief  who  belonged  to  the  /SovXi'j  or 
privy  council  of  the  king,  and  who  in  the  later  stages  of  Greek  and 
Roman  history  keeps  his  place  as  a  senator,  opposed  to  those  who 
vote  in  the  popular  assembly. 

Ver.  146. — Bard  to  handle 

eWayAos  is  a  very  impracticable  word,  pretty  much  as  ctx^tXio's, 
and  I  have  rendered  it  here  boldly  to  avoid  commonplace.  In  other 
places  I  kept  myself  more  close  to  the  routine  version. 

Ver.  154. — No  oxen  from  my  stalls,  etc. 

Note  here  the  obvious  analogy  of  our  moss-troopers,  so  well 
known  from  the  writings  of  Scott ;  and  compare  Nestor's  long 
account  of  a  border  foray  into  Elis  (xi.  670). 


BOOK  I.  SELECT  NOTES.  1 7 

Ver.  165. — Tlie  temj)est  of  the  v:ar. 

The  root  of  the  word  TroAvdl'^  is  atcraw,  to  rusli.  In  other  part.s 
of  uiy  version  I  have  expressed  it  by  various  compounds. 

Yer.  167. — No  equal  portion  of  the  sjioil. 
Compare  the  just  Jewish  law  on  this  subject,  Numbers  xxxi.  26. 

Ver.  169. — The  curved  .s7;/j>s. 

The  epithet  Kopwrt's  here  applied  to  the  ship  is  fundamentally 
the  same  as  Kopwvr],  from  which  comes  the  Latin  coromi,  and  our 
word  croion.  Originally  the  crude  form,  Kop  (Kupa^,  a  crow)  is 
formed  by  phonic  imitation  from  the  cry  of  that  family  of  birds ; 
and  hooked  or  crooked  things,  from  a  likeness  to  their  bent  bills, 
were  called  crows.  Through  all  the  various  applications,  the  idea  of 
bent,  curved,  and  then  rounded,  is  plainly  to  be  traced.  So  the 
horns  of  oxen  (Theoc.)  It  may  be  doubted  in  the  present  case 
whether  the  epithet  refers  to  the  curved  ornaments  which  rose  up 
at  the  bow  and  poop  of  the  ancient  ships,  or  generally  to  the  shape 
of  the  prow  and  stern.  Br.  is  quite  wrong  in  translating  "  heaJced," 
because  this  is  to  confound  Kopwvt's  with  e/x/^oAov,  of  which  no 
scholar  Avill  dream. 

Ver.  175. — Greid  Jore,  iv/iose  counsel  sways  higJi  heaven. 

I  have  here  expanded  the  epithet  ixrirUra,  counsellor  or  adviser, 
which  belongs  peculiarly  to  Jove  as  the  all-wise  ruler  of  the  uni- 
verse. This  epithet  belongs  to  him  so  essentially  that  in  the  old 
theology  (Hes.  Theoej.  886)  M^rts  or  Counsel  was  assigned  to  him 
as  his  first  wife. 

Ver.  176. — Jore-horn  kings. 

8ioTpe(f)€is  fSacTiXTJe's,  literally  Jove-bred,  Jove-nursed :  but  we  have 
also  Sioy£>'7;s  (ii.  173),  which  means  practically  the  same  thing. 
The  most  illustrious  families  among  the  Greeks  were  wont  to  trace 

VOL.  IV.         .  B 

0 


18  NOTES  To   I'lIK  IIJAU.  BOOK  1. 

their  lineage  Vjnck,  through  a  chain  of  heroes,  which  always  led  to 
Jove,  as  the  natural  and  rightful  source  of  all  ti-ue  nobility.  There 
was  a  certain  theological  truth  in  this,  corresponding  with  that 
expi'essed  in  Luke  iii.  8S. 

Vkr.  LSI. 

Down  to  this  verse  there  is  a  translation  of  this  book,  in  Walter 
Scott's  measure,  by  Morehead  (Edinburgh,  1813),  an  example 
which  might  deserve  imitation. 

Vkk.  189. — His  shaggy  hreast. 

a-T-qOea-aiv  Xaa-ioicri.  (So  again  ii.  851,  and  xvi.  554.)  This 
is  one  of  those  characteristic  words  which  test  the  quality  of  the 
translators  of  Homer.  To  represent  the  hero  of  a  sublime  epic 
poem  as  having  a  rough  breast,  all  shaggy  with  hair,  like  a  New- 
castle coal-heaA'er  or  an  Aberdeen  street-porter,  were  an  offence 
against  all  the  established  laws  of  epic  projiriety.  Therefore  P., 
C.,  and  Soth.  omitted  it ;  and  even  Ch.  turns  the  epithet  into  an 
action,  and  thereby,  losing  no  force,  hides  the  offence  to   dainty 

stomachs — 

"  Thetis'  son  at  this  stood  vext,  Ida  heart 
Bristled  Jds  hosom." 

There  are  other  expressions  in  Homer  of  a  like  nature,  at  which 
the  ultra-refinement  of  our  modern  saloon-gentlemanship  will  sniff 
fastidiously ;  this  may  last  for  a  day ;  but  Nature  and  Homer  are 
strong,  and  will  certainly  triumph  over  all  such  pruderies.  Ario.sto 
was  quite  Homeric  in  such  matters  (0.  F.  xxiii.  1 33). 

XvAi.  11)7. — Seized  his  i/cllfnr  hair. 

This,  not  "  auburn  locks,"  is  the  proper  version,  according  to 
the  analogy  of  ballad  poetry,  of  ^ai/^^s  Ko/u,rjs.  As  to  the  matter, 
the  yellow  hair  of  Achilles  (Pindar,  Netn.  iii.  75),  Menelaus,  and 
Apollo,  is  the  natural  accompaniment  of  youth,  joy,  and  brightness, 
and  is  especially  admired  among  all  those  nations  where,  from  cli- 
matic influences,  it  generally  becomes  a  great  rarity.     As  abeady 


]!0OK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  ]  \) 

stated  under  IAikwi/',  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  ancient 
Greeks  were  generally  dark,  as  the  modern  Greeks,  Italians,  and 
Spaniards  are.  The  golden  hue  of  Titian's  beauties  is  familiar 
to  all  the  world;  Tasso  gives  '' biondo  crine"  to  Clorinda  and 
Armida,  and  Erminia  and  the  angel  Gabriel,  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  ancients  gave  it  to  Apollo ;  and  in  the  Scottish  ballads 
and  songs  the  favourite  hero  is  always  "  a  yellow-haired  laddie." 
So  of  Gil  Morrice,  whose  "  gay  beautie"  is  celebrated,  we  read — 

''  But  when  he  to  the  greenwood  came, 
Naebody  saw  he  there, 
But  Gil  Morrice  sitting  on  a  stane 
Kaiming  his  yellow  hair."' 

Ver.  108. —  Unseen  hij  all  sure  onh/  hitn. 

This  is  a  natural  and  frequently-recurring  trait  in  the  apparition 
of  the  gods.  Every  theophany  is  the  residt  of  a  special  super- 
sensible relation  between  the  mortal  and  the  god,  and  falls  under 
the  same  law  as  the  apparition  of  ghosts,  who  are  not  and  who  can- 
not be  visible  to  any  persons  except  those  with  whom  they  stand  in 
a  certain  spiritual  relationship.  If  it  be  asked  why  Minerva  spe- 
cially appears  at  this  moment  as  the  guardian-angel  of  Achilles,  the 
answer  is  that  Pallas,  as  the  armed  maiden  daughter  of  Jove,  who 
combines  force  with  wisdom,  is  the  natural  guardian  of  all  Jove- 
born  heroes  on  all  great  occasions,  and  as  such  appears  constantly 
in  the  Homeric  poems,  and  behind  Hercules  and  other  heroes  in 
the  painted  vases.  (See  the  Vase  rooms  of  the  British  Museum, 
passim.) 

Ver.  'im.— Pallas. 

The  word  riaAA-a?  is  in  all  probability,  as  Pas.  suggested,  only 
another  form  of  iraXXa^,  which  received  a  peculiar  meaning  in  the 
Latin  pellex.^  and  has  been  confined  to  the  male  sex,  in  the  familiar 
modern  Greek  diminutive  iraXXiKapi.  It  signifies  a  young  person, 
a  maid.     In  Homer,  'AOqvi-)  is  generally  joined  with  it,  of  which  the 

'  Aytoun,  vol.  i.  p.  152. 


20  INOTES  TO  TJIl':  ILlAii.  BOOK  I. 

etymology   is   uncertain.     The  town  of  Athens  likely  derived  its 
name  from  the  shrine  of  the  goddess  in  the  Acropolis. 

A'^KK.  202. — Daughter  of  a-gis-hcuring  Jove. 

That  she  is  the  daughter  of  Jove,  the  only-begotten  offspring  of 
the  supreme,  and  in  the  government  of  tlie  world  in  fact  his  right 
hand,  is  the  special  dignity  of  Minerva.  Hence  her  familiar  epi- 
thet ofSpifj-oTraTpr]  (v.  747),  which  I  have  translated  literally 
"  strong-fathered."  She  alone  of  all  the  gods  was  entitled  to  take 
into  her  hands  the  terrible  thunderbolt  (^sch.  Eum.  790),  and  to 
wear  the  a^gis  (v.  73S),  though  this  latter  was  sometimes  assumed 
by  Apollo  (xviii.  204).  This  divine  shield,  or  more  properly 
goat-skin  slung  across  the  breast  over  the  shield  (Yates  in  Sm. 
D.  A.  cegis),  clad  with  terror,  is  by  the  German  mythologists  and 
philologers  interpreted  as  symbolical  of  "  the  dark-rushing  thunder- 
clouds" of  which  Jove  is  lord  (compare  eVatyt^w,  ii.  148),  the  ety- 
mon being  atcrcrw,  with  which  is  connected  at'^,  a  goat,  a  springing 
or  rushing  animal,  and  the  -^gean  or  rushing  sea ;  and  I  see  no 
reason  to  question  either  the  poetical  beauty  or  the  scientific  accu- 
racy of  the  etymology. 

Ver.  206. — Athene,  goddess  with  the  flashing  eyne. 

The  vulgate  '"  hlue-eyed,"  retained  by  V.,  Drb.,  and  others,  has 
given  way  in  D.  to  "  heUailgig,"  in  Wr.  to  "  bright-eyed,"  in  Glad. 
{Translations,  1861,  p.  81),  to  "  starry-eyed,"  and  edit.  1863  to 
"  flashing- eyed,"  the  very  epithet  on  which,  after  long  considera- 
tion, I  finally  fixed,  and  had  for  many  years  delivered  to  my  stu- 
dents in  public  teaching.  N.  has  "grey-eyed,"  which  Kingsley 
also  in  his  Andromeda  has  stamped  with  an  authority  in  such  mat- 
ters not  to  be  despised.  The  adjective  in  the  word  yXavKuyirt^ 
belongs  to  a  very  widely-extended  family,  of  which  some  of  the 
most  familiar  members  are  the  Greek  Aeucrorw,  the  Latin  hicen.  the 
English  Jook,  the  Sanscrit  Inch,  and  the  Scotch  glaik,  which  has 
retained  the  guttural,  and  comes  in  signification  nearest  to  the  Greek 
yAavKos.      Jamosoii   oxplnins   tlie   Scotch   word   as  a  glance  of  the 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  iM 

eye^  a  reflected  gleam,  or  glance  in  general,  which  is  precisely  tlio 
signification  of  the  adjective  yAavKos,  as  it  will  be  found  deduced 
with  masterly  detail  by  Lucas  in  his  Qucestiones  Lexilog.  (Bonn, 
1835).  That  this  is  the  fundamental  idea  of  the  word  was  perfectly 
well  known  to  the  ancients,  from  whom,  instead  of  many  passages, 
we  may  select  that  most  comprehensive  and  clenching  one  in 
Apollonius  Rhodius,  i.  1280,  where  the  lines  occur — 

"H/ios  5'  ovpavoOev  x^P°''^V  VTroXd/xireTai  tjojs 
Ek  Trepdryjs  dvcova'a,  diayXavaaovat  5' drapTrot, 

on  which  the  scholiast  has  this  remark — '"  The  words  yXavKo^  and 
Xa/DOTTos  are  synonymous ;  both  mean  Aa/x7rpos,  that  is,  bright. 
Whence  also  Minerva  is  called  yXavKWTris,  and  the  pupil  of  the  eye 
is  called  yX-qvr].  Euripides  applied  the  term  yXavK(OTri<s  to  the 
moon."  The  word  ;)(a/307ros,  which  is  here  declared  identical  with 
yAav/cds,  is  frequently  applied  to  lions  and  other  wild  beasts,  which 
have  a  fierce  flare  or  glare  in  their  eye,  as  any  one  may  see  in  a 
common  cat— 

"  Affciinut  the  Capitol  I  met  a  lion, 

Who  GLARED  vpon  me  and  weM  surly  by/''^ 

And  in  Chaucer's  portrait  of  the  Pardoner  we  have — 

"  Suche  glaryng  ejjghtn  hadde  he  rt*  an  hare  ,•" 

and  Homer,  in  fact,  uses  both  words  of  the  king  of  wild  beasts, 
XapoTTot  Aeovres,  in  Od.  XI.  611  ;  and  the  verb  yAavKtow  in  the 
splendid  passage,  xx.  172,  which,  as  Glad,  well  remarks  (iii.  474), 
expresses  "  the  brightening  flash  of  the  eye  under  the  influence  of 
passion." 

So  much  for  the  primitive  and  proper  meaning  of  the  word.  Let 
us  now  see  with  what  special  significance  it  can  be  applied  to 
Pallas  Athene,  and  on  what  principles  we  are  to  convey  this  signi- 
ficance to  the  English  reader.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  denied 
that  yXavKos  does  often  mean  ^^  blue"  ov  "  bluish-green,"  "  glau- 
cons,"  as  the  botanists  say;  but  it  means  this  accidentally  only, 

'  Julius  Ccesur,  Act  i.  Scene  3. 


22  NOTES  TO  TlIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

inasmuch  as  the  peculiar  (/Jan-  <>v  Jhirr  wliich  it  implies  belongs 
naturally  to  light-coloured  eyes,  and  not  to  dark  eyes.  Therefore 
ykavKos,  in  a  famous  passage  of  Aristotle  (De  Gener.  Anim.  v.  1), 
and  elsewhere,  is  opposed  to  iJ-eXas,  and  may  be  translated  "  bine,'' 
or  "  Uuisli-ijrey."  But  in  the  special  case  of  Minerva  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  the  common  rendering,  ''  blue-eyed,''  leads  to  a  con- 
ception of  the  character  of  the  goddess  which  is  fundamentally 
false  ;  and  in  this  case  an  accurate  translator  has  no  alternative. 
For  what  is  the  association  which  the  English  reader  naturally  has 
with  the  epithet  "  blue-eyed,"  whether  applied  to  a  modern  lady  or 
to  a  goddess  ?  Unquestionably  the  idea  of  a  sunny  juvenile  hila- 
rity, or  of  a  deep  thoughtful  mildness,  such  as  may  naturally  belong- 
to  the  goddess  of  wisdom.  Some  idea  of  this  kind  was  floating,  no 
doubt,  in  Dunbar's  mind,  when  he  says  so  positively,  in  the  third 
edition  of  his  Dictionary,  that  it  is  "  altogether  inconsistent  with 
the  character  of  the  goddess  to  translate  yXavKwiris,  as  some  have 
done,  ^fierce-eyed.'  "  But,  though  this  translation  would  be  too 
strong,  it  is  undoubted  that  a  certain  degree  of  fierceness,  or  at 
least  terrible  irresistible  brightness,  very  closely  allied  to  fierceness, 
was  associated  with  the  epithet  yXavKdiris  as  applied  to  Minerva. 
Her  eyes,  in  line  20U,  are  called  Setvw  ;  and  in  a  significant  pas- 
sage in  Lucian  (Dial.  Deor.  Id)  she  is  described  as  cfiojSepa  Kal 
Xc-poirij  Kal  Setvo's  avc5/D(K7j,  "  terrible,  avd  glaring  Itlie  a  lion,  and 
awfully  masculine  ;"  the  word  \apoTTyi  here  used  being,  as  we  have 
seen,  synonymous  with  yAavKo?.  Exactly  to  the  same  efi'ect  is  a 
passage  in  the  eighth  dialogue,  where  Vulcan  describes  the  wonderful 
maiden  whom  he  has  with  his  axe  struck  out  of  the  brain  of  the 
father — "  She  shakes  her  spear,  and  dances  a  war-dance,  and  is  wild 
with  martial  vigour,  but,  most  astonishing  of  all,  she  is  handsome,  and 
full-grown  from  the  very  moment  of  her  birth  ;  and,  though  yXavK- 
wTTts,  yet  even  this  expression  in  her  eye  becomes  a  grace,  from 
the  warlike  helmet  on  her  head.'"  This  method  of  speaking  indi- 
cates distinctly  enough  that,  except  in  a  Avoman  of  masculine  and 
commanding  character,  the  colour  and  expression  of  eye  implied  in 
•yAavKWTTts  was  esteemed  not  at  all  attractive,  but  rather  repulsive. 


i 


r500K  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  23 

There  cannot,  therefore,  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  couunoii 
English  associations  with  the  epithet  "  blue-eyed"  lead  necessarily 
to  a  false  conception  of  the  character  of  the  Athenian  goddess  ; 
though,  independently  of  this  association,  the  mere  blueness  of  the 
eye  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  terrible  glare  which  shot  from  it. 
Anna  Comnena,  in  her  description  of  Bohemond,  Prince  of  Taren- 
tum,  says,  ''  his  eyes  were  blue,  and  full  of  wrath  and  fierceness" 
(Panizzi,  xlriosto,  vol.  i.  p.  17).'     And  a  great  living  novelist,  in  The 
Last  of  the  Barom  (vii.  5),  has  this  sentence  :   ''  Edward  started, 
and  his  eyes  flashed  that  cold  cruel  fire,  which  make  eyes  of  a  light 
colour  so  far  more  expressive  of  terrible  passion  than  the  quicker 
and  warmer  heat  of  dark  orbs."     My  version,   "  flashing-eyed,"  is 
meant  as  a  proper  medium  between  the  fierce  savage  blue  eye  hero 
described  and  the  altogether  innocent  epithet,  "  bright-eyed."     It 
remains  only  to  ask  how  and  why  this  goddess  was  characterized 
by  this  terrible  brilliancy  of  eye,   and  what   connexion   such   an 
expression  has  with  her  mythological  genius  and  character.     On 
this  point  a  very  few  words  will  sufiice.     Minerva,  like   most  of 
the   Greek   gods,  has   a  twofold  significance  :  first,   as   an  imper- 
sonated physical  element ;  second,   as   an   anthropomorphic   spiri- 
tual power  and  agency.     In  the  first  view  I  entirely  agree  with 
Welcker,   in   the   (j.   J.,   that,   as   the   daughter  of  the  cloud-com- 
pelling Jove,  that  is,  of  the  stormy,  energetic,  masculine  element 
of  the    welkin,   she    can    be    nothing   but  the   bright,   clear,   un- 
clouded  phasis   of  the   same,    that   is,   the  celestial  light,  or  the 
empyrean  clearness  in  all  its  A'arieties.     In  this  respect  yAavKWTrts 
washer  fitting  epithet,  just  as  yAavKos  was  applied  to  the  moon. 
As  an  anthropomorphized  spiritual  power,  she  is  the  daughter  of 
supreme  celestial  wisdom  ;  and  as  the  highest  wisdom  is   always 
practical,  and   practice   in  this  world  of  diverse   interests   implies 
struggle,  the  wise  goddess  is  primarily  a  warlike  goddess,  and  the 
highest   type  of  perfect  manly  energy  and  effectiveness.     She  is 
thus  contrasted  with  Mars,  who  is  the  mere  blind  passion  of  indis- 
criminate  hostility.     In   this  character   she   appears   clad  with   a 
divine  power,  and  radiant  with   a  terror  scarcely  inferior  to  that 


24  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAH.  BOOK  I. 

which  encircles  the  presence  of  her  omnipotent  sire.  In  the  Iliad 
she  is  on  the  side  of  the  Greeks  for  the  same  reason  that  Jove  him- 
self is,  at  least  in  the  final  issue,  on  the  same  side.  They  are  the 
superior  party,  by  the  agency  of  whom  divine  providence  is  carry- 
ing out  its  mighty  plan ;  and  the  goddess  of  practical  wi.sdom  can- 
not be  otherwise  than  on  the  side  of  those,  the  wisdom  of  whose 
counsels  is  proved  by  their  success.  On  the  character  of  Pallas 
Athene  generally  much  might  be  said  to  justify  the  highest  eulogies 
of  her  most  devoted  worshippers  (Lucas,  Qucesf.  Lex.  81).  She 
will  almost  bear  a  favourable  comparison  with  the  Virgin  Mary. 
Gladstone  even  exalts  her  into  an  identity  with  the  divine  Aoyo?  of 
the  apostle  John  ;  but  such  analogies  are  slippery,  and  the  histori- 
cal foundation  on  which  they  are  attempted  to  be  raised  fallacious. 
The  altogether  contrary  and  unduly  severe  portraiture  of  this 
goddess  drawn  by  Hayman  (^Od.  App.  E.  4)  will  be  commented  on 
more  fittingly,  xxii.  247. 

Ver.  218. — Whoso  fears  fhe  <jnds  is  toisc,  etc. 

"  Piissima  sententia,'^  said  Professor  Duport,  "if  you  merely 
change  S^eot  into  S-eos."  I  think  it  is  equally  pious  without  the 
change.  Does  piety  depend  on  orthodoxy  ?  Does  the  spirit  of 
John  ix.  31  include  those  only  who  are  within  the  pale  of  a  strictly 
monotheistic  creed  ? 

Ver.  220. — And  in  tlif  scabbard  j^ihimjed  flie  ireiyJitt/  swoi'd. 

I  took  this  "p??mf/ecr'  from  Dryden  ;  and  it  is  beyond  all  ques- 
tion the  best  word  for  the  expressive  were  of  the  original,  being  as 
good  and  a  little  better  than  the  Greek,  as  our  vigorous  monosyl- 
lables not  seldom  are.  On  the  significant  contrast  between  "  glo- 
rious John  "  here,  and  Pope's  "  returned  the  shining  blade  to  its 
sheath,"  see  some  excellent  remarks  by  Leigh  Hunt  (Stories  in 
Verse,  1855,  p.  43).  The  scene  is  represented  in  a  Pompeian  paint- 
ing ;   Overbeck,  Biklwerke,  p.  883,  Plate  xvi.  1. 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  25 

Ver.  234. — Ecen  hy  this  baton. 

A  staiF,  baton,  or  sceptre,  as  we  have  seen  already  in  the  case  of 
the  priest,  was  the  emblem  of  authority  in  the  hands  of  kings,  of 
judges,  of  the  heads  of  tribes,  shepherds,  etc.,  among  all  ancient 
nations.  See  Gesenius  in  voce  t33Bf^  and  the  Hindoo  Prem- 
sagai-j  ch.  28.  But  in  the  present  passage,  as  is  manifest  from 
what  is  said  a  few  lines  below,  the  baton  is  referred  to  not  as  the 
symbol  of  royal  authority  generally,  but  of  that  authority  exer- 
cised in  the  enforcement  of  public  law  and  natural  right,  to  which 
Achilles,  as  an  injured  man,  may  now  with  all  reason  make  his 
appeal.  This  right  of  administering  the  laws  in  the  heroic  times 
belonged  inherently  to  the  kings  (Arist.  Pol.  iii.  14,  Hes.  Tlieog. 
85) ;  and  no  doubt  they  always  retained  this  right  for  the  most 
important  cases  ;  but  inferior  matters  they  in  all  probability  left 
to  be  adjudged  by  inferior  local  authorities,  such  as  the  ylpovrcs, 
or  elders,  in  the  shield  of  Achilles  (xviii.  505),  and  the  SiKao-TroAot 
avSpes  in  this  passage  (ver.  238),  who  are  not  spoken  of  as  if  they 
were  identical  with  the  kings.  It  must  be  further  observed,  that 
the  kings  and  inferior  judges,  as  administrators  of  the  law,  acted 
with  a  solemn  responsibility  as  delegates  of  Jove,  the  supreme 
moral  governor  of  the  universe.  The  ^iK-qs  rccAavra,  or  scales  of 
justice,  belong  specially  to  the  son  of  Kronos  (Hymn.  Henn.  324). 
All  public  assemblies  where  laws  were  made,  were  specially  under 
the  protection  of  Zcvs  ayopalos  {Msg\\.  Eum.  931),  of  whom  Themis 
{Oil.  11.  68),  the  personified  goddess  of  the  ^e/^to-res  (ver.  238  of 
this  passage),  is  the  legitimate  assessor. 

Ver.  250. — Word-moulding. 

Literally  ^^  voice-dividin;/"  ^^articulately-speaking.''  I  owe  my 
compound  to  George  MacDonald,  the  poet  (see  Arnold  On  Trans- 
lating Homer,  p.  89).  To  this  traditional  rendering  oi  fj-epoxp  there 
is  the  objection  that  compound  adjectives  with  this  termination 
almost  always  signify  some  variety  of  looh  or  face,  or  what  we  call 
expression,   from   oTrro/xat,    to    see.      For  this    reason,   Donaldson 


2fi  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

{Neio  Crat.  sec.  95,  uotc),  in  this  agreuiug  with  certain  Germans, 
chooses  to  translate  fxepoij/,  hright,  or  shin imj -faced,  as  if  from 
liap/xaipw.  a  reduplicated  root.  But  such  fancies  have  no  scientific 
value.  Besides,  the  contrast  between  black  and  bright  men.  as- 
sumed by  Donaldson,  is  not  indicated  by  Homer ;  and  a  wise  man 
in  such  cases  will  prefer  to  stand  on  the  Alexandrian  tradition, 
which  shows  at  least  how  the  Greeks  understood  the  phrase.  A 
received  interpretation  is  alw^ays  a  historical  fact ;  an  ingenious 
conjecture  is  nothing  at  all. 

Ver.  203. — Centaurs  and  Lapitlia:\ 

The  Lapithaj  and  the  Centaurs  belong  to  that  dim  borderland 
l^etweeu  mythology  and  history,  where  nothing  is  more  difficult 
than  to  declare  certainly  whether  any  huge  mass  looming  in  the 
distance  be  a  mountain  or  a  cloud.  In  this  region  the  interpreters 
of  fantastic  old  tradition  have  followed  two  opposite  methods  of 
interpretation,  as  their  natural  genius  or  acquired  tendencies  may 
have  led  them  to  favour  the  significance  of  idealistic  conception,  or 
the  distinctness  of  terrestrial  fact.  To  the  former,  the  Centaurs, 
with  their  shaggy  exterior,  and  their  wild,  unruly,  boisterous 
nature,  naturally  aj^pear  as  personifications  of  mountain-torrents 
rushing  violently  down  into  the  fertile  plain  from  the  land  of 
clouds,  where  they  had  their  birth.  So  Prell.  {3Iyth.  vol.  ii.  p.  13), 
who  (juotes  Virgil  (JEn.  vii.  674)  as  evidently  harmonizing  with 
this  idea.  To  the  other  class  of  interpreters  the  Centaurs  are 
merely  men  metamorphosed  into  monsters  by  that  active  fancy 
which  always  finds  its  favourite  field  in  the  region  of  earliest  and 
least  authenticated  tradition.  "  The  Lapitha?,"'  says  Duncker, 
[Gesch.  des  Alt.  vol.  iii.  p.  63),  '  were  inhabitants  of  the  Thessalian 
plain  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  ancient  Larissa,  who  had  to 
maintain  their  ground  and  protect  their  cornfields  against  the  pre- 
datory inhabitants  of  the  mountains,  the  dwellers  on  the  southern 
slopes  of  Olympus,  the  Dorians,  the  men  of  Ossa  and  Pelion,  the 
Centaurs,  the  shaggy  mountain-haunting  wild  beasts,  as  Iloniei- 
describes  them."     Between  these  two  views  it  will  always  be,  in 


BOOK  1.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  27 

many  cases,  impossible  to  mediate.  Tn  the  present  case,  however, 
I  must  say  that  the  traditions  which  connect  the  Lapithaj  with 
Theseus  and  Attica  (see  Suidas,  Trept^otSat,  and  Steph.  Byz. 
(^lAaiSat)  give  to  that  people  at  least  a  decidedly  historical  aspect. 
Whether  the  Centaurs  may  not  be  something  more  than  the  exag- 
gerated expression  of  primeval  horsemanship  practised  by  the  wild 
moss-troopers  of  Pelasgic  Thessaly,  may  for  ever  remain  undecided. 
Certain  it  is  that,  whatever  their  origin  might  be,  they  were  after- 
w^ards  elevated  by  the  Greek  imagination  into  a  perfect  kinship 
with  the  Satyrs,  Pans,  and  other  prick-eared  followers  of  the  wine- 
loving  Dionysus.  Their  connexion,  through  the  Lapithse,  with 
Theseus,  brought  them  prominently  into  Attic  legend,  from  which 
they  were  transferred  to  Attic  sculpture,  of  which  the  decorations 
of  the  temple  of  Theseus,  the  Parthenon,  and  the  Phigalian  marbles, 
are  instances  to  the  present  hour.  With  regard  to  Homer  him- 
self, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  looked  on  the  Lapith;\3  at  least 
as  substantial  men  in  every  respect,  as  nuich  as  Ajax  and  Aga- 
memnon (ii.  740,  XII.  129) ;  and  nothing  would  have  astonished 
him  more  than  the  transcendental  idea  of  Uschold  (^Vorhalle,  vol.  i. 
p.  64),  that  Peirithoos,  the  chief  of  the  Lapithae,  and  Eurytion  the 
Centaur,  were  originally  only  diiferent  epithets  of  one  and  the 
same  god,  afterwards  degraded  into  solid  men  and  hostile  kings 
by  the  materializing  stupidity  of  the  popular  imagination.  Miiller 
(Orcliom.  p.  191)  is  no  less  rational  than  erudite  and  ingenious  on 
the  Lapithfe,  whom  he  holds  to  be  a  sturdy  Thessalian  race,  closely 
allied  to,  perhaps  identical  with,  the  Phlegyte,  and  these  again 
only  a  warlike  section  of  the  famous  commercial  race  of  the  Min- 
yans  of  Orchomenos. 

V^ER.  265. — Qrjtrea  r   AlyetS-qv  CTrtetKeAov  a6avaroi<TLi\ 

"  Hie  versus  a  jjlerisque  iwohatis  libris  ahest :  neque  eum  ulhis 
scholiastes  nee  Eustathius  usquam  agnoscit,  ut  sero  adscriptum  jmtes 
ex  scuto  Herculis,  182"  (Wolf,  ProJegom.  p.  xxvii.)  No  doubt, 
as  Heyne  remarks,  it  is  quoted  by  Chrysostom  (Or.  lvii.  ) ;  but  the 
silence  of  the  scholiasts  on   a  point  of  this  kind,  on  which  they 


28  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

could  not  fail  to  have  enlarged,  is  sufficient  to  throw  discredit  on 
the  line.  The  fact  is  that  Theseus,  the  favourite  hero  of  the  Athe- 
nians, has  no  position  in  the  Iliad,  and  is  mentioned  only  once  inci- 
dentally in  Od.  XI.  322.  In  the  catalogue  (ii.  546,  Plut.  Cim.  7), 
where  the  Athenian  forces  are  recounted,  it  is  not  the  great  national 
hero,  but  Menestheus,  the  son  of  Peteus,  who  commands  them. 
The  temptation  to  interpolate  here,  springing  from  the  national 
vanity  of  the  Athenians,  was  great,  and  has  no  doubt  been  exer- 
cised.    My  version,  therefore,  does  not  acknowledge  the  line. 

Ver.  270. — From  Pi/IuSj  from  a  diatant  land. 

Br.,Wr.,  Glad.,  and  N.,  translate  i^dTrirjs  yacrjs^  '■•from  the  Apian 
land"  or  the  land  of  Apis,  i.e.,  the  Peloponnesus,  so  called  from  a 
famous  old  physician  of  that  name  (^sch.  Sujjpl.  265  ;  Theoc. 
XXV.  183).  But  the  application  of  this  old  physician's  name  to  the 
Homeric  adjective  a/rios  is  demonstrably  false.  The  authority  of 
Homer  himself  is  sufficient  to  settle  this  point,  for  the  very  phrase, 
TvjAd^ev  e^  aTr/rjs  yat'Tys  occurs  twice  {Od.  xvi.  18,  and  Vll.  25)  in  a 
connexion  where,  to  make  it  signify  the  Peloponnesus,  would  be  to 
produce  utter  nonsense.  As  little  can  this  phrase  signify  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus in  the  well-known  passage  of  Sophocles  {0.  C.  1685),  ttcSs 
yap  7/  TLv  airlav  yav  tj  ttovtlov  kA.tjS(ov'  aXw/j-evai.  Add  to  this 
that  Strabo  (371)  says  distinctly  that  airtos  in  Homer  is  simply 
TToppw;  with  whom  Hesy.  and  theVen.schol.,  A.,audB.,agree,  as  also 
Apollonius,  who,  with  the  decision  of  a  man  who  knows  the  truth, 
says,  that  the  notion  of  applying  aTrcos  to  the  Peloponnesus  was 
KttKcos,  in  fact,  only  a  fancy  of  the  more  modern  commentators, 
of  whose  style  of  erudite  drivelling  we  have  a  fair  specimen  in  the 
jE.  M.,  under  this  very  word.  The  fact  is,  that  learned  men  are 
peculiarly  liable  to  a  disease  of  judgment  which  leads  them  to  pre- 
fer what  is  recondite  to  what  is  true ;  and  as  anybody  might  at  once 
imagine  that  aTrtos  meant  distant,  while  only  a  learned  man  could 
know  anything  about  an  antediluvian  old  physician  called  Apis, 
the  interpretation  of  the  word  in  Homer  the  most  remote  from 
vulgar  apprehension  was  preferred.     Some  interpreters  also  may 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  29 

have  been  moved  by  the  tautology  of  the  phrase  Ty]\6dev  e£  aTriTjs ; 
but  tautology  is  characteristic  of  Homer,  and  in  all  languages, 
means,  in  many  cases,  only  the  superlative  degree. 

It  has  only  to  be  mentioned  farther  that  the  fii'st  syllable  of  the 
name  of  the  physician  ""ATrts,  and  the  adjectival  form  derived  from 
it  when  applied  to  the  Peloponnesus,  is  always  long,  whereas  in 
Homer  the  antepenult  of  aTrtos  is  short.  If  this  proof  is  not  com- 
plete, there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  compass  of  philological  research 
that  can  deserve  the  name  of  science. 

Ver.  272. — As  men  noiv  are. 

ot  vvv  (3poTol  el(Tiv.  This  frequently  recurring  formula  in  Homer 
(see  XII.  383,  and  elsewhere)  deserves  to  be  noted,  as  indicating 
that  the  bard  considered  himself  as  living  in  an  age  considerably 
removed  in  point  of  time  from  the  heroes  whose  deeds  he  celebrated. 
The  desire  to  represent  the  men  of  former  ages  as  giants  in  com- 
parison with  the  puny  mannikins  of  the  present  day,  is  natural  to  the 
human  heart,  and  thence  easily  finds  its  way  into  all  popular  poetry. 
Sometimes  this  desire  feeds  upon  piu-e  conceits,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  devout  imaginations  in  which  Puseyites  and  other  retrospective 
sentimentalists  indulge  with  regard  to  the  supreme  blessedness  of 
the  middle  ages ;  but  sometimes  also,  no  doubt,  this  natural  ten- 
dency finds  only  too  much  real  food  to  feast  on,  as  in  all  ages  of 
decadence  and  over-refinement.  In  Homer's  time,  though  the 
human  frame  was  still  sturdy  and  vigorous,  and  a  divine  hero  might 
show  a  "shaggy  breast''  without  offence,  yet  refinement  on  the 
luxuriant  coast  of  Asia  Minor  might  have  proceeded  so  far  as  to 
warrant  a  feeling  that  former  generations  of  men  were  more  dis- 
tinguished for  muscle,  and  all  feats  of  bodily  strength.  It  is  impos- 
sible, however,  to  say  exactly  what  period  of  time  may,  under 
different  circumstances,  be  necessary  for  the  growth  of  a  popular 
impression  of  this  kind.  In  Scotland,  at  the  present  day,  it  might 
most  justly  be  said,  with  regard  to  the  capacity  for  drinking,  that 
a  moderate  toper  fifty  years  ago,  in  the  days  so  ably  described  in 
Lord  Cockburn's  Memoirs,  could,  without  the  slightest  injury  to 


30  NOTES  TO   Jill':  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

his  health,  (h'ink  twicu;  or  thrice,  or  even  four  times  as  much,  as 
any  wine-bibbor,  0^01  vvi/  jSporoi  elaiv,  such  as  wine-bibbers  now 
are.  Compare  Ghid.  (i.  37),  who  agrees  with  me  in  refusing  to  be- 
lieve, with  Veil.  Pat.  (i.  5),  that  the  phrase  implies  a  long  interval. 

Veil  303. — Thy  j^urj^Je  life-streaiu  jhni\ 

— in  the  original,  KtXaivov,  hlack  or  darl\  which  I  changed  into 
jmrple  only  for  the  sake  of  the  rhythm ;  and  I  note  the  point 
merely  to  show  how  little  the  Homeric  epithets,  unlike  our  modern 
ones,  were  generally  attached  to  words,  with  any  special  regard  to 
their  propriety  at  the  particular  place  where  they  are  used.  Here 
it  is  manifestly  most  unsuitable  to  call  blood  "black,"  or  even 
"  dark,"  at  the  very  moment  when  it  is  streaming  out  from  the 
spear-point  infixed  in  the  body.  But  tlie  phrase  black  or  dark 
blood  had  evidently  become  a  commonplace,  like  "  the  swift-footed 
Achilles,"  which  the  poet  might  use  as  a  whole,  without  meaning 
more  than  the  simple  word  at/xa  would  have  implied.  The  reader 
may  note  here,  that,  though  in  my  translation  I  make  ample  use  of 
epithets,  I  allow  myself  Homer's  own  license  of  using  them  pro- 
miscuously, as  the  mvisic  of  the  line  may  demand,  knowing  that 
they  have  no  value  in  reference  to  the  special  passage  where  they 
occur. 

Vbr.  313. — TJien  Agamemnon  kivrj  <'h joined  the  host  In  make  ablution. 

The  Greeks  used  lustration  at  all  sacrifices,  after  evil  dreams 
(..^sch.  Peru.  203;  Ar.  Ran.  1338),  and  on  other  occasions 
(Soph.  4/«x,  655;  Eurip.  /y*A/r/.  Taur.  1160;  Paus.  viii.  41-2). 
Here  manifestly  there  is  a  general  purification  or  cleansing  of  the 
host  from  the  guilt  which  Agamemnon  had  incurred  against  Apollo 
(see  Nag.  Horn.  TheoJ.  p.  305).  A  similar  KadapfMus.  or  general 
religious  purification  of  the  army,  is  mentioned  by  Xenophon  in  the 
Anab.  (v.  7.  35.)  In  Cromwell's  time  there  would  have  been  a  fast- 
day  and  a  preaching.  That  the  Jews  sometimes  used  water  in  the 
same  way  is  obvious  from  1  Sam.  vii.  6. 


]!OOK'  I.  NUTKS  TO  THE  ILIAD.  31 

Ver.  316. — Tlw  waste  unfertile  sea. 

dAus  drpvyeToio — literally,  tlie  sea  from  which  there  is  no  vintage^ 
fnnn  whicii  no  harvest  can  be  gathered  ;  au  epithet,  having  so  direct 
a  reference  to  the  wants  of  ''food-eating  mortals,"  that  one  would 
almost  think  a  farmer  had  made  it,  not  a  poet.  On  this  utilitarian 
element  in  Homer,  see  Dissertations,  p.  14S.  So  Pindar  of  the  air 
((}J.  I.  10). 

Ver.  334. — Hail  messengers  (f  gods  and  men,  hrave  heralds! 

The  office  and  dignity  of  heralds,  KTjpvKes  {criet-s,  from  yqpvo). 
to  speak  or  cri/  out),  in  Homer  is  very  high,  and  there  is  no  passage 
in  which  the  respect  paid  to  them  appears  so  gracefully  as  in  that 
which  is  now  before  us.  Glad.  (iii.  48)  is  quite  right  in  saying  that 
Achilles  here  and  on  similar  occasions  (ix.  197)  comports  himself 
as  much  according  to  our  idea  of  "  a  gentleman"  as  it  was  possible 
for  a  Homeric  liero  with  such  a  free  range  of  tongue  to  do.  Only 
on  the  present  occasion,  the  politeness,  no  doubt,  proceeds  less  from 
the  character  of  the  man  than  from  the  universal  respect  paid  to 
the  functionaries  whom  he  addresses.  These  officers  were  peculiarly 
under  the  patronage  of  Jove  as  supreme,  and  Hermes  as  the  herald 
of  the  gods  (Jllsch.  Again.  498) ;  and  Plato,  in  the  Lav)s  (941  a), 
enacts,  that  if  any  herald  should,  by  giving  false  messages,  or  other- 
wise, abuse  his  sacred  trust,  an  indictment  shall  lie  against  him,  "  as 
having  acted  impiously,  and  contrary  to  law,  against  the  ordinances 
of  Mercury  and  of  Jove."  In  Homer,  the  heralds  perform  various 
functions,  both  of  a  private  and  public  nature.  They  act  as  butlers 
and  waiters  at  table,  and  as  masters  of  ceremonies  or  stewards 
{Od.  I.  109,  153);  as  grooms  or  equerries  (xxiv.  282).  They 
attend  the  dyopd,  or  public  assembly,  and  keep  order  there  (ii.  50, 
90).  and  perform  similar  duties  at  public  worship  (ix.  170). 

Ver.  350. — The  purple  tide. 

oLvoira  Tvoi'Tov — -literally,  "wine-faced,"  or  ''looking  like  wine." 
With  reference  to  the  various  reading,  dirdpova,  Sp.  says — "  Quid 


32  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

Aristarchnm  impulerit  nt  Itt'  uTreipova  anteferret  nan  video.  Vul- 
f/afum  eniiii  iiun  hvic.  loco  (iptum  esl,  turn  Homero  perquam  fami- 
liare,  airetpova  ttovtov  seiael  tantum  in  Od.  iv.  510  h-fjitiifj"  with 
which  I  agree.  As  to  the  colom*  here  attributed  to  the  sea,  a 
sensible  man  need  scarcely  be  reminded  that  the  colour  of  the  sea 
varies  constantly  with  its  depth,  with  the  play  of  light  and  shade, 
and  with  the  quality  of  its  bottom.  Generally  in  Homer  the  various 
living  play  of  colour  is  described,  not  specimens  on  a  pattern-sheet. 
On  this  subject,  Glad.  (iii.  490)  is  excellent. 

Ver.  357. — His  mother  with  quick  ear  his  plaint  did  gather. 

The  mother  of  Achilles  is  the  sea-goddess  Thetis,  the  daughter 
of  Nereus,  "the  hoary  old  man  of  the  sea,"  and  '"  the  beautiful- 
haired  Doris,  the  daughter  of  Ocean,"  "  the  perfect  river,"  as  Hes. 
has  it  (Theog.  242).  Like  all  the  sea-goddesses,  she  is  very  beauti- 
ful— for  what  is  more  lovely  than  the  sun-lit  waves  of  ocean  ? — and 
is  called  by  Catullus  ^^ pulcherrima  Neptunina  ;"  for  Neptune,  who 
took  the  place  of  Oceanus,  was  her  grandfather.  Her  common 
epithet  in  Homer  is  dpyvpoire^a,  silver-footed,  or  it  may  be,  silver- 
shooned,  or  silver-sandalled,,  of  course  referring  to  the  beautiful  tips 
of  the  foam-crested  waves.  Her  connexion  with  the  other  gods 
is  very  intimate,  and  she  is  recorded  to  have  placed  several  of  them 
under  great  obligations,  as  Jupiter  (396,  infra),  and  Dionysus  (vi. 
135),  and  Vulcan  (xviii.  394).  Her  marriage  with  the  hero 
Peleus,  from  which  union  Achilles  sprang,  is  one  of  the  best  known 
of  the  Thessalian  legends,  and  has  been  celebrated  in  a  well-known 
poem  by  Catullus.  She  was  worshipped  principally  in  the  GcTtSetov, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Enipeus,  near  Pharsalus  (schol.  Pindar,  Nem. 
IV.  81,  Eurip.  Androm.  19);   also  in  Messenia  (Pans.  iii.  14.  4). 

YvAX.  306. — To  sacred  Thebes  ice  niarchid. 

The  position  of  this  town,  the  capital  of  the  rich  plain  of  the 
same  name,  is  well  known  from  its  being  described  both  in  the 
famous  march  of  Xerxes  (Herod,  vii.  42),  and  in  that  of  Xenophon, 
in  the  last  act  of  his  famous  expedition  (Avnli.  vri.  8.  7).      It  lies 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  33 

in  the  vicinity  of  Adramyttium,  at  the  head  of  the  bay  of  the  same 
name,  to  the  north-east  of  Antandrus,  under  a  mountain  called 
Placos.  The  people  were  a  Cilician  tribe  (vi.  396).  It  belongs 
therefore  to  the  same  district  as  Cilia  and  Chryse.  (Above,  ver. 
38.     See  also  xxii.  479,  and  Str.  xiii.  612). 

Ver.  371. — The  Greeks  well  caned  in  co2'>per  mail. 

XaA/coxtTcovts — copper-coated^  a  very  common  epithet  of  the 
Greek  soldiers  in  the  Iliad ;  in  reference  to  which  the  question  is 
forced  on  us,  what  this  x°-^k^'^  really  was,  whether  simple  coppek, 
as  I  translate  it  in  this  passage,  or  an  alloy,  such  as  brass.  Now, 
there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  original  meaning  of 
XaAKo's  is  copjper,  for,  if  it  does  not  mean  copper,  there  is  no  word 
for  this  metal  in  the  Greek  language.  But,  in  ftict,  x«^'<os  is 
always  spoken  of,  both  in  Homer  (xviii.  474)  and  elsewhere,  as  a 
simple  metal,  along  with  other  simple  metals ;  and  in  ix.  365,  the 
poet  gives  it  distinctly  that  epithet  (epvOpos)  which  belongs  to  pure 
copper.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  also,  that  among  the  most 
ancient  nations,  copp)er  and  gold  were  two  of  the  most  abundant 
metals  (Herod,  i.  215),  the  most  easily  worked,  often  found  in  their 
virgin  state,  and  therefore  generally  used  for  purposes  to  which  the 
more  perfect  metallurgy  of  future  times  enabled  men  to  apply  iron. 
This  fact,  well  known  to  the  ancients,  Lucretius  (v.  1285)  repeats 
after  Hesiod  (Op.  151)— 

XaXKcS  5'  dpyd^ovTO'  /xeXas  5"  ovk  ^aKe  aidrjpos, 
for  which  reason  the  word  xa^Keus,  which  properly  signifies  a  copper- 
smith, was  afterwards  used  to  signify  a  smith  generally.  There  seems, 
however,  amongst  translators,  to  have  been  a  general  tendency  to  trans- 
late the  word  xaA,Kos  by  brass  rather  than  by  copper  (see  Judg.  xvi. 
21,  1  Kings  iv.  13,  and  Ges.  in  voce  nB'ra),  perhaps  to  bring  out 
the  idea  of  hardness,  on  which  principle,  indeed,  I  have  often  used 
the  word  hrass  in  this  translation.  But  there  is  something  charac- 
teristic in  this  early  and  general  use  of  copper,  which  it  is  not  at 
all  right  to  conceal  from  an  intelligent  reader.  Who,  for  instance, 
would  wish  to  change  copper  into  hrass  in  the  following  extract  from 
VOL.  IV.  C 


.'U  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

Earth's  Travels  in  Africa,  which  I  take  from  the  Edinhurgh  Review, 
April  1859,  p.  345 : — ''  At  Agades,  the  most  important  town  of 
Eastern  Negroland,  the  traveller  was  accosted  by  two  horsemen, 
well  dressed  and  mounted,  with  stirrups  and  bridle  ornaments  of 
copper y  So  much  for  the  propriety  of  translation.  With  regard 
to  the  fact,  it  may  still  remain  doubtful  whether  the  Greeks  in 
Homer's  time,  when  considerable  advances  in  metallurgy  had  been 
made,  did  not  actually  use  their  copper  with  a  certain  amount  of 
alloy,  and  yet  retain  for  the  compound  the  name  which,  in  strict- 
ness, belonged  only  to  the  predominant  metal.  But  whether  this 
be  so  or  not,  it  is  quite  certain  that  ancient  wi-iters  talk  of  harden- 
ing copper  by  some  process,  so  as  to  make  it  as  serviceable  as  iron 
(Eust.  B.  I.  236  ;  and  Proclus,  on  the  passage  of  Hesiod  just  quoted, 
Siol  Tivos  j3a(firj'S  Tov  xaX.Kov  crre/apoTrotoiJVTes  ovra  (jiVirei  fiaXaKOV ; 
both  passages  quoted  by  Millin  in  his  Mineralogie  Homeriqtie, 
Paris,  1816,  p.  129,  to  whose  work  I  refer  the  student  generally  ; 
as  also  to  Goguet's  Origin  of  Laivs,  Arts,  and  Sciences,  Edinburgh, 
1761,  B.  II.  ch.  4).  I  have  only  further  to  remark,  that  the  word 
pdiTTOj,  used  in  reference  to  this  matter  both  by  Eustathius  and 
Proclus,  ought  to  remove  all  difficulty  fi-om  a  much-bespoken  passage 
in  iEschylus  (Agam.  595),  which  I  confess,  in  common  with  many 
others,  to  have  misunderstood  and  mistranslated,  where  Clytem- 
nestra  says  simply,  "  Of  other  men  I  know  no  more  than  I  know  of 
the  art  of  dipping  and  hardening  coppjer  ;^'  that  is,  I  am  as  ignorant 
of  the  one  as  of  the  other.  See  likewise,  on  the  prevalence  of  copper 
in  early  metallurgy,  Mommsen,  Rom.  Ges.  vol.  i.  p.  179  ;  and 
Bischoff,  das  Kupfer  und  seine  Legirungen,  Berlin,  1865. 

Ver.  399. 

What  time  the  Oli/mpians  did  conspire  his  puissant  strength  to  hind. 

Here  we  have  a  remarkable  instance  of  those  wars  among  the 
gods,  which  gave  such  offence  to  Plato  {Rep.  ii.  378  b),  which  are 
so  prominent  in  the  Iliad  (xx.  xxi.),  but  which,  perhaps,  reach 
their  climax  in  this  very  singular  passage ;  for  in  no  other  part  of 
this  poem  docs  there  appear  any  indication  of  an  actual  rebellion 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAlJ.  35 

of  the  other  gods  against  Jupiter  ;   the  claims  of  Neptune  in  Book 
XIII.  being  brought  forward  only,  as  it  would  appear,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  being  set  aside.     We  have,  in  fact,  in  the  present  story,  a 
very  old,  probably  Pelasgic,  legend,  relating  to  an  antediluvian  age, 
before  the  dynasty  of  Jove  was  finally  established.     The  familiar 
legend  of  Prometheus  is  a  fragment  from  the  massive  blocks  of  the 
same  period. ^     What  are  we  to  make  of  these  stories?     To  answer 
this  question,  we  must  bear   in   mind   that   strifes   and  struggles, 
battles,  victories,  and  defeats  among  the  gods  are  nothing  peculiar 
to  Greek  mythology,  but  are  found  among  the  ancient  Egyptians 
(see  Plutarch's  Isis  and  Osiris,  passim),  and  among  the  modern 
Hindus  (see  the  Vishnu  Purana  ;  Wilson,  ch.  ix.)     In  explaining 
these  legends,  some  people  have  supposed  that  they  are  the  mythi- 
cal embodiments  of  actual  physical  revolutions,  a  theory  likely  to 
find  special  favour  with  the  amateurs  of  the  now  so  fashionable 
science  of  geology,  and  which  has  accordingly  found  a  sturdy  and 
thoroughgoing  champion  in  Forchhammer  ;  and  to  a  certain  extent, 
no  doubt,  it  is  true,  in  so  far  as  myths  about  giants  and  Titans ' 
are  often  found  connected  with  districts  where  certain  violent  powers 
of  subterranean  heat  were  in  ancient  times  (Pans.  viii.  29.  1,  2  ; 
Dodwell's  Greece,  ii.  p.  380),  or  are  even  now  in  action,  as  that  of 
Typhon    with    Cilicia.     Such    ideas    of  physical    revolutions    are 
recognised  in  certain  myths  also  by  Miiller  (Prolecj.  77),  as  they 
had  been  by  Heyne  before  him  {ad  Apollodor.  init.)    These  legends, 
so  long  as  they  have  a  well-marked  volcanic  locality,  may,  with 
Welcker,  be  considered  as  "  e in  Bild  wilder  Krd/te  imNaturreich." 
Another  class  of  minds  may  be  inclined  to  consider  the  wars  of  the 
gods  as  only  the  transplanting  to  a  celestial  stage  of  certain  religious 
contests  in  which  their  worshippers  were  engaged  below ;  as  if,  for 
instance,  the  Reformation  of  religion  in  the  sixteenth  century  were 
represented  as  a  war  in  heaven  between  the  Father,  the  Son,  and 
the  Holy  Ghost  on  the  one  side,  and  the  Virgin  Mary,  with  the 

'  "  Ledottrine  Giapetiche  contengono  i  vestigi  di  un  cidto  piu  antico  in  parte 
distrutto,  e  in  parte  conservato  da  esse,  e  quindi  di  vn  sincretismo  hieratico 
fra  due  diversi  sijsfemi." — Gioberti,  del  Buono,  iv. 


3G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

saints  on  the  other.  Thus  a  religious  revolution  below  wovild 
appear  as  a  change  of  dynasty  above.  That  this  theory  should  not 
be  allowed  to  fall  out  of  view  seems  quite  plain ;  but,  so  far  as 
Greece  is  concerned,  on  account  of  the  lack  of  early  historical 
record,  we  can  make  little  practical  use  of  it.  A  third  theory 
which  I  will  now  propose,  without  excluding  the  other  two,  takes  a 
much  wider  range.  Strife  in  one  form  or  another — opposition — 
collision — hostility — war — is  a  phenomenon  of  such  universal  pre- 
sentation in  the  world,  that  almost  all  theological  speculations  have 
in  some  form  or  other  been  forced  to  admit  it.  If  fire  fights  with 
water,  heat  with  cold,  winter  with  summer,  light  with  darkness, 
love  with  hatred,  and  not  only  all  sorts  of  wild  animals  with  one 
another,  but  every  nation  regularly  with  its  neighbour,  a  poly- 
theistic religion,  which  assmnes  a  separate  god  for  every  separate 
power,  must  suppose  the  heaven  to  be  as  full  of  wars  as  the  earth ; 
for  as  is  the  efi"ect,  so  must  be  the  cause.  The  gods,  therefore,  as 
representing  opposite  energies,  are  natm-ally  always  at  war.  But 
as  this  state  of  things,  if  allowed  to  go  on  without  check,  could 
continue  only  through  mutual  destruction,  and  end  in  utter  anni- 
hilation, the  strong  conservative  power  which  manifestly  rules  the 
world  is  always  conceived  as  superior  to  the  elements  of  strife  ;  and 
this  power  is  represented  in  G-reek  mythology  by  the  sovereignty 
of  the  legitimate  lord  of  heaven,  viz.,  Jove.  Against  him,  espe- 
cially in  the  green  age  of  the  world,  the  other  gods,  or  a  part  of 
them,  may  indeed  be  conceived,  as  in  the  present  passage,  to  rebel, 
but  they  cannot  possibly  overcome  him.  The  feeling  of  a  divine 
order  of  things  is  too  deeply  seated  in  the  human  mind  to  allow  of 
that;  even  against  such  a  powerful  coalition  as  Here,  Poseidon, 
and  Pallas  Athene,  Jupiter  will  as  surely  triumph  as  the  eternal 
Father  of  all  triumphs  against  Lucifer  and  his  angels  in  the  empy- 
rean battles  of  Paradise  Lost.  It  was  this  pious  conviction  which 
kept  the  Athenian  audience  quite  easy,  when,  in  the  play  of 
/Eschylus,  the  Titan  flouted  tlic  Thunderer  with  such  proud  words 
of  impious  defiance.  They  felt  that  the  dethronement  of  Jove  was 
a  thing  to  be  talked  about,  but  not  to  be   achieved.     This  is  the 


BOOK  r.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  37 

general  view  which  I  am  inclined  to  take  of  these  strifes  of  the 
gods ;  and  to  specialize  further  in  the  present  instance  would  not 
lead  to  much.  Briareus  is  evidently  a  water-giant,  or  the  power  of 
water,  called  by  a  sea-goddess  to  co-operate  with  the  lord  of  the 
watery  sky,  in  order  to  save  the  system  of  things  from  comailsion. 
The  name  by  which  he  is  known  among  the  gods  signifies  the 
strong  one,  from  fipiau),  (Spvw,  while  his  earthly  name  Aiyatwv,  as 
above  remarked  (165),  signifies  the  rusher,  a  most  appropriate 
name  for  a  water-god.  He,  with  his  two  brothers,  Gyes  and 
Cottos,  are  represented  by  ApoUodorus  (i.  1)  as  the  oldest  progeny 
of  Uranus  and  Gee.  No  wonder,  therefore,  he  was  strong,  if  the 
eternal  Heavens  and  the  ficrm-seated  Earth  were  his  parents.  He 
was,  in  fact,  by  a  whole  generation,  nearer  to  the  eternal  great 
unknown  source  of  all  power,  both  human  and  divine,  than  Jupiter 
himself. 

Ver.  424. — With  blameless  JEthiojJ  men. 

In  this  remarkable  connexion,  as  living  in  a  special  relationship 
to  the  gods,  the  Ethiopians  are  mentioned  several  times  in  Homer. 
So  particularly  Od.  i.  22  (where  see  Nitzsch  and  Hayman).  Here 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  these  Ethiopians,  like  Virgil's  Morini  (JS"?;. 
VIII.  727),  are  represented,  and  in  xiii.  205,  as  living  at  the  end  of 
the  world — "  ecrxaTOi  dvSpwv."  But  as  the  Morini  of  the  Roman 
poet,  though  called  the  "  extrenit  homimim,^'  were  no  farther  ofi'than 
Picardy — the  geogi-aphical  ideas  of  the  ancients  being  limited, — so 
we  are  not  to  seek  for  the  Ethiopians  in  any  district  more  remote 
than  where  they  were  afterwards  found,  viz.,  in  the  innuediate 
neighbourhood  of  Egypt  and  the  Red  Sea.  Homer,  in  fact,  him- 
self (Od.  IV.  84)  mentions  them  in  a  connexion  which  shows  that 
they  are  to  be  sought  for  at  no  very  remote  distance,  according  to 
our  ideas,  fi-om  his  own  fatherland,  Smyrna  : — 

"  To  Cyprus  and  Phoenicia  then,  and  the  Egyptian  land, 
I  came,  to  the  far  Ethiop  men,  and  the  Sidonian  strand. 
To  the  Eremhians,  and  to  Libya,  where  the  ripening  ray 
Makes  little  white-fleeced  lambs  full  soon  the  lusty  horn  di.splay." 


38  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

And  when  Neptune,  in  the  Odyssey  (v.  283),  on  his  return  from 
the  Ethiopians,  passes  behind  the  Solymi,  it  is  just  the  very  route 
which  a  bird  would  take,  flying  from  the  shores  of  the  Red  Sea  in 
a  north-westerly  direction  towards  Troy  and  the  Black  Sea.  All 
this  agrees  exactly  with  the  notices  of  this  people  given  afterwards 
by  historical  writers  ;  as  by  Herod,  (in.  17,  iv.  197).  Strabo,  be- 
sides the  civilized  Ethiopians  in  the  kingdom  of  Meroe,  enume- 
rates a  great  number  of  savage  or  semi-savage  tribes,  so  named, 
on  the  west  coast  of  the  Red  Sea,  under  the  curious  names  of 
Fish-eaters,  Root-eaters,  Osfrich-eaiers,  Locust-eaters,  Tiirtle-eaters, 
Dog-miUiers,  and  3Iarsh-men  ;  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point, 
distinctly  mentions  the  other  great  section  of  the  Ethiopians  to 
the  west  of  Egypt,  beside  the  Lotus-eaters  ;  ol  {rrrep  rrjs  Mavpov- 

(TtaS    OLKOVVTi?    TTpO?     TOtS    IcTTTeptOtS     AlOloxft    A(DTO(f>dyOL     (ill.     157, 

II.  120).  As  for  the  remarkable  partiality  which  the  gods  are  re- 
presented as  having  cherished  for  this  people,  we  can  only  say  that 
"  far  birds  have  fair  feathers,"  and  men  have  always  been  in  the 
habit  of  painting  some  race  of  people  at  a  very  remote  distance  in 
time  or  space,  as  more  holy,  and  therefore  more  near  to  the  gods 
than  ourselves,  and  the  very  imperfect  creatm*es  with  whom  we 
hold  daily  intercourse.  Pausanias  (viii.  2)  says  that  "  the  most 
ancient  men  who  lived  in  Arcadia  had  the  gods  for  guests,  and  sat  at 
the  same  table  with  them,  on  account  of  their  justice  and  piety." 
The  Hyperboreans  in  the  extreme  North  had  the  same  fragrance  of 
piety  about  them  (xiii.  1).  On  these  antediluvian  god-favoured 
races  generally,  see  Gerhard,  Myth.  634,  Nitzsch,  Od.  vii.  201-6, 
from  which  passage  of  the  Odyssey  it  is  plain  enough  that  their 
nearness  to  the  gods  did  not  always  consist  in  their  extraordinary 
piety,  but  only  in  their  uncommon  strength  and  superhuman  energy. 
Whether  the  connexion  of  the  sun  with  extreme  south,  east,  and 
west,  or,  again,  the  great  power  of  the  priesthood  in  some  of  the 
Ethiopian  nations  (Diod.  in.  6),  may  not  have  been  the  origin  of 
the  reputed  sanctity  of  that  people,  may  deserve  consideration. 


HOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  39 

Ver.  426. — The  copper-paved  hall. 

So  conceived,  I  imagine,  only  to  express  the  solidity  of  the 
eternal  heavens  ;  just  as  the  r^pn  of  the  Hebrews  was  translated 
(rrepiojfjLa  by  the  Hellenizing  Jews,  and  literally  rendered  into  Latin 
by  the  word  Jirmainentum,  which  we  have  adopted.  Compare 
(TiSijpeos  ovpavo'i  (Od.  xv.  329). 

Ver.  433. — The  sails  they  lower,  etc. 

There  are  only  a  very  few  points  with  regard  to  the  ships 
of  the  ancients  which  the  readers  of  the  Iliad  require  to  notice. 
Some  of  the  details  in  Od.  v.  252  might  require  discussion ;  but 
for  our  present  purpose  it  will  suffice  to  remark  that  the  "  well- 
poised  ships,"  in  what  is  called  the  heroic  age,  seem  to  have 
been  vessels  of  very  humble  pretensions  ;  in  their  moderate  tackle 
and  gear,  and  method  of  management,  more  like  what  we  call 
boats  and  shiffs  than  ships  proper.  It  does  not  appear  that  they 
had  more  than  one  mast — though  no  doubt  vessels  of  a  larger  build, 
with  several  masts,  were  afterwards  introduced  {Poll.  i.  1)1) ;  and 
this  mast  was  regularly  taken  down  at  landing,  and  put  up  when 
the  craft  went  out  to  sea.  As  little  had  they  a  complete  or  proper 
deck  ;  for  Thucydides  says  expressly  that  the  ships  built  even  in 
Theniistocles'  day  had  not  full  decks  (i.  14) ;  and  Pliny  (vii.  56) 
has  left  the  notice,  "  Naves  longas  tectas  Thasii  invenerimt  :  anteu 
ex  prora  tantum  et  2>uppi  pugnahant."  The  simplicity  of  the  rest 
of  the  equipment  will  appear  from  the  description  of   Homer. 

Ver.  447. 
Then  round  the  well-built  altar  of  the  god  they  piled  the  hecatomb. 

The  word  hecatomb,  originally  signifying  an  hundred  oxen,  is 
used  in  Homer  vaguely  of  any  great  public  sacrifice.  The  most 
complete  description  of  the  rite  of  sacrifice  in  the  heroic  age, 
occm-s  in  Od.  iii.  418-472,  on  occasion  of  the  entertainment  to 
Telemachus  by  the  venerable  patriarch  of  Pylos.  That  passage, 
compared  with  the  present  (which,  however,  is  only  in  two  points 


40  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

less  complete),  brings  out  the  following  ten  points  of  sacrificial  pro- 
cedure as  they  occur  in  order  : — (1.)  The  hands  are  washed  with 
water,  ')(epvi\pavTo^  according  to  the  precept  of  Hesiod  {Op.  et  Di. 
724),  with  which  the  words  of  Hector  agree  (ti.  266).  So  amongst 
the  Jews  (Exod.  xxx.  18-21,  Lev.  xvi.  24).  (2.)  The  ovAox^rai, 
or  ovAai,  that  is,  coarse- ground  barley  (see  Butmann,  Lexil.),  is 
taken  up  in  order  to  be  in  readiness  for  immediate  use.  (3.)  A 
prayer  is  offered  up  by  the  priest,  standing  with  uplifted  hands. 
(4.)  The  victim  is  brought  forward,  of  which  the  horns  had  pre- 
viously been  gilded  (x.  294) ;  the  topmost  hairs  are  plucked  from 
between  its  horns,  and  thrown  into  the  fire  ;  its  neck  is  drawn 
up  by  the  officiating  ministers  ;  a  knife  is  plunged  into  its  throat ; 
and  it  is  flayed.  (5.)  The  thighs  are  then  cut  out  and  coiled 
in  a  double  ply  of  fat.  (6.)  Small  pieces  of  raw  flesh,  taken  from 
various  parts  of  the  body,  are  laid  above  the  fat,  as  representatives 
of  the  whole  body,  that  the  gods  may  appear  to  have  at  least  a 
tasting  of  all  {Od.  xiv.  427.)  (7.)  The  thighs  are  then  burnt  on  the 
altar,  accompanied  by  libations  of  wine,  while  youths  attend  with 
forks  in  their  hands,  to  see  that  the  whole  is  duly  consumed.  (8.)  They 
taste  the  inivards,  (nrXdxv'  kirdo-avTo,  a  practice  the  nature  and  sig- 
nificance of  which  I  do  not  understand.  (9.)  The  remainder  is 
roasted.  (10.)  The  sacrificial  feast  takes  place,  in  which  all  the 
worshippers  join  with  jollity,  and  pious  hymns  are  mingled  with 
generous  potations.  This  is  the  practice  of  mingling  social  enjoy- 
ment with  religious  services  to  which  St.  Paul  alludes  (1  Cor.  xi. 
26).  So  much  for  the  detail.  With  regard  to  the  significance  of 
the  religious  act  in  the  present  case,  it  was  evidently  a  sacrifice  of 
atonement  on  account  of  sins  committed  against  the  gods,  in  order 
to  propitiate  their  favour  and  avert  their  wrath.  The  Jewish  idea 
of  vicarious  substitution  does  not  appear  in  Homer  ;  but  there  is  a 
voluntary  giving  up  to  the  god  of  what  was  most  valuable  to  the 
possessor — viz.,  his  flocks,  and  herds — as  a  symbolical  reparation 
for  the  offence  committed  by  the  mortal  in  contravention  of  the 
divine  law. 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  41 

Ver.  481. — Full  hlcw  the  gale  in  the  sounding  sail. 
I  have  here  ventured  to  paint  out  the  idea  which  appears  to  lie 
at  the  root  of  the  verb  Trpi^do),  and  the  family  to  which  it  belongs. 
The  subject  has  been  fully  discussed  by  Butmann.  I  suppose  that 
the  two  significations  of  the  word  ifJiTrvpi^w  and  (f)V(r(5  given  in  the 
U.  31.  are  fundamentally  the  same — a  strong  blast  naturally  pro- 
ducing heat. 

Ver.  498. — When  the  far-seeing  god  she  found^  remote  from  all. 

The  word  eipvoira,  here  used,  falls  under  the  general  observa- 
tion made  above,  that  adjectives  ending  in  6^,  oira,  or  wttos,  gene- 
rally come  from  wip,  the  look,  and  not  from  6^,  the  voice  (see  Lucas, 
Qucest.  Lexil.  81).  The  idea,  therefore,  is  the  same  as  that  of  Ovid 
in  the  Fasti,  when  he  says, 

Jupiter  arce  sua,  tottnn  cum  spectat  in  orbem, 
Nil  nisi  Romanum  quod  tueatur  habet. 

Jove  dwells  aloft,  and  from  his  starry  home 
Looks  east  and  west,  and  all  he  sees  is  Eomk. 

Ver.  500. 
A7id  Jcnelt  her  doivn  hefore  the  god,  and  supjiliant  seized  his  knee. 

This  is  the  common  form  of  supplication,  of  which  we  have 
frequent  examples  among  the  ancients.  Hence  the  formula  so 
common  in  Homer — Tavra  ^ewv  eV  yovvacn  Keirai  (xvil.  514), — 
tliese  things  lie  on  the  knees  of  the  gods,  i.e.,  depend  on  the  divine 
will — a  phrase  which  I  have  piu-posely  retained  in  my  version, 
though  it  will  no  doubt  sound  strange  to  an  English  ear.  Charac- 
teristic expressions  of  this  kind  ought  not  to  be  washed  over  with 
a  colourless  modern  generality. 

Ver.  528. 
Thtis  he  ;  and  ivith  his  eyebrow  dark  the  Father  botved  assent. 

This  nod  of  Jupiter  was  famous  among  the  ancients,  'dcreia-e 
Kofxai'  (Eur.  fyh.  Taur.  1276),  and  the  three  lines  in  which  Homer 
describes  it  were  justly  celebrated,  not  only  for  their  own  sublime 


42  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

simplicity,  but  from  the  fact  that  Phidias  received  from  them  the 
first  hint  of  his  greatest  work,  the  colossal  statue  of  Zeus  in  the 
temple  at  Elis,  of  which  so  accurate  a  description  is  given  by  Pau- 
sanias  (v.  11 ;  Str.  viii.  354).  And  indeed  there  are  few  passages 
in  Greek  poetry  where  the  good  effect  is  more  manifest  of  that 
a-(j}(f)poa-vvr]  or  sound-minded  moderation  by  which  all  the  poets  of 
Greece,  even  in  their  highest  flights  of  inspiration,  were  habitually 
controlled.  If  the  effect  of  the  nod  described  in  the  last  line, 
ixeyav  8'  lAeAt^ev  "OXv/xttov,  had  been  spread  out  into  greater  detail, 
such  as  we  find,  for  example,  in  the  Vishnu  Purcma,  ch.  xii.,  the 
effect  would  have  been  much  injured.  With  regard  to  the  dark 
eyebrows,  we  may  mention  that  the  word  Kvdveos  is  the  same  that 
in  V.  345  is  used  of  a  cloud  ;  and  in  fact  the  dark  eyes  of  the 
thunder-god,  brought  back  to  their  elemental  signification,  are 
nothing  but  the  dark-rolled  thunder-clouds  of  which  the  lord  of  the 
elements  is  the  ruler.  In  the  same  way  Neptune  is  KvavoxaiTiqs, 
from  the  dark  or  dark-hlue  colour  of  the  ocean.  The  Prem-sagar 
(ch.  xlii.)  tells  of  "  Krishnu,  of  the  dark-blue  cloud-like  form," 
which  almost  looks  like  as  if  the  Hindu  Apollo  had  stolen  a  trick 
of  feature  from  Indra,  who  represents  Jove. 

Ver.  551. — The  large-eyed  qtteenli/  Here. 

That  a  large  full-orbed  eye,  as  opposed  to  a  small,  meagre,  pink 
eye,  is  an  element  of  the  highest  beauty,  requires  no  proof. 

"  Here  let  me  lie  and  look  on  your  great  eyes  ; 
'Twill  do  me  good  ;  all  beauty  must  be  healing." 

The  word  f3o<J}Tns  signifies  literally  huviiig  the  eyes  of  a  cow ;  and 
how  large,  full,  deep,  and  liquid  they  are  any  one  may  know  who 
will  look  into  the  eyes  of  that  stupid  but  motherly  animal.  It  is 
not,  however,  to  be  imagined  that  the  Greeks  in  later  ages  actually 
had  this  living  idea  of  the  cow's  eye  before  them  when  they  called 
the  queen  of  heaven  jSoojttls  ;  for  the  word  fSovs,  or  (u\  came  to  be 
used  in  compound  words  to  signify  magnitude,  as  ^ot'Trats  an  "  ox- 
boy,"  that  is,  a  "big  boy;"  ftovXtixia.  ox-hunger,  that  is,  an  immo- 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAT).  43 

derately  large  appetite  ;  just  as  we  say  an  "  ox-daisy."  Among 
the  famous  beauties  of  antiquity  we  may  notice  that  Aspasia,  the 
mistress  of  the  younger  Cyrus,  is  described  as  having  ''  auburn 
locks  very  soft  and  smooth,  a  nose  somewhat  hooked,  and  very  large 
eyes''  {M\.  V.  H.  xii.  1).  Among  the  Orientals  indeed,  generally, 
large,  full,  open  eyes  were  esteemed  so  essential  to  beauty  that  they 
used  to  apply  a  certain  tincture  round  their  eyes,  which  had  the 
effect  of  distending  them  and  making  them  look  larger"'  (Jer.  iv. 
30  ;  Gresen.  in  voce  j?np).  In  the  Sanscrit  poetry  large  full  eyes 
are  the  constant  subject  of  eulogium — "  eyes  round  and  large  as 
the  lot.us-flower "  (Frem-sagar,  ch.  xxv.)  The  literal  translation 
of  this  word,  "  ox-eyed,"  or  "  coiu-eyed/'  I  avoid,  for  reasons  that  will 
be  obvious  to  a  man  of  taste.  Lord  Derby's  transmutation  into 
"  stag-eyed"  is  a  leap  more  to  be  commended  for  its  boldness  than 
for  its  wisdom.  It  is  making  the  poet  tell  a  lie  in  order  that  the 
translator  may  avoid  an  awkwardness. 

With  regard  to  the  other  epithet  of  Juno,  Trorvta,  which  generally 
accompanies  /3ow7rts,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  as  well  from  the  fre- 
quent use  of  the  same  root  in  Sanscrit  compounds  (Pati),  as  from 
those  cases  where  in  Greek  it  governs  the  genitive  (xxi.  470 ; 
Find.  Pyth.  iv.  380),  that  it  is  equivalent  to  Secnroiva  or  tnistress  ; 
and  some  have  even  supposed  that  the  common  name  of  the 
goddess,  "Hpa,  is  only  the  Greek  form  of  the  Latin  herns,  the  Ger- 
man herr,  and  our  sir.  As  to  the  mythological  significance  of  this 
goddess,  as  wife  of  Jove,  who  is  the  representative  of  Uranus, 
the  welkin,  she  should  be  only  one  of  two  things, — either  the 
anthropomorphic  form  of  Gee,  the  earth,  the  wife  of  Uranus,  or  the 
female  aspect  of  the  sky,  Jove  being  its  male  aspect ;  just  as  Nep- 
tune and  Amphitrite  represent  the  same  briny  element  under  oppo- 
site aspects  in  a  system  of  elemental  sexuali.sm.  A  modification  of 
this  latter  view,  to  the  effect  that  Juno  represented  the  lower  part 
of  the  atmosphere,  of  which  Jove  is  the  upper,  acquired  consider- 
able currency  among  the  ancients,  principally  through  the  influence 
of  the  Stoics,  and  has  been  patronized  in  modern  times  by  Prell 
(i.  p.  104).     But  the  other  view,  supported  by  so  early  and  so  high 


44  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

an  authority  as  Enipedocles  (Diog.  Laert.  viii.  76)  is  in  every  respect 
the  most  satisfactory,  and  has  accordingly  commanded  the  assent 
of  Welcker,  g.  I.  362  ;  of  Gerhard,  Myth.  222  ;  Rink.  Bel.  Hell 
41  ;  Hartung,  Rel.  Gr.,  Part  iii.  p.  77.  Demeter  in  fact  is  no 
proper  representative  of  the  old  earth  in  the  original  elemental 
theology  ;  and  there  is  no  goddess  except  Juno  who  under  the 
Jovian  dynasty  can  so  fitly  represent  the  Rhea  of  the  old  theology. 
No  trace  of  a  division  of  the  air  into  two  belts  appears  in  the  popu- 
lar mythology  of  the  Greeks  ;  and  the  importance  of  the  Earth  in 
all  polytheistic  systems  demands  imperatively  that  she  should  be  the 
wife  of  Zeus,  the  representative  of  Uranus.  The  sacred  marriage 
of  Zeus  and  Here  (xiv.  346)  finds  its  full  physical  significance,  as 
well  as.  its  poetic  beauty,  only  on  the  supposition  that  Juno  means 
the  earth ;  and  the  epithet  ftowiris,  though  to  the  translator  it  can 
only  mean  ■'  large-eyed,"  in  the  oldest  Pelasgic  theology,  I  agree 
with  Paley,  may  very  probably  have  had  its  origin  in  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  cow,  through  all  the  ancient  mythologies,  as  a  symbol  of 
the  earth. 

Ver.  561. — ^(ty,  ivoinan! 

The  word  Sai/xovn;  is  curious,  and  might  form  the  text  to  a  long 
theological  discourse.  There  are  two  words  in  Homer  commonly 
used  to  designate  the  gods,  Saifiwv  and  Seos,  between  which  not  a 
shade  of  difference  is  observable.  The  one  is  most  natui-ally  de- 
rived from  Satw,  to  divide  or  poHion  out,  so  that  Sat/xoves  are  the 
supreme  Powers,  who  divide  to  each  man  his  earthly  lot  or  portion  ; 
the  other,  ^eo?,  of  which  the  Latin  Dims  is  the  oldest  form,  is 
identical  with  the  Sanscrit  Deva,  which  comes  from  a  root  signi- 
fying to  shine  ;  so  that  '^eot  are  tlie  Jiriyht  or  shining  ones.  Be- 
tween these  two  words,  however,  time  and  theological  speculation 
gradually  created  a  great  gulf  of  separation,  which  appears  as 
early  as  the  time  of  Hesiod  {Op.  et  Di.  121,  with  Gottling's  note), 
was  moulded  into  system  by  Plato,  received  a  dark  shade  from  the 
Jews,  and  stands  out  complete  in  the  modern  English  use  of  the 
word  demon.     It  is  remarkable,  however,  that  this  degradation  of 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  45 

the  word  8at/xwv  is  to  a  certain  extent  anticipated  even  by  Homer, 
in  the  familiar  use  made  by  him  of  the  adjective  Sat/xovto?,  of  which 
we  have  an  example  in  the  present  passage.  This  was  noticed 
long  ago  by  Plutarch  (Zs/s  and  Osiris^  26),  who  observes  with  per- 
fect truth  that  nothing  similar  takes  place  in  the  adjectives  ^etos, 
avTt^eos,  etc.,  derived  from  S^eos.  This  distinction,  of  course,  must 
be  acknowledged  by  aU  who  affect  to  translate  Homer  with  charac- 
teristic accuracy.  And  it  amounts  practically  to  this,  that,  while 
^eios  or  Sios  avijp  is  always  "  godlike  or  divine,"  in  virtue  of  some 
extraordinary  quality  which  excites  our  admiration,  one  may  be 
called  8at/j,dvios  when  he  behaves  in  such  a  way  as  to  excite  peculiar 
attention,  and  to  raise  the  suspicion  that  such  conduct  is  not  with- 
out the  extraordinary  influence  of  some  superhimian  power  (see 
particularly  Herodot.  iv.  126,  and  viii.  84);  pretty  much  as  if  we 
should  say  in  English,  The  fellow  is  beivitched,  he  behaves  as  if  he 
were  possessed  hy  an  evil  spirit  (in  Scotch,  He  is  fey).  In  perfect 
accordance  with  this  original  force  of  Sat/^ovios,  Newman  translates 
here  "  0  elf-possessed  wight !  "  but  to  this  rendering  there  are  two 
objections  :  first,  that  elf  is  a  word  which,  like  fairy,  cannot  be 
shaken  free  from  medigeval  and  romance  associations ;  second,  that 
the  Greeks  themselves  had,  even  in  Homer's  time,  distinctly  lost 
the  full  etymological  meaning  of  Sat/xovios ;  and  V.  is  much 
nearer  the  actual  Homeric  force  of  the  word,  when  he  translates 
in  this  passage  Du  wunderhare  !  D.,  I  find,  agrees  with  me  in 
not  caring  to  give  any  greater  emphasis  to  the  word  in  this  passage 
that  what  lies  in  the  German  Weih!  In  fact,  the  adjective  came  to 
be  used  in  Greek  with  as  little  conscious  recognition  of  its  original 
force,  as  there  is  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  6  Si,df3okos,  when  J 
say  in  English,  What  the  devil  are  you  about  f  which  in  Homeric 
Greek  would  be — 8at/xovie  ri  TrpaTxei?  ; 

Ver.  584. — A  tway-cupped  beaker. 

ajxc^iKVTreWov.  The  root  of  this  word  is  just  our  English  word 
cap  (Lat.  ctqxi),  with  which  scoop  and  skiff  are  connected.  The 
preposition  a/x<^t,  as  opposed  to  irepl  (with  which,  however,   it   is 


46  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  I. 

often  confounded),  signifies  on  both  sides  (Lat.  umbo),  and  here, 
accordingly,  the  compound  should  mean  a  boivl  ivith  a  cup  at  both 
ends,  gi'asped  by  the  hand  in  the  middle  ;  and  that  the  word  was 
actually  so  understood  by  the  ancients,  Butmann  has  proved  by  a 
reference  to  Aristotle  (Hist.  An.  ix.  27.  4). 

Ver.  591. — Me  by  the  foot  he  hent. 

This  story  about  the  precipitation  of  Vulcan  from  heaven  into 
the  island  of  Lemnos  is  not  without  interest  in  several  views. 
Similar  stories  are  found  in  all  mythologies  :  as  when  the  Hindus, 
for  example,  make  Prahlada,  a  pious  worshipper  of  Vishnu,  be  cast 
down  from  heaven  by  Hiraya  Kasipu  ;  but  he  falls  uninjured,  and 
sound  in  every  bone,  whereas  the  celestial  smith  of  the  Hellenes 
is  lamed  for  life.  The  lameness,  indeed,  of  Hephaestus  is,  if  I  am 
not  much  mistaken,  the  origin  of  the  whole  myth ;  and  why  the 
smith  is  lame,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see,  since  those  who  work  mainly 
with  their  arms  naturally  have  slender  shanks  (see  below,  xviii. 
411),  and  from  tenuity  of  the  lower  extremities  to  actual  halting,  the 
leap  to  the  popular  imagination  is  not  great.  Vulcan,  therefore, 
was  lame  because  he  was  a  smith,  and  he  is  cast  down  from  heaven 
to  give  an  air  of  dignity  to  such  a  vulgar  accident.  There  is,  how- 
ever, an  elemental  explanation  of  the  same  legend,  more  poetical 
(Duncker,  Ges.  Alt.  iii.  46).  It  is  remarkable  that  the  Egyptian 
Pthah,  who  corresponds  to  Vulcan,  was,  if  not  lame,  deformed  and 
dwarfish  (Herodot.  iii.  37,  with  Baehr's  note).  The  connexion 
of  the  fire-god  with  Lemnos  finds  its  obvious  explanation  in  the 
fact  that  this  island  is  essentially  of  volcanic  origin ;  that  it  con- 
tained a  volcano  called  Mosychlos  (Schol.  Nicander,  Ther.  472  ; 
Welcker,  Tril.  p.  7);  that  it  was  for  this  reason  called  AWdXy, 
or  the  glowing  island  {E.  M.,  in  voce).  Here  then  is  a  plain 
physical  reason  why  Lemnos  should  be  "  the  dearest  of  all  places 
of  the  earth "  to  Vulcan  (Od.  viii.  284),  who  is  therefore  called 
"  Lemnius  pater"  by  the  great  Roman  poet  (^?i.  vm.  454).  The 
earliest  inhabitants  of  this  island  were  emigrants  who  crossed  fi-om 
Thrace  (Str.  xii.  549).  and  were,  no  doubt,  of  a  sufficiently  rough 


BOOK  I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  47 

and  wild  character ;  for,  though  they  treated  the  god  well  after 
his  fall,  the  poet  calls  thera  dyptocfuovoi  (which  is  worse  than  (3ap- 
j3ap6(f)Mvoi),  in  Od.  VIII.  294  ;  and  in  mythical  story,  their  conduct 
was  on  many  occasions  so  atrocious,  as  to  give  rise  to  the  familiar 
proverb,  Ar^/xvia  epya,  for  crimes  of  remarkable  cruelty.  On  the 
inextinguishable  laughter  of  the  gods,  with  which  the  lame  god's 
ministrant  services  (ver.  599)  were  greeted,  Glad.  (ii.  340)  com- 
ments with  too  severe  a  curiousness. 

Ver.  QOO.—Skmler. 

The  old  word  "  shinker^"  which  I  have  used  here,  seems  to  me 
to  suit  well  with  the  general  humorous  tone  of  the  passage.  It  is 
used  by  Tickell  in  his  translation  of  this  book. 

At  the  present  day,  "  scJiencl~e"  is  the  common  German  word  for 
a  vintner's  shop,  and  einschenken  is  to  pour  in. 

Ver.  604. — The  rich  responsive  sony. 

djji€Ll36fjitvai,  oTTt  KaXfj.  Plere  we  have  the  earliest  indication  that 
I  know,  of  that  fondness  for  composition  in  corresponding  stanzas 
curiously  balanced  against  one  another,  which,  under  the  name  of 
strophe  and  antistrophe,  often  plays  such  a  prominent  part  in  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  the  Greeks.  The  parallelism  of  Hebrew  poetry, 
and  the  antiphonal  chants  of  Christian  cathedrals,  contain  the  same 
very  natural  and  pleasing  element. 


BOOK  IL 

Ver.  1. — Steed-compelling, 

free  for  iTnTOKopva-Tai^  literally,  horse-harnessing,  or,  it  may  be, 
following  the  analogy  of  xaXKOKopva-r-qs,  provided  with  steeds — gaul- 
gerustet  (V.)  The  fancy  of  Apion,  that  the  word  meant  "  men 
ivearing  a  helmet,  of  which   the  crest   was  made  of  horsetails,"  was 


48  N0TE8  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

condemned  by  Porphyry,  in  his  (rfTqixara  (15).  and  deservedly,  for 
it  is  supported  by  no  Homeric  analogy,  and  besides,  ''  horse- 
hehneted"  would  be  a  very  clumsy  and  inadequate  way  of  express- 
ing such  an  idea. 

Ver.  3. — The  sweet  sleep. 

vi/jSv/jLo?.  I  agree  entirely  with  But.  and  Sp.  that  this  is  only  a 
different  abnormal  form  of  i^'Sd/xos,  used  exactly  in  the  same  way 
by  the  author  of  the  Homeric  hymns  (Mei'c.  241,  and  other  an- 
cient poets).  Aristarchus,  amongst  the  ancients,  seems  to  have 
stood  alone  in  supposing  the  words  to  be  altogether  different ;  but 
we  are  not  justified  in  inventing  an  altogether  new  etymology  to  a 
word,  and  changing  its  traditional  meaning,  merely  becavise  there 
is  something  anomalous  in  its  form.  All  language  is  full  of  ano- 
malies, especially  early  unprinted  language.  Bek.,  who  is  fond 
of  bold  measures,  goes  so  far,  in  Butmann's  track,  as  to  write 
vrjSvixos  with  a  digamma,  from  which  the  v  was  produced  by  one  of 
those  blunders  so  common  in  the  speech  of  uncultivated  people. 

Ver.  6. — Baneful  Dream. 

Passow's  attempt,  followed  by  L.  and  S.,  to  reduce  all  the  mean- 
ings of  the  adjective  oSAos  to  one,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
instances  that  I  know  of  that  spirit  of  perverted  ingenuity  by 
which  phllologers  are  peculiarly  liable  to  be  possessed.  But.  is 
quite  right  in  not  endeavouring  to  juggle  into  one  idea  significa- 
tions so  radically  different  as  tvhole^  wooUi/j  and  2)ernicious.  The 
objections  which  Pas.,  with  L.  and  S.,  make  to  the  received  epithet, 
as  given  to  dream,  are  utterly  worthless  ;  because,  in  the  first  place, 
there  is  no  apparition  of  a  dream-god  here  at  all,  but  only  of  a 
dream,  which  Jove,  the  father  of  dreams,  sends  as  his  servant.  I 
have  printed  with  a  capital  B,  merely  to  assist  the  imagination  of 
the  modern  reader.  On  this  subject,  see  particularly  Nag.,  Horn. 
Theol.  IV.  26,  29.  The  same  sensible  writer,  in  his  notes  to  this 
passage,  quotes  from  Lucian  [Jup.  Trag.  40)  the  words  Zeus  e^- 
airarf  tov  'Aya/xe/xvova   oveipov  Tiva   xlevS?]   eiTLTrefufas,  which   cer- 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  49 

taiuly  show  that  this  author  had  no  idea  of  Passow's  "  haiuhjreif- 
liclier  leihhafter  Tramu-Gott  selher.''  But  further,  even  supposing 
the  incarnate  Dream-god  himself  (of  whom  Homer  knows  nothing) 
really  were  here  introduced,  he  might  well  be  called  haneful^  by 
reason  of  the  harm  done  by  the  frequent  delusion  belonging  to 
dreams,  though  dreams,  of  course,  according  to  the  idea  of  the 
ancients,  are  often  true,  and  contain  a  direct  divine  revelation. 

On  the  circumstance  that  Jupiter,  the  supreme  moral  governor 
of  the  universe,  should  have  practised  such  a  deceit  on  Agamem- 
non's mind,  most  writers,  from  Plato  downwards  {Pol.  ii.  383  a), 
handle  the  poet  severely.  Now,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  to 
lay  down  as  a  formal  dogma  that  God  may,  systematically,  and  with 
deliberate  consciousness,  lead  his  creatures  to  their  destruction,  by 
a  deceitful  show,  is  to  undermine  the  foundations  of  all  human 
piety.  But,  taking  the  matter  in  a  more  loose  and  general  way, 
the  fact  cannot  be  denied  that  imperfect  creatures  like  man,  must, 
by  the  very  necessity  of  their  finite  natures,  fall  into  delusions  and 
disappointments  of  all  sorts  (Goethe  says,  "  die  Natur  frexit  sich 
an  der  Illusion) ;  and  as  these  delusions  are  the  necessary  result  of 
the  constitution  of  the  creature,  acted  upon  by  a  certain  disposal  of 
circumstances,  that  is,  of  two  God-ordained  factors,  there  is  nothing 
impious  in  saying,  with  regard  to  such  matters,  as  the  G-reeks 
generally  did,  that  "  a  god  deceived  us."  Hegel  (P/n7.  Ges.)  says,  it 
is  a  "  list,"  or  trick  of  the  Reason,  which  governs  the  world,  to  use 
the  passions  of  individuals  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  higher 
objects.  With  regard  to  dreams  specially,  as  they  were  all  sent  by 
Jove,  if  a  Greek  was  on  any  occasion  signally  led  astray,  by  putting 
faith  in  a  striking  vision,  he  could  not  do  otherwise  than  say,  that 
"  Jove  had  deceived  him,"  as  he  certainly  did  not  deceive  himself, 
and  he  had  in  his  theological  system  no  devil,  to  whom  he  could 
impute  the  unhappy  issue  of  delusive  dreams.  And  it  appears  to 
be  quite  plain,  that  in  all  systems  of  theology,  where  an  indepen- 
dent evil  Spirit  is  not  recognised,  both  moral  and  physical  evil  must 
be  attributed,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  to  the  Supreme  Being. 
That  there  is  a  logical  necessity,  at  least,  for  some  sort  of  theore- 
.   VOL.  IV.  D 


50  NOTES  TO  TJIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  11. 

tieal  Fatalism,  has  been  ackuowledged  by  the  greatest  thinkers 
(Mansel,  JJampUm  Lectures,  ii.  Note  18).  And  accordingly,  in 
the  Old  Testament,  where  the  devil  is  almost  ignored,  we  find  that 
"  the  Lord  hardened  Pharaoh's  heart,"  and  that  "  the  Lord  sent 
/o7ih  a  lij/'ng  spirit  in  the  viouth  of  all  iJie  pro'phets  of  Ahab"  (1 
Kings  xxii.  22,  23).  And  it  is  noticeable  that  the  same  act 
which  in  the  Book  of  Samuel  is  attributed  to  God  (2  Sam.  xxiv.  1) 
is  in  Chronicles  (1  Chron.  xxi.  1)  attributed  to  Satan.  Irreligious 
men,  who  want  an  excuse  for  their  bad  ways,  may  of  course 
readily  abuse  such  passages  to  their  own  destruction ;  but  the 
same  God  who  ordained  delusion  to  finite  mortals,  as  the  result  of 
certain  conduct  or  certain  circumstances,  devised  the  conscience 
or  practical  reason  also,  as  a  strong  light  shining  in  a  dark  place, 
which  no  man  is  entitled  with  a  suicidal  hand  to  extinguish.  And 
the  sound-minded  worshippers  of  Jove,  we  may  depend  upon  it, 
in  Homer's  time,  because  the  omnipotent  god  might  occasionally, 
for  a  special  purpose,  send  a  delusive  dream,  never  drew  the  sweep- 
ing conclusion  that  they  were  entitled  on  all  occasions,  and  for 
every  selfish  purpose,  to  violate  the  laws  of  truth,  and  fear  no  stroke 
of  retributive  vengeance  from  Zeis  o/)Ktos.  The  decrees  of  God, 
he  knew  well,  belong  to  one  sphere,  the  duties  of  men  to  another, 
and  a  totally  different  sphere. 

Ver.  11. — The  long-haired  Greeks. 

KaprjKOjxoMVTas.  That  a  rich  growth  of  hair  is  a  great  beauty, 
which,  as  in  the  case  of  many  natural  graces,  has  been  sacrificed  to 
convenience  or  convention,  is  quite  plain ;  and  the  evidence  of  the 
Homeric  epithet  with  regard  to  the  practice  of  the  most  ancient 
Greeks  in  this  matter  is  amply  confirmed,  both  by  the  pictures  on 
the  vases  (see  British  Museum),  and  by  the  testimony  of  the 
ancients,  that  the  Spartans,  who  were  the  most  conservative  of 
ancient  fashions,  in  their  best  days  always  wore  long  hair.  Plutarch 
has  told  us  that  Lycurgus  said  aptly  on  this  point,  that  "  a  good 
head  of  hair  made  the  beautiful  more  beautiful,  and  added  a  certain 
savage  terror  to  the  ugly  {Apoth.  Reg.,  p.  189  d.  Xyl.)     And  the 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILI All.  51 

same  author  states  that  the  statue  of  Lysander,  in  Delphi,  had  vcnj 
long  hair,  ev  i^dXa  KOfxwv,  and  a  goodly  beard  (irwyoji'a  -yei'i'utoi', 
Lys.  I.)  In  fact,  we  know  from  Aristotle  (JRhet.  i.  9),  that  in 
Sparta,  the  nobility  distinguished  themselves  from  the  servile  class 
by  the  length  of  their  hair,  just  as  the  Cavaliers  in  tbe  time  of  our 
religious  wars  were  distinguished  from  the  Roundheads.  That  the 
Spartans  afterwards  discontinued  this  practice  is  certain  (Paus. 
XVII.  14.  2);  but  the  constantly  noted  contrast  between  the  antique 
fashion  and  the  new  (Philost.  Vit.  Ajioll.  iii.  15),  only  serves  to 
make  the  propriety  of  the  Homeric  epithet  more  obvious.  On 
the  whole  subject,  see  Bek.  Char-.  Exc.  iii.  to  sc.  xi. ;  Miill.  Dor. 
vol.  ii.  p.  287  ;  and  the  art.  Coma,  in  Smith's  Diet.  Antiq.,  and 
Fried.  BeaJ.  §  OS. 

Ver.  23. — Son  of  the  warlike-minded  Atreus. 

Warlike-minded,  Sat^pwv  ;  '■'■  feurig,'"  V. ;  ''skilful-hearted,'"  N.; 
"  erfahren,'^  D.  The  most  recent  translators  are  by  no  means 
agreed  on  the  translation  of  this  epithet.  We  have  to  choose  be- 
tween two  meanings,  derived  from  the  roots  Sdy^/xi,  to  knoiv,  and 
Sal's,  war,  respectively.  Both  these  meanings  are  recognised  by 
the  ancients,  and  specially  by  the  Venetian  schol.,  Lips.,  who  says, 
that  when  applied  to  Penelope,  in  the  Odyssey,  the  word  signifies 
a-uv€Tos,  but  when  applied  to  Tydeus,  in  the  Iliad,  it. signifies  ttoAc- 
fiLKos.  To  this  verdict  But.  adheres  ;  but  N.  and  D,  manifestly 
act  on  the  principle  of  carrying  into  the  Iliad  the  signification 
which  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides  must  rule  the  Odyssey,  and  which 
Hayman  (^Od.  i.  48)  thinks  may  have  been  the  original  one.  Now, 
what  are  the  principles  that  ought  to  guide  us  in  such  a  doubtful 
matter?  Shall  we  say  absolutely  that  the  same  poet  can  in  no 
wise  be  allowed  to  use  the  same  epithet  in  diff"erent  senses  ?  Such 
a  limitation  evidently  cannot  be  made  ;  the  usage  of  language  exer- 
cises a  wide  despotism  in  such  matters.  Homer  may  have  found 
the  epithet  8aLcj)pu>v,  from  8dtiiJ.L,  in  the  popular  ballads  which  he 
used  as  materials  in  composing  the  Odyssey,  and  though  perfectly 
conscious  that  it  had  a  different  sense  in  the  Iliad,  nevertheless, 


;il'  NOTES  To  THK  ILTAIi.  BOOK  II. 

with  that  fidelity  tu  local  culuur  which  is  characteristic  of  his  poetry. 

refused  to  model  the  phraseology  of  the  one  poem  after  that  of  the 

other.      1  am  inclined   therefore   to  follow   the   tradition    of  the 

ancients  in  this  matter  ;  and  though  in  Iliad  xxiv.  325  I  have  made 

an  exception,  it  was  by  no  means  a  necessary  one.     In  Homer's  days 

"warlike"  was  a  title  which  belonged  to  all  men  of  respectable 

character. 

Ver.  42-44. 

To  the  common  dress  of  the  Greeks  there  is  not  much  special 
allusion  in  the  Iliad,  as  the  warlike  character  of  the  work  natu- 
rally leads  to  the  detailed  description  only  of  armour  and  the 
garniture  of  war.  But  the  little  that  Homer  does  give  us,  when 
describing  the  common  articles  of  clothing  in  his  day,  is  per- 
fectly in  accordance  with  what  we  know  of  the  dressing  habits  of 
the  Greeks  from  the  authors  of  a  later  period.  The  great  mildness 
of  the  climate  in  that  favoured  part  of  the  world,  allowed  of  a  style 
of  clothing  much  more  simple  and  light  than  what  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  in  this  region  of  bitter  winters  and  biting  springs.  The 
Greeks  in  general  wore  only  two  very  simple  garments,  the  x'-'^^^j 
or  funic,  and  the  l/xdnov,  mantle  or  cloak  ;  the  one  a  sort  of  smock 
or  kirtle,  into  winch  the  body,  so  to  speak,  v}ent  (evSvve) ;  the  other 
an  ample  square  or  oblong  cloth,  like  a  Scotch  plaid,  throvm  round 
the  body  (eVt^a'AAw,  or,  as  in  ver.  43,  7rept/3aAAw).  Both  these 
were  not  always  worn.  Working  men  found  it  more  convenient  to 
content  themselves  with  the  tunic  (oioxlt(j)v,  Od.  xiv.  489),  which, 
for  their  purposes,  was  often  so  made  that  the  right  arm  stood  out 
free  for  action,  without  a  vestige  of  a  sleeve ;  as,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Spartans,  and  others  who  affected  severe  manners,  often 
contented  themselves  with  the  simple  Ifj-drLov  both  in  winter  and 
summer  (Pint.  Lycurg.  16).  So  Socrates  (Xen.  Mem.  i.  6),  and 
Agesilaiis  (^lian,  V.  H.  vii.  13).  In  Homer,  the  word  IfidTiov 
does  not  appear ;  but  instead  of  it  we  have  \kaLva  (thrown  off 
when  the  wearer  wished  to  run,  183,  infra).,  and  ^a/jos.  which 
latter,  from  the  epithet  jxkya  generally  attached  to  it  (viii.  221). 
appears  to  have  been  a  larger  form  of  the  xXalva ;  so  large  indeed 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  58 

that  it  could,  when  re({uired,  be  drawn  down  from  the  head,  so  as 
to  cover  the  face  {Od.  viii.  84),  which  could  scarcely  be  done  with 
a  mere  scarf. 

The  same  simplicity  and  severity  of  costume  was  observed  in 
respect  of  the  feet.  It  was  not  at  all  a  universal  habit  among  the 
ancients  to  wear  shoes ;  though  from  the  great  praise  given  by 
Xenophon  {Rep.  Lac.  2)  to  the  Spartan  custom  of  going  abroad 
unshod,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  the  Athenians  in  his  time  gene- 
rally wore  shoes.  The  practice  of  Socrates,  who  went  unshod 
through  the  frostiest  days  of  winter,  was  noted  as  one  of  his 
oddities  (Plato,  Sympos.  2'20  b).  In  Homer  certainly,  we  find 
that  the  kings  and  heroes  always  put  on  their  TreSiAa  (this  word 
always,  not  vTroSrjfjLa)  before  they  go  out.  Whether  they  went  bare- 
foot within  doors,  or  wore  slippers,  we  cannot  say.  What  the 
exact  character  of  the  vreStAov  was,  whether  a  Ughf,  slipper-like 
shoe  ((ravSdXiov,  solea\  or  a  kolXov  vTroSi^fxa,  iifuJlj  hollow  shoe,  like 
those  we  wear  out  of  doors,  there  are  no  means  of  deciding. 

Vkr.  51-53. 

The  contrasted  mention  made  in  these  lines  (repeated  in  Odyssey 
II.  6)  of  the  dyopi),  congregation  or  assemhli/,  and  the  (SovXtj  or 
privy  council  of  the  elders,  presents  to  us  the  germ  of  the  political 
system  as  it  afterwards  grew  up  in  the  Greek  States,  and  more 
generally,  indeed,  the  rudimentary  type  of  all  political  government 
containing  that  just  balance  of  forces  in  which  the  only  safety  of 
the  social  organism  lies.  The  three  forces  which  compose  this  bal- 
ance are  king,  aristocracy,  and  people,  the  combination  of  which 
Homer  exhibits  in  their  rudest,  the  British  constitution  in  their 
ripest  form.  Of  the  power  of  the  king  we  shall  speak  presently ; 
on  the  relations  of  the  dyopd  and  the  /3ovX-q  a  few  remarks  will 
suffice.  The  word  dyopd,  from  dyeipw,  to  collect  or  gather  together, 
signifies  the  congregation  or  assemhly  of  the  people,  corresponding 
to  the  TTw-:  arvvaytayri  (pi  o')  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  eKKXrjo-La 
of  Athens  and  the  early  Christian  Church.  The  word  (iovXi] — 
Lat.  voln^  Grerni.    loollen — signifies  w'z7Z,  pu7'pose,  p)la7i,  counsel,  and 


•"'i  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

thence  council.  In  the  heroic  times,  the  usual  method  of  conduct- 
ing public  affairs  on  any  emergency  was  that  the  monarch  should 
call  together  the  more  notable  chiefs  or  elders  who  formed  his  privy 
council  (x.  195),  and,  after  advising  with  them,  lay  the  matter 
before  the  assembly  of  the  people.  That  the  people  had  the  power 
of  rejecting  the  proposition  thus  laid  before  them  is  not  to  be 
doubted  [Od.  iii.  149-50 ;  //.  i.  22)  ;  and  if  they  generally  con- 
tented themselves  with  approving  by  acclamation  (i.  22,  supra,  and 
IX.  50),  that  was  only  because  the  king,  with  his  council,  had  sense 
enough  not  to  propose  anything  which  was  likely  to  run  counter 
to  the  inclinations  of  the  body  to  whom  it  was  addressed.  (Fried. 
Real.  §  134,  on  this  point  properly  qualifies  the  strong  statement  of 
Wachsmuth,  vol.  i.  §  18.) 

The  mutual  relations  of  king,  council,  and  congregation  in  the 
Homeric  ages,  were,  with  a  few  modifications,  faithfully  preserved 
by  the  conservatism  of  the  Spartans,  the  excellent  nature  of  whose 
constitution,  as  containing  all  the  just  elements  of  a  weU-balanced 
government,  has  been  praised  by  Aristotle  in  a  well-known  passage 
(Pol.  II.  6).     The   strongest  element  of  the  Spartan  constitution 
was  unquestionably  the  yepova-ia  or  assembly  of  the  elders,  men 
who  held  their  ofiice  for  life,  and  who  could  not  be  elected  till  they 
had  reached  their   sixtieth  year  (Plut.  Lycurg.  26)  ;  and  in  the 
same  way  the  aristocratic  element  prevails  so  far  even  in  the  Greek 
camp,  that  Achilles  (i.  54)  convokes  the  dyopd,  jjroprio  motu,  with- 
out thinking  it  necessary  to  say  a  single  word  to  Agamemnon.     In 
the  irregular  government  of  the  early  Israelites  it  seems  to  have 
been  competent  for  any  person  who  had  suffered  a  grievous  wrong 
to  convoke  the  people  (Judges  xx.  1).     The  fact  of  the  matter  is 
that  the  power  of  the  various  bodies  of  the  State  was  in  those  early 
days  very  ill  defined  ;  but  one  thing  stands  out  quite  clear,  that  the 
power  of  the  king  depended  almost  entirely  on  his  position  as  gene- 
ralissimo of  the  forces.     The  predominant  element  of  the  govern- 
ing power  in  the  Homeric  times  was  unquestionably  the  /SacrtArJe?, 
and  yepovres,  the  most  influential  chiefs  and  elders,  under  the  salu- 
tary check  always  of  a  possible  appeal  to  the  people.     The  (BovXi] 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  55 

of  the  Athenians  was  an  altogether  different  matter,  being  in  fact 
only  a  standing  committee  of  the  StJ/aos  for  special  purposes. 

Veil  <S5. 
And  all  the  sceptred  kiiKjs  behind  the  people's  shepherd  go. 

The  designation  iroiixivi  Aatov,  '■'■  shepherd  of  the  people  "  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  patriarchal  times,  and  ought  not  to  be  smoothed 
away  into  some  unmeaning  modern  generality.  Compare  ^schyl. 
Pers.  7  ;  and  on  the  pastoral  element  in  language,  see  Max  Miiller 
in  the  Oxford  Essays  for  1856,  p.  18. 

Ver.  93. — jRumouTj  messenger  of  Jove. — 

An  example  of  one  of  those  poetical  personifications  which,  with 
a  little  more  culture,  might  easily  have  grown  into  complete  per- 
sons in  the  Greek  mythology.  "Ocrcra,  voice  or  rumour .^  is  not  a 
god,  any  more  than  "Ovetpos,  dream  ;  they  are  rather  an  intan- 
gible, indefinite  something,  whose  method  of  operation  we  cannot 
trace  in  detail,  but  of  which  the  effects  are  sometimes  distinct  and 
startling  enough.  But  these  influences  necessarily  come  from 
Jove ;  and  indeed  all  things  ultimately  come  from  God,  and  are 
naturally  conceived  of  as  "  messengers  of  Jove,"  with  a  more  dis- 
tinct personality  than  the  fire  and  the  winds  in  Psalm  civ.  4, 
only  because  with  the  Greeks  anthropomorphism  in  theology  was  a 
fixed  habit,  with  the  Hebrews  a  passing  method  of  conception. 
Compare  Od.  xxiv.  413,  and  i.  282,  Hesiod,  Op.  762,  where 
(/)'(//x7y  is  called  formally  "  a  goddess."  But  Hesiod  often  versifies 
a  dogma  of  the  fancy,  Homer  always  portrays  sketches  from  the 
life. 

Ver.  lUl. — A  sceptre  lohich  Hephaestus  made  iviih  curious  sleight. 

The  minute  account  of  the  transmission  of  this  sacred  emblem  rif 
authority  is  very  characteristic.  It  indicates  the  wandering  min- 
strel, who,  living  in  the  midst  of  popular  tradition,  treasured  in  his 
memory  with  reverential  fidelity,  the  history,  the  story  of  all  family 


50  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

greatness,  and  the  symbols  of  that  greatness,  which  were  the  key- 
stone of  social  order  in  those  times.  Pausanias  (ix.  40.  6),  in  his 
notice  of  the  antiquities  of  Chjeronea,  in  Boeotia,  mentions  the 
curious  fact  that  the  inhabitants  of  this  city  had  come  into  the 
possession  of  the  sceptre  of  Agamemnon  here  described,  and  that 
they  worshipped  it  as  a  god,  and  oflPered  sacrifices  to  it  every  day, 
and  placed  cakes  and  flesh  upon  a  table  that  stood  before  it. 

Ver.  103. — The  message-speeding  Ai-gus-slaying  god. 

The  two  constant  epithets  of  Hermes  in  this  line,  SiaKTopos  'Ap- 
yeL(fi6vTr]<;,  were  both  doubtful  to  the  ancients,  and  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  be  yet  clear  to  us.  That  the  received  meaning  of  the 
former  word,  from  the  Alexandrians  downwards,  was  a  messenger, 
minister,  or  manager,  seems  to  me  certain.  Whether  it  migbt  not 
have  originally  meant  a  guide,  or  ojie  who  leads  across,  in  allusion 
to  a  well-known  function  of  the  god,  must  remain  doubtful.  No 
man,  certainly,  is  entitled  to  assert  that  the  idea  of  "  messenger," 
6  Sidywv  Tois  ayyeAta?,  is  not  Homeric.  In  the  Odyssey,  Hermes 
is  the  regular  messenger  of  Jove  ;  and,  if  he  is  not  so  in  the  Iliad, 
the  nature  of  Homeric  epithets  forbids  us  to  say  that  they  have 
any  special  relation  to  the  poem  in  which  they  are  used.  The 
observations  of  But.  {Lexil.)  on  this  word  are  fanciful.  I  hold, 
therefore,  by  the  common  tradition.  As  to  'ApyeicjiovTrjs,  I  shall 
be  willing  to  adopt  the  meaning  of  "  bright  shiner"  (Hayman,  Od. 
App.  c  2,  and  Schol.  Ven.  l.),  as  soon  as  I  see  any  distinct  proof 
that  Hermes  was  originally  a  god  of  light  so  characteristically  as 
to  entitle  him  to  an  epithet  that  seems  suitable  only  for  Apollo.  In 
the  meantime  I  remain  conservative,  with  Nitzsch  (Od.  i.  88). 

Ver.  104.— Pelops. 

As  this  is  the  only  passage  in  which  Homer  mentions  the  great 
founder  of  the  family  of  which  Agamemnon  was  the  most  dis- 
tinguished member,  it  would  have  been  gratifying  had  he  affixed 
some  descriptive  epithet  to  his  name,  by  which  it  might  appear 
whether  he  believed  him  to  be  a  European  Greek  or  an  Asiatic. 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  57 

As  it  is,  his  mere  silence  indicates  nothing,  and  the  main  stream 
of  classical  tradition  brings  him  as  a  colonist  from  the  region  of 
Mount  Sipylus  in  Lydia  (Pindar,  01.  i.  38;  ix.  15;  Thucyd. 
I.  9).  Other  accounts  (Schol.  Pindar,  /.  c),  make  him  a  native 
Greek ;  and  we  are  not,  at  this  time  of  day,  in  a  condition  to 
reconcile  such  traditions.  There  is  not,  however,  the  slightest  pre- 
sumption against  the  historical  reality  of  a  Lydian  colony  in  the 
Peloponnesus. 

Ver.  112. — Harsh  lord  of  heaven. 

It  was  a  pious  maxim  of  the  ancients  to  keep  their  tongue  when 
they  spoke  of  the  gods — 

^(TTi  5'  dv5pl  (paixtv  eoiKos  dfi(pl  da/.fj.dvwv  KoXd, 

as  Pindar  has  it, — nevertheless,  we  are  not  seldom  struck,  in  Homer 
at  least,  with  a  certain  irreverential  and  almost  rude  way  of  talking 
of  the  celestial  beings,  which  contrasts  strangely  with  the  careful 
and  scrupulous  language  of  Christian  piety.  In  the  present  pas- 
sage, Agamemnon  accuses  Jove  roundly  of  having  practised  against 
him  an  "evil  deceit,"  and  calls  him  o-xerAtos  (V.  yrausam ;  N. 
cruel).  The  different  meanings  of  this  word  all  flow  from  the 
single  idea  of  holding  on,  which  the  etymology  from  o-^ew,  an  old 
form  of  e^w,  reveals.  A  crxerAcos  is  a  tough  felloAV,  who,  where  he 
has  a  grip,  holds  on  tenaciously,  whom  nothing  will  drive  from  his 
purpose — a  kind  of  character  very  common  in  Scotland,  and  spe- 
cially in  Aberdeen, — thence  an  unconscionable  fellow ;  one  who 
sticks  to  his  purpose,  and  carries  out  his  plan,  regardless  of  other 
persons'  feelings  or  hostility.  So,  in  a  good  sense,  old  Nestor  is 
called  a  ctx^tXios,  from  his  indefatigable  perseverance  in  working 
when  other  people  are  asleep  (x.  164)  ;  but  with  a  considerable 
admixture  of  asperity  Jove  is  called  crxexAtos  in  the  present 
passage ;  and  in  xxiv.  33,  all  the  gods  are  called  crxeTAtoi 
STjAr/z^oves,  because,  with  pitiless  severity,  they  stretch  the  destroy- 
ing hand  against  the  dearest  objects  of  human  affection,  and  seem 
almost  to  sport  with  mortal  misery.  To  the  feelings  which  give 
rise  to  such  language  Job  i.  21  supplies  the  proper  remedy. 


58  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Ver.  145. — The  Icarian  sea. 

A  part  of  the  ^gean,  in  the  vicinity  of  Icarus,  a  small  island 
lying  west  of  Samos,  of  which  it  was  a  dependency  (Str.  xiv.  639). 
It  was  barren,  and  used  only  for  pasture  (Str.  x.  488).  The 
ancients  believed  that  it  received  this  name  from  Icarus,  the  son 
of  Daedalus,  who,  flying  from  Crete  upon  wings  denied  to  mortals, 
was  precipitated  on  this  rock,  or  into  the  sea. 

Ver.  157. —  Unvanquished  maid. 

drpvriovrj,  from  arpyros — ^literally,  not  to  he  rubbed  down,  im- 
toearied,  so  Wr. ;  "  invincihile"  Monti. 

Ver.  165 — v>]as  diM<jiLeXLcrcra?, 

"  equal-oared  "  literally,  with  "  oars  on  both  sides."  How  strikingly 
this  epithet  brings  before  us  the  simplicity  of  the  age,  when,  though 
ships  were  provided  with  sails,  or  at  least  with  one  sail,  the  epithet 
which  describes  their  motive  machinery  still  refers  only  to  that  in- 
strument which  belongs  to  the  lowest  kind  of  boat  or  wherry ! 

Ver.  lC)d.— Ulysses,  in  council  like  to  Jove. 

In  the  Book  of  Job  it  is  said,  "  God  is  wise  in  heart,  and  mighty 
in  strength"  (ix.  4),  and  accordingly,  we  find  that  wisdom  and 
strength  are  the  two  most  prominent  attributes  of  Zei's  in  Homer. 
Wisdom  particularly  belongs  to  him ;  for  Neptune  also  is  strong, 
but  Jove  is  the  only  counsellor,  /ATyTtera.  Hence  a  very  wise  man 
in  the  Iliad  is  said  to  be  Ait  fxrjrtv  drdXavTos,  a  match  to  Jove  for 
counsel.  In  conformity  with  this  feeling,  the  first  wife  of  the 
supreme  god  in  the  old  theology  was  M7;Tt?,  or  counsel.     See  i.  175. 

Ver.  190.— 0  shame ! 

The  word  here  is  Sai/xoi/te,  concerning  which,  see  above,  i.  560. 
That  this  word  is  used  here  with  the  entire  pregnancy  of  its  etymo- 
logical meaning  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt.     Ulysses  uses 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  51) 

the  same  form  of  address  to  the  people  immediately  below  (ver.  200), 
and  ill  the  same  sense,  for  both  were  acting  unreasonably  and 
unaccountably,  and  as  if  possessed  by  a  8ai/Awv.  I  cannot  agree, 
therefore,  with  those  translators  who,  for  the  sake  of  politeness  I 
presume,  give  a  softer  English  in  the  first  passage.  V.  has  "  selt- 
samer'"  in  both  cases.  Aaifiovios  is  a  word  that,  like  ctx^tAios, 
always  requires  the  most  delicate  treatment,  and  which,  more  than 
any  other,  shows  how  far  wrong  the  literal  system  may  lead  a 
scrupulous  translator. 

Ver.  204. — III  fares  the  state  ivJiere  numbers  rule. 

It  is  by  no  means  an  easy  thing  accurately  to  state  the  relation 
between  the  different  elements  of  the  state  in  the  Homeric  age, 
and  particularly  to  define  the  position  of  the  monarch.  On  this  point 
we  have  the  weighty  testimony  of  Thucydides  and  Aristotle.  The 
former  (i.  13),  contrasting  the  "tyrants"  of  later  times  with  the 
ancient  kings,  says  that  "  formerly  there  were  hereditary  monarchies, 
with  definite  rights ; "  but  this  account  of  the  Homeric  monarchies 
is  only  true  generally,  and  in  contrast  with  the  "tyranny,"  or 
absolute  kingship  acquired  by  force ;  for  assuredly  in  early  mon- 
archies the  hereditary  succession  was  more  a  matter  of  custom  than 
of  acknowledged  right ;  so  the  conduct  of  Telemachus  in  the 
Odyssey  clearly  indicates,  and  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the 
monarch  remained  for  a  long  time  extremely  vague.  Aristotle 
(Fol.  I.  2,  with  which  compare  Brougham,  Fol.  Philos.  c.  iii.)  says, 
that  "  all  states  were  originally  governed  by  kings."  The  same 
great  philosoiDher  (iii.  14),  describing  the  different  kinds  of  mon- 
archy, says,  "  in  the  heroic  ages,  the  monarchies  were  ivith  the 
(jood-ioill  and  consent  of  the  people,  hi/  descent  from  fcUher  to  son, 
and  according  to  Jaw  -f  that  is,  in  our  modern  language,  hereditary 
constitutional  monarchies,  as  opposed  to  unlimited  despotism.  These 
descriptions,  however,  leave  verge  enough  for  doubt  as  to  what  was 
the  real  authority  possessed  by  the  Homeric  kings ;  and  notwith- 
standing the  strong  language  used  here  by  Ulysses,  it  seems  very 
certain,  from  the  whole  tone  and  tenor  of  proceedings  in  the  IHad, 


60  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

that  the  form  of  government  in  the  Homeric  times  was  practically 
much  more  of  an  aristocracy  than  a  monarchy.  With  regard  to 
this  matter,  I  entirely  agree  with  Miiller  (Dor.  iii.  1),  that  the 
most  important  feature  of  the  Homeric  form  of  government  is  "  the 
sharp  demarcation  between  the  nobles  and  the  people."  The  chief 
ruler  himself  was  properly  of  equal  rank  with  the  other  nobles,  and 
w^as  only  raised  above  them  by  the  authority  intrusted  to  him  as 
president  in  the  council  and  commander  in  the  field.  There  were 
no  prjTo.  yepara.  or  definite  royal  privileges,  defined  by  Magna  Charta. 
His  influence  depended  mainly  on  his  resources,  and,  not  least,  on 
the  religious  sanction  belonging  to  his  office.  For  the  Homeric 
monarch  was  emphatically  a  king  "by  divine  right"  (ver.  197), 
not  indeed  according  to  any  subtle  theory  of  courtly  doctors  of 
theology,  but  in  virtue  of  a  deep  religious  feeling  in  the  breasts  of 
the  people.  On  the  whole,  we  may  safely  conclude  that,  while  the 
authority  of  the  Homeric  kings  was  in  theory  extremely  weak,  it 
was  strong  enough  in  practice,  when  combined  with  the  great 
weight  of  a  patriarchal  aristocracy,  to  suppress  insuiTCCtion,  and  to 
answer  all  the  ends  of  a  good  government. 

Ver.  217. — (/joAkos  '^yju. 

The  traditional  rendering  of  this  word,  ^'  he  squinted,"  was  first 
disturbed  by  But.  ;  and  the  new  explanation  which  he  started  finding 
favour  with  Passow,  has  passed,  through  L.  and  S.,  into  some  recent 
English  versions.  <})oXk6<s,  according  to  him,  is  only  another  form 
of  the  Lat.  valgus,  "  handy-Ieyged."  But  this  is  mere  conjecture. 
The  tradition  is  pretty  uniform — a  tradition,  of  course,  which  has 
a  value  quite  independent  of  any  untenable  etymologies  with  which 
it  may  have  been  connected, — that  <^oAkos  is  o-rpa/Jos  ;  and  the  only 
objection  brought  to  shake  the  authority  of  this  witness  of  the 
Alexandrian  schools  is  the  alleged  capriciousness  by  which  Homer 
is  thus  made  to  commence  the  description  of  this  type  of  ugliness 
with  the  eye,  then  going  down  at  once  to  the  leg,  and  then  coming 
up  again  to  the  head.  ]5ut  tlie  fancy  of  poets  is  not  to  be  tied 
down  by  the  strict  laws  of  mechanical  succession.     In  the  present 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  61 

case,  nothing  could  be,  poetically,  mure  effective  than  to  commence 
the  description  of  the  most  ill-favoured  man  in  the  Greek  camp  by 
saying  that  he  "  squinted  with  one  eye,  and  was  lame  of  one  leg." 
He  is  thus  twisted  both  above  and  below,  which  makes  him  alto- 
gether a  distortion.  Of  the  history  of  this  personage  we  know 
little  beyond  what  Homer  here  tells  us.  In  the  Iliad  he  does  not 
appear  again.  He  was  by  birth  an  vEtolian,  the  son  of  Agrius, 
who  was  uncle  to  Diomede  (Apollod.  Bih.  i.  8) ;  and  he  found 
his  death  soon  after  the  funeral  of  Hector,  from  the  fist  of  Achilles, 
as  a  reward  for  the  unchivalrous  manner  in  which  he  treated  the 
dead  body  of  Penthesilea  (Q.  Smyrn.  i.  722,  823;  Tretz.  Lycoph. 
999).  In  the  transmigrations  of  a  future  state,  he  was  believed  to 
have  entered  the  body  of  an  ape  (Plat.  Bep.  620  c.)  He  has  also 
had  the  honour  of  being  handled  by  Shakspeare,  and,  along  with 
Demetrius  the  silversmith,  will  be  handed  down  to  distant  ages  as 
a  striking  illustration  of  the  spirit  and  genius  of  democracy. 

Ver.  254-256. 

These  three  lines,  discredited  by  the  ancients,  bracketed  by 
Wolf,  and  ejected  by  Bek.,  might  no  doubt  be  spared.  The 
repeated  clauses  commencing  with  tw  may  well  be  supposed,  as  in 
other  cases,  to  indicate  a  double  version,  which  the  conservative 
feeling  of  the  Pisistratidan  editors  led  them  to  combine.  See  Dis- 
sertations,  p.  347.  But  no  presumption  of  this  kind  is  strong 
enough  to  justify  a  translator  in  omitting  the  lines.  With  Homer, 
as  with  the  lawyers,  the  maxim  often  holds,  sujjerjlua  non  nocent. 
Blemishes  that  require  microscopes  to  expose  them  may  even  pass 
for  beaiities. 

Ver.  302. — Deailis  darh  minisfers. 

Krjpes  ^avoLToto.  The  Krjpe?,  or  shearers,  according  to  the  most 
probable  etymology  from  Kelpo).  a  widely-extended  root  in  the  Aryan 
languages,  are  mythological  personages  caught  in  the  very  act  of 
formation,  so  to  speak,  and  cut  short  in  that  act  before  they  can 
assert  for  themselves  an  independent  existence,  much  less  claim  a 


r)2  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

recognised  place  in  the  Pantheon  of  the  religious  system  to  which 
they  belong.  Welcker  ((/.  1.  i.  708)  calls  them  merely  "  poetical 
passing  jDersonifications ;"  but  they  are  in  fact  a  little  more,  and 
exhibit  a  constant  tendency  to  assume  a  higher  development. 
Among  them  he  enmnerates,  besides  the  K-'ijpe^,  "Ati],  and  the 
AiTttt,  the  Winds,  Strife,  Fear,  kv8oiim6s,  Sleep,  Death,  Dream, 
and  Rumour  (above,  ii.  93).  These  personifications  set  before  our 
eyes  the  living  process  by  means  of  which  all  mythologies  were 
originally  produced.  It  may  be  remarked  that  the  confounding 
of  the  Kvjpes  with  the  Fates  is  a  phraseology  characteristic  of 
Q.  Smyrn.  and  the  Alexandrian  Epos. 

Ver.  302. 

The  phrase  x^'C"  '''^  '^'*'  irpm^'  means  a  short  ivhile  ago — only  the 
other  day,  only  yesterday,  as  we  say ;  a  most  exti'aordinary  way  to 
talk  of  an  event  which  happened  nine  years  ago.  My  version  is 
purposely  devised  to  show  by  what  trick  of  the  imagination  such  a 
phraseology  might  arise.  An  abuse  of  adverbial  expressions  refer- 
ring to  time  is  not  uncommon  in  language ;  and  the  exact  contrary 
to  our  present  example  is  contained  in  the  well-known  colloquial 
use  of  TTaAai — anciently,  formerly, — for  a  feio  minutes  ago,  quite 
recently. 

Ver.  303. — Aulis'  rochy  hay. 

The  assembly  of  the  Achaean  fleet  at  Aulis,  in  Boeotia,  opposite 
Euboea,  is  an  event  which  received  great  prominence  in  the  future 
handling  of  the  Trojan  cycle.  The  young  scholar  will  at  once 
recall  the  Iphigenia  of  Euripides  and  the  opening  chorus  of  the 
Agamemnon  of  ^schylus.  It  is  remarkable  that  Homer  does  not 
say  a  single  word  about  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia.  That  the  great 
popular  minstrel  would  have  been  silent  on  such  a  theme  when  the 
course  of  his  narrative  directly  called  on  him  to  mention  it,  is  not 
probable.  We  therefore  conclude  that  here,  as  in  not  a  few  other 
cases,  the  versions  of  many  popular  legends  current  in  the  days  of 
the  tragedians  were  invented  in  the  period  between  their  age  and 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.         "         63 

the  ago  of  Homer.     There  was  ample  time  for  the  inventive  faculty 
to  disport  itself,  and  no  disinclination  to  use  it. 

Ver.  308. 
A  snake  whose  shining  hack  was  glowing  loith  bloody  sjwts. 

There  is  no  animal  which  plays  a  more  prominent  part  in  all 
early  religious  symbolism  than  the  serpent.  On  this  subject  I  can- 
not do  better  than  translate  the  remarks  of  Welcker,  in  his  g.  J. 
i.  §  13,  short,  but  learned  and  sensible  : — "  The  serpent,  the  most 
significant  of  all  animals,  was  applied  in  various  ways  by  the 
Greeks,  so  that  Justin  Martyr  says,  '  The  serpent  belongs  to  all 
your  gods  as  a  great  symbol  and  mystery'  (Apol.  70  e.)  In  the 
oldest  Hellenic  worship  this  animal  is  most  imj)oi-tant  in  connexion 
with  the  Delphian  snake,  with  the  earth,  and  with  .^sculapius. 
The  serpent  is  '  the  most  fiery  and  spiritual  of  all  animals,'  and 
moves  itself  without  limbs,  but  with  the  greatest  quickness  and 
dexterity ;  and  from  its  keen  piercing  eyes  received  from  the 
Greeks  the  names  of  o<^is  (oTrro/^at)  and  SpaKwv  (SepKo/xai).  The 
Cretans  called  it  St/3av,  that  is,  Siav,  divine  (Hesych.)  This  agrees 
with  the  Sosipolis  of  the  Eleans,  and  the  protecting  genius  called 
Agathodcemon.  As  with  the  most  ancient  Hebrews  the  serpent 
represented  unsanctified  intellect,  and  the  insolence  of  knowledge 
without  love,  so  with  the  Greeks,  this  animal,  as  a  symbol,  not  of 
physical,  but  of  intellectual  power,  represents  the  highest  wisdom, 
delivers  oracles,  and  is  therefore  called  otwvos.  Accordingly,  in  the 
'Hoiat,  a  lost  poem  of  Hesiod,  we  find  that  a  serpent  licked  the 
ears  of  Melampus  and  communicated  the  gift  of  divination  to  him, 
as  happened  also  to  Helenus,  Cassandra,  and  other  seers,  and  as 
we  find  represented  in  a  beautiful  bronze  head  of  ^sculapius  in 
Caylus  (ii.  77).  In  Pindar,  the  ancestors  of  the  prophetic  family 
of  the  Jamides  keep  two  snakes,  which  they  feed  with  honey. 
Connected  with  this  is  the  use  of  snakes  by  jugglers  and  magicians 
in  all  countries.  In  the  earliest  ages  the  medical  art  also  was 
closely  connected  with  divination  ;  and  ^sculapius  himself  appeared 


04  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

to  have  been  produced  from  a  snake  to  which  therapeutic  virtues 
were  attributed.  Independent  of  this  circle  of  ideas,  we  find  that 
the  serpent  signifies  production  from  the  earth,  because  this  animal 
seems  specially  bound  to  the  earth,  and  leaps  up  suddenly  from  the 
soil.  For  this  reason  Cecrops  and  the  giants  are  serpent  -  footed  ; 
and  the  Cadmean  Autochthons  spring  from  the  sown  teeth  of  a  ser- 
pent. On  account  of  the  terror  inspired  by  large  snakes,  this  ani- 
mal in  some  myths  performs  the  part  of  a  guard  or  watch.  All 
rude  people,  indeed,  acknowledge  somewhat  of  a  mystic  power  in 
the  serpent.  In  Haiti  the  members  of  a  secret  association  dance 
round  a  sacred  snake  from  Congo." 

On  the  religious  significance  of  the  serpent  generally,  see  P. 
Knight,  Symbol.  25 ;  Schwartz,  Urspnnig  der  Mythol,  Berlin, 
1860,  and  Faber's  special  work. 

Yer.  318. 
The  god  that  rides  Olympus  shoioed  that  he  had  sent  the  sign. 

It  is  quite  evident  from  Cicero's  translation  of  this  passage  {De 

Divinat.  ii.  30), 

"  Qui  luci  ediderat  genitor  Satnrnius  idem 
Abdidit,  et  duro  formavit  tegmina  saxo," 

that  some  ancient  copies  must  have  read  aiSijAoj/  or  some  cognate 
form,  not  dpt^y^Xov  ;  but  as  this  latter  is  the  reading  which  appears 
without  variation  in  our  mss.,  and  as  it  gives  a  perfectly  good  sense, 
there  seems  no  use  in  discussing  the  probabilities  or  possibilities  as 
to  how  the  discrepancy  in  the  text  might  have  arisen.  The  merit 
of  preserving  the  old  reading,  dpc^rjXov,  and  with  it,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  the  following  verse,  seems  to  belong  to  Zenodotus 
(Duntzer,  p.  157).  The  long  discussion  in  But.  leads  to  no  result ; 
and  Sp.  and  Nag.  agree  with  me  in  taking  the  text  as  we  find  it. 
As  to  the  mythological  legend  that  Jupiter  turned  the  serpent  into 
a  stone,  this  naturally  arose  from  a  stone  having  been  seen  in  that 
neighbourhood  shaped  like  a  serpent.  The  legend  of  Niobe  arose 
in  the  same  way  (xxiv.  602.     See  also  Od.  xni.  163). 


ISOOK   II.  NOTKS  TO  ■I'lIK  II. IAD.  65 

Ver.  o'21. — Cuiuiiii'j-cotOiNfl/cd  Kroium. 

Notwithstauding  the  piou.s  atte'nipts  of  Eustathius  and  some  of 
the  other  ancients  to  interpret  a  more  respectful  meaning  into  this 
familiar  epithet  of  the  father  of  Jove,  I  am  afraid  we  must  remain 
content  with  the  simplicity  of  the  ancient  popular  conception,  grow- 
ing up  as  it  did  in  times  and  among  a  people  with  whom  cunning 
((ro(^ta)  was  never  accounted  an  ignoble  quality.  The  fact  that  the 
same  epithet  is  distinctly  given  by  Hesiod  [Op.  d  Di.  48)  to  Pro- 
metheus, in  giving  an  account  of  the  deceit  practised  by  him 
against  Jove,  is  su9Scient  to  exclude  the  idea  of  profound  and 
hidden  wisdom  from  this  passage.  V.'s  '•  verhorgen"  seems  to 
allude  to  K/jovos  as  identical  with  xpoi'os,  time  :  but  all  interpre- 
tations of  this  sort  are  to  be  avoided,  when  they  do  not  lie  obviously 
in  the  popular  conception.  D.  has  '•  verschlagen."  Drb.  "deep- 
designing."  Welcker  (§  56)  agrees  with  me,  and  thinks  there  is 
an  allusion  to  the  insidious  manner  in  which,  according  to  the  old 
legend,  the  son  deprived  the  father  of  the  organs  of  generation. 

Yer.  o6"2. — Mavi^hrd  tlia  host  in  tribes  and  hrutherJwods. 

This  passage  is  extremely  interesting,  as  recognising  that  grand 
principle  of  political  subdivision  which  is  so  prominent  in  the  whole 
social  life  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  Romans,  and  Hebrews.  That  the 
family  is  the  great  social  monad  out  of  which  the  political  body 
grew,  was  recognised  by  the  ancients  as  clearly  as  a  modern  natu.- 
ralist  sees  in  a  madrepore  or  other  spongy  aggregate  the  result  of 
the  living  processes  of  an  infinite  number  of  animal  units  (see 
particularly  Plato,  Laws,  iii,  680  E ;  with  Stallbaum's  note). 
There  is  this  difference,  however,  between  the  two  cases,  that  the 
higher  nature  of  man  demands  not  only  a  larger  aggregate,  but  a 
liigher  organization,  with  a  new  head  or  centre  of  order  (see 
Arist.  Fol  I.  "2).  In  following  out  the  principle  of  the  family,  the 
Greek  philosophers  recognised  in  the  State  a  triple  gradation,  the 
one  always  expanding  above  the  other  in  a  sort  of  higher  metamor- 
phosis, like  the  leafy  development  of  a  plant.      Of  these  the  first 

\(,)L.  IV.  ^ 


Gf)  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  11. 

was  Trdrpa.  or  a  /ut/icrship  ;  the  second,  (f^pdrpa.  or  hrutherhood  : 
and  the  third,  cfjvXy,  or  <f>v\ov,  which,  like  (fivXXov,  a  h'aj\  seems  to 
be  connected  with  <^uw.  to  (jroic.  tSee  the  well-known  jDassage  from 
DicEearchus  in  Steph.  Byz..  article  Trdrpa.  As  society  increased, 
the  original  gevni  of  the  whole  growth,  the  Trdrpa,  of  course  disap- 
peared, and  only  the  (^vA?)  and  the  cjtpdrpa  retained  their  social 
importance,  and  were  subdivided  into  yemj  ((joiff,  ytyvo/^iat,  kiii, 
SsLiis.  jcDi).  But  this  division  of  the  members  of  a  numerous  social 
body  on  such  a  narrow  principle  as  that  of  family,  could  not  be 
maintained  pure  in  any  large  and  prosperous  community.  The 
family  name,  however,  and  certain  family  rites,  remained  as  a  social 
bond  long  after  kinship  by  blood  had  ceased  to  be  curiously  in- 
quired after  {FoU.  viii.  Ill  ;  Harpoc.  yei'vrjrat;  Cic.  Top.  6  ;  and 
Niebuhr,  B.  G.  vol.  i.  die  GeschUchter  und  Curien,  who  sees  the 
nearest  modern  realization  of  the  ancient  system  of  social  organiza- 
tion by  blood  in  the  little  band  of  the  Suliotes  in  Albania,  so 
famous  in  the  Grreek  war  of  liberation).  I  have  myself  seen  per- 
haps the  last  renmant  of  ancient  "  paternal  rule  by  families  and 
tribes,"  as  Milton  calls  it,  still  existing  in  a  remote  corner  of  the 
Isle  of  Skye,  under  the  headship  of  a  branch  of  the  noble  clan  of 
Macdonald.  In  democratic  Athens  we  find  that  the  word  (fivXi^, 
after  the  time  of  Cleisthenes,  became  a  merely  topographical  division, 
like  our  counties,  subdivided  into  Sij/xoi,  or  parishes.  Even  in  aris- 
tocratic Rome  the  same  thing  took  place  to  a  certain  extent  under 
Servius  Tullius,  whose  constitution,  according  to  the  express  testi- 
mony of  Dionysius  (iv.  14),  was  based  on  the  principle  of  substi- 
tuting local  for  family  tribes ;  but  the  old  organism  by  family  and 
clanship,  as  is  well  known,  remained  alongside  of  it  for  certain  pur- 
poses. These  changes  of  course  were  made  with  the  greatest  dis- 
tinctness and  decision.  Nevertheless,  so  firmly  fixed  was  the  idea 
of  blood-relationship  among  the  members  of  the  State  in  the  Athe- 
nian mind,  that  the  ^parp/at  or  brotherhoods  still  existed  as  the 
necessary  condition  of  all  citizenship.  As  in  Homer  (ix.  63)  old 
Nestor  declares  that  he  will  hold  no  communion  with  a  rebel,  but 
count  him  as  d(f)p-)]Tcop.  ilOepia-TOS.  and  aveo-rtos.  an  nriflaw,  so  in 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  67 

Aristophanes,  a  foreigner  who  had  not  been  able  to  get  himself 
naturalized  in  Athens  is  laughed  at  for  not  having  (fipdropas,  that 
is,  for  not  having  been  admitted  into  a  (fypdrpa  and  received  the 
kinship  of  the  State.  The  same  fundamental  principle  was  regu- 
larly recognised  in  the  Attic  feast  of  the  'ATraroi'/Dttt ;  on  the  third 
day  of  which  all  children  born  within  the  year  were  taken  to  the 
assembled  heads  of  the  political  brotherhoods,  and  publicly  enrolled 
in  a  register,  which  registration  remained  the  only  legal  evidence 
of  their  citizenship. 

We  may  remark  further  with  regard  to  this  passage,  that  Nestor's 
object  in  dividing  tlie  army  according  to  their  clans  was  evidently 
to  excite  their  feeling  of  honour,  and  respect  for  one  another's  opi- 
nion (aiSw?,  XV.  561 ) ;  the  clannish  sentiment,  as  among  our  High- 
landers, being  evidently  a  much  stronger  spur  to  noble  conduct 
than  the  feeling  of  loyalty  to  their  monarch,  or  the  modern  catholic 
bond  of  cash  payment. 

Ver.  455. 

Here  commences  a  series  of  similes,  heaped  up  one  above  another 
like  a  race  of  mounting  waves,  which  must  be  regarded  as  a  strik- 
ing peculiarity  in  Homeric  poetry.  The  Wolfians,  sharp  as  paid 
pleaders  to  pick  a  flaw,  of  course  look  on  these  as  proofs  of  a  com- 
bination of  different  similes,  of  which  one  was  sufficient  for  the 
occasion,  originally  made  by  different  minstrels,  and  afterwards 
strung  together  by  the  conservative  instinct  alluded  to  above,  p.  61. 
On  this  ground,  I  presume,  Bek.,  in  his  arbitrary  way,  has  ejected 
three  of  them.  But  to  this  the  reply  is  easy,  that  these  similes, 
not  being  inconsistent  with  each  other,  but  distinctly  marking  dif- 
ferent stages  or  aspects  of  a  great  critical  moment  of  the  action, 
are  part  of  the  idiosyncrasy  of  the  poet.  Nitzsch  (Sag.  Poes.  i.  33 
and  95)  has  expressed  this  view  with  strong  emphasis  for  his  own 
countrymen  ;  for  us  practical-minded  islanders,  our  broad  national 
common  sense,  and  the  judicious  criticism  of  Mure  (ii.  91)  will  act 
as  a  sufficient  safeguard  against  the  disintegrating  tendencies  of  the 
German  school. 


68  NOTES  To  Tin;  iLlAl>.  BOOK  II. 

Vek.  4G1. — Bif  C'aijstr.r's  jfotr. 

Here  the  bard  i.s  evidently  painting  scenes  as  familiar  to  his 
eye  as  the  whirr  of  the  partridge  on  Tweedside  was  to  the  ear  of 
Walter  Scott.  The  Cayster,  which  flows  into  the  ^Egean  at  Ephe- 
sus,  is  the  first  great  river  that  the  traveller  has  to  cross  south  of 
Smyrna,  the  poet's  birthplace  ;  and  the  Asian  meadow  mentioned 
along  with  it  is  manifestly  the  swampy  alluvial  land  about  the 
mouth  of  this  river,  which  gave  occasion  to  the  ancients  indulging 
some  favourite  speculations  on  the  growth  of  plains,  in  which  we 
see  the  germs  of  the  geological  philosophy  of  our  great  country- 
man, Lyell  (Str.  xiii.  621,  xv.  691 ;  Hamilton,  Asia  Minor,  vol.  i. 
p.  540).      The  word  ao-ts  means  mud  (xxi.  321). 

Vj^r.  478-9. 

The  points  of  comparison  here  are  too  obvinus  to  require  com- 
ment. Neptune  is  broad-breasted,  like  the  earth,  to  express  mag- 
nitude and  strength.     See  his  statues  in  the  Museum. 

Vek.  484. 

The  Muses  in  Homer,  like  the  Furies  and  t\\v.  Fates,  arc  a 
mighty  power,  but  kept  very  vague  and  distant.  Only  in  one 
place  {Od.  XXIV.  60)  is  their  future  orthodox  number.  Nine,  men- 
tioned ;  in  Boeotia.  a  principal  seat  of  their  worship,  they  were  three 
(Pans.  IX.  29).  Their  generation  from  Jove  (James  i.  17)  and 
Memory  (Hes.  Theog.  53)  is  a  fine  example  of  the  suggestiveness  so 
deeply  rooted  in  the  Greek  myths.  Not  less  full  of  significance 
and  instruction  were  their  three  Boeotian  names.  Diligence. 
Memory,  and  Song.  In  these  old  Hellenic  fancies  we  have  poetry, 
piety,  and  philosojDhy  combined.  How  much  wiser  is  it  sometimes 
to  be  a  polytheist  than  a  positivist ! 

Veil  4'J4. 

The  general  (juestions  with  regard  to  the  catalogue  have  been 
discussed  in  the  Dissertations.     We  shall  now  review  the  details 


l!(i(iK   II.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  69 

— a  process  somewhat  irksome,  no  doubt,  but  wliich  will  throw  a 
strong  light  on  the  firm  basis  of  reality  on  which  the  popular  poetry 
of  the  Hellenes  rested. 

Boeotia,  in  point  of  topographical  conformation,  forms  a  caldron, 
surrounded  by  mountains  on  all  sides,  and  containing  in  the  middle 
a  lake  of  considerable  size,  through  which  its  principal  river  flows, 
but  finds  no  outlet  into  the  sea,  except  by  certain  subterranean 
chasms  (Kara(i66pa)  in  the  limestone  mountain  barrier.  To  the 
north,  its  mountain  border  separates  it  from  Thessaly  ;  on  the  west, 
Parnassus  divides  it  from  Phocis  ;  and  in  its  south  district.  Mount 
Helicon,  with  its  slopes,  stretches  down  to  the  shores  of  the  Corin- 
thian Gulf;  while  Cithaeron  and  Parnes  separate  it  on  the  same 
side  from  Megaris  and  Attica.  On  the  side  of  the  Euboean  Sea  it 
is  shut  in  by  a  verge  of  hills,  coming  down  along  the  coast  from  the 
south  of  Thessaly,  of  which  Ptoon  is  the  chief.  Its  most  habitable 
region  is  twofold  :  first,  the  great  plain,  through  which  the  river 
Cephissus  flows  from  the  north  slopes  of  Parnassus  into  the  great 
lake  Copais  ;  and,  second^  a  plain  of  less  extent,  west  of  Helicon, 
and  skirting  the  northern  base  of  Cithaeron,  through  which  the  river 
Asopus  flows  eastward  into  the  Euboean  Sea.  The  land  in  these 
districts  is  rich  and  loamy,  to  a  degi-ee  that  justly  made  it  famous 
among  the  Greeks,  dwelling  as  they  did  in  a  land  of  hard  rocks, 
meagre  rivers,  and,  in  some  places,  very  thin  soil.  Hence  the 
praise  of  the  Boeotians — 

BotWTOi  fxaXa  irlova  Syjfiov  ^x<"'^f^: 

in  V.  710,  with  special  reference  to  the  country  near  to  Lake 
Copais.  In  one  of  these  two  plains  the  most  famous  Boeotian  cities 
here  mentioned  will  naturally  lie.  The  first  place,  named  Hyria, 
lies  in  the  Asopian  plain,  half  way  between  Thebes  and  Tanagra, 
and  not  far  from  Aulis,  along  with  which  it  is  mentioned  by  the 
poet.  Hyria  was  a  city  of  some  note  in  the  early  legends  of 
Boeotia  (Mull.  Orchom.  92).  The  "rocky  Aulis"  takes  its  name 
from  auAos,  a  channel — properly  the  narrow  channel  between 
Boeotia  and  Euboea,  opposite  Chalcis.  a  few  miles  to  the  south  of 
which  it  was  situated  (Liv.  xlv.  '27).      The  situation  is  described  by 


70  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Strabo  (403j,  and  has  been  identified  by  modern  travellers  (Leake, 
N.  G.  ii.  263,  AVordsworth,  Afh.  and  Att.  p.  7).  Its  prominence 
in  the  Trojan  story  afterwards  commended  it  specially  to  the  genius 
of  J]uripides  and  iEschylus  {IpMg.  Aid.  120,  and  Afjam.  184). 

Vek.  497. — Schcenvs, 

(Vrxotvo?,  a  rtish),  on  a  river  of  the  same  name,  is  placed  by 
Strabo  (IX.  408)  six  miles  fi'om  Thebes,  on  the  road  to  Anthedon  ; 
and  its  situation  is  accordingly  conjectured,  with  probability,  by 
both  L.  (ii.  321)  and  Ubrichs  (258).  Scolds,  again  (Str.  ibid.),  lies 
in  a  diff"erent  district,  south  of  Thebes,  on  the  banks  of  the  Asopus, 
beneath  Cithferon  ;  that  is,  manifestly,  somewhere  near  the  famous 
town  of  Plata^ge,  to  which  neighbourhood  it  is  more  certainly  fixed 
by  the  distinct  statement  of  Pausanias  (ix.  4.  3 ;  L.  ii.  331). 
Eteonos  follows  immediately  in  Strabo,  as  a  city  of  tlie  Asopian 
strath,  afterwards  named  Scarphe,  and  was  one  of  the  townships 
dependent  on  Platfete — not  on  Thebes. — and  therefore  to  be  sought 
for  close  to  Scolos,  on  the  Attic  border.  L.  explains  the  epithet 
iroXvKvrjfxos  ("  hilly  slopes"),  applied  here  to  this  place,  of  the  nar- 
row defile  through  which  the  Asopus  flows  before  emerging  into 
the  plain  of  Tanagi'a.  Thespi^,  famous  in  the  history  of  tragic 
art,  lies  between  Thebes  and  Helicon,  just  under  that  mountain  to 
the  east  (Pans.  ix.  26.  3).  It  was  famous  for  the  w^orship  of  Cupid 
(of  whom  Praxiteles  made  for  them  his  famous  statue)  and  the 
Muses.  In  the  time  of  Strabo,  Tanagra  and  Thespian  were  the 
only  two  Boeotian  cities  that  belonged  to  the  living  world.  All  the 
rest  were  in  ruins,  or  had  left  mere  names  behind.  Gr^a  is 
placed  by  Strabo  (404)  near  OrojDus ;  and  as  both  this  town  and 
Tanagra  (Steph.  Byz.  in  voce)  laid  claims  to  having  inherited  its 
site,  it  likely  lay  not  far  from  these  cities,  on  the  Asopus,  behind 
Mount  Parnes  (Miiller,  Orchom.  480).  Whether  in  the  namcFpara 
there  may  not  exist  the  only  Homeric  trace  of  the  Graii  and 
Grceci  of  the  Eomans  (Glad.  i.  99,  124),  must  be  left  undecided. 
Mycalkssus,  a  place  well  known  in  the  history  of  the  Peloponnesiau 
war,  lay  in  the  territory  of  Tanagra.  on  the  road  from  Thebes  to 


BOOFv  11.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  71 

Chalcis  (Str.  404);  and  this  is  confirmed  by  Pausanias  (ix.  19), 
who  goes  from  Thebes  to  Chalcis  by  Teumessiis,  Grlisas,  Harma, 
and  Mycalessus,  which,  according  to  this  reference,  mnst  be  near 
the  sea,  especially  as  the  temple  of  the  Mycalessian  Demeter,  which 
he  mentions  immediately  afterwards,  is  on  the  sea.  So  also 
Thucyd.  (vii.  29.)  On  the  supposed  situation  of  this  town,  see 
L.  ii.  p.  252.  The  epithet  evpvxopo'; — whatever  speculations  may 
be  indulged  in  as  to  the  original  connexion  between  x^P'^^  ^^^ 
Xwpos — certainly  in  actual  usage  has  nothing  to  do  with  dancing  ; 
and  the  vacillation  between  o  and  w  is  a  matter  fiimiliar  to  all 
scholars.     See  Lucas  on  to/jiojpo?. 

Ver.  499. 

Harma — {ap/xa,  a  charint), — in  the  Tanagra^an  district  (Str.  404), 
of  which  Pausanias,  in  the  passage  just  quoted,  saw  the  ruins.  The 
Greeks,  with  their  pet  trick  of  fanciful  etymology,  connected  this 
name  with  the  chariot  of  Amphiaraus.  (On  its  probable  situation 
see  L.  iii.  251,  Ulrichs,  p.  261).  Eilesion,  unknoAvn.  Erythr^, 
a  place  well  known  to  the  Greeks,  fi'om  its  having  formed  one  of 
the  ends  of  the  camp  of  Mardonius  in  the  celebrated  battle  of 
Plataeae  (Herod,  ix.  15,  Pans.  ix.  2,  and  Eurip.  Bacch.  751).  On  its 
probable  site  at  Katzula,  see  L.  ii.  328.  The  first  town  in  ver.  500, 
Eleon  (a  jjJace  of  marshes,  from  e'Aos),  is  placed  by  Strabo  in  the  dis- 
trict of  Tauagra.  but  its  exact  site  is  unknown.  Hyle  (I'A?;,  u-nod — 
mentioned  again,  v.  708,  and  vir.  221),  bears  the  same  name  as  the 
small  lake  IIylikk,  immediately  east  of  Copais,  near  which  it  must 
have  been  situated  ;  though  I  do  not  suppose  that  by  the  "  Cephis- 
sian  lake"  in  v.  709,  Homer  meant  the  lake  of  Hyle.  and  not 
rather  the  Copais.  Hyle  may  have  been  so  situated  as  to  belong 
in  a  manner  to  both  adjacent  lakes  ;  or  the  reputation  of  the  larger 
lake  may  have  altogether  overwhelmed  the  smaller  one,  in  the 
imagination  of  the  minstrel.  The  exact  site  of  H.  is  not  known. 
Peteon,  a  village  of  the  Thebaid  district,  near  the  Anthedon  road 
(Str.  410).  In  ver.  501,  Oka  lea,  on  the  banks  of  a  brook  of  the 
same  name,  is  placed  by  Strabo  (410)  on  the  south  side  of  the  lake 


72  NOTES  TO  THF.  ILIAD.  BOnK  II. 

Copais.  halfway  between  Haliartus  and  Alalcomeiia?  (L.  ii.  :20G). 
Medkon,  ariother  of  the  Copaic  towns,  lay  not  far  from  Unchestu.s, 
near  the  Phoenician  mount  (Str.  410).  Cop^.  (KWTTTy,  an  oar  ,  from, 
which  the  lake  took  its  name,  is  on  its  north  shore  (Str.  410),  and 
is  generally  considered  to  be  identical  with  Topolf,  which  Ulrichs 
(p.  216)  remarks  is  even  now  the  only  place  on  the  lake  where 
there  is  a  ferry  with  boats.  Pausanias  (ix.  24j  places  it  exactly 
opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Cephissus,  and  the  route  that  he  describes 
agrees  well  with  this  site.  Eutresis,  the  next  place,  is  a  little  vil- 
lage in  the  Thespian  district  (Str.  411).  The  next  town.  Thisbe,  is 
under  the  south  base  of  Helicon,  near  the  sea,  with  a  harbour,  whence 
there  is  a  passage  to  Sicyon,  seven  or  eight  miles  across.  At  Kalwsia. 
which  the  minute  description  of  Pausanias  (ix.  32.  2)  has  enabled 
\i.  (ii.  508)  to  identify  with  Thisbe,  the  doves  are  still  as  abun- 
dant as  they  were  in  the  days  of  Homer.  The  next  town,  Coronea, 
to  be  carefully  distinguished  from  Plutarch's  birthplace,  Chseronea. 
is  well  known  in  the  history  of  Greece  as  the  scene  of  two  battles, 
the  one  e.g.  447,  fatal  to  Attic  ascendency  in  Boeotia,  the  other. 
B.C.  394,  in  which  Agesilaus  again  asserted  the  Spartan  supremacy 
in  those  parts.  The  site  of  this  fymous  town  is  to  be  sought  on  a 
hill  under  Helicon,  on  the  south  side  of  the  Copais  (Str.  411).  with 
a  plain  beneath,  on  which  was  the  temple  of  tiic  Itonian  Athena, 
famous  in  the  traditions  of  the  Thessalian  Minyans  {Ap.  Eli.  i.  551), 
and  the  consecrated  seat  of  the  common  council  of  the  Boeotian 
States.  The  detailed  topographical  reference  in  Pans.  (ix.  32-34) 
led  L.  (ii.  134)  to  assign  a  hill  east  of  Lebadea,  and  opposite 
Orchomenus,  as  the  site  of  Coronea.  A  town  of  the  same  name  in 
Thessaly  is  one  of  the  many  facts  which  prove  the  early  civilisation 
of  Greece  from  the  inhabitants,  originally  Pelasgi,  of  that  broad  and 
fertile  ])lain.  See  the  genealogy  in  Pans.  (ix.  34-5).  The  position 
of  Hali.\rtls,  towards  the  south-east  corner  of  the  lake,  in  a  narrow 
gorge  between  the  lake  and  the  mountain,  is  strongly  marked  by 
Strabo  (411),  and  is  illustrated  by  Plutarch,  in  his  life  of  Lysander 
(28),  who  was  slain  here,  and  pointed  out  by  L.  (ii.  200.)  The 
epithet  Trotvyfvra,  ''grassy"  (Byin.  E<iii.  Apvll.  243),  refers  to  tl.e 


liOdK   II.  NOTKS  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  73 

rich  meadow-ground  on  the  borders  of  the  hike,  where  the  reeds 
wrew  from  which  the  famous  Boeotian  flutes  were  made.     In  the 
next  line,  504,  Flatjem,  a  name  as  well  known  as  Waterloo,  lies 
beneath  Cithaeron,  to  the  north,  near  the  source  of  the  Asopus,  on 
the  Attic  border.     Glisas,  as  above  mentioned,  occurs  in  Pausanias, 
on  the  route  from  Thebes  to  Chalcis,  and  is  more  specially  noticed 
in  Str.  (412,  and  Herod,  ix.  48.)     HvpOTHEBiE,  in  ver.  505  (i.e. 
under  Thebes,  vTrb)  certainly  seems  to  indicate  that  at  the  time  of 
the  Trojan  war,  according  to  the  popular  tradition,  upper  Thebes 
or  the  Cadmea,  as  it  was  called,  was  not  inhabited,  and  only  the 
people  dwelling  in  the  low  ground  beneath  the   Acropolis  sent  a 
contingent  to  Troy  (Str.  412).     The  city  of  Thebes,  however,  the 
great  city,  the  "seven-gated  city,"  is  alluded  to  by  the  poet  under 
its  well-known  name  in  other  places  (iv.  406,  and  Od.  xi.  263). 
In  the  Iliad,  however,  the  inhabitants  are  never  called  Thebans, 
but  Cadmeans  (iv.  385).     The  Onchestus  of  the  next  line  was  one 
of  the  famous  seats  of  the  worship  of  Poseidon  (Apoll.  lihod.  in. 
1239).     The  honour  paid  to  the  water-god  in  this  district  is  easily  ex- 
plained, either  by  the  presence  of  the  element  of  which  he  was  patron, 
by  the  known  commercial  enterprise  of  Orchomenus,  and  other  Boeo- 
tian cities,  or  by  the  breeding  of  horses — the  sea-god's  favourite 
animal, — to  which  the  rich  meadows  on  the  banks  of  the  Copais 
were  peculiarly  favourable.     Its  situation  in  the  territory  of  Ilali- 
artus,   on  the  lake,  but   considerably  more  towards  Thebes,  and 
farther  from  Helicon,  is  pretty  accurately  indicated  both  by  Pau- 
sanias (ix.  26.  3)  and  Strabo  (412),  with  which  compare  L.  ii.  214. 
Arne  in  the  next  line  is  remarkable  for  being  the  name  of  the 
Thessalian  home  of  the  great  colony  of  Boeotians,  who,  about  sixty 
years  after  the  Trojan  war,  were  driven  from  their  native  seats  by 
an  irruption  of  wild  Thessalians,  who  efi'ected   a  permanent  settle- 
ment in  the  rich  plains  of  the  Cephissus  and  the  Asopus  (Thucyd. 
I.  12).    About  the  site  of  the  Boeotian  Arne,  the  ancients  were  alto- 
gether in  the  dark.     Zenodotus  wishing,  naturally  enough,  to  see 
the  city  of  Hesiod,  in  the  roll  of  famous  Boeotian  towns,  or  perhaps 
desirous  to  save   the  poet's  reputation  from   the   impeachment  of 


74  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BOoK  II. 

having  named  a  city  as  participant  of  the  Trojan  expedition,  which 
did  not  exist  until  sixty  years  afterwards,  read  it  "AcrKpr)  in  this 
line  (vide  Sp.  j,  not  mindful  of  the  character  which  the  old  theologer 
gives  to  the  climate  of  this  place  (Oj).  638),  certainly  anything 
but  favourable  to  the  cultivation  of  the  vine.  Midea  is  another 
city  of  the  Copais,  of  which  all  memory  was  lost.  Strabo  (413) 
says  that  both  it  and  Avne  were  sw^allowed  up  by  the  lake,  which, 
on  account  of  the  want  of  any  proper  outlet,  was  subject  to  strange 
inundations,  and  had  occupied  diiferent  levels  at  different  times. 
NisA(ver.  50<S),  or,  as  Strabo  (405)  will  have  it,  Nysa  (NOcra),  was 
a  village  on  Helicon.  The  occurrence  of  this  name  in  Thrace,  and 
in  various  parts  of  the  East,  seems  to  indicate  the  westward  pro- 
gress of  some  Indo-European  tribe,  with  whom  Dionysus  was  a 
principal  object  of  vforship  ;  for  all  the  legends  about  the  Dionysiac 
worship  point  to  its  foreign  origin,  and  in  all  of  them  the  name  of 
Nisa  or  iVy.so.  plays  a  notable  part.  The  epithet  (ade-q.  like  lepd, 
evidently  refers  to  the  worship  of  this  god.  The  Boeotian  roll  ends 
with  Anthedon,  which  is  properly  called  €o-;(aT6wcra,  as  being- 
situated  far  from  the  centre  of  the  country  on  the  north-east  coast. 
It  was  at  all  times  a  remote  serai-civilized  sort  of  place,  occupied 
principally  by  fishermen  and  boatmen,  pilots  and  shipwrights, 
according  to  the  curious  account  of  Dicaearclms  (Euhr,  p.  145); 
their  great  local  saint  was  also  a  fisherman,  called  Glaucus,  or 
Sea-green. 

Ver.  412. 

Orchomenus,  of  whose  architectural  grandeur  some  massive 
slabs,  well  known  to  tourists,  still  remain,  was  a  famous  city  on  the 
north-west  corner  of  Lake  Copais,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cephissus.  It 
was  the  principal  site  of  the  Minyans,  a  race  of  enterprising  nobles 
originally  from  the  south-east  corner  of  Thessaly,  who  made  them- 
selves famous  in  the  earliest  ages  of  Greek  civilisation  by  the  great 
voyage  which  they  made  to  the  Black  Sea — the  destined  seat  of  so 
many  Greek  colonies, — commonly  called  the  Argonautic  expedition. 
The  importance  of  this  place  in  the  Homeric  age  is  evident,  from 


BOOK  ]I.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  75 

its  not  being  named  with  the  other  15cEotian  towns,  but  receiving  a 
separate  paragraph  for  itself;  and  specially  also  from  the  manner 
in  which  it  is  mentioned  along  with  Egyptian  Thebes  in  ix.  381. 
The  worship  of  the  Graces,  for  which  it  was  famous,  evidently  arose 
from  the  growth  of  intellectual  refinement,  which  again  sprang  from 
the  extraordinary  agricultural  and  commercial  prosperity  of  the 
place.  The  importance  of  this  city  in  the  early  history  of  Greece 
has  been  vividly  brought  before  the  world  in  the  present  age  by 
Otfried  Miiller,  in  his  Ordmnenus  unci  die  Minyer^  a  work 
which,  for  extent  and  accuracy  of  research,  fertility  of  combination, 
and  a  graceful  command  of  materials,  has  no  superior  among  the 
most  esteemed  products  of  the  rich  and  brilliant  erudition  of  Ger- 
many. AsPLEDON,  the  town  mentioned  next,  lay  about  two  nnd  a 
half  miles  from  Orchomenus  ;  exact  site  unknown. 

Ver.  517. 

We  now  come  to  Pnocis,  a  mountainous  district,  to  the  west  and 
south-west  of  Boeotia,  which  may  indeed  be  said  to  be  altogether 
made  up  of  Parnassus,  from  the  head  to  ''the  forefeet"  of  that 
celebrated  mountain.  The  inhabitants  were  a  stout-souled  race, 
so  resolute,  that  to  dare  like  a  Phocian  became  a  proverb  among 
the  Greeks  for  every  deed  of  lofty  fearlessness  (Pans.  x.  1.  3).  Of 
the  Phocian  cities,  the  most  famous  was  Delphi,  anciently  called 
Pytho  (ver.  519);  mentioned  again  in  the  Iliad  (ix.  405),  where 
the  great  wealth  of  that  early  seat  of  an  influential  hierarchy  is 
particularly  specified.  The  epithet  Trerpijeo-cra,  rocky,  is  peculiarly 
suitable  to  Delphi,  which  lies,  in  fact,  so  close  beneath  a  high  up- 
right wall  of  rock — a  part  of  the  great  flat  southern  ledge  from 
which  Parnassus  rises, — that  the  traveller,  descending  from  above 
by  a  steep  winding  path,  is  long  before  he  can  catch  a  glimpse  of 
the  spot  to  which  he  is  approaching.  Ckissa,  in  the  next  line,  is 
a  little  south-west  of  Delphi,  near  the  Corinthian  gulf,  to  which  a 
domain  of  sacred  or  church  lands  was  attached,  belonging  to  Delphi. 
With  Leake  and  Illrichs,  I  assume  that  Crissa  and  Cirrha  were 
two  distinct  places,  standing  in  the  same  relation  that  Edinburgh 


76  XOTE.S  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

does  to  Leith,  because  it  is  more  easy  to  suppose  au  occasional 
confusion  of  two  places  so  closely  connected,  than  to  explain  hoAv 
Strabo  (ix.  418)  should  have  laid  down  two.  if  there  was  only 
one.  Of  Cyparissus  nothing  is  recorded,  and  the  site  is  dis- 
puted. The  context  here  plainly  leads  us  to  place  it,  with  Strabo 
(ix.  423),  under  Lijcorea,  on  Parnassus.  Daulis,  which  retains 
its  ancient  name,  and  is  situated  high  on  the  shoulder  of  Parnassus, 
as  you  cross  from  the  valley  of  the  Cephissus  to  the  ravine  of 
Delplii,  was  a  remarkably  strong  place  (Liv.  xxxii.  IS).  Its 
nightingale-haunted  woods  long  maintained  a  prominent  place  in 
the  well-known  legend  of  Procne  and  Philomela.  I  have  a  lively 
recollection  of  the  green  gardens  of  pomegranates,  and  of  the  rich 
runnels  of  water  that  came  bickering  down  the  steep,  as  I  passed 
the  village  on  my  way  to  Delplii.  The  next  town,  Panopeds,  situ- 
ated close  on  the  Boeotian  boundary,  was  famous  in  legendary  his- 
tory {Od.  XI.  576),  and  remarkable  historically  as  the  seat  of  the 
Congress  of  the  Phocian  states  (Pans.  x.  4).  In  the  next  line, 
Anemorea,  situated  on  a  windy  height,  on  the  borders  of  the  Del- 
phian and  Phocian  territory  (Str.  423),  is  of  no  celebrity ;  but 
Hyampolis  (a  contraction  for  'Yavrwv  ttoA^s,  the  city  of  the  Hyantes, 
the  earliest  known  inhabitants  of  Boeotia,  Str.  ix.  401),  receives 
frequent  mention  in  history,  from  its  occupying  a  position  in  a 
narrow  pass,  through  which  it  was  often  necessary  or  convenient 
for  armies  to  pass  from  Locris  into  the  rich  plain  of  Orchomenus 
(Pans.  X.  35.  4  ;  Str.  ix.  424  ;  L.  ii.  107).  The  Cephissus  (ver. 
521),  one  of  the  few  reputable  rivers  of  Grreece,  is  justly  called 
8tos ;  for  a  river  that  did  not  dry  up  in  summer  was,  in  those  hot 
countries,  justly  felt  to  be  fraught  with  a  peculiar  blessing.  It 
springs  from  the  northern  slopes  of  Parnassus,  near  a  town  called 
Lil.s:a  by  the  ancients,  and  flows  east  into  the  Copais.  Its  foun- 
tains, known  at  present  by  the  significant  popular  name  of  Kf.<^o.- 
XojSpvcTL — well-heads^ — have  been  traced  by  L.  (ii.  71),  as  also  the 
ruins  of  the  adjacent  Lil;\!a. 


BOOK  II.  NOTKS  TO  '['UK  ILIAD.  77 


Vek.  527. 

The  only  Locriaiis  known  to  Homer  occupy  a  narrow  mountain 
strip  of  land,  stretching  from  Thermopylae  along  the  Maliac  bay, 
and  Eubcean  Firth  to  the  north  border  of  Boeotia.  Its  inhabitants 
are  singular  in  Homer  for  their  dexterity  in  the  use  of  the  bow  (xiii. 
715  ;  Q.  Smyrn.  iv.  187),  that  being  rather  an  Oriental  than  a 
Eui'opean  weapon  (Pans.  i.  "23.  3).  Their  principal  town  was  Opus 
(ver.  531),  from  which  the  whole  people  were  often  called  Opuntians, 
to  distinguish  them  from  the  other  Locrians.  It  is  situated  at  one 
end  of  a  rich  plain,  about  nine  miles  long  (Bursian,  i.  190),  a  short 
distance  from  the  sea,  and  is  famous  in  Homer  as  the  birthplace  of 
Patroclus  (xxiii.  85).  Kynos,  near  the  promontory  which  fronts 
Euboea,  at  the  north  end  of  the  rich  plain,  is  the  naval  station  of 
Opus,  and  famous  as  the  city  of  Deucalion,  the  Noah  of  the  great 
Boeotian  flood,  of  which  Parnassus  was  the  Ararat  (Str.  ix.  425). 
Calliarus,  Bessa,  and  Augeij5  had  left  no  stone  in  Strabo's  days 
(Str.  426).  Scarphe,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  well-known  place 
even  down  to  the  days  of  the  Roman  emperors  (Bursian,  i.  189), 
and  its  situation  may  be  decided  by  a  pretty  accurate  approximation 
(Str.  426;  L.  ii.  178).  Quite  certain  also,  from  an  inscription  as 
old  as  the  good  Bishop  Miletius,  is  the  site  of  Throniuji  (L.  ii.  178). 
Both  these  places  are  in  the  western  division  of  Locris,  towards 
Thermopylte,  the  one  on  the  coast,  the  other  inland  about  twenty 
stadia,  on  the  river  Boagrius.  This  stream  was  a  mere  channel 
in  summer,  over  which  a  person  could  pass  with  dry  shoes,  but  in 
the  rainy  season  it  came  down  suddenly  and  savagely,  with  a  wild 
roar,  whence  its  name  (f^cyj  and  aypios). 

Ver.  536. 

Next  in  due  order  comes  Eubiea,  an  island  stretching  opposite 
the  Maliac,  Locrian,  Boeotian,  and  Attic  coast  to  a  length  of  some 
ninety  miles,  but  with  a  very  disproportionate  breadth — hence 
anciently  called  MaKpts.  or  the   Jam/  island  (Str.  x.  445).     It  was 


7S  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

also  called  in  ancient  times  'A/3avTi<s,  from  its  oldest  inhabitants, 
called  in  this  passage  "A/3avTes  (Herod,  i.  146).  The  character 
of  the  island  is  decidedly  mountainous  and  rocky ;  so  much  so, 
that  on  the  eastern  coast,  south  of  Cerinthus,  which  is  near  the 
north  end,  there  is  not  a  single  town  mentioned  by  Homer ; 
and  the  southern  portion  of  it  was  as  notorious  for  shipwrecks 
among  the  Greeks  (Fepato-Tos,  Od.  iii.  177)  as  the  Acroceraunian 
mountains.  It  possessed  only  two  large  plains,  one  on  the  north, 
and  the  other  on  the  west  coast.  The  northern  one,  over- against 
Thessaly,  contained  the  town  of  Histi^a  (vcr.  537),  afterwards 
called  Oreos  (Str.  x.  445),  important  by  its  position,  and  famous 
in  military  history.  The  other  plain  stretches  out  exactly  opposite 
Bceotia,  at  the  place  where  the  strait  is  so  narrow  as  to  be  bridged 
over  ;  and  exactly  at  this  point  lies  Chalcis,  the  metropolis,  in  a 
sense,  of  the  island  (Str.  447),  while  Eretria  stands  on  the  coast, 
at  the  southern  end  of  the  same  plain.  Of  these  towns,  the  former, 
governed  by  a  wealthy  and  enterprising  aristocracy  (Ar.  Pol.  iv.  3), 
was  the  mother  of  many  famous  colonies,  while  the  latter  lent  its 
name  to  a  school  of  philosophy,  of  which  Menedemus  was  the 
founder.  Cerinthus  (ver.  538)  was  a  small  place  on  the  north- 
east coast  of  the  island  (Str.  446),  and  Dium,  on  the  north-west 
coast,  near  the  Cena>an  promontory,  which  runs  out  right  against 
Cape  Cnemides,  on  the  Locrian  coast.  The  other  two  towns  (ver. 
539)  are  less  favom-ably  situated,  near  Mount  Ociie,  at  the  south- 
west end  of  the  island  :  the  one,  Carystus,  was  noted  for  its  marble 
and  asbestos  (Str.  446)  ;  while  the  other,  Styra,  proved  itself  to 
be  a  place  of  some  consequence  by  the  part  it  took  in  the  Persian 
war  (Herod,  viii.  1),  and  the  tribute  which  it  paid  to  Athens 
(Thucyd.  vii.  57). 

Ver.  546. 

In  remarkable  contrast  to  the  numerous  display  of  towns  made 
by  Boeotia,  comes  Attica,  with  its  single  Athens.  The  simple 
explanation  of  this  is,  that  in  those  times  the  city  of  the  dread  god- 
dess with   the  blue-gleaming  eyes  was  of  small  importance  in  the 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAH.  79 

Greek  world,  and  of  little  or  uoiie  in  the  Argi\e  legends  that 
formed  the  materials  of  Homer's  great  poem.  "  Athenians"  appear 
again  in  iv.  328,  xiii.  196  and  089,  and  xv.  337,  but  with  no 
particular  circumstances  of  distinction. 

Vek.   547. 

The  mighty-hearted  Erechtheus,  king  of  Athens,  spoken  of  in 
this  passage,  seems,  on  the  most  natural  interpretation  of  his  mys- 
terious birth,  in  which  Hephaestus,  Athene,  and  Gee  are  the  agents, 
originally  to  have  been  a  sort  of  Athenian  Adam,  or  primaeval 
man,  created  by  the  union  of  celestial  fire  with  terrestrial  clay 
(see  Preller,  ii.  p.  91,  and  Weleker,  ii.  284).  To  Erechtheus 
the  institution  of  the  Panathenaic  games  is  ascribed  (Mar.  Par. 
Ei^.  10),  and  his  well-compacted  house  on  the  Acropolis  (Od.  vii. 
81)  is  now,  along  with  the  Parthenon,  the  chaste  coronet  of  one  of 
the  most  famous  little  rocky  citadels  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
For  the  mythical  story  of  Erechtheus,  see  ApoU.  Bihl.  iii.  14.  6; 
Plato,  Tima;.  23  d.  scM.  ;  and  Pans.  i.  2.  6,  and  26.  6.  The 
meaning  of  the  word  S'JJ/xos  in  this  place  is  manifestly  district,  land, 
and  has  nothing  to  do  with  democracy.  The  dogmatic  assertion  of 
0.  Miiller  (Dor.  ii.  p.  73) — a  trick  by  which  even  the  best  Ger- 
mans will  juggle  themselves, — that  this  verse  is  as  late  at  least  as 
the  age  of  Solon,  has  been  sufficiently  refuted  by  Clinton  (Tntrod. 
ix.  p.  9).  It  is  time  to  have  done  with  this  system  of  raising  sus- 
picions, and  then,  by  a  strong  assertive  faculty,  passing  them  off 
for  proofs. 

Ver.  557. 

Salamis,  the  famous  island  of  destiny  to  the  human  race,  lies 
over-against  Athens  pretty  much  as  Inchkeith  does  before  Edin- 
burgh, while  JEgina,  which  appears  below  in  the  Argive  muster- 
roll,  corresponds  to  the  Isle  of  May,  only  that  Salamis  is  much  closer 
to  the  Attic  coast  than  our  Scottish  island  is  to  the  sands  of  Leith 
and  Portobello.  The  next  line,  cnrjcre  ?>'  oiywi'  tV  ' AOi-jvalwv  'icnavTo 
(fidXayyes.  is  a  well-known  forgery  to  support  the  Athenian  claims 


so  NOTES  To  ■IIIK  ILIAD,  ]{(MiK  II. 

on  Salaiuis  (Plut.  *S'o/.  10,  unci  Str.  ix.  394),  aud  therefore  (loos  not 
appear  in  my  version. 

Veil  559. 

In  leaving  northern  for  .southern  Greece,  we  shall  find  several 
striking  proofs  of  the  divergence  of  the  early  Homeric  geography 
from  the  divisions,  ethnological  and  political,  current  in  later  times. 
Mycen^.  and  Argos  are  here  the  chief  cities  of  two  independent 
kingdoms,  of  which  the  one  belongs  to  Agamemnon,  the  other  to 
Diomede.  The  whole  of  this  district,  as  has  been  well  set  forth  by 
Curtius  {Pel.  ii.  335),  stands  naturally  apart  from  Arcadia  and 
Lacedfemon,  from  which  it  is  separated  by  stony  mountain  ridges; 
while  internally  it  falls  into  three  districts,  the  one  composed  of 
the  valleys,  through  which  the  streams  run  that  empty  themselves 
into  the  Corinthian  gulf ;  the  other  the  irregular  rocky  peninsula 
that  fronts  Attica,  with  the  Saronic  gulf  between,  as  Fife  faces 
the  Lothian  coast ;  and  the  third,  the  great  plain  of  Argos,  with 
a  semicircular  sweep  at  the  head  of  the  Saronic  gulf.  This  plain 
is  Argos,  strictly  so  called ;  for  that  the  word  "Apyos  signifies  an 
arable  plain — an  old  form  of  aypos — seems  pretty  certain,  both  from 
the  feeling  of  the  ancients  (Str.  viii.  372  ;  Midler,  Orchom.  p.  119), 
and  from  the  more  important  fact  that  this  word,  like  many  others 
()f  the  oldest  mint,  is  still  preserved  in  common  use  in  the  topo- 
graphy of  those  islands  in  the  Archipelago  of  which  the  population 
is  most  purely  Greek  (Ross,  Gr.  InseJ.  ii.  7i),  and  iii.  47).  Glad  ,  in 
an  elaborate  discussion,  comes  independently  to  the  same  conclusion 
(i.  384).  This  plain  afforded  rich  ground  for  breeding  horses  ; 
hence  the  epithet,  itttto/^otos  (ver.  287,  supra),  so  conunon  in 
Homer.  In  the  present  passage,  Argos  obviously  means  the  town, 
the  strong  fort  of  Diomede,  situated  on  the  high  conical  hill  at  the 
other  end  of  the  Ioav  ground,  seen  north-west  from  Nauplia,  the 
landing-place  of  the  steam -boats  which  sail  to  this  part  of  Greece. 
This  hill  fort,  as  in  the  case  of  Athens,  afterwards  became  the  mere 
acropolis,  or  Larissa,  as  it  was  c:dled,  of  the  town  in  the  plain. 
Ttrvns.  famous  in  the  legends  of  Hercules  and  JjcUerophon,  and 


J5()()K  JI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  81 

well  known  to  travellers  and  readers  by  its  Cyclopean  galleries, 
stands  on  a  low,  flat,  oblong  knoll  (kAitus,  Soph.  Trach.  271),  on 
the  road  to  Argos,  a  few  miles  from  Nauplia.  The  epithet,  Tei;(to- 
ecro-a,  is  well  explained  by  Mure  {Tour,  ii.  173). 

Ver.  560-1. 

The  towns  in  these  verses  are  all  in  the  eastern  peninsula,  in 
which  direction  alone  the  realm  of  Diomede  could  extend,  with- 
out encroaching  on  the  domain  of  the  great  king.  Hermione,  at 
the  extreme  south  of  the  peninsula,  was  an  old  settlement  of  Dry- 
opes,  of  whose  hoar  religious  legends  of  subterranean  Ceres,  and 
Jove  of  the  Cuckoo,  Pausanias  tells  some  curious  details  (ii.  35-6). 
Near  this  was  a  descent  to  hell.  This  town  stands  exactly  opposite 
to  the  island  of  Hydra,  whose  enterprising  sea-captains  played  such 
a  brilliant  part  in  the  Liberation  war  of  1821.  Asine  is  another 
sea-town  in  the  same  district,  but  more  towards  Nauplia.  It  was 
destroyed  by  the  Argives  (Str.  viir.  373;  Pans.  ii.  36.  5).  The 
site  of  Asine  is  determined  approximately  by  Strabo  placing  it 
near  Nauplia,  and  Homer  in  '  a  deep  bay.'  Such  a  bay  is  the  bay 
of  Tolon,  the  first  large  bend  of  the  sea  which  the  traveller  encoun- 
ters when  going  south  from  the  city  of  Palamedes ;  and  Curtius 
(ii.  466)  has  put  his  finger  on  old  polygonal  remains  at  this  place, 
giving  certainty  to  the  divinations  of  L.  Next  follows  Trcezen — 
ver.  561 — a  well-known  city  in  the  south-east  corner  of  the  penin- 
sula, close  to  the  remarkable  little  volcanic  peninsula  of  Methana, 
famous  for  the  worship  of  Poseidon  and  Hippolytus,  and  a  close 
legendary  connexion  with  Attica,  inwoven  into  the  life  of  Theseus 
(Paus.  II.  32).  Eiones,  a  small  village  on  the  coast ;  site  unknown 
(Str.  373).  Epidaurus,  which  still  retains  its  ancient  name  TLlSavpo, 
with  the  ancient  accent,  which  the  English  so  perversely  transfer  to 
the  penult — lies  considerably  to  the  north  of  Trcezen,  on  the  same 
coast,  in  a  recess  of  the  Saronic  gulf,  shut  in  by  mountains  (Str. 
VIII.  374).  Its  celebrity  belonged  less  to  itself  than  to  the  fimious 
temple  of  ^sculapius,  a  few  miles  inland,  of  whose  medico-reli- 
gious  curiosities  Pausanias  has  left  us  an  interesting  description 

VOL.  IV.  F 


82  NOTCS  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

(ii.  26).  Ill  Averse  562  follows  ..^gtna,  an  island  famous  alike 
for  its  legendary  celebrity,  its  couimercial  enterprise,  and  its  pre- 
cious relics  of  antique  sculpture  now  in  Munich.  The  only  remain- 
ing town  is  Masks,  ojjposite  Troezen,  on  the  Argolic  gulf,  which 
the  people  of  that  city  used  as  a  harbour  (Paus.  ii.  36)  to  save 
themselves,  in  those  days  of  timid  navigation,  from  the  necessity  of 
doubling  the  extreme  south-west  corner  of  the  peninsula.  For  its 
site  see  the  well-reasoned  account  of  Curt.  (ii.  462). 

Vkk.  569. 

We  now  come  to  the  kingdom  of  Agamemnon,  though  its  whole 
extent  is  not  fully  indicated  here,  as  we  may  see  from  ver.  108, 
Knpra,  and  ix.  149 ;  but  these  may  be  regarded  in  the  light  of 
outlying  dependencies ;  or  the  king  of  Mycenfe  may  have  had  a 
right  to  dispose  of  some  of  them,  as  belonging  to  Sparta,  from  an 
arrangement  with  Menelaus.  Of  Agamemnon's  kingdom  the  capital 
is  Myc£xj5,  the  "gold-abounding  Myceufe"  (vii.  180),  a  strongly 
fortified  town  on  the  slope  of  the  mountains  that  sink  down  from 
the  north  towards  the  plain  of  Argos.  It  is  situated  about  two 
hours'  walk  from  Argos,  on  the  direct  road  to  Corinth,  by  Tretus 
and  Nemea.  The  solitary  grandeur  of  its  mountain  site,  the 
massive  strength  of  its  Cyclopean  walls  (Eur.  Iphig.  Aid.),  and  the 
severe  antique  stateliness  of  its  "gate  of  lions"  still  bear  ample 
witness  to  the  early  power  of  the  king  of  men,  on  which  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  Iliad  rests.  This  ancient  city,  now  as  desert  as  Baby- 
lon, and  as  hoary  as  the  pyramids,  long  maintained  a  separate 
existence  against  the  rising  dominancy  of  Argos  (Herod,  vir.  202  ; 
IX.  28),  but  in  the  year  468  its  jealous  neighbour  finally  rased  it  to 
the  ground,  starving  out  the  stout  inhabitants  whom  it  could  not 
con(|uer  by  force  of  arms  fPaus.  vir.  25.  8).  In  verse  570  follows 
CoiiixTir,  anciently  called  Ephyra  (vi.  152),  whose  happy  situa- 
tion between  two  seas  made  it  for  a  long  time  the  emporium  of 
trade  between  the  east  and  the  west.  It  is  significant  that  Homer 
even  at  his  early  age  should  allude  to  its  wealth  rather  than  to  its 
strongly-fortified  acropolis,  a  mighty  bulwark,  more   than  twice  the 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  83 

height  of  Arthur  Seat,  rather  too  hn-ge,  however,  for  the  purposes 
of  military  defence.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  city  had 
taken  its  position  as  the  destined  Liverpool  of  Greece  at  a  very 
early  period.  Its  connexion  with  the  Phoenicians  is  undoubted 
(Steph.  Byz.  (potyiKaLov;  Tzet.  Li/mph.  658).  CLEONiE  lies  on  the 
right  of  the  traveller  going  northward  shortly  after  descending  from 
Nemea,  on  the  road  to  Corinth,  by  the  Tretus  pass.  It  derived  its 
chief  notability  from  its  connexion  with  the  Nemean  games  (aywv 
KAewvatos;  Find.  Nem.  iv.  27;  on  its  modern  state  see  Curt.  ii. 
5]0).  Okne.e  (ver.  571),  long  maintaining  an  independent  posi- 
tion against  Argos  (Thucyd.  vi.  7),  was  situated  among  the  moun- 
tains on  the  borders  of  the  Phliasian  territory,  about  fifteen  miles 
north-west  from  Argos  (Paus.  ii.  25.  4;  Curt.  ii.  478).  Follow- 
ing one  of  the  feeders  of  the  Asopus  down  from  this  place,  we 
arrive  at  the  broad  and  rich  mountain  basin  of  Fhlius,  famous  for 
its  wine  (Athen.  i.  27  d),  still  praised,  a  full-bodied  Burgundy 
(Curt.  ii.  470),  and  the  worship  of  Dionysus  connected  therewith. 
The  principal  city  of  this  state,  which  long  maintained  an  indepen- 
dent and  dignified  position  (Herod,  vii.  22,  ix.  28  ;  Thucyd.  v. 
57),  was  by  some  supposed  to  be  the  Homeric  Ar.ethurea  of 
this  verse ;  but  Strabo  (viii.  382)  and  Pausanias  (ii.  12.  4)  plainly 
point  to  an  ancient  Artethuria  at  the  sources  of  the  Asopus,  whose 
inhabitants  afterwards  swarmed  off  down  the  glen  into  the  Phliasian 
basin.  The  next  town,  Sicyon  (ver.  572),  belonging  to  the  same 
natural  district,  and  situated  on  the  Corinthian  gulf,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Asopiis,  on  a  rich  plain  a  few  miles  west  of  Corinth,  is  a  very 
ancient  city,  of  considerable  legendary  and  historical  celebrity. 
By  its  ancient  name,  MrjKiovi]  (Str.  viii.  382)  it  is  well  known  in 
the  myth  of  Prometheus ;  Sisyphus,  one  of  its  earliest  kings,  is 
mentioned  in  vi.  153 ;  and  its  school  of  art,  of  painting,  and  sculp- 
ture, headed  by  the  names  of  Eupompus,  Pamphilus,  Apelles,  Cana- 
chus,  and  Lysippus,  forms  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  art.  Adras- 
Tus,  here  mentioned  as  one  of  its  early  kings,  and  who  occurs  again 
in  XIV.  121,  was  by  birth  a  prince  of  the  royal  house  of  Argos, 
transferred  to  Sicyon  for  a  season  only  by  one  of  those  feuds  so 


84-  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  HOOK  II. 

common  in  those  times,  and  who  afterwards  resumed  his  native 
throne,  and  became  ftimous  as  one  of  the  seven  chiefs  who  engaged 
in  the  great  war  against  Thebes  in  the  generation  before  the 
Trojan  war  (Pans.  ii.  6;  Apoll.  iii.  6.  1;  Pind.  Nem.  ix.  20; 
ihique  schol.)  He  also  took  part  in  the  war  of  the  Epigoni,  and 
died  at  Megara  on  his  Wcxy  home  (Pans.  i.  43.  1).  He  received 
divine  honours  at  Sicyon  (Herod,  v.  67).  He  was  famous  as  a 
chariot-racer,  and  the  speed  of  his  divine  steed  Arion  is  celebrated 
below  (xxiiT.  347,  on  which  Pausanias  enlarges,  viii.  25  ;  and 
Welcker,  E'p.  Cyc.  i.  67). 

Ver.  573. 

The  next  verse  (573)  brings  us  into  the  western  division  of  that 
thin  rocky  strip  of  land,  afterwards  called  Achaia,  the  mere  ri)n  of 
Northern  Arcadia  ;  and  the  first  town  that  the  poet  mentions  here 
is  Hyperesia,  afterwards  called  ^geira,  minutely  described  by 
Polybius  (iv.  57)  as  situated  on  "  strong  and  inaccessible  heights, 
between  Sicyon  and  ^Egium,  about  a  mile  from  the  shore  looking 
right  north  towards  Parnassus."  The  account  of  its  peculiar  reli- 
gious creed  and  customs  in  Pausanias  (vii.  26.  2)  is  exceedingly 
interesting  and  curious.  On  its  modern  side  at  [xavpa  XiOapia, 
L.  iii.  387,  and  Curt.  i.  474,  both  agree.  GtOnoessa,  which  Pausa- 
nias (vii.  26.  6)  says  was  properly  Aovoecro-a,  but  mis-spelt  by  the 
ignorance  of  the  scribes  of  Pisistratus,  lay  on  the  road  between 
^Egeira  and  Pellene,  close  on  the  border  of  the  territory  of  the 
Sicyonians,  by  whom  it  was  taken  and  rased  to  the  ground  (Paus. 
VII.  26.  6).  The  epithet  aiTreti'T^  used  by  the  poet  agi'ees  admir- 
ably with  the  high-peaked  hill  now  called  Kopv<^r]  rrjs  Hava-ytas,  or 
the  peoA;  of  tJie  Vir(/in  Mary,  above  two  thousand  feet  high,  and  a 
conspicuous  object  from  many  parts  of  the  Corinthian  gulf  at  its 
widest  part  (L.  iii.  385;  Curt.  i.  484).  Next  comes  Pellene,  the 
first  town  in  Achsea  towards  the  eastern  border,  in  a  rough  moun- 
tain district,  famous  for  its  woollen  cloaks  (PoU.  vii.  67),  and  for 
the  decided  position  Avhich  it  took  in  tlie  Peloponnesian  war  on  the 
Spartan  side  (Thucyd.  ii.  i)).     j-Eoium,  the  next  town  mentioned, 


ROOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  85 

bringing  us  back  by  a  sudden  leap  westward  more  than  half  way  t(i 
Patras,  was  a  town  of  great  importance  even  in  the  time  of  Paii- 
sanias  (vii.  24.  2),  when  the  common  council  (crweSpiov)  of  the 
Achaeans  assembled  here,  with  what  shadow  of  power  the  Romans 
had  thought  fit  to  leave  them.  The  site  of  i^^gium  is  now  occupied 
by  VosTizzA,  the  best  harbour  in  Achsea  east  of  Patras,  and  well 
known  to  many  travellers  by  its  beautiful  plane-tree,  forty-five  feet 
in  girth  (Clark,  Pel.  p.  290),  and  by  its  vicinity  to  the  monastery 
of  Megalospili  (L.  iii.  182  ;  Hettner,  Reiseskizzen,  253).  In  verse 
575  the  introduction  of  the  general  name  of  the  country,  AlyiaXos, 
coast  or  shore,  in  the  midst  of  the  towns  which  belong  to  it,  seems 
rather  strange ;  but  I  find  no  trace  of  a  town  called  ^gialus,  and 
translate  it  therefore  as  a  general  descriptive  word,  though  in  all 
likelihood  in  Homer's  time  there  was  a  city  or  district  so  named. 
The  last  Achaean  town  is  Helice,  between  ^gium  and  ^lilgeira,  as 
you  sail  towards  Sicyon,  a  town  of  the  greatest  antiquity,  and  cele- 
brated in  Homer  as  one  of  the  chief  seats  of  the  worship  of  Poseidon 
(II.  VIII.  203,  XX.  404).  In  the  year  373  b.o.  this  city  disappeared 
from  the  face  of  things  by  one  of  the  most  violent  earthquakes  ever 
recorded.  This  happened  in  the  dead  of  night,  and  was  accom- 
panied by  a  sudden  rise  of  the  sea,  which  drowned  those  who  had 
not  been  crushed  (Diod.  Sic.  xv.  48  ;  Pans.  vii.  24.  3).  After 
the  catastrophe  the  whole  town  was  found  under  water,  and  so  con- 
tinued, except  the  tips  of  a  few  trees  belonging  to  the  sacred 
grove  of  Poseidon.  This  event  occasioned  much  speculation  tfi 
thoughtful  persons,  whether  it  should  be  attributed  to  necessary 
physical  causes  or  to  a  special  exercise  of  divine  retribution  for 
some  flagrant  sin  of  which  the  people  of  the  town  had  been  guilty. 
It  was  noticed  also  by  the  curious  (^lian,  Hist.  An.  xi.  19)  that 
animals,  who  are  often  wiser  than  men,  seemed  to  have  had  a  pre- 
sentiment of  the  calamity.  For  some  days  before  the  earthquake  a 
whole  army  of  rats  and  cats,  snakes,  beetles,  and  millipeds  were 
seen  marching  out  of  the  town,  to  the  great  astonishment,  \n\\  ncit 
to  the  effective  admonition  of  the  inhabitants. 


86  KOTES  TO  TllH  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Yeu.  581 

brings  us  to  Laced^mon,  the  kingdom  of  Menelaus.  It  is  called 
"  hollow,"  like  the  hollow  Syria,  the  hollow  Elis,  and  in  our  own 
country,  "  the  howe  o'  the  Mearns,"  because  the  habitable  part  of 
the  country  consists  almost  entirely  of  the  valley  of  the  Euvotas, 
about  forty  miles  long,  within  which  ahnost  all  the  towns  arc  con- 
tained that  play  a  notable  part  in  Homer  and  history.  Glad.'s 
"  channelled"  Laconia  (i.  103),  adopted  by  Wr.,  is  not  good.  There 
is  no  need  of  an  odd  word  to  express  a  common  thing.  V.  has 
^■umhugelt,"  from  the  old  schol.,  an  expression  which  I  have  adopted. 
The  epithet  K>jTwecra-a,  in  accordance  with  the  existing  laws  of 
etymological  science,  can  mean  nothing  but  ''full  of  clefts, 
chasms,  or  deep  hollows,"  an  interpretation  Mdiich  is  amply  justi- 
fied by  the  physical  conformation  of  the  country  (Curt.  ii.  205). 
As  to  Grlad.'s  ■'  ahoundiiu/  in  loild  beasts  "  it  is  not  Greek,  unless 
with  reference  to  those  diluvian  times  in  which  whales  and  seals 
and  other  animated  wind-bags  may  have  been  disporting  in 
that  region.  My  rhyme,  I  perceive,  has  given  the  word  the  slip 
altogether.  V.  is  wrong  in  adojDting  fxeydXr]  (^gross)  from  the  schol., 
as  if  K7JTwe^s  could  be  the  same  as  /xeyaKT^TJjs.  On  the  right  bank  of 
this  river,  about  half-way  from  its  source  in  the  Arcadian  mountains, 
is  Sparta,  near  the  modern  3Iistra,  sole  representative  to  ancient 
Greece  of  the  monarchical  principle  and  aristocratic  policy  of  the 
Homeric  age,  and  symbol  to  all  the  world  of  an  energetic  though 
one-sided  manhood,  founded  on  the  two  ideas  of  physical  culture 
and  military  discipline.  The  site  of  Pharis,  which  Pausanias 
(hi.  20.  3)  places  south  from  Amyclae  towards  the  sea,  is  supposed 
by  Curt.  (ii.  248)  to  be  indicated  by  certain  remarkable  remains, 
similar  to  the  treasuries  of  Mycenae  and  Orchomenus,  which  were 
discovered  by  Gropius  in  1805,  and  described  by  Mure  (ii.  246), 
at  the  deserted  village  of  Bafio,  near  Rizi.  Messe  is  a  harbour  on 
the  Taenarian  promontory,  in  the  country  of  the  Maniotes  (Paus. 
in.  25.  7),  and  recognised  by  Curt.  (ii.  282),  in  the  modern  bay 
of  Mezapon,  about  the  rocks  of  which   the  pigeons   are   still  seen 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  87 

fluttering.  BRYiiE.9i  {\ev.  bS'd) — which,  like  the  modern  Greek  fSpLac, 
signifies  wells  (from  (Spvij)) — seems,  from  Pausanias'  description 
(ill.  20.  3),  to  be  somewhere  near  Amyclfe,  towards  Taygetus.  Of 
AuGE^  "  the  lovely"  there  is  no  trace,  unless  indeed  it  be  JEqix 
(Paus.  III.  21.  5;  Curt.  ii.  268),  near  the  ancient  Gythium  and 
the  modern  Marathonisi,  on  the  sea,  a  short  distance  south-west 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Eurotas.  Amycl^  (ver.  584),  the  most 
famous  name  on  the  roll,  next  to  that  of  Sparta  itself,  the  abode  of 
Castor  and  Pollux,  was  sitviatcd  (Polyb.  v.  19)  about  two  and  a 
half  miles  south  of  Sparta,  on  the  same  side  of  the  river  (L.  i.  138; 
Curt.  ii.  245).  Helos — of  which  the  name  e'Aos,  marsh,  indicates 
the  site — lay  on  the  fertile  marshy  plain  at  the  mouth  of  the  Eurotas, 
of  which  the  Helotes  were  the  cultivators,  though  their  name  pro- 
bably signifies  captives,  from  lAetv  (Paus.  iii.  20.  6).  The  next 
town,  Laas  (ver.  585  ;  Scyla.  x.  ;  Paiis.  iii.  24.  5),  is  recognised 
by  L.  (i.  256,  and  Curt.  ii.  273)  at  Passavd,  near  the  bay  called 
Batliy,  a  few  miles  south  of  Marathonisi.  The  last  town  in  the 
Laconian  list,  OItvXos  (Paus.  in.  25.  7),  sometimes  pronounced 
with  a  labial  consonant,  (^oltvXos  (Str.  viii.  360),  survives  in  the 
modern  Yituli,  on  the  gulf  of  Messene,  about  half  way  from 
Cape  Matapan  to  Kalamata  (Curt.  ii.  283;  Ij.  i.  313). 

Yek.  5!)1. 

The  country  to  the  west  of  Laconia,  afterwards  known  under  the 
name  of  Messenia,  is  in  topographical  features  a  duplicate  of  Sparta, 
with  this  difterence,  hoAvever,  that  the  western  land  is  of  a  more 
gentle  and  mild  character  than  the  eastern ;  a  physical  contrast 
with  which  the  moral  character  of  the  respective  inhabitants  was  in 
perfect  agreement.  The  name  Messeise  occurs  in  Od.  xxi.  15,  but 
rather  in  connexion  with  Sparta  than  as  a  separate  country.  This 
agrees  with  II.  ix.  150,  where  Agamemnon  treats  several  cities  in 
this  country  as  his  own.  The  western  coast -line  of  this  division, 
bounded  on  the  north  by  the  river  Neda,  forms  a  district  called 
Pylos,  with  a  town  of  the  same  name ;  a  region  famous  in  ancient 
times  by  the  capture  of  the   Spartans  in   the  island  of  Sphacteria, 


88  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  liOOK  11. 

during  the  Peloponnesian  war,  and  by  the  battle  of  Navarino,  in 
the  year  1827, — so  notable  a  moment  in  the  history  of  modern 
(xreece.     Beyond  this  river  a  district  extends  north  to  the  Alpheus, 
called  by   the  ancients   TiaPHYLiA,   or  the  country  of  the   three 
tribes,  Epeans,  Eleans,  and  Minyans,  or  Arcadians  (Str.  337).     This 
district  is  topographically  a  part  of  Ai'cadia,  as,  indeed,  historically 
it  wavers  between  Arcadia  and  Elis,  formed  as  it  is  by  a  ridge  of 
mountains,  which  runs  out  from  that  country  about  halfway  between 
the  Neda  and  the  Alpheus.    All  this  district — the  Messenian  and  the 
Triphylian  west  coast — forms  what  in  the  twelve  verses  of  the  cata- 
logue (591-602)  constitutes  the  kingdom  of  Nestor.     And  here  the 
first  important  question  that  arises  is.  Where  is  the  Pylus  of  Nestor  ? 
for  the  ancients  name  three  cities  so  called  ;  one  on  the  coast  of 
Messenia,  already  mentioned,  one  in  the  Triphylia,  and  the  other 
considerably  to   the  north,  in   the  district  of  Elis  and  the   river 
Peneus.     The  claim  of  this   last  town  to  be  the  capital   of  the 
Neleid  kingdom — though   treated  seriously  by  the   ancients,  who 
had  personal  interests  to  warp  their  judgment — may  be  dismissed 
without  consideration.     The  claim  of  the  Triphylian  town  rests  on 
the  strong   ground,  that  in  v.  545  the   Alpheus  is  characterized 
as  the  river  that  runs  through  the  Pylian  territory  ;  in  perfect  con- 
sistency with  which,  the  foray  of  Nestor,  minutely  described  in  xi. 
712,  makes  a  distinct  impression  on  every  unjDrejudiced  reader,  as 
it  did  upon  Strabo  (viii.  352.  3),  that  the  district  from  which  that 
raid  proceeded  was  north  of  the  river  Neda ;  that  is,   Triphylia. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  account  of  the  travels  of  Telemachus  (not 
to  mention   the  epithet  i^/za^oei?,  sandy)  is,  if  possible,  more  dis- 
tinct, to  the  effect  that  the  Pylos  of  the  Neleids  was  in  Messenia,  at 
Navarino,  as  was  the  opinion  of  Pausanias  (iv.  36.  1),  and  indeed 
of  the  ancients  generally.     Here,  therefore,  we  are  in  a  dilemma. 
The  poet  of  the  Iliad  contradicts  the  poet  of  the  Odyssey.     What 
is  the  legitimate  conclusion  ?     The  ancients,  in  their  great  rever- 
ence for  the  accuracy  of  the  poet,  made  no  conclusion,  but  denied 
tbe  premises  ;  for  in  their  opinion  it  was  the  duty  of  a  Homeric 
critic,  as  of  a  modern  Churchman,  either  to  believe  that  their  doctor 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  89 

was  incapable  of  error,  or  at  least  to  deny  that  he  ever  had  erred. 
They  accordingly  asserted  one  side  of  the  case  or  the  other,  as  their 
inclination  or  their  judgment  led.  Certain  modern  critics,  on  the 
other  hand,  would  find  in  this  contradiction  a  strong  argument  to 
prove  that  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  written  by  different 
authors.  But  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  introductory  dis- 
courses, if  sound,  exhibit  this  inference  as  hasty  and  unauthorized. 
My  view  of  the  case  is  this  : — Homer,  when  composing  the  Iliad, 
found  ballad  materials,  which  represented  the  kingdom  of  Neleus 
as  seated  principally  on  the  Alpheus.  These  he  used  witliout 
being  curious  about  the  exact  situation  of  the  town  of  Pylos  ; 
thoitgh  it  seems  pretty  evident  that  he  held  the  western  half  at 
least  of  the  territory  of  the  futm-e  Messenia  to  belong  either  to 
Neleus,  or  to  nobody.  A  popular  poet,  indeed,  though  his  topo- 
graphy will  generally  be  right,  and  never  absurd,  has  no  object  to 
gain  by  minute  topographical  any  more  than  chronological  accu- 
racy, and  therefore  may  occasionally  make  a  small  slip.  In  the 
ballads  of  the  vocttoi,  again,  the  poet — who,  it  must  always  be 
borne  in  mind,  was  an  Asiatic  Greek,  and  in  all  probability  knew 
no  more  of  the  Pylian  coast  from  personal  inspection  than  Strabo 
himself  knew  of  the  plain  of  Troy, — in  the  materials  of  the  Odysse}', 
I  say.  Homer  found  the  topography  of  Pylos  so  laid  down,  as  that 
a  person  travelling  almost  due  east,  must  touch  at  PherjB  (Kala- 
mati),  as  a  half-way  house,  in  an  easy  day's  journey.  This  account 
he  adopted,  without  curious  scrutiny,  as  inwoven  Avitli  the  whole 
Telemachean  story  ;  and  if  it  did  not  exactly  harmonize  with  the  im- 
pression made  by  the  recital  of  Nestor  in  Iliad  xi.,  it  was  a  matter 
of  no  practical  consequence  either  to  himself  or  to  his  hearers  ;  for 
the  contradiction  was  not  of  an  apparent  or  prominent  kind,  but 
such  as  required  a  curious  microscopic  criticism  to  expose,  of  which 
at  that  time,  and  in  that  place,  we  may  be  assured,  there  was  none. 
As  to  the  real  state  of  the  case,  I  have  little  doubt  that  both  the 
traditions  are  founded  on  fact,  to  this  extent  at  least,  that  at  one 
period,  or  at  various  periods,  the  Neleid  kingdom  occupied  the 
whole  coast  of  Messenia  and  Triphylia,  up  to  and  even  beyond  the 


90  .NOTES  TO  'JIIE  ILIAU.  BOOK  11. 

Alpheus.  On  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  but  think  Curt.  (ii.  173)  is 
right  in  reverting  to  the  general  opinion  of  the  ancients,  that  the 
original  settlement  of  Ncleus,  on  his  arrival  from  Thessaly,  must 
have  been  at  Navarino  ;  for  it  is  a  most  improbable  thing  that,  on 
a  coast  particularly  barren  of  good  harbours,  a  situation  so  favour- 
able, both  for  shelter  and  defence,  should  have  been  overlooked. 
On  this  whole  subject  there  is  a  most  complete  and  judicious  note 
in  Nitzsch  {Od.  iii.  4).  Hayman  (i.  App.  d  4)  follows  the  true 
instinct  of  a  commentator  of  the  Odyssey,  in  deciding  for  the  Pylos 
which  is  nearest  to  Sparta.  Of  the  Pylian  towns  which  follow,  the 
identification  was  more  than  usually  difl&cult  to  the  ancients,  and  is 
equally  so  to  us.  Of  the  lovely  "  Arene,"  neither  Elians  nor 
Messenians  could  tell  Pausanias  anything  trustworthy  (v.  6.  2).  It 
seemed,  however,  probable  to  that  antiquarian  tourist,  that  Arene 
was  identical  with  SamicuiM,  a  fortified  place  of  which  remarkable 
ruins  still  remain,  on  the  broad  top  of  a  promontory,  about  half- 
way between  the  Alpheus  and  the  Noda  (Curt.  ii.  78). 

Vek.  592. 

The  situation  of  Thrxum  is  strongly  marked  by  nature,  on  a  hill 
at  the  ford  of  a  river  (xi.  711),  and  its  importance  as  a  military 
post  (Xen.  Hell.  iii.  2.  29),  has  enabled  both  ancient  and  modern 
writers  easily  to  identify  it  with  Epitalium,  near  the  mouth  of 
the  Alpheus,  on  its  south  bank  (Str.  viii.  349;  L.  ii.  199^.  Of 
Aepy  the  ancients  knew  nothing ;  but  the  supposition  that  it 
must  be  the  same  as  Epeum,  a  remarkable  fortress  on  a  lofty 
situation  on  the  road  between  Hkr.^a  in  Arcadia  and  Macistus 
(Xen.  Hell.  III.  2.  30)  is  plausible.  Cyparisseis  (ver.  593),  which 
gives  its  name  to  the  broad-sweeping  bay  of  Cyparissia,  is  identified 
both  by  L.  (i.  69)  and  Curtius  (ii.  184),  though,  as  appears  to  me, 
not  on  very  sure  grounds,  with  a  town  that  through  the  middle 
ages  bore  the  name  of  Arcadia,  and  which  is  beautifully  situated 
on  a  rocky  promontory,  a  little  north  of  Cape  Platamodes.  Am- 
PHiGENiA,  according  to  Strabo  (viii.  349),  is  in  Macistus,  a  dis- 
trict of  the  Triphylia,  between  Lepreon  and  the  Alpheus  (Xen. 


BOOK  11.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  91 

Hell.  III.  2.  25).  On  Pteleon,  IIelos,  and  Doriuji,  the  geo- 
grapher is  dumb  ;  though  with  regard  to  the  last  the  antiquarian 
was  more  fortunate  (Paus.  iv.  33.  7).  On  the  mention  of  this  town 
(Steph.  Byz.  voce  Dorium),  the  poet  interrupts  his  dry  register  of 
places,  by  a  short  digression  on  the  legendary  history  of  the  min- 
strel TiiAMYRis.  This  son  of  the  Muses,  foiling,  like  Dr.  Bentley, 
in  the  cardinal  grace  of  modesty,  roused  not  only  the  wrath  of 
mortal  men,  as  the  Cambridge  Doctor  did,  but  tlie  wrath  of  the 
celestial  powers  also  against  him  ;  and  the  consequences  were  what 
might  have  been  expected.  The  Muses  struck  him  blind  ;  bad 
enough  ;  but,  wliat  was  worse,  they  did  not  leave  him  the  conso- 
lation which  to  blind  musicians  specially  belongs,  fur  they  deprived 
him  of  his  musical  skill.  That  ^^  blind"  was  the  true  popular 
meaning  of  the  word  TrrjpoVj  is  evident  from  Apoll.  {Bib.  i.  3), 
and  Paus.  (ix.  30.  2) ;  nor  was  the  super-subtle  conceit  of  the 
vewrepot  in  the  Venetian  Schol.  A,  that  blindness  was  no  part 
of  his  punishment,  worthy  of  being  revived  by  Glad.  (ii.  91). 
Thamyris  was  a  Thracian ;  by  which  it  is  not  meant  that  he  was 
not  a  Greek ;  only  it  is  certain  that  all  the  early  poetry  of  Greece 
came  from  Thrace  (Died.  Sic.  iii.  67),  and  nothing  was  more 
natural  than  that  the  Hellenic  tribes  who  first  migrated  from  the 
East  should  cross  the  Hellespont,  and  settle  on  the  southern  shores 
of  Thrace  and  Macedonia.  In  after  times,  no  account  of  kinship 
and  blood  having  been  preserved,  those  early  Greeks  inhabiting 
tliat  northern  region  would  simply  be  called  Thracians,  and  spoken 
of  as  if  they  belonged  to  a  dijfferent  nation. 

Ver.  603. 

Arcadia  is,  like  Boeotia,  a  land  completely  encased  by  mountains, 
only  the  one  is  like  a  round  caldron,  the  other  like  a  square  camp. 
Another  point  of  resemblance  to  Boeotia  is  found  in  the  peculiarity 
that  the  principal  rivers,  whether  flowing  from  the  north-eastern 
corner,  as  the  Ladon,  or  the  south-east,  as  the  Alpheius,  have  only 
one  grand  outlet  near  the  south-west  corner,  at  Heraea,  where  the 
Elean  and  Triphylian  border  meets.     Those  few  waters,  which  do 


!>2  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

not  find  ail  egress  by  this  great  natural  channel,  escape,  as  inBoeotia, 
through  subterranean  channels,  beneath  the  soil  of  Argolis,  into  the 
sea.  The  eastern  district,  out  of  which  these  waters  flow,  is  separ- 
ated from  the  rest  of  Arcadia  by  the  long  ridge  of  M>5;nalus,  and 
from  its  being  shut  in  on  all  sides  by  high  land,  possesses  several 
lochs  on  its  table  land,  but  none  of  any  large  extent.  Such  is  the 
general  configuration  of  the  country,  whose  inhabitants,  belonging 
to  an  era  of  population  beyond  the  reach  even  of  Greek  legend, 
boasted  that  they  were  "  older  than  the  moon,"  and  lived  in  sinless 
simplicity,  in  the  golden  age,  "  eating  acorns  among  the  mountains" 
(^p.  Rh.  IV.  263).  They  were,  like  the  modern  Swiss,  sturdy 
mountaineers  and  good  soldiers  (ver.  611),  and  always  defied  the 
ambition  of  Sparta  to  reduce  them  to  bondage.  Like  the  Swiss 
also,  they  often  served  other  states  for  pay  (Thucyd.  vi.  57  ;  Suidas 
"ApKaSa's  nifxovixevoi).  Their  greatest  virtue  was  that,  among  a  most 
musical  people,  they  were  pre-eminent  lovers  of  music ;  and  to  this 
their  favourite  god,  Hermes,  bears  testimony  in  the  myth  of  the 
shell  of  the  tortoise,  which  he  turned  into  a  lyre. 

Ver.  604. 

^PYTUS  was  a  legendary  hero  of  Arcadia,  whose  tomb,  in  the 
usual  form,  a  mound  with  a  circular  basement  of  regular  masonry, 
Pausanias  saw  on  a  mountain  called  Sepia,  close  to  Cyllene  (viii. 
16.  2).  PnENEOS  (ver.  605)  lies  in  the  same  district,  to  the  south- 
west of  Cyllene,  a  town  remarkable  both  in  ancient  and  modern 
times  for  those  sudden  changes  of  level  in  the  water  of  the  adja- 
cent lake,  noticed  above  in  the  history  of  the  great  Boeotian  lake 
(Pans.  VIII.  14. 1  ;  Str.  viii.  389  ;  Plin.  N.  H.  xxxi.  5  ;  Clark,  Pel. 
p.  315).  The  sheep-abounding  Orchomenus,  now  Kalpaki,  is  in 
the  same  eastern  division  of  Arcadia,  and  remarkable  for  its  kingly 
acropolis,  nearly  three  thousand  feet  high,  femous  in  the  most 
ancient  times  (Pans.  viii.  3.  1),  and  often  mentioned  in  the  later 
history  of  Greece.  In  the  days  of  Pausanias  (viii.  13),  its  import- 
ance, like  that  of  so  many  other  Greek  towns  under  the  Romans, 
had  ceased.     Its  ruins  are  described  by  Dodwell  (ii.  427,  and  L. 


BOOK   II.  I<0TE8  TO  TlIK  ILIAD.  93 

iii.  lOU).  Ill  vcr.  GUO,  KniPE,  Stratie,  and  Enispe  are.  tu  use 
the  words  of  Strabo  (viii.  388),  "  difl&cult  to  find,  and  of  no  use 
if  ttey  were  found,  for  the  whole  country  is  waste  and  barrenness." 
Tegea  (ver.  607)  is  in  the  south-east  corner  of  Arcadia,  near 
the  Spartan  border,  and  the  sources  of  the  Alpheus,  renowned  for 
its  sturdy  and  successful  opposition  to  Sparta  (Herodot.  i.  65). 
Mantinea  is  a  place  of  great  note  in  history,  having  been  the  scene 
of  several  very  remarkable  and  decisdve  warlike  encounters.  This 
military  celebrity,  like  Leipzig  in  modern  times,  it  owes  unquestion- 
ably to  its  position  ;  for  it  lies  in  a  great  plain,  about  twenty  miles 
long,  and,  being  on  the  great  road  from  the  Argolis  district  to 
Sparta,  it  stands  exactly  where  a  gi-eat  shock  between  Sparta  and 
its  dependencies  and  any  hostile  power  would  naturally  take  place. 
Homer  calls  it  "lovely,"  but  it  is  at  present  "a  bare,  marshy, 
depopulated  plain,  cold  in  winter,  hot  in  summer,  and  unhealthy  at 
all  seasons"  (Curt.  i.  235).  The  classical  traveller,  however,  is 
rewarded  by  an  inspection  of  its  walls  and  ditches,  which  present 
curious  points  in  ancient  fortification  (Mure,  ii.  208 ;  Curt.  i.  236). 
Stymphalus,  well  known  in  the  mythological  history  of  Hercules, 
— lake  and  town, — is  situated  in  the  extreme  north-east  corner  of 
Arcadia,  on  the  high  road  from  Corinth  to  Orchomenus,  and  from 
Corinth  to  Olympus.  In  its  topography,  it  repeats  the  adjacent 
Pheneos  on  a  smaller  scale,  and  presents  similar  hydrographic 
phenomena.  Pans.  (viii.  22.  3)  found  no  lake,  only  a  stream  ;  and 
Clark  (p.  319)  says,  "  as  at  Pheneos  we  expected  to  see  a  fen,  and 
found  a  lake,  so  in  Stymjihalus  we  expected  a  lake,  and  found  a 
field."  Pans.  (viii.  22.  6)  and  Str.  (viii.  389)  tell  strange  stories 
about  the  hydrography  of  this  region.  Parrhasia  (ver.  608),  on  the 
Messenian  border,  is  the  country  of  one  of  the  most  ancient  divisions 
of  the  Arcadian  people  (Str.  viii.  388).  The  Agapenor  who  leads 
this  Arcadian  troop  finds  honourable  mention  in  Pans,  among  the 
early  kings  of  his  country  (viii.  5),  and  forms  to  Glad.  (i.  138)  a 
text  for  some  Pelasgic  speculations  which  appear  to  me  rather 
slippery. 


94  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Ver.  615. 

We  now  round  off  the  Peloponnesus  by  the  mention  of  a  few 
cities  belonging  to  a  people  whom  the  poet  calls  Epeans  (here  and 
XI.  G94),  but  who  were  afterwards  called,  from  their  city,  Elean.s 
(xi.  671).  The  natural  boundaries  of  this  country,  from  the  Neda 
northward  to  the  mouth  of  the  Corinthian  gulf,  are  indicated  by 
the  course  of  the  rivers,  all  flowing  west  from  Arcadia,  and  by  the 
broad  open  slopes  of  the  hills,  as  contrasted  with  the  abrupt 
steepness  of  the  eastern  side  of  the  Peloponnesus ;  and  the  flat 
coast,  studded  with  lagoons,  produced  malaria  and  mosquitoes,  to 
defend  from  whose  assaults  Zevs  aTrojivios  (Pans.  v.  14.  1),  Jove, 
the  averfer  of  jiies,  was  frequently  invoked.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  large  extent  of  arable  and  pasture  land  of  the  best  quality  gave 
Elis  a  character  quite  singular  in  Greece  for  agricultural  acti- 
vity and  the  enjoyments  of  a  country  life  (Polyb.  iv.  73).  Its 
horses  are  celebrated  by  Homer  (Od.  iv.  635,  xxi.  346).  The 
oxen  of  Augeas,  king  of  Elis,  supplied  one  of  the  twelve  labours  to 
Hercules ;  and  the  soil  had  the  enviable  boast  alone  in  Greece  of 
producing  the  Pvararo?  or  fine  flax  so  often  mentioned  in  Scripture 
(Paus.  V.  5.  2).  In  politics  the  Eleans  never  played  any  prominent 
part ;  but  their  possession  of  the  grand  national  temple  of  Jove  at 
Olympia,  on  the  banks  of  the  Alpheius  (hence,  no  doubt,  the  epithet 
Slav,  ver.  615),  always  gave  them  great  consideration  among  the 
shifting  alliances  and  collisions  of  the  loosely-united  Greek  States. 
The  cities  of  this  country  mentioned  by  Homer  are  few,  and  of 
these  few  the  fewest  possess  any  celebrity.  Pisa,  the  sacred  city 
of  Jove,  so  sublimely  besung  in  after  times  by  Pindar,  does  not 
appear  at  all.  The  first  on  the  list,  Buprasium  (xxiii.  631),  which 
Homer  (xi.  756)  calls  "  wheat-abounding,"  was  gone  without  a 
trace  in  Strabo's  day  ;  but  the  country  between  the  town  of  Elis  and 
Dyme,  in  Achaea,  still  retained  the  old  Homeric  name  of  the  town 
(Str.  VIII.  340).  Elis,  the  capital  of  the  district,  and  vested  with 
the  presidency  of  the  Olympic  games — an  honour  which  it  wrested 
from   the   more   ancient   Pisn. — is   situated   on  the   banks   of   the 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  95 

Peneius.  It  is  placed  by  Pausanias  about  fourteen  miles  from 
the  harbour  of  Cyllene,  on  an  acropolis,  which  was  recognised  by 
Dodwell  (ii.  316),  L.  (i.  4),  and  Curt.  (ii.  22)  in  the  peaked  hill 
called  KaXocTKOTTL  or  Fair-vieiv^  on  the  south  side  of  the  river. 

The  situation  of  Hyrmine  on  the  sea-coast  depends  on  that  of 
Cyllene,  which  is  a  disputed  point  (Str.  viii.  841) ;  but  if  Curtius  is 
right  in  his  sequence  of  important  points  on  this  part  of  the  Elean 
coast,  following  Ptolemy  (iii.  16),  as  to  me  seems  a  firm  basis  to 
stand  on,  then  Hyrmine  must  be  set  farther  north  than  it  appears 
in  Kiepert's  map.  Myrsinus,  or  Myktuntium,  as  it  was  called  in 
Strabo's  time,  was  nine  miles  north  of  Elis,  on  the  road  to  Dyme. 
The  "  Olenian  rock"  (xi.  757)  was  merely  guessed  by  the  ancients 
to  be  the  same  as  Scollis,  a  rocky  mountain  on  the  Dymean  and 
Elean  border  (Str.  viii.  341)  ;  for  they  distinctly  avoid  confound- 
ing it  with  the  town  of  Olenus,  on  the  Achaean  coast  (Str.  386). 
The  last  town  on  the  Elean  list  is  Aleisium  (xi.  757),  on  the 
mountain  road  from  Elis  south-east  to  Olympia  (Str.  341). 

Ver.  625. 

We  now  come  to  the  Islands.  The  Echinades,  so  called  from 
Ixii'os,  a  hedgehog,  as  some  of  them  were  also  called  o^etai,  or  the 
sharp  islands, — are  situated,  as  Homer  says,  right  opposite  the 
north  coast  of  Elis,  to  the  north-east,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ache- 
LODS  (xxi.  194).  They  are  small,  sharp,  rocky  islands,  some  of 
them  mere  rocks,  with  a  meagre  soil,  or  quite  barren,  without 
population ;  why  called  "  sacred"  in  the  text  I  do  not  know;  pro- 
bably from  some  old  shrine  or  temple.  They  attracted  particularl}'' 
the  attention  of  the  ancients,  raising  in  their  brains  certain  geo- 
logical speculations  about  the  encroaching  of  the  mainland  upon 
the  sea  (Thucyd.  ii.  102  ;  Pans.  viii.  24.  5),  which,  however, 
have  not  yet  become  facts.  The  Homeric  Duliciiium  Strabo  (458) 
had  no  difficulty  in  identifying  with  one  of  those  islands  called 
SoXixa ;  which  indeed  seems  a  very  fair  use  of  etymology,  as  the 
word  SoAt^o?  signifies  long,  and  the  island  so  named  had  this 
shape.      But  unfortunately  Homer    in   one   place    (Od.    xvi.    396) 


96  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  TiooK  II. 

calls  it  ''  wheat-abounding  and  grassy,"  au  epithet  tj^uitc  incun- 
sistent  with  the  character  which  these  islands  ever  could  have 
sustained.  Either  therefore  the  poet  has  been  too  free  with  his 
favourite  epithets  of  TroXvirvpos  and  TroiTjeis,  which  is  by  no  means 
impossible,  or,  as  has  been  suggested  (L.  iii.  51)  it  is  not  abso- 
lutely necessary  in  the  grammatical  structure  of  this  verse  to 
suppose  that  Dulichium  is  an  island  at  all ;  but  it  may  represent 
some  of  the  rich  fat  land  on  the  -S^tolian  mainland,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  river,  which  in  popular  tradition  might  easily  have  been 
confounded  with  the  closely  adjacent  islands.  Hayman's  idea 
(Od.  I.  App.  D.  7,)  that  "  lying  beyond  the  sea,  i.e.,  the  Crissean 
gulf,  under  the  land,  and  probably  flat,  its  form  might  easily  blend 
with  that  of  the  continent,  and  an  unduly  large  space  have  been 
ascribed  to  it,"  is  not  at  all  bad. 

Ver.  081. 

By  the  Cephalonians  in  this  line,  the  poet  seems  to  include 
generally  the  inhabitants  of  the  modern  island  of  Cephalonia,  the 
largest  of  the  group,  and  its  dependencies,  Ithaca  and  Zante,  form- 
ing together  the  realm  of  Ulysses.  Its  ancient  name  was  Samk. 
or  Samos,  a  name  afterwards  known,  and  still  retained,  as  the 
appellation  of  its  principal  city  (L.  iii.  55).  The  name  of  Cepha- 
lenia,  now  Cephalonia,  applied  to  the  island,  appears  first  in  Herod, 
(ix.  28.)  It  is  an  island  of  considerable  size,  being  above  thirty 
miles  long  (M'Culloch,  Geog.  Did.),  but  the  mass  of  it  is  a  mighty 
mountain,  as  high  as  Ben  Nevis,  which  towers  majestically  over 
the  broad  firth  at  the  mouth  of  the  Corinthian  gulf.  The  stout 
inhabitants  of  Same  achieved  no  small  celebrity  in  the  declining 
days  of  Greek  glory,  by  standing  a  siege  of  four  months  against 
the  Romans  (Liv.  xxxviii.  29).  Ithaca  (ver.  632)  lies  alongside 
the  north  half  of  Cephalonia,  to  the  east  separated  by  a  narrow 
firth.  It  is  a  long  mountain  ridge,  about  half  the  length  of  Cepha- 
lonia, cut  in  the  middle  by  a  large  gulf  on  the  east  side,  leaving  an 
isthmus  of  only  a  mile  broad  to  connect  the  two  halves  of  the  island. 
On  the  right  hand,  that  is  to  the  north,  as  you  sail  into  this  gulf, 


I 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  97 

runs  the  mighty  mountain  of  Avwy^,  which  by  its  height  alone  is 
naturally  recognised  as  the  Neritum  of  this  verse.  This  descrip- 
tion agrees  well  with  the  epithet  Kpam-*/,  rocky,  applied  to  the 
island  in  iii.  201.  But  how  to  reconcile  the  true  aspect  of  the 
island,  and  its  geographical  site  with  the  much-debated  lines  in  the 
Odyssey  (ix.  25,  26)  baflSes  my  powers,  and  is  happily  no  part  of 
my  business  here.  Were  I  commenting  on  the  Odyssey,  I  should 
take  with  me  first  of  all  Mure's  sensible  remark  that  "  a  poet  is  not 
a  land-surveyor"  [Journal,  i.  60),  and  ought  not  to  be  treated  as 
such.  As  to  the  notion  of  certain  learned  Germans  (Volcker,  Horn. 
Geog.  p.  46),  that  the  modern  Gkxki,  though  bearing  the  same  name, 
and  accented  on  the  same  syllable  as  the  ancient  'lOaK-q,  and  gene- 
rally agreeing  strikingly  with  the  main  features  of  the  landscape, 
is,  after  all,  not  the  same  island ;  this  is  a  fancy  which  could  only 
have  been  bred  in  the  brains  of  a  bookish  people,  who,  by  the  con- 
tinued exercise  of  an  unpractical  speculation,  have  acquired  a 
wonderful  faculty  either  of  making  something  out  of  nothing,  or  of 
turning  something  into  nothing,  as  whim  may  dictate  or  occasion 
demand.  The  sites  of  J^gilips  and  Crocylea  (ver.  633)  are  both 
laid  down  in  L.'s  map  of  Ithaca,  on  that  sort  of  conjecture 
which  minute  topographical  knowledge  only  can  sometimes  make 
very  nearly  equivalent  to  a  proof.  There  remains  Zante — ZaKw- 
Oos, — south  of  Cephalonia,  and  considerably  less  in  size,  but  much 
more  famous  for  beauty  and  fertility.  KaAo,  ttoXis  d  ZaKw6'os, 
says  Theocritus  (iv.  32)  of  its  chief  town,  on  a  fine  open  semicir- 
cular bay,  with  a  lofty  mountain,  Monte  Skotto  (Vieimnouni), 
looking  out  from  its  south  side;  and  ^^  il  Jiore  de  Levante"  is  a 
well-known  epithet  given  by  the  Italians  to  the  whole  island. 

Ver.  637. — Ships  toith  vermeil  protvs, 

— fxtXTOTrdprjoi.  This  is  the  only  passage  of  the  Iliad  in  which  ships 
are  so  described  ;  a  peculiarity  which  would  furnish  a  Grerman  with 
a  strong  argument  for  the  interpolated  character  of  the  catalogue. 
The  epithet  occurs  also  in  Od.  ix.  125.  Dacier  translates  ■"  ad- 
mirahlement  hien  peintes,"  which  I  merely  quote  as  a  curious 
VOL.  IV.  G 


98  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

instance  of  a  false  principle  which  long  prevailed  in  the  French 
and  Anglo-French  school  of  taste,  that  in  order  to  achieve  the 
beautiful  we  must  abolish  the  characteristic. 

Ver.  638. 

Seen  from  the  lofty  summit  of  Parnassus,  the  whole  country  to 
the  west  and  north-west  appears  one  vast  sea  of  mountains.  This 
region  is  ^Etolia,  a  country  whose  rough  wildness  is  varied  by  only 
two  plains  of  any  extent,  as  its  rivers  also  are  only  two,  the  Evenus 
(Celtic,  Avon?)  eastward  towards  Parnassus,  and  the  Acheloiis 
{aqua  ?)  on  the  west,  which  separates  it  from  Acarnania.  The  two 
plains  are  that  on  the  south,  between  the  mouth  of  those  two  rivers, 
in  which  region  are  all  the  known  towns  mentioned  by  Homer,  and 
that  to  the  north,  inland  beyond  the  mountains.  The  original  in- 
habitants of  this  region  were  not  in  the  popular  sense  Greeks,  but 
a  race  called  Curetes  (Str.  x.  465),  who  appear  in  Homer  (ix.  529), 
and  are  apparently  to  be  classed  with  those  Leleges,  Caucones, 
Pclasgi,  and  other  tribes,  who  peopled  early  Greece  before  the 
Hellenes  gave  a  new  impulse  to  civilisation  and  a  new  name  to  the 
people.  Afterwards,  in  the  more  accessible  parts  of  this  district, 
a  genuine  Hellenic  race  prevailed  (Str.  x.  464),  but  the  people 
still  preserved  a  wild  and  semi-barbarous  type  (jjii^of3dpl3apov, 
Eurip.  Phoen.,  and  Thucyd.  i.  5,  iii.  94 ;   Herod,  vii.  126). 

Ver.  639. 

Pleuron,  the  chief  city  of  the  Curetes  (ix.  529 ;  Str.  x.  451), 
lay  in  the  great  plain  of  the  P]venus,  between  Calydon  and  the 
Acheloiis  (Pseudo  Dicaearchus  dvaypaifiy]  ti/s  'EAAaSos,  58  ;  Thucyd. 
III.  102) ;  but  there  were  properly  two  towns  of  this  name,  the 
more  ancient  low  in  the  plain,  and  the  more  recent  higher  up  to- 
wards the  ridge  of  Aracynthus  (Str.  x.  451).  The  ruins  of  the 
ancient  city  have  been  traced  by  L.  (i.  115)  at  Mount  Zvyo,  about 
an  hour's  drive  from  Missolonghi  (Mure,  i.  140).  Olenos  was  near 
new  Pleuron  (Str.  x.  451 ).  Pylene,  the  same  writer  says,  shared 
a    similar  fate    with    Plcumn.    and    was    transferred   from   the  low 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  99 

country  up  the  hill  to  Prosciiium.  Cualcis  (ver.  640)  was  ou  the 
shore,  near  the  river  Evenus,  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain  of  the  same 
name  (Str.  x.  451;  Thucyd.  ii.  83;  L.  i.  Ill);  and  Calydon, 
from  the  mythological  legend  of  the  boar -hunt,  by  far  the  most 
famous  city  of  the  group,  was  in  the  same  district  between  Pleuron 
and  Chalcis  (Str.  x.  451,  460).  Calydon  plays  no  prominent  part 
in  history;  and  in  the  year  b.c.  31  disappears  altogether,  Augustus 
having  transferred  its  inhabitants  to  Nicopolis,  the  new  city  which 
he  founded  to  celebrate  his  crowning  victory  on  the  Ambracian 
gulf 

Yer.  645. 

Crete,  the  largest,  the  most  celebrated,  and  the  most  ill-fated 
island  of  the  Mediterranean,  lies  in  a  fine  central  position,  at  the 
mouth  of  the^gean,with  its  north-west  wing  turned  towards  Sparta, 
and  its  north-east  to  Rhodes.  In  mythology  it  is  supreme  in  glory 
as  the  birthplace  of  Jove,  and  the  scene  of  his  marriage  with  Hera 
(Diod.  Sic.  V.  72).  In  Homer's  time  the  fame  of  its  hundred  cities 
(ver.  64!))  filled  the  Mediterranean.  Its  most  ancient  legislation 
and  constitution  was  very  much  praised  by  certain  philosophical 
writers  of  antiquity,  particularly  by  Plato,  who  felt  a  strong  revul- 
sion from  democracy  as  exhibited  in  Athens ;  but  its  inhabitants 
had  a  bad  repute  as  pirates,  liars,  and  sensualists.  Their  three  chief 
cities  were  Gnossus,  Gortyna,  and  Cydonia,  of  which  the  last  is 
mentioned  by  Homer  in  the  Odyssey  (iii.  292),  and  the  other  two 
in  the  present  passage.  Gnossus,  situated  on  the  north  side,  in  a 
plain  between  Lyctus  and  Gortyna,  a  few  miles  from  the  sea, 
opposite  the  island  of  Dia  (Str.  x.  476;  Stadiasm.  Mar.  Mayn. 
348  ;  Miiller),  was  the  capital  of  the  kingdom  of  Minos,  and  the 
accredited  seat  of  the  famous  labyrinth,  of  which  the  image  appears 
on  its  coins.  It  is  now  called  fxaKporeixo,  or  the  long  wall,  and 
lies  near  the  modern  town  of  Megalo-hastron  (Pashley,  i.  203). 
Gortyna  and  Ph^^istus  (ver.  648)  are  in  our  sources  of  geographi- 
cal knowledge  dependent  on  one  another,  and  on  another  town, 
Matala  or  Matalon,  not  mentioned  by  Homer.     For  the  lines  in  the 


100  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Odyssey  (iir.  292-296)  show  that  Pilestds  was  on  the  south  side 
of  the  island,  near  the  coast,  and  in  the  Gortynian  district.  This 
agrees  with  Strabo  (479),  who  places  Phaestus  at  sixty  stadia  from 
Gortyna,  and  twenty  from  the  sea,  while  the  naval  station  belonging 
to  it,  3Iatalum,  Avas  forty  stadia  distant.  This  Matalum  still  retains 
its  name,  and  stands  in  the  anonymous  periplus  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean (Stadiasm.  liar,  llagn.  323),  in  a  due  sequence  from  the 
Samonian  promontory,  in  the  north-east  corner  of  the  island  as  you 
proceed  along  the  east  end,  and  then  along  the  south  coast  westward. 
A  simple  inspection  of  the  map  will  show  how,  in  the  broad  open 
bay  westward  of  the  broadest  part  of  the  island,  that  is,  about  the 
middle,  the  south  wind  will  send  in  as  surging  a  sea  as  the  west  at 
Bude  in  the  north  of  Cornwall  (Od.  iii.  295).  These  are  the  prin- 
cipal data  on  which,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  Pashley  and  his  predeces- 
sors have  fixed  the  site  of  Gortyn,  at  a  spot  in  the  large  plain 
south-east  of  Ida,  where  ruins  arc  found  (Pash.  i.  ch.  18,  19). 
Not  far  from  Pii^stus,  famous  as  the  birthplace  of  Epimenides, 
comes  RiiYTiCM,  which  Strabo  mentions  as  being  in  the  Gortynian 
district,  in  which  connexion  also  it  appears  in  Nonnus  (xiii.  235). 
Of  the  three  towns  which  follow,  Lycastds  (Str.  x.  479 ;  Polyb. 
XXIII.  15)  seems  to  have  been  somewhere  between  Gnossus  and 
Gortyna,  where  it  appears  in  Kiepert's  map ;  but  Pashley  places 
it  much  farther  to  the  east.  Miletus,  which  was  razed  to  the 
ground  by  the  people  of  Lyctus,  seems  from  Pashley's  map  to 
have  retained  its  ancient  name,  and  is  spoken  of  by  that  tra- 
veller as  an  ascertained  site ;  but  his  grounds  are  not  stated  at 
length  (i.  269).  It  lies  near  the  sea,  about  thirty  miles  east  of 
Gnossus.  Lastly,  Lyctus,  a  place  of  more  note  inland  (Scylax), 
under  the  ^gean  mountain,  where  Jove  was  born  (Hes.  Theo<j. 
476),  with  a  liarbour,  Chersonesus,  on  the  north  coast  (Str.  479), 
westward  of  Gnossus,  both  easily  identified  by  their  names  (Pash. 
i.  268). 


BOOK  11.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  101 

Ver.  653. 

Rhodes,  of  which  we  next  speak,  is  perhaps  the  most  illustrious 
island,  for  its  size,  in  the  history  of  the  world.  It  is  little  more 
than  forty  miles  long,  and  composed,  lil^e  Crete,  principally  of  a 
long  ridge  of  rocky  mountains,  of  which  the  highest  summit  is  said 
to  be  above  4000  feet  in  elevation.  This  island,  with  its  three 
towns  here  mentioned,  formed,  along  with  Cos,  Halicarnassus,  and 
Cnidus,  a  sort  of  political  brotherhood,  called  the  Hexapolis,  all  of 
Dorian  extraction  (Herod,  i.  145).  The  city  of  Rhodes,  as  much 
admired  by  the  ancients  as  Edinburgh  is  by  the  moderns,  is  a  com- 
paratively recent  town  (Str.  xiv.  652-4) ;  but  the  enterprise  of  the 
Rhodians  in  early  times  had  made  the  island  prominent  in  colo- 
nizing the  Mediterranean.  Their  early  wealth,  alluded  to  by  Homer 
(ver.  670 — a  line  which  I  see  no  good  reason  for  suspecting),  was 
embodied  in  the  legend  that  Jove  had  rained  gold  upon  it ;  and  the 
beautiful  sunniness  of  their  climate  was  symbolized  in  the  Heliads, 
or  sons  of  the  Sun,  to  whom  Jupiter  early  gave  the  island  in  possession 
(Pind.  01.  7) ;  and  their  early  excellence  in  the  arts  was  quaintly 
stereotyped  in  the  old  legends  about  the  Telchins.  In  after  ages, 
while  their  valour  defied  the  successors  of  Alexander,  their  policy 
com'ted  the  alliance  of  the  Romans ;  their  maritime  laws  were  in- 
corporated into  the  Digest  (xiv.  2),  and  their  philosophers  taught 
the  rulers  of  the  world  (Strabo  655,  Sueton.,  Jul.)  Of  the  three 
cities  named  by  the  poet,  the  first,  Lindus,  situated  on  a  promontory 
in  the  middle  of  the  south  side  of  the  island,  stiU  bears  the  same 
name,  and  exhibits  notable  sepulchral  and  other  remains.  The 
second,  Ialysds,  dwindled  to  a  village  in  Strabo's  time,  was  on  the 
north  side,  near  the  north-east  promontory,  a  short  distance  south  of 
the  picturesque  site  afterwards  occupied  by  Rhodes  ;  and  Cameirus, 
on  the  same  side  of  the  island,  was  on  the  promontory  of  Mono- 
lithos,  a  little  south-west  of  the  Atabyrian  mount,  recognisable, 
as  Ross  says  (though  he  does  not  seem  personally  to  have  visited 
the  spot),  plainly  by  its  white  rocks,  Avhich  Homer  characterizes  by 
the  epithet  dpyivoet?  {Insel  Reiscn,  iii.  103).     The  number  three, 


102  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

by  which  these  ancient  cities  are  grouped,  was  a  favourite  with  the 
Dorians  (Od.  xix.  177;  Miiller,  Dor.  ii.  p.  78;  Niebuhr,  Rom.  Ges. 
1833,  i.  31-4).     For  Tlepolemus,  see  v.  628. 

Ver.  671. 

The  islands  which  follow,  all  of  inferior  size  and  consequence,  be- 
long to  the  south-west  or  Carian  corner  of  Asia  Minor,  and  naturally 
follow  in  the  wake  of  Rhodes.  The  first,  Syme,  lies  between  that 
island  and  the  long  Carian  peninsula  in  which  Cnidus  was  situated, 
rocky  and  bare,  but  full  of  bays,  and  with  a  population,  in  1845, 
of  about  7000  souls,  occupied  principally  in  sponge-fishing  (Ross, 
Ins.  iii.  123).  Like  other  islands  in  this  corner  of  the  jEgean, 
after  some  stiff  struggles  with  the  Carians,  it  came  permanently 
into  the  possession  of  Doric  settlers  from  the  Peloponnesus  (Diod. 
Sic.  V.  53).  As  for  Nireus,  he  owes  all  his  immortality  to  the 
present  passage,  and  may  take  his  place  along  with  that  Philip 
of  Crotona,  whom  Herodotus  mentions  (v.  47),  as  a  striking  proof 
of  that  quick  instinct  for  beauty  which  was  the  peculiar  gift  of 
God  to  the  Hellenic  race  ;  though  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
observations  of  Gladstone  (iii.  406)  on  this  special  passage  are 
more  subtle  than  sound.  The  repetition  of  the  name  of  Nireus — 
if  indeed  all  the  lines  are  genuine — is  a  common  enough  trick  of 
poets  (see  Tasso,  ii.  1),  and  has  no  particular  significance. 

Ver.  676. 

NiSYROS,  which  mythology  fabled  to  have  been  a  fragment  torn 
from  Cos,  which  Neptune  flung  upon  an  impious  giant  (Str.  x.  489), 
lies  between  that  island  and  the  Cnidian  promontory,  a  little  to  the 
south.  There  was  truth,  as  usual,  at  the  bottom  of  the  fable,  for  the 
island  is  one  of  the  most  striking  of  the  volcanic  products  of  the 
Mediterranean,  and  at  the  present  day  throws  out  hot  fames  and 
sulphurous  scum  (Ross,  his.  ii.  78).  Next  follows  Crapathus, 
or  Carpathus,  which  gave  its  name  to  the  adjacent  part  of  the 
^Egean  (Hor.  Od.),  and  was  situated  midway  between  Crete  and 
the  south-east  corner  of  Rhodes.     Anciently  it  belonged  to  Minos 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  103 

(Diod.  Sic.  V.  54),  and  is  an  island  of  considerable  size,  very  rocky 
and  inaccessible,  but  in  some  parts  fruitful  (Ross,  iii.  50).  Casos 
is  a  small  rocky  island,  lying  oif  the  south  end  of  Carpathus  towards 
Crete  (Ross,  iii.  32).  Cos  (ver.  677),  situated  in  the  mouth  of  the 
great  Carian  gulf,  to  the  north  of  the  Cnidian  peninsula,  now- 
called  Stanco  (V  rav  kw),  about  twenty-three  miles  long  (Smith, 
Diet.),  and  celebrated  in  antiquity  for  its  medical  school  (to  'Ao- 
KXr]7neLov,  Str.  xiv.  657),  its  delicate  silken  fabrics,  and  its  wine 
(Athen.  I.,  Hor.  Sat.  ii.  4.  29),  which  travellers  yet  declare  to  be 
"very  good"  (Ross,  iii.  127).  The  "  Calydnian  Islands"  gi-oup 
lies  a  little  to  the  north  of  Cos,  as  you  sail  towards  Miletus.  The 
largest  of  the  group  is  now  called  "  Kalymnos,"  a  form  of  the 
Homeric  designation  familiar  to  the  ancients  ;  for  Strabo  (x.  489) 
has  KaXv/jivav.  Some  interesting  notices  of  the  state  of  society  in 
this  place  will  be  found  in  Ross  (ii.  94),  a  traveller  to  whom  scholars 
are  largely  indebted  for  the  fresh  and  original  manner  in  which 
he  has  connected  the  study  of  the  classical  remains  of  antiquity  in 
Greece  with  the  character,  habits,  and  language  of  the  existing  inha- 
bitants. Would  that  some  of  our  energetic  young  British  scholars 
would  follow  his  example,  and  not  continue  isolating  themselves 
from  the  living  Greek  world  by  that  barbarous  and  unauthorized 
fashion  of  pronouncing  the  Greek  language,  which,  with  such  un- 
reasoning persistency,  they  practise! 

Ver.  681. 

We  now  come  to  the  country  afterwards  called  Thessaly,  which, 
so  far  as  it  had  a  common  name  in  Homer's  day,  I  entirely  agree 
with  Glad.  (i.  101),  seems  indicated  here  by  the  phrase,  ''  the  Pelas- 
gic  Argos,"  that  is,  the  gi-eat  plain  peopled  by  the  Pelasgi,  between 
the  Cambunian  mountains,  the  southern  boundary  of  Macedonia,  and 
the  long  ridge  of  Oturys,  which  nms  across  from  the  mountain 
country  on  the  Epirotic  border,  in  a  line  almost  due  east,  to  the 
^Egean  sea.  The  other  boundaries  of  this  great  plain  ai"e  Mount 
PiNDUs  on  the  west,  and  the  ridge  of  mountains  which,  starting 
from  Olympus,  the  highest  mountain   in   Greece,  runs  along  the 


104  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  11. 

coast  of  the  ^gean  till  it  ends  in  a  long  peninsula,  whose  south- 
eastern promontory,  Sepias,  fronts  the  north-eastern  promon- 
tory of  Euboea.  This  narrow  eastern  strip  of  Thessaly  along 
the  coast  was  called  Magnesia  (ver.  756),  and  the  whole  laud  thus 
presents  the  aspect  of  an  immense  enclosed  space,  having,  like 
Arcadia,  only  one  outlet  for  its  waters  through  the  romantic  defile  of 
Tempe,  between  Olympus  and  Ossa.  That  the  word  Argos,  though 
sometimes  used  by  Homer  for  a  town  (iv.  52)  means  here  the 
whole  Thessalian  plain,  seems  to  be  quite  evident,  both  from  the 
other  considerations  mentioned  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  specially 
from  the  use  of  the  article  in  a  manner  not  peculiar  to  Greek,  but 
belonging  to  all  languages.  Towns,  no  doubt,  may  in  special  cases 
have  the  article  ;  as  ai  'A^ijvat,  that  is,  tlie  city  of  Athena,  or  of  the 
Athenians  ;  but  generally,  in  all  languages,  it  is  the  country  which 
has  the  demonstrative  prefix,  while  the  town  is  left  without  empha- 
sis. So  in  German:  die  Tyrol,  die  ScMueiz,  but  not  die  Brcslau, 
die  Innspruck.  The  same  in  Scotland :  the  Carse  of  Goiorie,  the 
Lothians,  the  Hoive  o'  the  llearns,  but  not  the  Edinburgh,  the  Aber- 
deen. In  a  wider  sense  Thessaly  may  be  said  to  include  the  vale 
of  the  Spercheius,  that  is,  the  district  between  the  ridge  of  Otiirys 
on  the  north  and  (Eta  on  the  south.  This  was  the  country  of  the 
^^NiANES  (ver.  749),  a  tribe  evidently  of  some  note  in  Homer's 
time,  but  who  afterwards  disappeared  (Str.  ix.  427).  The  whole 
Thessalian  region  was  one  of  the  most  rich  and  highly  favoured  in 
Greece,  having  a  favourable  outlet  to  the  sea  on  the  south-east, 
large  rivers,  the  largest  plain  in  Greece,  and  a  strong  well-defined 
natural  boundary ;  but  notwithstanding  all  these  advantages,  it 
never  possessed  politically  that  unity  to  which  its  topographical 
configuration  so  naturally  led.  In  Homer's  time  it  was  evidently 
as  much  divided  into  different  clanships,  or  dynasties' — so  Strabo 
calls  them, — as  any  country  occupied  by  Greek  races  ;  and  when,  at 
a  later  period,  the  Hellenic  and  Pelasgic  tribes  desci'ibcd  in  the 
catalogue  were  overpowered  by  an  irruption  of  Thessalians  from 
Epirus  (Thucyd.  i.  12;  Herod,  vii.  17G),  and  driven  southward  to 
cause  a  redistribution  of  territory  in  the  Peloponnesus,  we  do  not 


BOOK  II.  NOTKS  TO  THE  ILIAD.  105 

find  that  these  new  occupiers  of  the  hind  were  able  to  command  it 
from  a  central  metropolis,  but  they  remained  contented  with  an 
ineffective  sort  of  independence,  under  various  lordly  families,  of 
which  the  Scopadge  and  the  Aleuadoe  are  familiar  to  the  readers  of 
Greek  history. 

The  first  district  of  Thessaly  described  by  Homer  is  what  was 
anciently  called  Ach^a,  or  Piitiiiotis  (Str.  ix.  429-433 ;  Thucyd. 
VIII.  3  ;  Xen.  Ages.  ii.  5,  in  Scylax,  between  the  MaAieis  and  Thes- 
saly), with  boundary  somewhat  vague,  but  which  may  be  taken 
generally  as  that  part  of  Thessaly  in  the  south-east  corner,  be- 
tween the  head  of  the  Pagasean  gulf  and  the  lower  valley  of  the 
Spercheius ;  one  part  of  this  district  was  called  by  the  afterwards 
glorious  name  of  "  Hellas"  (ver.  683,  and  ix.  447),  a  name  still 
extant  in  Hellada,  the  modern  appellation  of  the  Spercheius ;  and 
the  whole  constituted  the  paternal  domain  of  Achilles,  though  the 
word  "Phthiote"  is  undoubtedly  so  used  (xiii.  685;  Str.  ix.  432) 
by  the  poet  as  to  include  also  the  followers  of  Protcsilaus  and 
Philoctetes.  The  names  in  verse  684  exhibit  the  operation  of  a 
general  principle  in  early  history,  in  virtue  of  which  the  designa- 
tions of  particular  tribes,  sometimes  small  and  unimportant,  are  in 
the  course  of  time  transferred  to  designate  large  composite  masses. 
So  the  English,  from  the  Angli ;  and  the  general  Grreek  people, 
from  the  small  Thessalian  district  where  some  of  their  most  stirring 
and  adventurous  tribes  were  originally  settled.  All  history  indeed 
points  to  Thrace  and  Thessaly  as  the  cradle  of  Greece.  In  the  time 
of  Homer  the  local  designation,  'Axatoi,  had  already  passed  into  a 
general  term  for  all  the  Greeks,  specially  for  those  under  Agamem- 
non. The  transference  of  the  Achjean  name  to  Peloponnesus  is 
accounted  for  by  Pausanias,  as  usual,  by  a  pedigree  and  fiimily 
history  (vir.  1) ;  Dionysius  (Arch.  i.  17)  traces  the  affinity  back- 
ward, and  makes  the  Achaean s  migrate  from  Argos  to  Thessaly. 
As  for  the  "  Hellenes,"  the  ancient  writers  knew  well  that,  as  a 
general  designation  for  the  Greek  people,  this  name  was  unknown 
to  Homer ;  for  which  reason  the  verse  530  above,  which  mentions 
"  Panhellenes  and  Achoeans,"  is  noted  by  some  of  them  as  spurious 


106  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

(Thuc.  I.  3  schoL;  Str.  viii.  370).  The  same  composite  term  occurs 
in  Hesiod  (Op.  528);  and  there  is  a  use  of 'EAAas  in  the  Odyssey, 
KaO'  'EAAcxSa  Kol  iikcrov  "Apyo<s  (l.  344),  which  seems  at  first  sight 
to  give  to  Hellas  a  wider  significance  than  what  strictly  belongs  to 
it  in  the  Iliad.  It  may  be,  however,  as  Nitzsch  says,  that  Homer  by 
this  expression  only  means  to  designate  the  whole  by  two  extreme 
points,  north  and  south.  On  the  gradual  extension  of  the  Hellenes, 
see  Clinton  (i.  p.  45).  As  to  Danaans,  the  only  other  common 
name  by  which  the  Greeks  are  designated  in  Homer,  that  was,  like 
Achaeans,  only  a  synonyme  for  Argives,  which  their  mythographers 
deduced  from  a  king  named  Danaus,  of  Egypto-Phoenician  extrac- 
tion (Apoll.  II.  1 ;  Paus.  ii.  19.  3 ;  Herod,  ii.  91).  Alos  (ver. 
682) :  this  town  was  on  the  end  of  the  ridge  of  Othrys,  overlook- 
ing the  plain  of  Crocion,  and  watered  by  the  river  Amphrysus,  on 
whose  banks  x\pollo  fed  the  kine  of  Admetus  (Str.  ix.  433  ;  L.  iv. 
336).  The  next  place,  Alope,  must  be  somewhere  near  the  Maliau 
gulf,  as  its  position  is  determined  by  that  of  Echinus  (Steph.  Byz. 
'AAoTT?;),  which  is  minutely  described  by  Polybius  (ix.  41),  and 
still  preserves  its  ancient  name  (L.  ii.  20).  Tkachis,  i.e.,  the 
rough  rocky  district,  from  rpa^us  (on  which,  however,  see  Forch- 
hammer,  Hellen.  p.  11),  is  a  town,  not  strictly  in  the  Phthian  dis- 
trict, some  five  miles  west  of  Thermopylae,  where  there  is  a  pass 
through  the  (Etean  ridge  of  not  more  than  fifty  feet  wide  (Herod. 
VII.  176),  of  great  celebrity  in  mythical  history,  as  the  scene  of  the 
death  of  Hercules,  and  of  no  less  strategical  importance. 

Yer.  690. — Lyrnessus, 

a  town  in  the  territory  of  Adramyttium,  quite  close  to  the  Thebes 
of  the  Troad,  i.  366,  which  see  supra  (8tr.  xiii.  612). 

Yer.  695. 

We  now  come  to  the  domain  of  Protesilaus,  a  part  of  Phthiotis, 
on  the  Maliac  gulf,  and  northward,  adjacent  to  the  country  of 
Achilles  (Str.  ix.  435),  Phylace — (jivXaK-q,  the  guard  or  ward  (as 
It^vgo-ward,  in  Fifeshire  ?),  frequently  mentioned  in  Homer  (xiii. 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  107 

096,  XV.  335),  but  otherwise  of  no  significance.  Strabo  (ix.  433) 
seems  to  place  it  inland,  between  the  Pharsalian  district  and  the 
Phthiotis  ;  but  the  passage  is  somewhat  confused.  Leake  (iv.  331) 
finds  it  at  Ghidek,  on  a  height  commanding  a  fine  view  of  the  gulf 
of  Volo.  Pyrasus  (ttv/oos,  wheat),  ver.  G95,  was  on  the  shore  of 
the  Pagasean  bay,  with  a  good  harbour,  twenty  stadia  from  the 
Phthiotic  Thebes,  a  town  which,  from  the  data  furnished  by  Poly- 
bius  (v.  99)  and  Strabo  (ix.  435),  it  is  plain  must  have  been  on 
the  north-east  corner  of  Phthiotis,  not  far  from  the  Magnesian 
border,  near  the  sea  (L.  iv.  359^  The  "  shrine,"  or,  more  strictly, 
"  consecrated  ground  of  Demeter,"  which  seems  to  have  been  a  syn- 
onyme  for  Pyrasus,  gave  rise  to  the  name  Demetrium,  by  which  the 
place  was  afterwards  known.  Iton  (ver.  697),  placed  by  Strabo 
(ix.  433)  about  eight  miles  from  Halus,  and  by  Leake  (ii. 
357)  in  a  pastoral  district  of  the  highlands  of  Othrys,  to  which  the 
epithet,  "  mother  of  flocks,"  is  most  appropriate,  was  famous  in  the 
early  history  of  Greece  as  the  seat  of  the  worship  of  the  Itonian 
Athene,  which  the  Boeotians,  when  they  left  Thessaly,  took  with 
them  into  their  new  country  (ApoU.  Kh.  i.  551  schol.  •  Mliller, 
Orcliom.  384).  Antron  (ver.  697)  is  a  coast-town  in  the  south- 
east coast  of  Phthiotis,  opposite  Euboea,  so  called  from  its  caverns 
(avrpov), — like  Wemyss,  in  Fifeshire, — whose  situation  is  indicated 
in  Strabo  (ix.  435)  by  its  position  in  his  periplus  northward  of  the 
island  of  Myonnesus,  and  is  recognised  accordingly  by  L.  (iv.  348) 
in  the  modern  Fano.  This  place,  like  Pyrasus,  was  famous  for 
the  worship  of  Demeter  [Hymn.  Dem.  491),  so  characteristic  of  the 
Pelasgi  (infra,  ver.  840).  Lastly,  Pteleon,  though  destroyed  by 
the  Romans  in  their  wars  with  the  Macedonians  (Liv.  xlii.  67), 
still  survives  in  a  wretched  Turkish  village  called  ^xeAto,  looking 
down  upon  the  entrance  to  the  gulf  of  Volo.  The  marsh  below 
the  town,  where  a  brook  descends  into  the  sea,  no  doubt  under 
more  civilized  management,  produced  the  grassy  meadows  to  which 
the  poet's  epithet  Xex^-n-ocrjv  points  (L.  iv.  341).  These  are  the 
cities  of  Protesilaus.  As  for  that  hero  himself  (xiii.  681,  xv.  705), 
he  is  one  of  those  mortals,  not  rare  in  the  history  of  the  world,  who 


108  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

have  gained  more  celebrity  by  a  well- commemorated  mishap, 
than  they  might  have  achieved  by  the  most  brilliant  success. 
He  was  a  prominent  figure  in  the  representations  of  ancient  art 
connected  with  the  Trojan  war  (Pans.  x.  30.  1) ;  and  in  modern 
times,  the  faithful  attachment  between  him  and  his  wife  Laodamia 
has  furnished  to  Wordsworth  one  of  the  few  themes  of  Glrecian 
story  that  has  been  happily  transplanted  into  the  soil  of  English 
poetry.  This  misfortune d  chief  was  buried  at  Eleus,  in  the  Thra- 
cian  Chersonesus,  where  divine  honours  were  paid  him  (Str.  xiii. 
595;  Pans.  i.  34.  2;   Tzet.  Lycoph.  532). 

Ver.  711 

carries  us  beyond  Pthiotis,  northward  into  a  region  lying  imme- 
diately behind  the  Magnesian  mountain-ridge,  to  the  north  of  the 
Pagasean  gulf.  The  first  city  here,  PnERiE,  famous  afterwards  in 
the  history  of  Thessalian  tyrannies,  was  situated  near  the  Bcebean 
lake,  ninety  stadia  from  Pagasfe,  which  served  it  for  a  naval 
station  (Str.  iv.  436).  L.  (iv.  437)  recognises  it  in  the  modern 
Velestinio.  The  Boebean  lake,  now  Karia,  is  a  long  narrow  sheet 
of  water,  whose  supply  of  water  is  extremely  irregular,  and  which 
is  frequently  mentioned  by  ancient  writers  (Eurip.  Ale.  590).  Of 
Glapiiyr.1;  I  can  find  no  mention  elsewhere.  But  Iolcos,  east- 
ward from  Pagasa3,  at  the  head  of  the  Pagasean  gulf,  near  the 
foot  of  Mount  Pelion  (Pind.  Nem.  iv.  88),  is  famous  in  mythological 
history  as  the  seat  of  the  enterprising  race  of  Minyans,  that  made 
the  Boeotian  Orchomenus  so  famous  (ver.  511,  siqira,  and  Str.  ix. 
414),  and  as  the  harbour,  whence  the  Argonautic  expedition  set 
out.     On  its  site,  see  L.  iv.  379. 

The  Edmelus  who  is  mentioned  here  as  chief  of  these  Minyans, 
appears  again  as  a  vigorous,  but  not  successful  combatant  in  the 
chariot  race  (xxiii.  354).  His  father,  Admetus,  and  mother, 
Alcestis,  are  familiar  in  the  phiy  of  Euripides.  On  Admetus,  see 
the  speculations  of  Miiller,  Dor.  vol.  i.  p.  339,  Emjl. 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAP.  109 

Ver.  716. 

The  country  of  Philoctetes  next  described  is  a  part  of  the  Mag- 
ncsian  peninsula,  and  contains  only  four  cities,  of  no  great  signifi- 
cance : — (1.)  Methone,  placed  by  Scylax  the  first  town  south  of 
lolcos,  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Macedonian  and  Messenian 
cities  of  the  same  name  ;  (2.)  Tiiaumacia,  of  which  we  know  nothing 
beyond  what  the  context  of  Homer  leads  us  to  suppose,  viz.,  that 
it  was  situated  somewhere  on  the  Magnesian  coast ;  (3.)  Melibcea, 
familiar  to  the  classical  ear  from  its  sea  purple  (Virgil,  ^n.  v.  251), 
and  placed  by  Strabo  (ix.  443)  in  the  middle  of  the  broad  bay  that 
the  maps  exhibit  between  Pelion  on  the  south,  and  Ossa  on  the 
north  of  the  Magnesian  district ;  (4.)  Olizon,  opposite  Arte- 
misium,  in  Euboea  (Plut.  Them.  8),  that  is,  on  the  extreme  south 
coast  of  Magnesia.  As  for  the  chief  who  commanded  the  ships  of 
these  four  cities — Philoctetes, — he  is  one  of  those  heroes  who 
make  a  prominent  figure  in  the  post- Homeric  legendary  history  of 
the  Trojan  war,  and  in  the  Greek  drama,  but,  as  he  does  not  appear 
again  in  the  Iliad,  may  pass  without  large  comment  here.  From 
the  Odyssey  we  learn  that  the  glorious  son  of  Poias, — for  this  was 
his  patronymic, — ^returned  safe  from  Troy  [Od.  iii.  190),  to  whose 
capture  he  had  contributed,  as  Pindar  says  {Pyth.  i.  97),  with  his 
sore  leg  more  than  others  had  done  with  their  sound  arm  ;  and  his 
skill  in  archery  was  such  that  even  Ulysses  confesses  himself  his 
inferior  in  the  use  of  the  deadly  bow  {Od.  tiii.  219). 

Ver.  729. 

The  poet  now  leaves  the  coast,  and  throws  himself,  by  a  leap, 
far  into  the  interior  of  Thessaly,  a  district  originally  called  Doris, 
afterwards  Histi^otis  (Str.  ix.  437),  where  the  town  that  he  first 
names  is  Tricca,  situated  at  the  west  end  of  the  great  valley  of  the 
Peneius,  near  the  place  where  that  river,  coming  down  from  the 
mountains  into  the  plain,  makes  a  sudden  bend  in  its  course  from 
south  to  east,  famous  in  ancient  times  as  one  of  the  great  seats  of 
the  worship  of  iEsculapius,   thence  transferred   to   Epidam-us  in 


110  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Argolis  (Str.  viii.  374  ;  ix.  437).  Here  the  trees  and  gardens  on 
the  banks  of  the  river,  still  the  favourite  retreat  of  invalids  from 
all  parts  of  Greece,  refresh  the  eye  of  the  traveller  as  he  plods  his 
dusty  way  beneath  the  hot  sun  of  that  cloudless  climate  (Ussing, 
Gr.  Beisen,  p.  65).  Ithome  is  placed  by  Strabo  (437)  in  the 
same  district,  in  the  middle  of  a  sort  of  quadrangle  formed  by  the 
four  cities  of  Tricca,  Metropolis,  Pelinna^um,  and  Gomphi,  and  by 
L.  identified  with  Fanari,  in  the  district  south  of  the  Peneus  (iv. 
509).  Of  (EcHALiA,  in  the  same  district,  I  find  no  nearer  specifi- 
cation (Str.  IX.  438).  As  in  the  case  of  Pylus,  there  were  several 
places  of  this  name,  and  as  one  had  received  a  prominent  place  in 
the  Heracleid  legends,  the  ancients,  of  course,  had  their  pretty 
quarrels  about  it.  So  far  as  the  Hiad  is  concerned,  however,  here, 
and  ver.  596  supra,  the  Thessalian  town  is  the  CEchalia  of  Eurytus, 
and  therefore  of  Hercules.  On  the  two  "  sons  of  ^sculapius," 
see  IV.  191,  and  xi.  832, 

Yehs.  734-737. 

With  regard  to  the  places  mentioned  in  this  section,  I  entirely 
agree  with  L.,  that  Str.  (ix.  438)  must  be  quite  wrong  in  making 
any  of  them  in  the  Magnesian  district,  which  the  poet  has  ah-eady 
exhausted.  We  must  therefore  suppose  an  Ormenion,  site  unknown, 
somewhere  in  the  district  between  Tricca  and  Larissa,  in  which 
direction  the  poet's  description  is  proceeding.  Asterion  is  said 
by  Stephanus  to  be  identical  with  Piresia,  and  this  the  Alexandrian 
poets  place  near  the  confluence  of  the  Apidanus  and  Enipeus.  two 
well-known  southern  tributaries  of  the  Peneius  (ApolL  Rhod.  i.  35). 
On  this  indication  L.  (iv.  323)  identifies  it  with  Vlokho,  "  which, 
by  its  abruptness,  insulated  situation,  and  white  rocks,  attracts  the 
spectator's  notice  from  every  part  of  the  surrounding  country." 
The  white  rocks,  of  course,  indicate  at  the  same  time  the  site  of 
the  adjacent  Titanus,  the  Tiravoto  Aev/ca  /capv/va  of  the  poet — 
Titanus  in  Greek  meaning  white  earth,  chalk,  lime,  or  gyjjsum. 
The  fountain  Hyperia  follows  the  fortunes  of  Ormenium.  On 
Eurypylus,  see  below  (vii.  167). 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  Ill 

Ver.  738. 

We  now  reach  the  lower  vale  of  the  Peneius,  originally  inhabited 
by  the  PERRUiEBiANS  (Str.  ix.  439);  and  the  situation  of  the  first  city 
here,  Argissa,  called  "Kpyovpa  by  Strabo  and  Stephanas,  is  fixed 
by  that  of  Atrax  (Str.  ix.  488,  440,  Liv.  xxxii.  15).     Gyrtone, 
near  Larissa  {Schol.  Apoll.  Rh.  40),  the  original  country  of  the 
Phlegy^  (Str.  IX.  442),  was  a  prosperous  place  in  the  days  of 
ApoUonius  (Argon,  i.  57),  and  is  mentioned  by  Livy  in  his  ac- 
count of  the   Macedonian  wars  (xxxvi.  10).     Orthe — ver.  739, 
Strabo  (440)  speaks  with  a  certain  indecision — was  thought  by  some 
to  be  identical  with  Phalana,  a  well-known  town  of  the  PERRHiEBi 
on  the  Peneius,  near-Tempe.     The  other  two  cities,  Elone  and 
Oloosson,  were  both  in  the  same  district  (Str.  ix.  440).     The  latter 
still  retains  its  old  name,  in  the  accusative  case,    EAao-o-ova,  dis- 
plays the  white  argillaceous  soil  from  which  it  takes    its  Homeric 
epithet,    contains    about  four  hundred   families,   and   possesses   a 
monastery   containing  many  good   editions  of  the  classics,  which 
none  of  the  monks  can  read  (L.  iii.  347).     On  Pirithous  and  the 
Lapith^,  see   i.  263  ;   his  representative  in  the   Trojan  story  is 
of  course  Polyp(etes  (vi.  29),  who  performs  an  important  part  in 
the  defence  of  the  rampart  against  Hector  and  Sarpedon  (xir.  129), 
and  figures  bravely  in  the  Games  (xxiii.  836),  and  with  his  coun- 
tryman Leonteus  is  said  to   have  survived  the  capture  of  Troy, 
and    founded   Aspendus    (Eust.    p.    334).      The    ^Ethices    (ver. 
744,  where  eastward  in   my  version  is  a  misprint  for  ivestioard) 
are   classed  by  Strabo  (vii.  326,  327)  with  the  Molossians  and 
other  wild  mountain  tribes  in  Epirds,  or  on  the  Epirotic  border. 
Cyphus  was  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Olympus  (Str.  ix.  441).     To  the 
JEnianes  we  have  been  already  (p.   104)  introduced;  as  also  to 
the  Perrii-ebi,  who  possessed  the  plains  beneath  Olympus  (Str.  ix. 
440).     On  DoDONA,  mentioned    in    the  next  line,   see  xvi.  234. 
The  TiTARESius  (Str.  441)  is  a  river  which,  flowing  from  Mount 
Titarius,  one  of  the  Olympian  range,  disembogues  into  the  Peneius, 
a   little   above  Tempo,  under  the  modern  name  of  Elassonitiko 


112  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

(L.  iii.  396).  The  phenomenon  of  the  two  waters  refusing  to  mingle, 
is,  according  to  L.'s  observations,  nothing  more  than  the  "  pellucid 
Titaresius  slowly  uniting  with  the  turbid  Peneius."  The  poet, 
therefore,  has  committed  an  impropriety,  which  misled  Strabo 
(441),  by  calling  this  river  "  silver-eddying,"  because  this'implies 
the  idea  of  clearness,  which  nullifies  the  contrast  with  the  fair- 
flowing  waters  of  the  Titaresius.  But  this  is  only  another  instance 
of  the  general  law  as  to  epithets,  specifically  distinctive  of  minstrel 
poetry.  It  was  only  a  piece  of  pardonable  poetical  flattery  to  call 
the  white  Peneius  silvery  ;  and  the  epithet  once  given  was  retained, 
even  when  the  contrast  of  another  really  clear  bright  river  made 
it  impertinent.  On  the  Styx,  see  viii.  369.  The  Magnesians, 
with  whom  the  long  muster  finishes,  were  evidently  a  distinct 
tribe,  living  scattered  without  any  great  town,  in  that  part  of  the 
Magnesian  district  which  lay  to  the  north  of  the  domain  of  Philo- 
ctetes. 

Vek.  761-785. 

I  cannot  but  think  there  is  something  disorderly  in  this  special 
paragraph  about  the  horsemen,  after  the  whole  catalogue  is  com- 
plete. The  notice  about  Achilles  also  is  perfectly  superfluous,  when 
the  same  thing  had  been  already  said  at  ver.  688  a  little  before.  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  if,  after  ver.  760,  we  attach  immediately 
ver.  786,  Tpwo-tv  8'  ayyeAos,  k.t.A.,  we  have  a  more  natural  con- 
nexion. The  intervening  lines  were  probably  put  in  here  just  be- 
cause there  was  no  other  place  for  them.  If  we  do  not  suppose 
some  patchwork  of  this  kind  occasionally,  we  give  Pisistratus  and 
his  editors  really  very  little  to  do. 

Ver.  764. 

As  this  is  a  Thessalian,  not  a  Macedonian  or  Thracian  legend, 
the  reading  Urjpeiij  (Qea-craXias  x^P'O'',  Steph.  Byz.),  is  unques- 
tionably to  be  preferred  to  Ilieptr/,  which  Clarke  and  the  older 
editions  have. 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  113 

Ver.  776. — Lotus. 

This  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  lotus  of  the  lotus-eaters  in  the 
Odyssey,  but  is  only  the  common  Greek  name  for  clover.  The 
botanical  authorities,  Fraas  and  Lenz,  agree  in  taking  the  trifolium 
frugiferum^  frequent  in  moist  meadows  of  Asia  and  Greece,  for  the 
Homeric  Awtos.  They  also  pronounce  the  a-kXivov  to  be  not  our 
parsley,  but  apium  graveolens,  celery,  for  which  horses,  I  am  told, 
can  acquire  a  relish. 

Ver.  788. — Where  prona  Typlweus  lies  in,  Arimi. 

That  Typhon,  the  "  hundred-headed  Cilician  portent"  (^schyl. 
Prom.  361),  is,  like  the  Chimera,  only  an  imaginative  representa- 
tion of  certain  volcanic  phenomena,  for  which  these  regions  were 
in  early  times,  and  partly  still  are,  remarkable,  I  think  no  sane 
mythologist  will  doubt.  The  very  name,  tu(^w,  implies  a  hot- 
sinoking  hill,  such  as  the  Solfatara,  near  Naples,  or  a  hot  deso- 
lating wind  (Welcker,  <j.  I.  i.  791  ;  Duncker,  Ges.  Alt.  iii.  577). 
About  the  "  Arimi"  the  ancients  were  not  agreed— some  placing 
it  in  Cilicia,  some  in  other  parts  of  the  volcanic  region  of  Asia 
Minor  (Str.  xiii.  627).  It  was  afterwards  transferred  to  the  volcanic 
islands  on  the  Neapolitan  coast,  out  of  which  the  Roman  poets,  by 
a  foolish  blunder,  made  Inarime  (Virg.  ^n.  ix.  716),  like  Stanco 
for  ecr  rav  Kw.  Hesiod  agrees  with  Homer  in  this  matter  [Theoy. 
304),  and  Gesenius,  in  his  Heb.  Diet.,  is  of  opinion  that  the  root 
is  Semitic,  o!!^  signifying  a  hill  country ;  likely  enough,  as  the 
Phoenicians  were  the  earliest  settlers  in  those  parts. 

Ver.  793. — The  lofty  mound  loliere  old  ^syetes  buried  lay. 

This  mound  has  been  dragged  in  to  perform  a  prominent  part  in 
the  great  topographical  controversy  about  the  site  of  ancient  Troy. 
Strabo  (xiii.  599)  argues  from  the  barrow  as  a  known  point ;  and 
so  no  less  the  moderns  (Le  Chevalier,  p.  94,  Prokesch,  Denk- 
loiirdigJceiten  aus  dem  Orient,  vol.  i.  182)  ;  but  I  much  fear  the 
ancients  had  as  little  sure  ground  to  go  upon  in  this  matter  as  the 

VOL.  IV.  H 


ll-t  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIA]).  BOOK  IT. 

mudcrus.  The  Pulites  who  figures  here  appears  agaiu  in  xui.  533 
and  XXIV.  250,  and  had  the  honour  of  being  slain  by  the  son  of 
Achilles  (Virg.  ^n.  u.  526). 

Vkk.  811. — Before  the  city  doth  rise  a  inound, 

— KoXwvi],  Lat.  aiUis,  a  hill,  or  hillock, — the  tomb  of  some  light- 
footed  Amazon  {Schol.  Ven.)  of  the  sisterhood  of  the  famous  Pen- 
thesilea,  who  appears  on  the  stage  of  the  Trojan  story,  immediately 
after  the  dciith  of  Hector.  With  regard  to  the  double  name — the 
human  and  the  divine — by  which  this  place  was  known,  I  have 
little  doubt  that  Lobeck  {AgJa.  p.  858),  Nitzsch  (Od.  x.  305),  and 
Gottling  (Hes.  introd.  xxx.),  are  right  in  saying  that  by  the  lan- 
guage of  men  in  such  cases  is  understood  the  popular  or  vulgar 
name,  by  the  language  of  the  gods,  the  sacerdotal,  oracular,  or 
poetical  designation.  The  arguments  adduced  by  these  authors, 
as  well  as  the  irrimd  facie  probability  of  the  case,  seem  sufficient 
to  overthrow  the  mere  historical  interpretation  which  refers  the 
divine  appellation  to  the  Pelasgi,  as  the  oldest  inhabitants  of  those 
parts.  The  same  peculiarity  of  phraseology  is  used  in  i.  403, 
XIV.  291,  XX.  74. 

Ver.  819. 

We  now  come  to  the  muster-roll  of  the  Trojans  and  their 
allies,  the  Tpwi/cos  8ta/cocr/ios,  sixty  lines,  on  which  Demetrius  of 
Skepsis,  an  archaeologist  of  the  district  (about  250  b.c.)  wrote  more 
than  twenty  books.  First  we  meet  with  the  name  of  the  Dar- 
DANS,  as  a  distinct  subdivision  of  the  Trojan  race.  To  understand 
their  relative  position,  we  must  start  with  a  general  conception 
of  the  region  called  the  Troad,  or  the  kingdom  of  Priam,  as  ex- 
hibited in  Homer.  This  country  foi'ms  a  well-marked  territory 
in  the  north-west  corner  of  Asia  Minor,  washed  on  three  sides  by 
the  sea.  Its  boundaries  are  determined  by  the  range  of  Mount 
Ida — the  back-bone  of  the  district, — and  the  rivers  flowing  thence 
in  a  westerly  and  north-easterly  direction  into  the  sea.  Of  the 
streams  flowing  west,  the  Seaman dcr  is  by  far  the  largest ;  while 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  115 

on  the  east  side  the  ^sepus  marks  off  the  kingdom  subject  to 
Priam  from  the  rest  of  Mysia.  Thovxgh  of  small  dimensions — a 
mere  corner  of  Asia  Minor, — this  country  contained  nine  petty 
dynasties  (Str.  xiii.  584),  viz.,  Lyrnessus,  Thebes,  the  Leleges, 
the  Dardans,  the  Trojans  proper,  the  Lycians,  the  dwellers  between 
the  ^Esepus  and  Abydus,  Percote,  and  Adrasteia.  And,  in  the 
first  place,  Dardania  is  di.stinctly  described  (Str.  xiii.  596,  602) 
as  a  district  on  the  north  side  of  the  Scamander,  interposed  between 
Cebrene  on  the  south  side,  and  the  district  of  Carysene,  towards 
Zeleia  and  the  north-east ;  and  so  it  stands  in  Kiepert's  maps  In 
the  next  place  (ver.  824),  we  have  Zeleia,  properly  described  by  the 
poet  as  under  the  lowest  foot  of  Ida,  near  the  mouth  of  the  iEsepus  ; 
for  Ida  ends  there  to  the  north-east,  as  distinctly  as  in  the  promon- 
tory of  Lectum  to  the  south-west.  In  iv.  103  it  is  called  a  "  sacred 
town.'"  As  it  lies  on  the  line  of  march  betwixt  the  ^sepus  and 
the  Granicus,  it  naturally  formed  the  headquarters  of  the  Persian 
army  on  the  evening  before  the  famous  battle  which  virtually  de- 
cided the  fate  of  the  Persian  empire  fArr.  Anah.  i.  12).  Strabo 
(xiii.  587)  talks  of  it  as  a  place  still  existing.  The  dcjivcLot,  in  the 
next  line,  he  writes  with  a  capital  A,  and  refers  to  a  neighbouring 
lake,  otherwise  called  the  Dascylites.  This  seems  a  mere  erudite 
conceit.  The  'ASp-ja-reia  of  ver.  828  is  a  jilain  through  which  the 
river  Granicus  runs,  the  poet's  description  going  on  regularly  from 
east  to  west.  This  district  was  principally  famous  for  a  temple 
of  Nemesis,  of  whom  the  poet  Antimachus  wrote  that  she  is  "  a 
mighty  goddess,  to  whom  Adrastus  first  erected  an  altar  beside 
the  river  ^Esepus,  where  she  is  worshipped  under  the  name  of 
Adrastea"  (Str.  xiii.  588).  The  Ap^sos  of  this  verse,  called  Haucros 
in  V.  612 — omitting  the  initial  unaccented  syllable  as  in  modern 
Greek,  Trt'crw,  for  oTrto-co, — was  a  town  betwixt  Parion  and  Lampsa- 
cus,  colonized  from  Miletus  (Str.  589).  Pityeia  (2')ine  toivn),  ver. 
829,  lies  between  Parion  and  Priapus,  on  the  coast.  The  moun- 
tain of  Tereia  is  near  Lampsacus,  where  there  was  a  temple  of  the 
mother  of  the  gods  (Str.  589).  The  river  Practius  (ver.  835) 
flows  into  the  Sea  of  Marmorii,  between  Abydos  and  Lampsacus. 


116  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

The  relative  situation  of  the  two  towns  Percote  and  Aiiit^BE  appears 
clearly  from  the  account  of  Alexander's  march  in  Arrian  (i.  12),  ou 
his  way  from  the  field  of  Troy  to  the  Granicus.  "  He  came  first  to 
Arisbe,"  says  the  historian,  "  where  all  his  army  had  encamped 
after  crossing  the  Hellespont,  and  the  next  day  to  Percote  ;  and  on 
the  day  after  that,  leaving  Lampsacus  on  his  left,  he  encamped  ou  the 
river  Practios."  In  Strabo's  time  these  places  had  entirely  disap- 
peared. Percote  occurs  again  in  xv.  548.  Arisbe,  on  the  river 
2eAA'^eis,  occurs  again,  vi.  13,  xii.  9G,  and  xxi.  43,  where  it  is  hon- 
oured with  the  epithet  Sta.  Strabo  remarks  that  the  names  Arishe 
and  Asios  are  both  Thracian ;  but  acns  is  certainly  Greek  (xxi. 
821).  The  list  of  cities  in  this  district  is  closed  by  the  well-known 
towns  of  Sestos  and  Abydos,  one  on  the  European,  and  the  other 
on  the  Asiatic  side  of  the  Dardanelles,  at  the  narrowest  part  of  the 
strait.  Abydos,  though  no  doubt  originally  a  Thracian  settle- 
ment, was  latterly  colonized  from  Miletus  (Thucyd.  viii.  61). 
The  loves  of  Hero  and  Leander,  the  passage  of  Xerxes,  and  the 
famous  swimming  feat  of  Lord  Byron,  have  given  to  these  places  a 
celebrity  such  as  not  even  the  song  of  Homer  could  confer. 

Ver.  840 

brings  us  to  the  far-trayelled  //.eya  Wvos,  "  might)/  peoph,''^  of  the 
Pelasgi,  as  Strabo  calls  them,  concerning  whom  what  can  or  can- 
not be  known  may  be  shortly  stated  as  follows : — That  a  people  so 
named  before  the  times  of  the  Homeric  traditions  were  found  occu- 
pying various  fertile  districts  on  the  coasts  and  islands  of  the 
j^gean  and  the  Propontis,  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  best- 
attested  facts  of  ancient  history.  They  existed  in  those  regions  so 
late  as  the  days  of  Herodotus  and  Thucydides  ;  and  their  language 
and  character  formed  a  subject  of  curious  speculation  to  archaeolo- 
gists (Herod,  i.  56-58 ;  Thucyd.  iv.  109).  Their  principal  settle- 
ments were  in  Thessaly,  specially  in  that  part  called  from  them 
neAao-yiwTts  (Str.  v.  221  ;  and  ver.  681  mpra),  in  the  part  of 
Macedonia  between  the  mouths  of  the  Axius  and  the  Strymon.  in 
Lemnos,  Imbros,  and  Samothrace,  ou  the  west  coast  of  Asia  Minor 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  117 

(Str.  XIII.  621),  in  Avgos  (J^^sch.  Supii.),  in  Attica,  and  in  Epirus 
(Str.  VII.  327).  They  form  the  principal  element  in  the  old  con- 
federation of  the  Amphictyons  (Clinton,  i.  p.  65).  In  fact  there  are 
few  parts  of  ancient  Greece  in  which  traces  of  them  may  not  be 
found ;  they  appear  to  crop  out  everywhere,  as  the  geologists  say, 
like  portions  of  some  underlying  stratum ;  whence  Pelasgic  latterly 
came  to  be  used  for  old  Hellenic,  and  in  the  lloman  writers  was 
merely  a  poetical  word  for  Greek.  This  extension  of  the  term 
makes  it  necessary  to  use  great  caution  in  historical  inference 
wherever  it  occurs  ;  and  if  Arcadia  is  always  referred  to  as  one  of 
the  oldest  seats  of  Pelasgic  influence,  this  may  be  a  mere  invention 
of  the  gcnealogizing  Xoyoypdcfiot — whose  wits  in  such  matters  were 
always  awake,  and  their  conscience  always  asleep — to  express  the 
extreme  antiquity  which  the  Greeks  universally  conceded  to  that 
people.  As  to  the  Pelasgi  in  Italy,  of  whom  Dionysius  of  Halicar- 
nassus  makes  so  much,  Schwegler  {Bom.  Ges.  i.  156)  has  perhaps 
done  wisely  in  relegating  them  into  the  limbo  of  historical  theories 
clad  with  unsubstantial  personality  by  the  fertile  inventiveness  of 
"  Grcecia  mendax."  Who  then  were  these  people, — Greeks  or  bar- 
barians ?  Barbarians  unquestionably,  by  the  united  testimony  of 
antiquity  ;  but  this  word  marks  only  a  people  foreign  in  language, 
and  not  living  in  recognised  social  communion  with  the  Hellenic 
body.  But  a  foreign  language  may  be  a  closely  cognate  language, 
as  Dutch  is  to  English,  or  a  language  of  an  entirely  diflterent  stock, 
as  Plioenician  is  to  Latin.  That  the  Pelasgi  were  (3apf3ap6(fiODvoi.  in 
the  estimation  of  Herodotus  proves  therefore  nothing  as  to  the  im- 
portant question  whether  they  belonged  to  the  Hellenic  stock  ;  and, 
as  there  are  no  extant  monuments  of  their  language,  we  have  no 
strictly  scientific  instrument  by  which  we  might  test  the  ti'uth  of  the 
opinion  maintained  so  strongly  by  Dionysius  and  Marsh  {Ilor.  Pel. 
1815)  that  the  Pelasgi  were  Greeks.  Nevertheless  there  are  cer- 
tain grounds  of  judging  in  this  matter,  leading  to  historical  probabi- 
lities, which  will  unquestionably  be  nearer  the  truth  than  the  absolute 
scepticism  of  Grote.  For,  in  the  first  place,  if  the  Pelasgi  had  been 
a  race  differing  from  the  Greeks,  one  does  not  see  how  they  should 


118  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

have  disappeared  from  the  scene  in  so  short  a  time,  leaving  so  little 
trace  of  their  existence.  Had  they  been  an  altogether  uncultivated 
and  uncivilized  people,  such  a  result  might  possibly  have  taken 
place,  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  the  Sclavoniaus  and  other  wild 
tribes  were  absorbed  by  the  Greeks  of  the  Byzantine  empire  in  the 
middle  ages ;  but  that  this  was  not  the  relation  in  which  they  stood 
to  the  Hellenes  we  shall  see  jiresently ;  the  legitimate  inference 
therefore  seems  to  be  that  they  were  lost  in  the  Hellenes,  as  the 
various  tribes  of  the  ancient  Teuts,  Goths,  Vandals,  Lombards,  etc., 
were  in  the  great  nation  of  the  Germans,  as  a  species  disappears 
in  a  genus,  or,  more  properly,  a  subordinate  species  in  a  dominant 
species.  The  Welsh,  as  Clinton  justly  remarks  (i.  p.  93),  form  an 
example  of  a  people  of  an  entirely  different  race,  and  with  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  traditional  culture,  resisting  such  absorbing  influ- 
ences successfully.  We  shall  therefore  say  wisely  that  the  Pelasgic 
dialect  stood  in  somewhat  the  same  relation  to  the  Hellenic  that 
the  Moeso-Gothic  does  to  the  modern  High  German  ;  and  this 
hypothesis  will  explain  the  entire  homogeneousness  of  the  Greek 
language,  which  cannot  be  resolved  into  two  elements  like  English. 
In  the  second  place,  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  Greeks 
derived  a  great  part  of  their  religion  from  the  Pelasgi  (Herod,  ii. 
51).  Achilles  himself,  a  native  of  the  region 'EAAas,  in  Thessaly, 
from  which  the  Hellenes  afterwards  took  their  name,  invokes  the 
Pelasgic  Jove  (xvi.  233) ;  and  this  Pelasgic  Jove  was  looked  on 
by  the  early  Greeks  with  as  much  reverence  as  Delphi  in  after 
times ;  and  those  very  people  whom  Herodotus  notes  as  speaking  a 
barbarous  language,  are  in  Homer  called  8iot  (Ocl.  xix.  177),  and 
give  to  the  national  Zevs  one  of  his  best-known  appellatives. 
That  the  Greeks  should  have  taken  their  religion  from  a  set  of 
wandering  gipsy  tribes  talking  a  language  essentially  non-Hellenic 
is  in  the  highest  degree  improbable.  I  conclude,  therefore,  with 
Duncker,  Thirlwall,  Rawlinson,  Welcker,  Miiller,  Clinton,  and  other 
names  of  the  highest  authority,  that  the  significance  of  the  word 
Pelasgi  belongs  more  to  chronology  than  to  ethnography ;  and  that 
this  people  were  Greeks  in  the  same  sense  that  the  Anglo-Saxons 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  119 

were  English.  The  only  other  noteworthy  point  with  regard  to 
them  is  that  they  are  generally  believed  to  have  been  principally 
devoted  to  agriculture,  and  this,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  for  three  rea- 
sons— (1.)  because  they  are  found  occupying  the  richest  and  most 
fertile  plains ;  (2.)  because  the  worship  of  Demeter  was  Pelasgic  in 
its  origin  (Pans.  ii.  22.  2;  Duncker,  Ges.  Alt.  iii.  25);  (3.)  be- 
cause they  so  easily  yielded  before  the  Dorians  and  other  Hellenes, 
whose  military  character  is  sufficiently  prominent.  Their  advance- 
ment in  the  arts  is  testified  by  the  strong-built  walls  which  bore 
their  name  in  Athens  and  other  parts  of  Greece  where  their  pre- 
sence is  well  attested. 

Ver.  841. 

The  name  Larissa  always  indicates  a  Pelasgic  settlement. 
Steph.  Byz.  mentions  twelve  cities  of  this  name.  The  one  here 
is  one  of  those  on  the  coast  of  Mysia,  afterwards  the  seat  of  the 
JEoMc  settlements,  of  which  Strabo  (xiii.  620)  mentions  three. 

Ver.  844. 

The  Thracians  were  an  extensive  tribe  of  semi-civilized  moun- 
taineers, who  inhabited  the  wild  district  between  the  Strymon  on 
the  west  to  the  shores  of  the  Eusine  on  the  east.  Their  boun- 
daries towards  the  north  are  extremely  vague  ;  however,  the  Balkan 
and  the  sources  of  the  Hebrus  form  a  natural  boundary  between 
the  Thracians  proper  and  the  dwellers  on  the  rich  plains  on  the 
south  side  the  Danube.  The  Greek  colonists  on  the  Euxine  and 
the  ^gean,  who  no  doubt  suifered  much  from  their  irregular 
habits,  paint  their  character  with  no  very  amiable  traits,  making 
them  notable  chiefly  for  fighting,  drinking,  lying,  polygamy,  rapine, 
and  all  sorts  of  atrocity.  In  Homer  they  appear  quite  respectable 
as  the  allies  of  Priam  ;  and  though  their  climate  was  no  doubt 
much  rougher  than  what  the  Greeks  generally  enjoyed,  yet  they 
had  fine  pastures  and  rich  meadows  (xi.  222),  grew  excellent  wine 
(ix.  71),  and  had  an  admirable  breed  of  horses,  whence  their  epi- 
thet tTTTTOTToAot  (xTii.  4,  XIV.  227,  x.  486).     The  snow-white  horses 


120  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II 

of  this  last  passage  appear  afterwards  in  history  (Xen.  Anab.  vii. 
3.  26),  and  the  kings  of  Thrace  were  always  able  to  bring  a  great 
force  of  cavalry  into  the  field  (Thucyd.  ii.  98).  In  their  ethno- 
logical relations  they  go  along  with  the  Trojans  and  other  tribes 
dwelling  in  the  north-western  section  of  Asia  Minor,  to  whom  the 
Hellespont  does  not  so  much  present  a  barrier  as  invite  a  passage. 
The  similarity  in  topographical  terminology  and  manners  between 
Thrace,  Troy,  and  the  adjoining  districts  in  the  north-west  of  Asia 
Minor,  was  noted  by  Strabo  (xii.  564,  542,  xiii.  590),  and  Eaw- 
linson  (Herod,  vol.  i.  p.  545)  includes  all  these  peoples  with  the 
Pelasgi,  in  the  great  Indo-Pjuropean  family  of  the  Thracians,  as 
connected  with  the  earliest  history  of  Greek  civilisation.  See 
above,  ver.  595. 

Ver.  845. 

The  epithet  ayappoos  is  peculiarly  applicable  to  the  Hellespont, 
from  the  very  strong  current  which  naturally  runs  through  the  great 
outlet  of  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Propontis  towards  the  Mediterra- 
nean (Forchhammcr,  Dio  Ehene  von  Troja,  p.  17). 

Ver.  847. 

The  CicoNES  are  a  subdivision  of  the  Thracians  on  the  coast  of 
the  ^gean,  well  known  to  the  readers  of  the  Odyssey  (ix.  39). 
Their  territory  lay  immediately  west  of  the  mouth  of  the  Hebrus, 
and  had  accordingly  to  be  traversed  by  Xerxes  shortly  after  his 
famous  passage  of  the  Hellespont  (Herod,  vii.  59). 

Ver.  848. 

The  P^oNiANS  are  another  tribe  of  the  same  people,  whose  loca- 
lity is  plainly  pointed  out  by  the  poet  on  the  banks  of  the  great 
river  Axius  [Vardhari),  which  rises  in  Mount  Scardus,  between 
the  Moesian  Dardania  and  Dalmatia,  and  flows  through  the  middle 
of  Macedonia  into  the  Thermaic  gulf,  between  Thessalonica  and 
Beroea.  Of  the  name  Macedonia  Homer  knows  nothing.  As  to 
the  extraordinary  praise  here  given  by  the  poet  to  the  waters  of  the 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  121 

Axius,  Strabo  (vii.  Frag,  21,  23)  knows  nothing  of  it,  but  says 
directly  the  contrary,  viz.,  that  the  waters  of  this  river  are  muddy 
and  turbidi  (S^oAepos).  Strange  devices  seem  to  have  been  fallen 
upon  by  the  ancient  critics  to  save  the  poet  from  this  inconsistency  ; 
but,  if  we  cannot  muster  courage  to  say  that  the  "  good  Homer" 
was  "nodding"  here,  or  his  interpolator  blundering  or  lying,  we 
may  get  out  of  the  difficulty  in  an  easy  way  by  saying  that  the 
river  is  clear  in  its  upper  course,  where  it  bickers  over  gravel,  but 
muddy  below,  where  it  rolls  through  loam.  The  Paeonians  in 
Homer  appear  as  archers,  and,  like  the  Thracians  generally,  are 
great  horsemen  (xvi.  287).  They  remained  to  a  late  period  on  the 
stage  of  history,  with  mighty  pretensions,  saying  that  they  were 
Teucrians  from  Troy  (Herod,  v.  13),  and  their  final  subjection  to 
the  Macedonian  sceptre  was  one  of  the  first  military  exploits  of  the 
future  conqueror  of  the  east  (Diod.  Sic.  xvii.  8). 

The  town  Amydon  (ver.  849),  called  'A(3v8wv  in  Strabo's  time 
{vii.  330),  was  known  as  a  dismantled  stronghold. 

Ver.  851. 

The  Paphlagonians,  whose  country  extends  along  the  south  shore 
of  the  Euxine,  from  the  Halys  to  the  Parthenius,  whose  principal 
town  in  historic  times  was   Sinope,  were  a  semi-civilized  people 
classed  by  Strabo  with  the  Cappadocians  (xii.  553).     Their  river 
Parthenius — the   virgin    stream, — had    this   name,    according   to 
Strabo  (xii.  543),  from  the  flowery  meads  through  which  it  flows 
and  the  softness  and  purity  of  its  waters,  as  the  poets  sing  (Q 
Smyrn.  vi.  466;  Ap.  Rh.  ii.  939).     Homer  mentions  the  Paphla 
gonians  in  the  Iliad  several  times,  but  with  no  distinctive  epithets 
In  history  they  appear  as  strong  in  cavalry  (Xen.  Aiiah.  v.  6.  8) 
and  quaintly   clad   (Herod,  vii.   72).     The  Heneti,  one   of  their 
tribes,  arc  placed  by  the  geographer  (xii.  543)  to  the  east  of  the 
Parthenius,  though  they  had  disappeared  entirely  from  that  quarter, 
and  were  generally  supposed  to  have  migrated  westwards  after  the 
Trojan  war,  and  founded  Venice.     How  far  they  had  anything  to 
do,  either  with  the  Veneti  of  the  Iladriatic,  or  with  the  strong  sea- 


122  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

faring  people  at  Quiberon  in  France,  who  witli  their  shallow  seas 
and  flat-bottoraed  ships  gave  Julius  Caesar  so  much  trouble,  must 
be  left  undecided.  The  Venedi  of  Tacitus  (Germ.  46),  were  un- 
questionably a  Slavonian  tribe,  of  whom,  under  the  name  of 
Wends,  fragments  still  exist  in  remote  parts  of  Germany.  Of  the 
towns  named  in  the  following  verses,  all  on  or  near  the  coast,  and 
west  of  Cape  Carambis,  Cytorus  was  notable  as  an  emporium 
of  the  Sinopians,  and  produced  highly  valued  box-wood,  while 
Sesamus  was  swallowed  up  by  Amastris,  a  new  city  founded  by  a 
princess  of  the  Persian  family,  shortly  after  the  death  of  Alex- 
ander the  Great.  To  the  same  new  foundation  the  population 
of  Cytorus  and  Cromne  was  transferred,  ^gialus,  as  the  name 
implies  (atytaAo's),  was  a  stretch  of  shore  about  twelve  miles  long, 
with  a  village  of  the  same  name.  The  lofty  Erythini  were  two 
rocks  of  a  red  colour,  as  the  name  implies  (Str.  xii.  545). 

Vers.  856-7. 

The  Alizones  were  not  known  certainly  to  the  ancients.  The 
name  'AXv/3r],  so  like  ^aAij^jy,  the  distance  implied  in  ry]X69ev, 
and  the  celebrity  of  the  mines,  led  Strabo  to  think  that  nothing 
could  be  intended  here  but  the  country  of  the  Chalybes,  near 
Trebizond,  famous  for  its  iron  mines,  and  from  which  the  Greek 
word  xaXvxp,  for  steel ,  is  supposed  to  come.  But  I  find  no  proof 
that  silver  was  ever  found  there.  The  long  discussion  in  the  Geo- 
grapher (xii.  549),  against  Demetrius  of  Skepsis,  Apollodorus,  and 
other  topographical  critics,  has  no  small  philological  interest,  as 
showing  how  ready  a  certain  class  of  ancients  were  to  tinker  the 
text  of  Homer  to  suit  their  own  crotchets  ;  but  the  authority  of  the 
received  text  seemed  in  this  as  in  other  cases,  to  have  been  too 
strong  for  them. 

Ver.  858. 

Mysia  is  a  country  that  makes  little  figure  in  the  Iliad,  as  in  fact 
the  Troad  was  the  notable  part  of  what  afterwards  went  under  that 
name,  and  for  its  inhabitants  the  title  Trojans  was   appropriated. 


BOOK  IT.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  123 

Its  boundaries  from  west  to  east  Avere  from  the  river  ^Esepus  to  the 
Ehyndacus  and  Mount  Olympus  (Str.  xii.  564),  which  towers  so 
majestically  beyond  the  beautiful  Turkish  town  of  Brusa  (Hamilton, 
Asia  Minnr^  i.  71).  Southward,  it  stretched  towards  the  Caicus 
and  the  Hermus,  in  which  direction  the  district  of  Teuthrania  lies, 
celebrated  in  the  Trojan  legend  as  the  country  of  Telephus,  whose 
son  Eurypylus  plays  such  a  prominent  part  in  the  events  which 
preceded  the  taking  of  Troy  {Od.  xi.  520 ;  Qxiint.  Smyrn.  vi.  and 
VII.  ;  Str.  XII.  576).  With  regard  to  the  M-vcroi,  it  is  remarkable, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Thracians  and  the  Pelasgi,  that  their  name 
occurs  with  the  slight  modification  Moicroi,  on  both  sides  of  the 
Hellespont ;  the  Moesians  between  the  Macedonian  mountains  and 
the  Danube  being  familiar  to  the  modern  ear,  through  the  old 
German  dialect,  the  Moeso-Grothic,  so  called  from  the  German  tribes 
who  afterwards  occupied  those  parts.  Strabo,  who  notices  their 
relationship,  calling  them  all  Thracians  (vii.  295)  remarks  also — 
what  we  shall  see  afterwards — that  these  European  Mysians  are 
plainly  alluded  to  by  the  poet  in  the  curious  passage,  xiii.  5. 

Ver.  862. 

The  Phrygians,  called  in  poetry  sometimes  Mygdonians  (iii.  186  ; 
Pans.  X.  27.  1  ;  Str.  xii.  575).  from  one  of  their  tribes,  were  one 
of  the  most  widely  spread  peoples  of  the  ancient  world,  and  con- 
tended for  antiquity  with  the  Egyptians,  as  the  Argives  did  with 
the  Athenians  (Pans.  i.  14).  Like  the  Pelasgi  and  the  Thracians, 
they  are  found  on  both  sides  of  the  Dardanelles.  Those  who  dwelt 
in  Macedonia  were  called  Bptye?  (Herod,  vii.  73) ;  historical  facts 
agreeing  entirely  with  the  old  mythical  tradition  of  the  Lydian  or 
Phrygian  colony  of  Pelops  in  the  Peloponnesus,  where  indeed,  as 
Athenaeus  (xiv.  625)  expressly  witnesses,  great  barrows  or  mounds 
(■X^cofiara  [leydXa)  were  pointed  out  by  the  people,  under  the  name 
of  "  the  tombs  of  the  Phrygians.'^  Their  ethnological  connexion  with 
the  Greeks  was  recognised  by  Plato  {Crat.  410).  But  though 
thus  widely  scattered  in  the  most  ancient  times,  their  great  central 
seat,  even   in  Homer's  time,  was  the  central  table-land  of  Asia 


1  -1  4  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  II. 

Minor,  between  the  Halys  and  the  districts  on  the  ^Egean  Sea, 
occupied  by  ^olic,  Ionic,  and  Doric  settlers.  The  Taurus  bounds 
them  on  the  south,  while  Mount  Olympus  marks  the  high  ridge 
which  separates  them  from  the  Bithynians  and  Paphlagonians  on 
the  north.  Their  principal  river  is  the  Sangaritjs  (hi.  187,  xvi. 
719,  Hes.  Theocj.  341),  their  produce  in  wool  {cjipvymv  ipiwv,  Suid. ; 
^pvyiT]  TToXvfjirjXos,  Q.  Smyrn.  x.  126)  and  wine  was  famous,  this 
latter  being  specially  mentioned  by  Homer  in  the  epithet  ayUTreAo- 
ecrcrav  (ill.  184),  which  he  gives  to  the  country.  This  fertility  in 
wine  is  indicated  also  by  the  fervid  worship  which  they  paid  to 
Dionysus  under  the  name  of  Sabazius  (Ar.  Av.  875,  Scliol.) 

The  AscANiA  of  ver,  863  is  a  town  and  lake  at  the  east  end  of 
the  Sea  of  Marmora,  on  the  borders  of  Mysia  and  Bithynia,  evi- 
dently in  Homer's  days  a  fort  of  Phrygia,  where  the  famous  town  of 
Niccea,  so  notable  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  creed,  afterwards 
stood.  This  place  is  mentioned  again  (xiii.  793} ;  for  I  do  not 
think  that  Strabo  (xii.  565)  has  any  sufficient  reason  for  supposing 
that  the  poet  must  have  had  two  different  places  in  his  eye. 

Ver.  864. 

The  luxurious  Lydians,  the  d/3poStatToi  of  ^schylus,  and  the  later 
Greeks,  have  no  place  in  Homer ;  part  of  their  future  territory  is 
occupied  by  a  people  called  M.eones,  who,  even  after  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Lydians,  do  not  entirely  leave  the  scene ;  for  Ptolemy 
(v.  2.  21)  mentions  a  Ifreonia  as  a  distinct  subdivision  of  Asia 
Minor,  "  on  the  borders  of  Mysia,  and  Lydia,  and  Phrygia."  The 
locality  mentioned  by  Homer  is  the  rich  district  in  the  valley  of  the 
Hermus,  where  the  famous  city  of  Sardes  stood,  with  Mount  Tmolus 
nodding  over  it  on  the  south,  and  the  Gygean  lake  at  no  great 
distance  on  the  north  side  of  the  river  (Str.  xiii.  626). 

Ver.  867. 

The  Carians  (x.  428,  and  iv.  142)  were  a  people  at  a  very  eai-ly 
period  settled  in  the  south-west  corner  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  ad- 
joining islands.      They  wore   distinguished  from   the    Greeks  by 


BOOK  II.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  125 

language,  armour,  aud  other  customs,  and  were  well  known  in  all 
parts  of  the  Mediterranean  from  their  habit  of  serving  as  mercenaries 
(Herod,  i.  171  ;  Thucyd.  i.  4.  8  ;  Str.  xiv.  661).  The  epithet 
JSap/Sapoffiwi'wv  here  applied  to  them,  was  the  subject  of  comment  to 
the  ancients,  but  it  may  mean  either  spealdng  a  language  ivhich  the 
Greeks  did  not  unde7'stand,  unquestionably  the  original  meaning  of 
the  word  (3dpl3apo<; — or  speaking  corrupt  Greek  ;  their  language 
certainly  contained  many  Greek  words  (Philip.  TJieang. ;  Miiller, 
Histor,  iv.  474).  In  either  case  the  frequency  of  their  intercourse 
with  the  Greeks,  as  Strabo  remarks,  was  sufficient  to  attach  such 
an  epithet  to  them.  Their  boundaries,  as  they  appear  on  the  cur- 
rent maps,  and  as  they  are  given  in  this  passage,  are  interesting ; 
for  Homer  pushes  them  considerably  to  the  north  of  what  we  after- 
wards recognise  as  their  boundary.  In  fact,  they  or  their  congeners, 
the  Leleges  and  Pelasgi,  originally  occupied  almost  all  the  towns 
that  were  afterwards  peopled  by  the  great  Ionic  migration  (Paus. 
VII.  2.  3,  5,  7,  and  3.  1,  2,  3),  and  accordingly  they  stand  here  pro- 
minently as  connected  with  the  town  of  Miletus,  though  the  popu- 
lation of  this  city  was  Ionian.  Their  natural  boundary  to  the  north 
was  evidently  not  the  Mjeander  which  passes  Miletus,  but  the  ridge 
Messogis,  which  separates  the  Carian  valley  of  the  Mseander  from 
the  Lydian  valley  of  the  Cayster.  This  same  Mount  Messogis, 
running  out  into  the  sea,  forms  a  long  headland  opposite  Samos, 
the  Mycale  of  this  passage,  and  of  the  famous  battle  which  estab- 
lished the  Athenian  ascendency  in  those  seas,  b.c.  479.  The 
mention  of  Miletus  in  this  passage  corresponds  strikingly  with 
the  remarkable  colonizing  activity  of  that  city  at  a  period  of  Greek 
history  not  much  later  than  Homer  (Str.  xiv.  635). 

The  opos  ^Oupdv  or  ^OipCjv  is  either  Latmos  or  Grius  (Str. 
XIV.  636),  both  of  which  overhang  the  district. 

Ver.  876. 

The  Lycians,  in  the  persons  of  Sarpedon  and  Glaucus,  perform 
such  a  prominent  part  in  the  Iliad,  that  one  may  feel  surprised  to 
see  their  country  dismissed  here  with  only  two  lines,  and  without 


120  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  III. 

the  naming  of  a  single  city.  But  Homer  was  a  Greek  to  the  back- 
bone, and  no  sensible  man  will  expect  historical  justice  from  a 
popular  minstrel.  No  Homeric  region  excepting  the  Troad  has 
attracted  more  attention  in  modern  times  tlian  Lycia,  since  the  enter- 
prise of  the  late  Sir  Charles  Fellowes  enriched  this  country  with 
those  singular  ancient  monuments  which  now  occupy  a  separate 
chamber  in  the  British  Museum.  The  country  of  Lycia  borders  on 
Caria,  from  which  it  is  separated  by  the  river  Calbis  or  Indus,  and 
is  bounded  on  the  east  by  the  mountains  of  the  Solymi.  As  the 
Calbis  is  more  properly  a  Carian  stream,  the  principal  river  of  Lycia 
is  the  Xanthus,  which  flows  ahuost  due  south  from  the  Phrygian 
borders,  through  the  most  westerly  section  of  the  country,  and 
empties  itself  into  the  sea,  where  there  is  a  town  of  the  same  name, 
near  Patara,  so  famous  for  the  worship  of  Apollo.  The  lower  dis- 
trict of  the  Xanthus  was  the  scene  of  the  adventures  of  Bellerophon, 
in  Iliad  vi. 

The  Lycians  were  a  peculiar  people,  whose  proper  name  was 
TERMIL.E  (Herod,  i.  173).  Their  lang-uage,  of  which  Sir  Charles 
Fellowes  brought  remarkable  monuments  to  light,  has  been  analysed 
by  Lassen,  and  declared,  whether  on  good  grounds  or  not  I  cannot 
say,  to  be  Indo-European,  but  very  distantly  connected  with  Greek 
(Rawlinson,  Herod,  i.  247  and  549). 


BOOK  III. 


Ver.  6. — Pigmies. 

The  vford  jyigniy  (from  Trvy/x-j,  pugnus,  Daibnling — Tom  Thumb) 
is  no  doubt  an  exaggerated  expression  of  a  well-known  fact, 
that  there  are  races  of  men  considerably  beneath,  as  there  are 
others — like  the  ancient  Germans — considerably  above  the  nor- 
mal size  of  human  beings.     For  not  only  Herodotus  (iv.  43)  and 


BOOK  III.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  127 

Pliuy  (iV.  H.  Yi.  lU),  but  the  accurate  Aristotle  {Hid.  An.  -viii. 
14)  asserts  that  the  pigmies  were  a  diminutive  people  in  the 
upper  parts  of  Egypt,  who  lived  in  caves,  and  whose  horses  were 
of  a  similar  small  stature.  Strabo,  however,  delivers  himself  in 
this  matter,  like  an  Edinburgh  reviewer,  rather  sceptically  (xvii. 
S21).  Donaldson,  again,  in  the  N.  C,  81,  indicates  an  opinion 
that  the  whole  account  of  the  pigmies  is  to  be  attributed  to  the 
vanity  of  "  the  Greeks,  who  described  the  negroes  of  Africa  as  pig- 
mies, or  Cercopes,  because  they  differed  in  form  and  stature  from 
themselves,  or  as  Virey  would  class  the  Hottentot  with  the  baboon  ;" 
an  opinion  that  may  well  stand  for  part  of  the  truth.  Why  should 
we  not  say  also  that  baboons  or  gorillas  may  sometimes  have  been 
mistaken  for  men?  (see  Tyson  On  Pygmies,  London,  1751.)  As 
to  the  warlike  encounters  which  this  "  small  infantry"  are  said  to 
have  carried  on  with  cranes  migrating  from  Thrace  and  the  north 
of  Europe,  perhaps  the  fact  may  really  have  been,  as  suggested  by 
Kop.,  that  the  cranes,  when  they  alighted  on  the  new-sovra  fat 
fields  of  the  Nile,  in  the  month  of  November,  were  not  always  wel- 
come visitors,  and  that  it  was  the  Egyptians  who  made  war  on 
them,  not  they  who  made  war  on  the  Egyptians. 

Ver.  7. 

And  ivake  the  fiylit  with  grim  delight,  ivhen  the  morning  mist 

is  grey. 

I  here  unite  the  two  ideas  which  different  authorities  give  for 
TjepLoi,  mist  and  morning,  merely  because  it  is  convenient.  On  the 
philological  question,  whether  rjepios  should  not  always  in  Homer 
be  interpreted  misty,  or  hazy,  I  stand  decidedly  on  the  conservative 
side.  The  old  scholiasts  and  glossaries  distinctly  say  rjepLoi  =  i(o6ivol, 
opQpivoi ;  and  with  this  the  usage  of  Homer  generally,  and  specially 
in  Od.  IX.  52,  corresponds,  where  Nitzsch  has  in  der  ersten  Frilhe. 
No  doubt  it  is  possible  to  translate  rjkpioi  in  this  passage  also,  thich 
as  air,  in  a  dark  ynass  ;  and  this  is  what  Ameis  actually  does.  But 
if  we  abandon  the  firm  ground  of  ancient  tradition  on  every  occa- 
sion when  the  ingenuity  of  academic   brains  can  suggest  something 


128  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  III. 

possible,  or  even  probable,  which  suits  better  with  some  etymo- 
logical theory,  we  shall  deceive  ourselves  with  a  jugglery  of  flatter- 
ing imaginations,  which  will  render  philology  altogether  unworthy 
of  the  name  of  a  science.  In  dealing  with  a  text  like  the  Homeric, 
of  which  the  history  is  so  obscure,  and  the  form  in  some  cases  so 
uncertain,  we  have  no  right  to  stand  on  etymologies,  as  we  might 
in  the  case  of  words  whose  anatomy  is  certain,  and  whose  growth 
and  metamorphosis  can  be  accvirately  traced. 

Ver.  8. — Breathing  silent  strength. 

So  IV.  429.  Kop.  has  a  good  note  here.  A  contrast  is  plainly 
intended  between  the  Trojan  method  of  marching  to  battle  and 
the  Greek  ;  but  we  must  note  carefully  the  points  of  time  to  which 
the  contrast  applies.  It  seems,  on  the  one  hand,  altogether  im- 
probable that  an  excitable  people  like  the  Greeks  should  advance 
to  combat  in  perfect  silence.  The  remark  of  Caesar  (Bell.  Civ. 
iii.  92)  on  this  point,  applies  to  all  times  and  places : — "  Neque 
frustra  antiguitus  institutum  ut  clamorem  universi  tollerent  f^  and 
it  is  quite  certain,  both  from  Homer  (iv.  421-428,  xiii.  835)  and 
Xenophon  {Anab.  vi.  5,  26,  iv.  2,  7),  and  other  Greek  writers, 
that  the  Greeks  raised  an  aXaAayyuos,  or  war-shout,  as  well  as  the 
Trojans,  when  commencing  battle  (compare  Ariosto,  0.  F.  xvi. 
40,  42).  We  must  therefore  take  the  t'crav  of  this  passage  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  march  before  the  immediate  clash  of  conflict, 
which  the  ancient  Greeks  must  have  prided  themselves  in  con- 
ducting in  a  more  quiet  and  orderly  way  than  the  barbarians  (see 
particularly  Pans.  x.  21.  2) ;  just  as  they  talked  of  "  drinking  like 
Scythians"  (crKvdi^eiv),  and  "drinking  like  Greeks;"  that  is  to 
say,  doing  the  same  thing  in  a  more  wild  and  uproarious,  and  in  a 
more  mild  and  gentlemanly  fashion. 

Ver.  56. — Thmi  hadst  worn  a  coat  of  stone. 

This  is  a   literal  version  of  one  of  those  homely  proverbial  ex- 
pressions in  which  all  truly   j)Opular   poetry  delights.     Pope,  with 


Unnli  111.  JN'OTKS  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  12!) 

his  usual  blindness  or  indifference  to  anything  of  this  kind,  gives 
the  sounding  generality — 

■'  Tmy  yet  may  wake,  and  one  avenging  blow 
Crush  tlie  dive  autlior  of  his  country's  \v(je  ;" 

and  in  so  doing  shows,  more  distinctly  than  a  long  treatise  would, 

the  essential  difference  between  poetry  and  rhetoric.      Stoning  is  a 

method  of  punishment  very  characteristic  of  the  untamed  fierceness 

of  peoples   not  softened  by  the  higher   stages  of  civilisation  (see 

1    Kings    xii.    18,    xxi.    13  ;    Soph.   Anf.    36  ;    Ajax,   254  ;    Paus. 

Arcad.  VIII.  5.  8,  and  23.  5). 

Ver.  65. — Let  none  the  (jhiriina  (jifis  (h':q>isr^  etc. 

I  call  attention  to  these  two  beautiful  lines,  as  containing  one  of 
those  maxims  of  proverbial  wisdom  which  so  frequently  occur  in 
Homer.  Another  such  maxim  occurs  immediately  (ver.  108).  Such 
wise  sayings  form  an  essential  part  of  all  popular  literature ;  and, 
while  they  often  give  rise  to  a  separate  style  of  poetry,  the  gnomic, 
of  which  in  Greek,  as  well  as  in  Semitic  and  Sanscrit  literature,  we 
have  notable  examples,  are  never  neglected  by  a  popular  minstrel  of 
such  a  high  type  as  Homer.  We  must  observe  further,  that  youth 
and  beauty  were  looked  upon  by  the  Greeks  not  merely  with  ad- 
miration, as  with  us,  but  with  a  genuine  religious  regard,  of  which 
feeling  a  very  curious  instance  is  recorded  by  Pausanias  in  his 
account  of  the  town  of  ^gium  in  Achaia  (vii.  24.  2),  where  there 
was  a  priesthood  of  Jove,  which  could  only  be  held  by  a  young 
man  in  the  bloom  of  youth  the  most  distinguished  for  beauty. 

Ver.  103. — Ye  to  the  Sun  a  irJiite  ram  hrinrj,  etc. 

On  the  gods  invoked  in  adjuration,  see  below,  ver.  278.  Here 
we  note  only  that  the  animals  sacrificed  to  the  gods  are,  like  every- 
thing in  the  Greek  mythology,  symbolical.  To  the  Sun  as  bright 
and  strong,  a  white  male  naturally  belongs ;  to  the  Earth,  as  the 
universal  mother,  sending  up  her  wonderful  births  from  darkness, 
a  black  female  (compare  Od.  iii.  6  ;  //.  xxi.  131 ;  Virg.  Mn.  in. 
120). 

vol,.   IV.  I 


130  NOTES  TO  Till-:  ILIAIi.  BOOK  III. 

Vek.  127. 

Of  Jirirsc-sulirlin'tK/  Triijdii  Ditni.  aitd  hrarc  (Irveks  copijcr-cualcd. 

The  frequent  occurrence  of  this  line  in  the  Iliad  seems  to  in- 
dicate, what  we  might  naturally  have  expected,  that  the  Trojans,  as 
being  on  their  own  continent,  and  having  the  command  of  the  in- 
land country,  would  probably  be  superior  to  the  invading  army  in 
cavalry.  The  epithet  i7r7ro8a/xos,  however,  is  not  confined  to  them, 
and  is  applied  to  Diomede,  Nestor,  and  other  Greek  heroes,  as  the 
most  befitting  epithet  for  a  great  warrior.  For  in  the  heroic  as  in 
the  mediaeval  times,  those  who  fought  on  foot  were  always  looked 
on  as  a  decidedly  inferior  class  to  the  cavalry.  Hence  the  social 
dignity  of  the  Roman  ■'  Equites."  See  Ar.  Pol.  iv.  3,  on  itttto- 
T/Do^ta ;  also  Id.  iv.  13  and  vi.  7  ;  and  compare  the  characteristic 
passage  about  the  knightly  excellence  of  horsemen  in  Kincf  Arthur. 
II.  133. 

Vek.  144. 
Even  Filthcus'  daiujltter^  ^Ethra.  uml  t/u-  fidl-et/cd  Cli/hu-nc. 

JEthva,  the  daughter  of  Pittheus,  can  be  no  other  person  than 
the  mother  of  Theseus,  so  well  known  in  Attic  legends.  Now  it 
certainly  does  appear  strange  that  she  should  have  a  place  here 
as  one  of  Helen's  a/x^tVoAot,  or  female  attendants  ;  for  Theseus, 
according  to  the  legend,  bad  carried  Helen  ofl"  to  Aphidna,  in 
Attica,  as  a  young  woman ;  and  his  mother  would  certainly  be 
rather  old  to  perform  the  part  of  d/;i<^t7roXos  to  her  afterwards  in 
Troy.  But,  as  Heyne  remarks,  "  In  fahuUs  priscarum  stirpium 
lam  justl  tcmporis  ratio  non  Jiabetur."  It  is  certain  that  the  person 
of  iEthra  was,  somehow  or  other,  mixed  up  in  the  popular  imagin- 
ation with  the  beautiful  Helen,  and  the  one  accompanies  the  other 
in  her  Trojan  wanderings  (Paus.  v.  19.  1  ;  Pint.  T/ies.  34  ;  Apoll. 
TTi.  10.  7)  ;  but  the  line  may  nevertheless  be  an  Attic  interpo- 
lation. 


BOOK  III.  NOTES  To  THE  ll.l.VIt.  131 


Vkk.  145. 

The  Scseau  gates  (o-Kaiat  7rj;Aai)  mean  the  ''gales  on  the  Jeft" 
(Lat.  with  the  digamiua  sccecns,  Sccevola).  These  gates  led  most 
directly  from  Troy  to  the  Greek  camp  (vi.  393),  and  are  there- 
fore fi-equently  mentioned  in  the  poem.  Beyond  this  nothing  is 
known  or  knowable. 

Vek.  149. — T/iese  ciders  saf  beside  the  yate. 

In  the  Sr/zxcyepovres  (literally,  old  men  of  the  people)  we  have  the 
natural  germ  of  the  Spartan  yepovcrta,  of  the  Roman  Senatus,  and 
in  fact  of  every  natural  and  healthy  aristocracy.  The  high  dignity 
belonging  to  the  word  ST//xoyepwv,  in  Homer,  is  manifest  from  its 
use  in  xi.  372. 

Ver.  152. — Like  the  blithe  crieket  on  the  tree. 

Here  Ch.  gives, 

"  And  as  in  well-grown  woods,  in  trees,  cold  spiny  grasshoppers 
Sit  chirping,  and  send  voices  out  that  scarce  can  pierce  our  ears 
For  softness,  and  their  weak  faint  sounds ;  so  talking  on  the  tower 
These  seniors  of  the  people  sat," 

in  which  notion  he  is  followed  by  P.,  C,  and  even  N.,  as  if  the 
main  idea  in  Homer's  mind  had  been  like  that  of  Tennyson  in  the 
Princess — 

"  His  name  was  Gama ;  cracked  and  small  his  voice  ; 
A  little  dry  old  man." 

But  all  this  is  founded  on  a  complete  mistake  ;  a  mistake,  no 
ddubt,  as  old  as  Eustathius,  who  talks  of  Temyes  avaifxoi  Kal  xfvxpol 
Tr]v  KpaaLv  Kada  ot  yepovres,  but  not  the  less  false,  and  essentially 
un-Hellenic.  The  real  idea  intended  here  of  a  pleasant  agreeable 
flow  of  melodious  talk,  is  sufficiently  indicated  in  the  well-known 
passage  of  Plato's  Phcedrus,  259  a.,  and  262  d.  where  the  cicale  or 
tree-crickets  ai'e  called  "prophets  of  the  Muses."  So  also  Hes.  Op. 
580,   Scut.  393,  and  the  excellent  note  in  Barter's  Iliad  (Lond. 


132  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  111. 

1854).  It  will  be  observed  that  I  purposely  eschew  the  Italian  word, 
as  quite  unsuitable  to  the  genius  of  Homeric  or  minstrel  poetry. 

Ver.  180. — If  fi'cr  such  riaiiw  from  IjJaMcsfi  inc  lie  kneic, 

— KvvwTrtSo? — a  very  strong  w^ord,  which  I  have  in  other  places 
translated  literally,  but  have  judged  right  to  soften  a  little  here, 
(xladstone,  wdio  is  as  rapturously  enamoured  of  the  dead  Helen  as 
Paris  was  of  the  living,  finds  here  an  example  of  her  "  humble 
demeanour,  and  self-stabbiug  language,"  quite  sufficient  for  a 
Christian  divine  to  make  a  sermon  on  ;  but  the  fact  is  that  this  is 
only  another  example  of  the  loose  use  of  epithets  in  ballad  poetry, 
without  special  reference  to  the  occasion  when  they  were  used.  Tbc 
'^blushless  Helen"  was  a  descriptive  compound,  as  completely 
one  in  the  language  of  Greek  minstrel  poetry  as  the  swift-footed 
Achilles  or  the  strong-lunged  Dioraede.  With  regard  to  Helen 
generally,  as  a  commentator  on  Homer  I  am  glad  that  I  have  not 
much  to  say.  She  seems  upon  tlie  whole  to  comport  herself  wnth 
great  tact  and  j)i'opriety,  making  herself  agreeable  (with  a  slight 
seasoning  of  connubial  banter)  to  her  Trojan  husband  in  the  Iliad, 
and  to  her  G-reek  one  in  the  Odyssey  (iv.),  as  occasion  requires. 
The  G-ermans  (Prell.  Myth.  n.  73  ;  Hartung,  Rel  der  Gr.  iii.  p.  117) 
indeed  think  that  she  was  not  a  mortal  woman  at  all,  but  a  god- 
dess of  light,  perhaps  the  moon,  and  thus  becomes  the  worthy  sister 
of  her  brothers,  the  "  lucida  sidera."  on  whose  shining  the  fate  of 
storm-tossed  mariners  depends.  But  as  I  think  the  Trojan  wai- 
was  a  real  war,  I  am  bound  in  consistency  to  believe  that  the 
Trojan  Helen  was  a  real  woman.  After  the  taking  of  Troy,  she 
followed  her  original  husband  first  to  Egypt,  and  then  to  Sparta, 
where  she  died,  and  divine  honom's  of  the  first  class  were  paid  to 
her  (Herod,  vr.  fil ;  Isoc.  Encom.  Hel.  63). 

The  best  commentary  on  the  peculiar  Homeric  phrase  e"  ttot' 
h]v  ye.  is  found  in  the  words  of  Queen  Katherine  in  Hcnnj  VTIf. 

(Act  ri.  sc.  4)— 

"  But  thinking  that 
We  are  a  queen — we  long  have  dreamed  so — certain 
The  flauirhlcr  nf  a  king." 


BttOK   III.  XOTKS  TO  THE  ILIAD.  133 

Ver.  164. — Xof  fhmi,  Imt  f/ip  iiiiJiujj'fiil  jioii-crs  (hrnir  Jidcr  iimrrcl 

III]!  niurtal  lot 

This  fashion  of  throwing  back  all  evil  on  the  gods  is  character- 
istic of  the  ancient  Greeks,  and  occurs  xix.  86  infra,  and  many 
other  places.  So  Virgil  {J^n.  ii.  601).  The  Hindus,  whose  theo- 
logy glories  in  denying  freedom,  often  express  themselves  very 
strongly  on  this  point  (Mullens,  i/wK/oo  P/iilos.  Lond.  1860,  p.  20). 
There  is  a  great  truth  as  well  as  a  great  falsehood  involved  in 
this  popular  conception.  The  truth  is,  that  there  is  often  observ- 
able in  human  affairs  a  strong  under-cui'rent,  as  it  were,  of  divine 
destiny,  against  which  no  mortal  skill  can  prevail.  This,  when 
recognised,  is  a  pious  feeling,  and  inclines  a  man  to  charitable 
judgment  of  his  neighbour's  shortcomings,  as  in  the  present  in- 
stance. On  the  other  hand,  it  is  manifest  that  a  maxim  of  this 
kind,  if  made  a  motive  of  human  conduct  and  habitually  acted  on, 
would  excuse  any  sort  of  crime,  and  annihilate  every  possibility  of 
human  virtue  (Plat.  i?ep.  x.  617  e.)  The  old  minstrel  saw  clearly 
how  near  this  abuse  lay,  and  has  taken  care  to  protest  strongly 
against  it : — 

"  0  shame  that  mortal  men  should  blame  tlie  gods,  and  say  that  we 
Are  authors  of  all  liarm  ;  but  they  witli  sin  infatuate 
Shape  sorrow  for  themselves  beyond  the  rigliteons  law  of  Fate."' 

The  belief  that  the  gods  are  the  authors  of  evil  naturally  justi- 
fies the  habit  of  reproaching  them  to  their  face,  when  events  take 
place  contrary  to  our  expectations.  So  ver.  365  infra,  and  xxii. 
15.  In  Williams'  South  Sea  Missions,  chap,  v.,  there  is  a  curious 
account  of  certain  idolaters  who  were  ''  bitterly  enraged  against 
their  gods  for  not  answering  their  prayers,  and  had  almost  come  to 
a  determination  to  burn  them  !"  The  root  of  this  absurdity  lies 
deep  in  human  nature  ;  so  that  a  Christian  maiden  under  the  strong 
excitement  of  passion  may  cry, 

■'Alack,  alack,  that  Heaven  should  practise  stratagems 
Upon  so  soft  a  subject  as  myself." - 

'   Odi/ssej/,  I.  32.  -  Borneo  and  Juliet. 


134  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  III. 

Our  Christian  heroes  and  heroines  curse  their  stars  and  their  des- 
tinies ;  the  Homeric  Greeks  blame  the  gods  ;  they  with  more  logic, 
we  with  more  decency  ;  both  without  reason. 

Ver.  202. 

A  suhfle  wit  he  hnasts^  well  versed  in  every  curious  wile. 

Cunning  is  a  quality  of  mind  generally  pretty  well  developed 
among  all  nations  in  an  early  stage  of  civilisation,  where  there  i.s 
often  much  use  for  this  vulpine  function  of  the  human  being.  In 
certain  departments  of  social  action,  as  in  politics  and  diplomacy,  it 
continues  to  play  the  principal  part  even  amongst  the  most  civilized 
nations.  It  is  very  seldom  that  a  people  rises  into  that  high  pride 
and  lofty  sense  of  honour,  characteristic  of  the  English,  which  makes 
its  possessor  look  on  cunning  as  an  altogether  low  and  contemptible 
quality.  On  the  cunning  of  the  Circassians,  see  Spencer  (vol.  ii. 
p.  258).  Among  the  ancient  Hebrews  the  patriarch  Jacob  repre- 
sents this  quality  very  notably.  Gladstone  is  obliged  to  observe 
with  sorrow  this  moral  weakness  even  in  the  perfect  Athene,  who 
with  him  is  one  of  the  grand  bearers  of  the  Messianic  traditions. 
The  fact  is,  cunning  was  a  character  of  mind  peculiarly  Greek,  and 
ran  to  seed  sometimes  in  the  most  glaring  falsehood  and  treachery, 
as  the  examples  of  Themistocles,  Alcibiades,  and  Pausanias  suffi- 
ciently declare. 

Ver.  224. — Not  theii  fur  Jimo  lie  stood  ive  cared. 

The  advocates  of  the  digamma  either  omit  this  line,  as  P.  Knight, 
declare  it  an  interpolation,  as  Heyne,  or  modify  it,  as  Brandreth. 
who  uses  no  accents,  thus  : — "  tov  8e  to^'ojs  re  ^eov  rjyaa-a-afxeO'  eto-o- 
powiTes."  But  Heyne  is  quite  wrong  in  saying,  ''  liedundat  versus 
tt  nexu  caret."  Brandreth's  jjroposed  reading  makes  perhaps  more 
obvious  sense  than  the  received  one  ;  but  the  common  renderiuii'. 
which  comes  down  to  us  from  the  scholiasts,  and  which  has  been 
rendered  by  P.,  in  his  smart  antithetic  style, 

"  Oirr  ears  refute  the  censure  of  our  ei/es.^' 


BOOK  TIL  NOTES  TO  TlIK  II. IAD.  13;") 

is  nut  in  the  nlightest  degree  obnoxious  to  the  remark  of  l^randretti 
— "  yl  mente  'poette  prorsna  alientim  est." 

Ver.  243. — The  Hfi:-iiantainin(j  earfli. 

On  the  epithet  4>v<tl(oo<;  here,  lluskin,  always  brilliant,  often 
unsound,  has  some  supersubtle  remarks,  on  which  Arnold  {On 
Translat.  Horn.  p.  8)  wisely  comments.  The  epithet  is  a  fixture, 
and  means,  in  reference  to  this  passage,  nothing  at  all.  (See  Cope, 
Cambridge  Essays,  1856,  p.  181.)  As  for  Castor  and  Pollux, 
they  belong,  in  the  Greek  epic  cycle,  to  the  Cypria,  not  to  the  Iliad 
(Welcker,  E22.  Cyc.  ii.  92-97).  They  occur  in  the  Odyssey  (xi. 
298).  On  them  compare  Clinton  (vol.  i.  p.  76),  and  Duncker 
(Ges.  Alt.  iii.  37 j. 

Ver.  271. — Ayamennmn  tlien  drrw  forth  tin-.  L)iiJ'e. 

Here,  as  in  11.  402,  we  have  a  very  remarkable  instance  of  the 
patriarchal  simplicity  of  the  early  Greek  religion,  and  their  entire 
freedom  from  the  influence  of  an  order  of  priests  exercising  exclu- 
sive functions.  The  same  freedom  existed  in  the  earliest  or  Vedic 
form  of  the  Hindu  religion  (Wilson's  preface  to  Vishnu  Puruna, 
p.  2  ;  Mullens  on  Hindoo  Philosophy,  part  i.  p.  21).  But  had  such 
a  solemn  religious  act  been  performed  in  ancient  Egypt,  or  in 
India  when  thoroughly  Brahminized,  or  in  modern  England,  or 
even  in  Presbyterian  Scotland,  where  there  is  properly  no  sacer- 
dotium,  unquestionably  it  would  not  have  been  performed  by  a  lay- 
man. But  the  Greeks  in  Homer's  time  still  preserved  that  purely 
popular  form  of  worship,  in  which  every  head  of  a  family,  and  the 
king  as  head  of  the  great  state  family,  was  entitled,  or  rather 
bound,  to  perform  the  religious  services  which  the  family  required. 
With  the  ancient  Hebrews,  in  the  time  when  Melchisedec  was 
botli  priest  and  king,  the  same  simplicity  prevailed  (see  Tuch  on 
Gen.  xiv.  17).  So  Virgil  (Jl^n.  lu.  SO)  mentions  "  Bex  Anius,  rex 
idem,  honiiinini  Pliaehique  sacerdos."  But  the  sacerdotal  polity  of 
the  Jews,  as  of  the  Egyptians,  though  it  still  gave  the  supreme 
magistrate  the  riglit  of  offering  sacrifices  for  the  people,  did  so  only 


13G  NOTES  TO  Tin:  ii.iau.  book  in. 

in  his  character  of  priest.  The  right  of  laymeu  to  exercise  reli- 
gious functions  was  completely  absorbed  in  that  of  the  priesthood  ; 
so  that  when  in  Judea,  on  the  erection  of  the  monarchy,  the  priest 
ceased  to  be  a  king,  he  retained  his  exclusive  right  to  exercise 
sacred  functions,  and  the  king,  as  a  mere  layman,  could  not  inter- 
meddle with  any  sacred  rite — the  mere  oft'ering  of  public  prayer 
(1  Kings  viii.  22)  not  being  looked  upon  in  this  light.  This 
appears  from  1  Sam.  viii.  20 — where  a  king  is  demanded  only  to 
perform  judicial  and  military  functions, — compared  with  what  hap- 
pened to  Uzziah  (2  Chron.  xxvi.  16-18).  The  case  of  David 
seems  to  have  been  exceptional  (Stanley  in  Smith's  Diet.  Bih.  i. 
p.  410).  Such  a  quarrel  as  that  with  Uzziah  could  never  have 
arisen  between  a  Greek  magistrate  and  a  Grreek  priest.  The 
Spartan  king  always  retained  the  right  of  performing  sacrifice  in 
behalf  of  the  people  (Xen.  Rep.  Lac.  15  ;  Herod,  vi.  56).  And 
when  monarchy  was  abolished  in  Athens,  we  find  that  the  three 
principal  archons  of  the  year  retained  and  exercised  sacerdotal 
functions  of  the  highest  importance  (Poll.  viii.  91).  Nay  more, 
we  constantly  read  of  private  persons  performing  sacrifice  (Ar. 
Pax.  973  ;  Pint.  Nic.  4),  assisted  only  perhaps  by  a  /xavns,  not  at 
all  to  be  confounded  with  a  regular  te/DciJs,  or  priest  (Hermann,  Rd. 
Alt.  §  33),  and  a  very  great  range  of  liberty  was  allowed  to  private 
individuals  in  erecting  temples  and  altars  for  their  own  private 
devotional  use,  against  which  Plato  in  the  Laws  (x.  16),  in  his  rage 
for  turning  all  society  into  a  machine,  thinks  it  necessary  to  make 
some  very  severe  enactments.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  there 
never  was  any  regular  body  or  corporation  of  priests  in  Greece  ; 
but  individual  priests  or  priestesses  were  attached  to  the  local 
service  of  some  god,  and  their  privileges  were  purely  local.  The 
contrast  of  Egypt  in  this  respect  is  strongly  stated  by  Diod.  (i.  73). 
and  it  was  this  freedom  from  the  control  of  an  overruling  body  with 
exclusive  privileges,  which  enabled  first  the  Greek  philosophy 
Avith  that  grand  luxuriance  which  Ave  admire,  and  the  gospel  after- 
wards to  be  preached  in  Athens,  as  Avell  as  in  Rome,  where  the 
same    principles    were    acknowledged,   Avith   a   general   libertv,   to 


P.OOK  III.  XDTF.S  TO  THE  ILIAH.  137 

which  occasional  persecutions  gave  only  a  beneticial  stimulus. 
Paul  was  only  sneered  at,  not  put  into  prison,  when  he  preached 
Christ  on  the  hill  of  Mars.  How  diiFerent  would  be  the  fate  of  a 
modern  Paul,  preaching  without  the  sanction  of  the  police  in  the 
Prater  of  Vienna,  or  the  Thiergarten  in  Berlin  ! 

A^ER.  275-6. — Father  on  Ida  throned  siq)rp)iic. 

There  are  two  things  to  be  noted  here.  First,  the  mingling  in 
this  prayer  of  the  anthropomorphic  dynasty  of  gods  represented  by 
Jove,  with  the  original  undisguised  elemental  gods — Sun,  Earth, 
and  Rivers.  With  regard  to  the  position  which  these  original 
elemental  gods  afterwards  held  alongside  of  the  gods  of  the  Jovian 
dynasty,  there  is  no  doubt  a  certain  truth  in  what  Gladstone 
(ii.  216)  says,  that  "  Fata  is  but  the  exhausted  residue  of  a  tradi- 
tion from  which  the  higher  life  has  escaped."  But  we  must  bear 
in  mind  also  that  the  Greek  mind  was  at  all  times  strongly  im- 
pressed with  the  faith  that  all  nature  is  essentially  divine,  and  con- 
stantly exhibiting  the  divinest  functions  (Ar.  Fth.  Nic.  vi.  7.  4), 
a  feeling  which,  so  long  as  it  lasted,  would  prevent  such  mytholo- 
gical figures  as  Earth,  the  Sun,  etc.,  from  assuming  the  merely 
negative  character  of  the  '"  exhausted  residue  of  a  tradition."  The 
tendency  to  believe  in  the  heavenly  bodies  as  real  individual  gods 
appeared  afterwards  even  in  the  philosophy  of  the  intellectual 
Stoics  ;  we  are  not,  therefore,  in  anywise  at  liberty  to  underrate 
the  influence  of  such  elemental  gods  in  the  early  age  of  Homer. 
In  the  Odyssey,  the  Sun  especially  appears  as  a  most  potent  and 
eifective  completely  individualized  god ;  and  in  the  present  pas- 
sage he  is  appealed  to  with  all  the  solemnity  which  belongs  to  Zev<s 
opKtos  himself.  The  second  point  to  be  noticed  is  the  choice  of 
gods  appealed  to  in  the  present  solemn  adjiu'ation.  The  first 
power  invoked  is,  of  course,  Jove,  in  whom  the  whole  moral 
government  of  the  world  is  centred ;  the  second  is  Helios,  as  the 
great  universal,  all-beholding  fountain  of  life  and  gladness,  from 
whose  fiir-darting  glance  nothing  can  be  liid ;  the  third  is  Earth, 
as  the  general  mother,  out  of  whom  we  all  come,   and  into  whose 


o 


138  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  III. 

bosom  we  shall  all  return.  Earth,  besides,  has  a  special  propriety 
here,  as  comprehending  those  subterranean  regions,  in  which  the 
dread  powers  dwell  who  after  death  inflict  on  the  guilty  offender 
the  punishment  which  he  may  have  escaped  here.  These  powers 
are  the  Furies  (xix.  259).  As  to  the  Eivers,  I  do  not  know 
that  they  have  anything  to  do  here,  except  as  a  notable  part  of  the 
Earth,  adding  a  sort  of  descriptive  beauty  to  the  generality  of  Faia. 
The  special  sacredness  of  rivers,  however,  as  the  generators  of  fer- 
tility, was  universally  felt  by  the  ancients,  and  it  is  remarkable  that 
in  the  famous  oath  of  Hannibal,  preserved  by  Polybius  (vii.  9), 
along  with  certain  personal  Phoenician  gods,  '•  the  Sun,  the  Moon, 
the  Rivers,  the  Meadows,  and  the  Waters,"  are  prominently  named. 

Ver.  292. — He  spake,  and  pierced  the  vicfim's  tin-oaf. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  here  the  rites  practised  in  under- 
taking a  solemn  obligation.  First,  it  is  noticeable  that  hJoad  in 
some  shape  or  other  must  flow. 

"  Blood  is  a  fluid  ofquite  pecidiar  viitue." 

Of  the  Arabian  practice  in  such  cases,  Herodotus  gives  us  a 
very  curious  notice  (iii.  S).  The  blood  generally  flowed  from  the 
veins  of  a  sacrificial  victim,  as  in  the  present  case,  thus  making 
the  oath  ;i  ])art  of  the  most  solemn  religious  act.  See  Gen.  xv. 
9-17  ;  Jer.  xxxiv.  18,  19.  Compare  opKca  re/ju'eiv,  icere  fa-dtis. 
and  rina  nj3-  The  form  of  imprecation  in  ver.  .SOO  finds  a  perfect 
pnrallel  in  Livy  i.  24. 

The  symbolical  acted  drama  of  these  passages  belongs  to  all 
nations  in  which  the  use  of  written  and  printed  documents  has 
not  superseded  tlie  vivid  gesticulations  of  living  address.  See 
1  Sam.  xi.   7  ;   1  Kings  xxii.  11  ;   2  Kings  xiii.  15-19. 

Veu.  oil). —  'J'/ir  liiiiilis  iijidii  llir  cm-  hv  laid. 

Animals  sacrificed  as  a  p;irt  of  a  swurii  and  solemn  bond  were 
not  feasted  on  by  tlic  jiai'tics  ])resent  ;is    ;it   ;i    common   sacrifice  : 


BOOK  III.  NOTES  TO  THE  IIJAD.  139 

and  Priam  may  have  taken  them  back  to  Troy  as  evidence  to  all 
the  citizens  of  the  completed  pact,  and  then  disposed  of  them 
according  to  use  and  wont  in  such  cases.     See  Eustathius. 

Ver.  320. —  0  Jove  most  glorious^  etc. 

Kochly's  {Dissert,  iv.  13)  remark  that  verses  320-3,  298-301, 
351-354,  and  365-368  run  in  quatrains,  involves  a  principle  of 
symmetry  that  goes  deep  into  the  structure  of  all  Greek  poetry  ; 
but  one  may  acknowledge  it  when  it  occurs  without  making  a 
hobby-horse  of  it,  and  riding  about  perilously  on  its  back  in  the 
wild  fashion  so  common  with  German  scholars. 

Ver.  328. — TJteii  Pan's,  spouse  of  Helen,  buckled  his  armour  on. 

We  may  mass  together  shortly  here  the  principal  details  relative 
to  the  armour  and  weapons  of  the  Homeric  heroes  as  they  occur  in 
the  Iliad,  shortening  oiir  work  materially  by  the  aid  of  the  articles 
Anna,  Ocrece,  etc.,  by  Yates  in  Smith's  D/c^.  Ant.,  and  Friedrich's 
Realien,  120.     The  process  of  arming  in  Homer  includes  in  regular 
succession  six  points  : — (1.)   The   Greaves   [KV7][jii8es)  are  bound 
round  the  shins  (i.  17  siqrra).     In  Homer  they  are  made  of  tin, 
in  what  may  be  regarded  as  a  model  case  fxviii.  610),   but  more 
commonly  perhaps  of  copper  (vii.  41).     Those  of  leather,  like  our 
boots,  were  not  for  military  use  (Od.  xxiv.  229).     In  the  second 
place  comes  the  S^wpa^,  the  Cuirass,  composed  of  two  hollow  pieces 
(yi'aAa — V.  99  ;  XV.  530),  one  behind  and  the  other  before,  clasped 
together  by   buckles.      In   the  time   of  Pausanias   this   Homeric 
fashion  had  become  a  piece  of  antiquity,  so  that  he  describes  it 
minutely,  as  seen  painted  on  the  pictures  of  Polygnotns  at  Delphi 
(x.  26.  2).     When  the  Greeks  are  called  x«'^'«ox'twv€s,  or  copper- 
coated,  this  seems  merely  a  use  of  )(tT(oi'  for  the  S^wpa^  which  was 
put  on  above  it.     So  in  ti.  416  and  xiri.  439,  the  x't^'>^  ^^  spoken 
of  as  defending  the  life.     The  use  of  a  ^wpa^  of  lint  is  mentioned 
in  II.  529  and  830 ;  but  it  was  plainly  exceptive,  snid  was  rather  a 
barbarian   characteristic   (Herod,   in.  47  ;   Pans.  vi.  19.  4  ;  Xen. 
Ci/r.  VI.  4.  2).      Attached  to  the  'Aojpa^  was  the   (wa-ri'ip  or  Belt 


1-1(1  NOTES  To  Tin:  ILJAL).  BOOK  111. 

(iv.  182).  The  cTT/aeTTTos  x'™''  ^^  ^'-  H^  seems  to  Lave  been 
flexible,  and  formed  of  brass  rings  plaited  together.  Beneath  the 
belt,  and  close  to  the  skin,  as  a  protection  for  the  lowest  part  of  the 
trunk,  was  the  fiLxpr]  (iv.  187),  which,  according  to  the  Schol.  Ven. 
on  that  passage,  was  a  plate  of  brass,  with  soft  wool  beneath  (see 
the  plate  in  Smith,  Art.  Zona).  After  buckling  on  his  cuirass,  the 
Homeric  warrior  then  flung  his  Swokd  over  his  right  shoulder,  by 
a  belt  from  which  it  depended  on  his  left  side.  The  sword  of  the 
Greek,  as  it  appears  in  vases,  is  short  and  strong,  so  that  the 
epithet  [xeya  (v.  146)  is  either  exceptive,  or  must  be  taken  rela- 
tively (see  the  figure  in  Smith,  Arma).  Fourthly  came  the 
Shield.  This,  in  the  case  of  the  Homeric  heroes,  was  always 
round, — -quite  round  (ver.  347), — round  as  the  lamp  of  Phoebus 
(Virg.  .^n.  III.  637).  Whether  the  circle  may  not  have  been 
drawn  out  sometimes  into  an  oval,  the  epithets  rep/JLLoea-cra  (xvi.  803) 
and  TToSj^vcKrys  (xv.  646)  have  led  some  persons  to  doubt  (Glad, 
iii.  335),  but  the  shields  in  the  Etruscan  vases  are  generally,  if 
not  always,  quite  round.  It  was  made  of  several  distinct  plies  of 
leather,  and  various  metals  (xii.  295).  The  shield  of  Ajax  (vii. 
220)  had  seven  plies  of  leather  and  an  eighth  of  copper.  The 
shield  of  Achilles — a  rare  example,  no  doubt — was  made  altogether 
of  plates  of  diiferent  metals  (xx.  270).  The  rim  was  called  avrv^ 
(xviii.  479),  and  it  had  a  boss  (d/x<^aAos)  in  the  middle.  The 
Homeric  heroes  seem  also  to  have  supported  their  shields  with  a 
thong  or  belt,  rcAa/Awv  (ii.  388  ;  v.  796).  In  xiv.  404,  the  sword- 
belt  and  the  shield-belt  are  expressly  distinguished.  Herodotus 
(i.  171)  speaks  as  if  these  belts  suspended  across  the  neck  and  the 
left  shoulder  were  the  only  instrument  used  for  wielding  the  shield, 
till  the  Carians  invented  o'xai'a.  And  this  is  no  doubt  quite  true ; 
but  the  TeXafjLiov  did  not  stand  alone,  and  served  principally,  I  pre- 
sume, to  support  the  shield,  when  the  warriors  were  on  the  march  ; 
for  the  Homeric  shields  certainly  had  handles  called  Kav6v€s  (viii. 
193;  XIII.  407).  An  idea  of  the  manner  in  which  the  shield  was 
grasped  may  be  got  from  the  figure  in  Smith,  J)ict.  Ant.,  Clipeiis. 
See  also  the  figure  of  a  handle  running  across  the  circular  shield 


HOOK   111.  NOTKS  TO  Till-:  ILIAli.  Ul 

like  a  cliaineter,  in  Hewitt's  Anciejit  Armoitr,  1S55  (vol.  i.  p.  75). 
Next  in  order  comes  the  Helmkt.  This  in  Homer's  time  seems 
usually  to  have  been  made  of"  dog-skin  (/cweTy),  or  weasel  skin 
(KTiSer/),  or  other  hide,  strengtliened  and  adorned  in  part  by  copper 
or  other  metals,  sometimes  altogether  of  copper — -rrdy^^^aXKos  (Od. 
xviir.  378).  The  inside  was  padded  with  felt — TrtAos  (x.  265). 
Sometimes  it  was  plain  and  low,  exhibiting  outwardly  the  exact 
shape  of  the  head  (x.  258),  called  Karalrv^.  Oftener,  however, 
it  had  various  elevations,  knobs,  bosses,  or  plates,  (lidXo<;  (iii.  362), 
Xa/jLTrpo<i  7/Aos  (Apion)  on  the  surface,  for  the  purpose  either  of 
supporting  the  crest  or  breaking  the  stroke  of  a  sword.  Hence 
the  epithets  a//(^t(/)aAos  (xr.  41),  rfrpac^aAos  (xii.  384).  And 
Tpv<f>dXe.ia  (xr.  352),  notwithstanding  the  positive  assertion  of  But. 
(Lexil.),  appears  most  naturally  to  be  interpreted  as  only  a  corrup- 
tion for  rpicfidXeia  (Welck.  Ep.  Cyc.  i.  p.  219 ;  v.  743,  and  xi.  41, 
where  the  additional  epithet  rerpacfidXrjpos  is  a  great  puzzle).  There 
occurs  also  (f>dXapa  (xvi.  106),  which  the  scholiasts  interpret  cheek- 
pieces.  The  only  other  term  requiring  explanation  is  otjAwttis 
(v.  182;  XI.  353),  about  which  the  ancients  were  not  agreed;  but 
the  explication  in  Hesych.  (Trepi/xi^Kets  €)(^ov(ra  ras  rwv  6(fi6aX{j,wv 
oTToLs),  as  applying  to  a  striking  external  feature,  and  well  consis- 
tent with  the  etymology,  is  given  in  my  version.  Last  in  order 
comes  the  main  weapon  of  offence,  the  Lance  or  spear,  made  of 
wood,  often  ash  (xrx.  390),  and  tipped  with  copper.  The  Iliad 
supplies  abundance  of  instances  of  the  manner  in  which  this  weapon 
was  used,  both  as  flung  from  a  distance  and  when  used  in  close 
thrust.  The  butt-end  of  the  spear,  with  an  iron  or  copper  spike 
to  fix  in  the  ground,  is  called  by  Homer  o-avpwTT^p  (x.  153),  and 
oi'piaxos.  When  the  warriors  go  out  to  fight,  they  have  generally 
two  lances  in  their  hands,  as  may  be  seen  in  many  ancient  drawings 
(in.  18  ;  Smith,  Diet.  Ant.,  Arma).  The  order  of  fighting  was  to 
throw  the  lance  first,  and  then  come  to  stern  work,  if  necessary, 
with  the  sword.  When  the  Avai-rior  returned  home,  he  put  his 
spear  in  a  spear-case  (xix.  387).  very  prominent  in  the  Odyssey 
(T.  128). 


U2  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IV. 

Vek.  445.  —  ^^'''-I'J'JH  C'ruiiuc. 
The  word  Kpavd-q,  as  the  scholiasts  tell  us,  means  roufjh^  rocky, 
and  if  so,  there  were  islands  enough  in  the  G-reek  seas  to  whicli  such 
an  epithet  would  be  most  suitable.  The  island  here  spoken  of  is 
said  by  Pausanias  (iii.  22.  1)  to  be  a  small  island  in  front  of 
(xythium,  on  the  south  coast  of  Sparta.  Strabo  again  (ix.  399) 
places  it  on  the  coast  of  Attica. 


BOOK    IV. 

VkR.  2. The  hlooiiiilKJ  Hchc. 

Though  there  can  be  little  doubt  of  the  original  connexion  of  the 
Grreek  iroTvia  with  the  Sanscrit  iKitis  (Curt.  377),  lonl^  master, 
sovereign,  and  though  in  conformity  with  this  etymology  I  have 
translated  this  epithet  "  queenly,"  when  applied  to  Here,  yet  it  is 
manifest  from  the  present  passage,  where  it  is  applied  to  a  goddess 
of  such  inferior  rank  and  power  as  Hebe,  that  the  peculiar  sig- 
nificance of  the  word  was  soon  lost  in  a  very  general  notion ;  and 
in  this  case  a  translator  is  justified  in  substituting  such  an  epithet 
as  may  be  most  suitable  to  the  person  and  to  the  verse.  Hebe 
is  one  of  those  mythological  personages  whose  significance,  as 
originally  a  mere  personification  of  a  well-known  quality  (yf^i] 
— youth,  puberty),  is  so  plain  that  it  cannot  be  mistaken.  As  a 
daughter  of  Jupiter  and  Here  {Od.  xi.  604),  that  is,  of  Heaven  and 
Earth,  she  represents  properly  that  miraculous  power  of  rejuven- 
escence which  the  system  of  the  world,  ever  old  and  ever  young, 
exhibits,  and  as  such  was  early  taken  into  the  list  of  the  perfectly 
anthropomorphized  natural  agencies  (Hes.  Theorj.  17).  In  the 
fertile  mountain  district  of  Phlius,  in  the  north-east  corner  of  the 
Peloponnesus,  this  goddess  received  peculiar  worship,  descending 
from  the  most  ancient  times,  and  here,  as  well  as  in  the  neighbour- 


I 


BOOK  IV.  Notes  TO  Til h;  iLiAi).  l-lo 

iiig  district  of  Sicyou,  she  was  known  under  the  names  of  Tawfii^Sa 
(^joyful  coiuispI)^  and  Ata,  the  divine  (Paus.  ii.  13.  3  ;  8tr.  viii.  382). 
In  the  present  passage  the  part  which  she  plays  as  cupbearer  to 
the  gods  is  significant  enough ;  but  her  perfoi'mances  in  a'.  722 
and  905  are  only  incidental  to  her  character  as  daughter  of  Here 
and  sister  of  Mars.  In  the  Odyssey  (xr.  603),  she  appears  most 
appropriately  as  the  spouse  of  Hercules. 

Akk.  S. — PulUifi,  queen  of  AJahomena'. 

As  in  modern  times  the  epithets  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  so  anciently 
the  designations  of  the  gods  wei'e  often  taken  from  the  localities 
which  were  the  seat  of  some  famous  image,  or  of  some  peculiar 
worship.  Here  the  allusion  is  to  a  city  on  the  south  shore  of  the 
Lake  Copais,  in  Bocotia  (Str.  amii.  413),  near  the  Telphousian  foun- 
tain, where  Teiresias  died.  Welcker  {g.  I.  i.  p.  316)  expresses  the 
opinion  that  the  name  of  the  town,  which  signifies  strenrjtii  aiirJ 
defence,  was  originally  an  epithet  of  the  goddess,  and  from  her 
transferred  to  her  favourite  town. 

Vej{.  lO. — SiiiiJv-d iffusiiKj  ^Ij'/nudife. 

</)tAo/x/xei67;s  is  a  constant  epithet  of  Venus,  which  L.  and  8.. 
Wr.  and  Drb.  should  not  haA^e  translated  "  hivghfer-Iovivg,"  be- 
cause, in  the  first  place,  such  an  epithet  belongs  rather  to  Bacchus  or 
Glomus  than  to  Aphrodite ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  though  yeXdo) 
may  sometimes  mean  to  smile,  fieiBido)  certainly  never  can  mean  to 
laugh.  C.  has  '' smile -loving  Venus  ;  "  V.,  with  all  the  pregnant 
beauty  of  the  German  compound  words,  "  holdanldchelnde  Kypris," 
Avhich  D.  has  not  improved  by  changing  it  into  "  huldreich- 
Idchelnde." 

Ver.  77. — A  meteor  star. 

I  cannot  think  that  P.  was  at  all  justified  in  translating  d(nrjp 
here  a  "  comet,'"  for  a  comet  is  a  thing  that  appears  permanently 
for  a  considerable  season — weeks  or  months  in  the  sky,  whereas 
here   a   momentary   rapidly   shooting    light    is    eA'idently  implied. 


14-J-  NolKS  TO  Till-:  ll.IAJ).  BOOK  IV. 

The  (TTT II' Orjpe<i,  or  sparks^  certainly  cannot  mean  the  tail  of  a  comet, 
though  this  may  have  occasioned  Pope's  mistake,  if  indeed  it  is 
ever  necessary  to  seek  for  any  cause  of  error  in  him  beyond  the 
poetic  desire  of  saying  something  grand.  The  Germans  translate 
the  Greek  noun  by  its  simple  German  equivalent  stern.  That 
the  dcTT'qp  here  was  a  mere  meteor  or  "  shooting-star  "  (da-Tijp 
Stci'crcrwv)  cannot  be  doubted,  though  I  must  confess  I  never  saw 
them  casting  out  sparks  as  here  described ;  but  that  they  often  do 
so  is  manifest  from  the  account  of  them  given  by  Lardner  in  his 
Museum  of  Science  and  Art.,  London,  1854,  vol.  i.  p.  141.  See  an 
account  of  one  which  appeared  at  the  death  of  Alexander  of  Russia, 
in  Alison's  History  of  Europe  from  1815  to  1852,  vol.  ii.  p.  215. 

Ver.  101.— rimhus,  lord  'f  liyht, 

— 'A/TToXXoiVL  XvKiqyevi'i.  This  epithet  has  been  interpreted  in  three 
ways — (1.)  as  referring  to  Lycia,  where  Apollo  was  much  wor- 
shipped; (2.)  as  connected  with  Ai'ko?,  a  wolf,  an  animal  much 
used  in  the  religious  symbolism  of  the  ancients ;  (3.)  as  a  com- 
pound from  the  old  root  of  lux  (Macrob.  Sat.  i.  17),  which  ap- 
pears in  the  Greek  word  XyKa/Sas  (Od.  xiv.  161),  the  j^ath  of  h'ghf, 
the  year.  Against  the  first  interpretation,  the  philological  objec- 
tion urged  by  Welcker  (g.  J.  i.  81)  must  certainly  weigh  something, 
that  the  word  ought  in  this  case  to  have  been  AvKirjyevi^s,  besides 
that  there  is  no  proof  that  in  the  religion  of  the  early  Greeks  the 
worship  of  Apollo  was  so  connected  with  Lycia  as  to  justify  the 
derivation  of  the  epithets  Xvklo<;,  and  Xvkcios,  and  XvKrjyevt^s  from 
that  locality.  To  suppose  that  Lycia  is  here  meant,  because 
Minerva  makes  the  appeal  to  Pandarus,  a  Lycian,  is  to  assume 
a  curious  propriety  in  the  use  of  epithets,  of  which  Homer  had  no 
conception.  Against  the  second  interpretation,  it  appears  sufiicient 
to  remark  that,  though  it  may  explain  the  epithet  XvKeco's,  accord- 
ing to  a  sense  well  known  among  the  later  Greeks  (Pans.  ii.  9.  7 ; 
iEschyl.  Sept.  Theh.  132,  and  the  coins  of  Argos  stamped  with  a 
wolf),  it  certainly  does  not  explain  the  present  compound  Xvktj- 
y€i'»7S  :  for  though  the  heat  of  the  sun  in  the  dog-days  might  well  l)o 


BOOK  IV.  NOTES  TO  TJJK  ILIAD.  1-15 

compared  to  a  raging  wolf,  it  is  pressing  this  analogy  too  far  to  call 
the  sun-god  for  this  reason  horn  of  a  loolf.  It  rather  appears, 
therefore,  that  in  interpreting  this  word,  wc  ought  to  revert  to  those 
earliest  times,  when  that  popular  elemental  theology  was  formed, 
of  which  Homer  adopted  the  phraseology,  without  always  under- 
standing its  significance ;  and  as  there  can  be  no  question  whatso- 
ever, with  men  capable  of  forming  an  opinion  on  such  subjects,  that 
Apollo  originally  meant  the  Sun,  so  I  can  have  little  hesitation  in 
transferring  Damm's  suggestion  to  my  version,  though  without 
adopting  literally  his  Latin  "  <jcnilor  lucis"  the  Hellenism  of  which 
is  doubtful,  as  Atoyevry?,  and  other  compounds  of  this  kind  have  all 
a  passive  signification. 

Vkr.  105. — T/icn  in  Ju's  hamJ  the  hnn  he  /dok. 

The  bow  was  peculiarly  an  Asiatic  weapon  (Herod,  vii.  61-SO  ; 
^schyl.  Pe7-s.  26),  and  appears  with  great  propriety  here  in  the  hands 
of  that  Trojan  whose  perfidy  renewed  the  great  fight  between  the 
contending  parties.  Of  the  Greek  bow  as  here  described  (for 
Homer  is  not  curious  of  distinguishing  between  Asiatic  and  Euro- 
pean arms),  with  a  double  curvature,  and  a  flat  central  band  in  the 
middle,  an  account  will  be  found  by  Yates  in  Smith's  Diet.  Arcus, 
where  it  is  contrasted  with  the  large  semicircular  Scythian  bow, 
which  the  Greeks  compared  to  the  old  2,  written  like  our  C.  Mr. 
Muir,  of  Archers'  Hall,  Edinburgh,  who  did  what  he  could  with  all 
courtesy  to  clear  up  my  ideas  on  ver.  Ill,  showed  me  several  bows 
after  the  exact  pattern  of  the  Homeric  one  in  this  passage,  made 
of  two  horns  joined  together  in  the  middle,  principally  Chinese 
and  Oriental.  As  to  Kopwvq,  Yates  says,  but  I  know  not  on  what 
authority,  that  it  means  here  a  ring  which  fastened  the  two  horns 
together.  But  the  Schol.  Ven.  says  expressly,  Kopuivq  to  iTrtKa/xTre? 
(XKpov  rov  To^ov,  od^v  a7r7ypT)/Tat  rj  vevpd  ;  and  this  seems  to  me 
to  agree  better  with  the  general  meaning  of  Kopwvif]  and  Kopwvis 
in  other  applications.  Perhaps  my  version  might  be  improved 
thus — 

"  And  tipped  the  Iiurii,  to  crown  the  worh,  with  a  cap  of  gulden  shine." 
VOL.  IV.  K 


116  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IV. 

For  not  being  myself  an  archer,  or  familiar  with  the  terms  used  by 
those  who  practise  that  most  English  of  gymnastic  sports,  I  cannot 
but  feel  great  uncertainty  as  to  the  exact  propriety  of  the  phraseo- 
logy used  in  my  translation.  Compare  Virgil's  imitation  of  this 
passage  [jEn.  xi.  858). 

Vek.  128. 
The  epithet  dyeAea/.  given  to  Athene  in  this  line,  especially 
when  taken  along  with  Atjitis  in  x.  4G0,  evidently  means  ''  carry- 
inci  ojf  spoil ,  <ir  hooty"  "huntress  of  the  spoil;"  an  epithet  most 
appropriate  to  a  Avarlike  goddess.  This  is  also  Wolf's  opinion, 
and  Welcker's  {>j.  I.  i.  317). 

A'^ER.  141. — As  vlteu  a  Caridii  or  Mo/mnan  maid. 
The  manufacturing  refinements  and  general  luxury  of  the  Lydians 
are  well  known.  Their  excellence  in  the  arts  of  dyeing  and  staining 
is  often  alluded  to  (Plin.  N.  H.  viii.  50  ;  Ar.  Acharn.  113  ;  Dunck. 
Ges.  Alt.  i.  p.  589)  The  illustrating  of  nature  from  art  is  charac- 
teristic of  early  popular  poetry,  and  of  an  age  when  objects  of  ele- 
gant workmanship  were  not  to  be  seen  in  every  shop-window. 

Ver.  151. — When  lie  saw  loth  cord  and  harb,  etc. 

By  vevpov  is  properly  meant  a  string,  or  thong,  or  cord,  or  sinew, 
d  SeSerat  to  (rt.8y]pov  tou  (3eXov<i  Trpo<s  rov  KaAa/xov,  as  the  scho- 
liast says,  a  cord  or  string  by  which  the  iron  point  of  the  arrow  was 
sometimes  fastened  to  the  reed.  Mr.  Muir,  of  Archers'  Hall, 
showed  me  several  arrows  in  which  the  pile  is  fastened  with  "  sinew," 
exactly  as  Homer  here  describes. 

Vek.  171. — Aryos    tliirsty  sail. 

How  appropriate  this  epithet  is  to  the  Argive  country,  any  one 
may  assure  himself  by  considering  the  present  topography  of  that 
region,  which  in  fact  is  nothing  more  than  a  sort  of  sloping  eastern 
rampart  of  Arcadia,  whose  great  waters  flow  all  to  the  west.  (See 
Curt.  Pclop.  ii.  558.)     The  other  twn  interpretations,  ttoAi'tto^i^tos, 


BOOK  IV.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  147 

■much  desired  (adopted  by  C),  and  ttoAvi'i/'os,  from  tTrro/^at  (sug- 
gested by  Strabo),  much  hcurissed,  or  oppressed  by  ivar,  seem  to 
have  had  their  origin  either  in  the  idea,  as  Curtius  remarks,  that 
"Apyos  must  necessarily  mean  the  whole  Peloponnesus,  or  in  that 
desire  to  fit  the  epithets  curiously  to  the  context  which  has  pos- 
sessed so  many  commentators  and  translators  of  Homer,  ignorant 
as  they  were  of  the  true  nature  of  the  popular  epic,  as  distinguished 
from  the  epos  of  literary  culture. 

Ver.  194. — Son  of  Asdepms,  hlaineless  leech. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Homer  never  speaks  of  j^sculapius  as 
a  god,  but  as  a  man.  That  he  was  properly  not  a  god,  but  oidy 
a  deified  mortal,  Cicero  also  expressly  testifies  (Nat.  Deor.  ii.  24). 
There  is  a  growth  in  these  matters,  and  a  development  well  worthy 
of  consideration.  So  the  Virgin  Mary  is  only  a  pious  and  well- 
behaved  matron  in  the  New  Testament :  in  the  canons  of  the 
Council  of  Trent,  and  in  the  creed  of  more  than  two-thirds  of  the 
Christian  Church,  she  is  the  "Mother  of  God,"  and  "the  Queen 
of  Heaven,"  and  of  immaculate  conception.  And  not  only  time 
achieves  great  results  in  such  matters,  but  place  also.  Hippolytus, 
who  was  a  mere  man  at  Athens,  fit  to  be  made  by  Euripides  the 
hero  of  a  love  intrigue  in  a  pathetic  play  of  Athenian  life,  was  a 
god  across  the  firth  at  Troezeu,  a  place  not  farther  from  Athens 
than  Largo  is  from  Edinburgh  (Pans.  ii.  32).  The  proper  god  of 
medicine  in  Homer  (so  far  as  he  acknowledges  a  separate  god  for 
the  healing  function,  which  originally  belonged  to  Apollo)  is  Ilatvywv, 
from  whom  all  physicians  are  said  to  be  descended  {Od.  iv.  232). 
That  the  knowledge  of  medicine  came  to  the  Greeks  originally 
from  Thessaly,  one  of  the  earliest  seats  of  Hellenic  civilisation,  is 
evident  from  the  pedigi-ee  of  Coronis,  the  mother  of  ..^Esculapius,  and 
from  one  form  of  the  tradition,  which  says  positively  that  the  god 
was  born  at  Tricca  in  Thessaly  (Str.  xiv.  647),  a  place  mentioned 
above  (ii.  729)  as  the  native  place  of  Machaon.  Chiron  also,  from 
whom  Machaon  derived  his  medical  knowledge  (ver.  219  infra). 
was  a  Thessalian. 


148  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IV. 

Vkr.  :235. 

Tlicia  FatJicr  Jove  ivill  iwccr  h<-Ij>  w.'iu  lidp  ihciaseloes  with  lien. 

"Four  short  words,"  says  Grladstone  (ii.  383),  "describe  the 
props  of  human  society — ya/xos,  o/jkos,  Ge/^ts,  and  Oeos ;"  and  of 
these  four  words  we  find  that  the  Greek  Zevs  is  pre-eminently  the 
last — that  he  has  a  direct  superintendence  over  the  second  and 
third,  and  that  his  celestial  consort,  "Hpa,  presides  over  the  first. 
The  Platonic  dictum  (liejj.  ii.  p.  382),  that  "  a  lie  is  naturaUi/ 
hateful  both  to  <jo<h  and  men,'"  and  especially  a  deliberate  lie  with 
an  oath,  was  accepted  by  the  Greeks,  in  the  main,  as  the  basis  of 
all  human  society.  Nevertheless,  as  truthfulness  is  of  all  virtues 
the  most  difficult  consistently  to  practise,  and  as  the  Greeks  were 
anything  but  a  remarkably  veracious  people,  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised at  the  gross  theological  contradiction  in  this  book,  where 
Athene,  with  the  permission  of  Jove,  incites  to  the  commission  of 
a  perjury,  which  the  same  Jove  shall  afterwards  visit  with  condign 
retribution.  Cuntradictions  in  theology — like  that  of  free-will  and 
necessity  in  our  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith — are  always 
natural,  and  to  be  expected ;  and  as  the  Greeks,  as  remarked 
above  (p.  49),  had  no  devil,  but  attributed  all  human  actions 
directly  to  tlie  gods,  it  could  not  be  otherwise  than  that  the  same 
gods  should  sometimes  appear  as  authorizing  both  good  and  bad 
actions.  Strictly  speaking,  however,  the  contradiction  here  is  not 
absolute.  Athene,  as  a  party  goddess,  enlisted  in  the  service  of 
the  Greeks,  is  entitled  to  have  her  own  sphere  of  action,  which  her 
kind  father  would  not  deny  her ;  and  the  boundaries  of  loisdom  and 
running  are,  among  a  half-civilized  people,  so  vague,  that  she  who 
inspires  the  virtue  may  well  be  supposed  to  patronize  the  vice, 
especially  in  war,  when  man  becomes  a  tiger  or  a  fox,  as  necessity 
may  re(|uire  it,  and  casts  his  moral  dignity  aside.  So  in  the  Philo- 
rfetes  of  Sophocles  (133-4),  Ulysses,  who  in  point  of  cunning  was  a 
genuine  Greek,  practises  most  cruel  treachery  under  the  patronage 
of  'E/3/xr^s  SoAtos  and  'Adi'jva,  which  is  bringing  the  goddess  of  highest 
wisdom  very  disreputably  into  the  company  of  the  chosen  patron 


BOOK  IV.  NOTES  Tu  TIIK  ILIAH.  U!J 

of  thieves  and  footpads.  Most  unworthy  of  the  character  of 
PaUas  as  all  this  undoubtedly  is,  it  is  j^ractically  counterbalanced 
by  the  fact  that  Jove,  though  permitting  these  acts  of  perfidy,  never 
actually  commits  them — a  distinction  which  our  theologians  con- 
stantly draw,  and  of  which,  vnleat  quantum  valeaf,  the  polytheistic 
theology  of  the  Greeks  is  certainly  entitled  to  receive  the  full 
benefit. 

Ver.  242. — Brave  GnX'Ls  f/iaf  Ji<//il  icilJi  flijiiuj  daiis. 

The  interpretation  of  the  difficult  word  loixuipoc,  it  seems  to  me, 
ought  to  turn  on  two  points,  which  must  be  admitted  : — (1.)  The 
word  is  used  only  twice  in  Homer,  here  and  xiv.  479,  and  in  both 
places  is  evidently  a  term  of  reproach.  (2.)  It  is  impossible  to 
interpret  this  word  without  regard  to  the  similar  word  eyx^o-t/xwpoL, 
which  is  as  plainly  a  term  of  praise  as  it  is  applied  to  the  Myr- 
midons (Od.  III.  188)  and  to  the  Arcadians  (vii.  134),  who  were 
well  known  as  first-rate  soldiers.  Whatever,  therefore,  be  the 
exact  meaning  of  the  second  element  of  both  words,  it  is  manifest 
that  as  the  one  compound  implies  praise  for  the  dexterous  use  of 
the  spear,  the  other  must  obviously  be  understood  to  mean  blame 
for  the  use  of  the  arrow.  But  what  blame  lies  in  the  use  of  the 
aiTOw  as  opposed  to  the  use  of  the  spear  ?  Plainly,  as  Eust.  and 
the  Schol.  suggest,  because  archery  was  an  inferior  style  of  warfare, 
in  which  a  coward  might  indulge  at  safe  distance,  as  the  Greek 
brigands  do  with  rifles  from  behind  a  bush  or  a  rock  ;  and  this 
feeling  is  plainly  indicated  by  the  contemptuous  language  used  by 
Diomede  to  Paris  in  xi.  385  : — 

To^ora,   Xw^rjTjjp,   Ktpa  ayXae,    TrapOevowtTra, 

(juoted  by  Faesi.  The  present  is  clearly  a  case  where,  as  we  are 
ignorant  of  the  true  etymology  of  the  word,  the  sense  indicated  by 
the  context  ought  to  receive  full  weight.  The  "arrow-doomed," 
which  Cowper  took  from  certain  ancients,  is  thei'efore  bad,  as  not 
containing  the  true  sting  of  the  reproach.  The  objection  that  the 
first  syllable  of  /os,  an  arrov:,  ought  to  be  long,  is,  in  the  present  case, 
entitled  to  little  weight,  because  such  a  word  as  wni'imi  could  not 


150  NOTES  TO  THE  ILTAD.  BOOK  IV. 

possibly  come  into  a  hexameter  verse,  and  therefore,  like  a^avaros, 
and  other  known  words,  had  its  first  syllable  altered  for  the  need. 
Since  writing  the  above,  I  am  glad  to  see  the  same  view  stated  by 
Lucas,  De  vocibus  Homericis  in  /Mopos,  Bonnfe,  1837 — the  author 
of  the  admirable  tract  on  yXavKWTn<;,  mpra,  p.  21. 

Ver.  275. — As  u^iev  a  sioain  haih  from  a  toweo-  espied. 

In  the  Cambridge  Essays  for  1856,  p.  128,  there  is  a  paper  on 
"  The  Picturesque  in  Greek  Poetry,"  by  Mr.  Cope,  well  worthy  of 
perusal,  in  which  he  says  of  the  present  passage,  that  "  there  is  not 
the  least  symptom  in  it  of  any  feeling  of  pleasure  or  interest  deriv- 
able from  the  contemplation  of  the  gathering  of  the  storm, — all  is 
unmixed  terror,"  and  the  concluding  words,  he  adds,  bear  the 
plainest  witness  to  what  may  be  called  "  the  utilitarian  character 
of  the  Greek  notions  of  scenery."  I  certainly  agree  with  this 
writer,  that  the  importance  of  this  and  similar  passages  (viii.  255), 
in  reference  to  what  we  call  "  the  picturesque,"  has  been  vastly 
overrated  by  some  admirers  of  the  poet.  Homer  is  removed  from 
Ruskin  nearly  as  far  in  sentiment  as  in  chronology. 

Ver.  288. — 0  Father  Jove,  Athene,  and  Apollo  ! 

In  this  formula,  if  anywhere,  we  have  the  true  Greek  Trinity, 
as  the  Romans  had  a  sort  of  Trinity  in  the  Jupiter,  Minerva,  and 
Juno  of  the  Capitol.  Strictly  speaking,  however,  neither  the  Greeks 
nor  the  Romans  had  any  Trinity,  that  is,  a  plurality  of  persons, 
unified  by  the  pervading  influence  of  a  common  idea, — such  a  real 
Trinity  as  the  Hindu  Trimurti.  What  we  have  in  the  present 
passage  is  merely  a  familiar  formula  of  prayer,  in  which  the  three 
favourite  gods  of  the  Greek  race  are  mentioned  with  significant  pro- 
minence. The  parallel  which  Glad,  has  drawn  between  these  three 
personages  of  the  Hellenic  Pantheon  and  the  three  persons  of  the 
Christian  Trinity  stands  on  no  solid  foundation.  There  is  no  hint 
of  a  Trinity  in  the  Old  Testament,  any  more  than  in  Plato,  though  it 
has  been  lavishly  fathered  upon  both ;  and  even  if  there  were  such 
a  doctrine  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  there  is  nothing  so  character- 


HOOK  TV.  NOTES  To  THE  ILIAD.  151 

istically  striking  in  the  points  of  likeness  between  the  real  Christian 
Trinity  and  the  quasi  Trinity  of  this  passage,  as  to  warrant  the  theory 
of  a  historical  connexion  between  the  one  and  the  other.  Of  all  things 
in  the  world,  a  sort  of  Trinity  to  the  mere  eye  and  the  imagination 
arises  most  easily  in  the  human  mind ;  for  three  is  the  first  number 
to  which  belongs  Aristotle's  definition  of  a  perfect  whole,  having 
a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end  ;  and  any  central  figure  with  two 
supporters,  both  by  the  natural  instinct  of  the  mind  to  form  a  whole, 
and  by  the  very  architectural  structure  of  ancient  temples  and 
shrines,  naturally  produces  this  number.  In  this  fashion  arose  a 
sort  of  Trinity  also  among  the  ancient  Egyptians,  as  will  be  ob- 
served by  those  who  considt  the  learned  works  of  Wilkinson  and 
Bunsen.  To  the  same  influence  is  to  be  ascribed  the  triple  Here,  wor- 
shipped by  the  people  of  Stymphalus,  in  her  three  aspects  as  Hats, 
TeAeta,  and  X-jpa,  mentioned  by  Pans.  (viii.  22.  2),  the  three  gods 
whom  Solon  ordered  the  Athenians  to  swear  by  (Poll.  viii.  142), 
and  scores  of  such  triads  in  all  religions  and  in  all  parts  of  the 
world.  Compare  Payne  Knight,  Symhol.  221,  229,  on  sacred 
duads  and  triads  generally,  in  cases  where  they  contain  a  real  sym- 
bolism. 

Ver.  297. — TJiP  Iniujhffi  of  ir.((r  Jip  pnsfed  in  the  ran. 

The  order  of  battle  here  is  founded  on  principles  of  common 
sense,  which  must  ever  be  the  strong  foundation  of  the  military  art. 
Had  the  "  brave  Belgians,"  who  ran  back  to  Brussels  to  publish 
the  loss  of  the  battle  before  it  was  fairly  begun,  not  been  posted  in 
the  rear,  they  could  not  have  run  away ;  and  in  the  large  disposi- 
tions of  modern  tactics,  it  is  no  doubt  often  the  case  that  many  a 
man  behaves  valiantly,  not  from  innate  courage,  but  merely  because 
he  is  so  placed  that  he  cannot  find  space  for  the  fugitive  use  of  his 
legs.  As  for  the  chariot-riders,  they  are  manifestly  destined  by 
the  wise  old  Pylian  to  perform  the  same  function  as  Napoleon's 
cuirassiers  at  Waterloo,  viz.,  to  break  the  enemy's  lines,  and  throw 
them  into  confusion,  while  the  main  strength  of  the  battle  lies  in 
the  infantry  (as  in  our  Highlanders  at  Waterloo),  ready  either  to 


1R2  NOTER  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IV. 

advance  in  deadly  ranks,  should  the  chariots  pave  the  way  for  them, 
or  to  receive  the  enemy's  charge  steadily,  should  the  charge  of  the 
knights  be  I'epulsed. 

Vers.  306-7. 

The  two  lines — 

8s  5e  K   avTjp  dvo  tSv  ox^i^v  'irep'  &p/ia6'  'iK-qTai, 

(yX^'-  ^pe^daOw.  eireii-j  ttoXv  cpiprepov  ovtus — 

are  certainly  not  particularly  clear.  In  determining  the  meaning 
of  the  passage,  we  must  consider  what  is  the  main  scope  of  the  short 
advice  given  by  Nestor  to  his  knights,  and  what  the  words  naturally 
mean.  Now  it  is  evident  that  the  old  horseman  is  talking  of  how 
to  deal  with  the  enemy,  and  that  the  phrase  aTro  tSv  o^ewj/  fVep' 
apjiaO'  tKTjTai,  Avould,  in  this  view,  naturally  be  understood  to  mean, 
coming  iip  to  the  chariot  of  the  enemy.  This  is  the  first  interpreta- 
tion given  by  Eustathius,  to  which  it  is  natural  to  suppose  he  gave 
the  preference  ;  nevertheless  P.  and  C.  have  followed  the  other 
notion  proposed  by  certain  ancients,  that  the  erepa  ap/Aara  refers  to 
the  chariot  of  some  other  Greek.  But  it  seems  plain  to  me  that 
Nestor  would  never,  in  so  short  an  exhortation,  have  given  an  ad- 
vice about  the  exceptive  case  of  a  man  being  dismounted  from  his 
own  car,  before  he  had  taught  his  men  generally  how  to  deal  with 
the  enemy.  I  t?ierefore  think  that  the  natural  emphasis  of  the 
passage  lies  in  (A-Tyrat,  so  as  that  this  word  shall  mean  "  comimj  close 
nj)  to"  which  meaning,  perhaps,  lies  also  in  the  word  ope^dcrOw. 
The  injunction  therefore  is,  not  to  Jting  at  a  distance,  or  at  ravftoni. 

Ver.  '6f)^.— The  father  of  Tclemachus. 

[  think  Ulysses  is  the  only  chief  in  the  works  of  Homer,  who, 
when  his  self-esteem  is  excited,  delights  to  speak  of  himself,  not  as 
the  son  of  a  famous  father,  but  as  the  father  of  a  famous  son.  This 
peculiarity  seems  to  arise  from  the  prominent  part  which  Tele- 
machus  plays  in  the  Ithacan  cycle  of  popular  legends,  from  which 
the  Odyssey  Avas  composed.  Telemachus  no  doubt  was  the  ideal 
model  of  a  Greek  son,  just  as  Achilles  was  of  a  Greek  hero. 


BOOK  TV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  153 

Ver.  875. — Praised  ahove  all  vxirrior -kings  ivas  Tydeus. 

The  mythological  story  of  Tydeus  here  alluded  to  is  well  known. 
We  have  here,  in  fact,  a  scrap  of  the  Thebaid,  as  elsewhere  of  not  a 
few  others  of  the  rich  cycle  of  Greek  romances  which  supplied  Homer 
with  materials  (Nitzsch,  Sagenpoesie,  p.  111).  With  the  quarrel 
about  the  supremacy  of  Thebes,  which  broke  out  between  Eteocles 
and  Polynices — a  quarrel  with  which  the  pages  of  the  tragic  writers 
everywhere  overbrim, — Tydeus  had  nothing  naturally  to  do,  being 
an  jEtolian ;  but,  like  many  godlike  heroes  in  those  violent  times, 
having  been  forced  to  leave  his  country  on  account  of  accidental  or 
culpable  homicide,  he  found  his  way  to  Argos,  and  there  marrying 
Deipyle,  the  daughter  of  Adrastus,  became  father  of  Diomede 
(Apollodor.  I.  8.  3).  To  Adrastus  also  Polynices  had  fled;  and 
thus  Tydeus  found  himself  participator  in  the  glory  and  the  mis- 
fortunes of  the  famous  expedition  against  Thebes.  As  such  he 
receives  a  prominent  place  in  the  graphic  description  of  ^schylus, 
in  his  great  war-breathing  drama  (Sejjf.  Theh.  370).  His  conduct 
in  the  adventure  told  by  Homer  in  the  present  passage,  is  mostly 
in  the  spirit  of  what  is  narrated  of  Rinaldo  in  the  Carlovingian 
romances.  As  for  Thebes,  the  capital  of  Bocotia,  the  student  will 
perhaps  remember  the  peculiarity  in  the  catalogue,  that  not  Thebes 
proper,  but  only  'Y-n-oOrjfia'i — Lover  Thehes — is  mentioned.  It  is 
called  Ter^os  "Apeiov  {ivfra,  ver.  407),  because  Mars  was  its  great 
guardian  god.  The  Kivropes  lttttwv  of  391  is  in  allusion  to  the 
Theban  cavalry,  which  were  very  famous  (Soph.  0.  ('.  1062,  ^47^/. 
149  ;  Pind.  01.  vi.  145).  The  K^vrpov  was  either  a  regular  goad, 
or  some  sharp  metallic  point  put  into  the  whip  (Soph.  0.  T.  808  ; 
Xen.  Cyroj).  vii.  1.  29;  Hesych.  m  voce,  and  wfra  xxiii.  387). 
Spurs  at  the  heels  in  the  modern  fashion  occur  early  in  the  Eoman 
writers  (Lucret.  v.  1073),  and  perhaps  also  among  the  later  Greeks 
(vid.  Schneider's  note  to  Xen.  Equitat.,  etc.,  orifxvwip).  Of  course 
such  spurs  cannot  occur  in  Homer,  where  there  are  no  riders  in 
the  proper  sense  of  the  word.  In  the  translation  of  ver.  380,  I 
find  I  have  gone  rather  beyond  ray  text ;  it  should  be,  they  cried  aid 


154  XOTF.W  TO  Tin:  lUAD.  BOOK  TV. 

that  aid  should  he  given,  but  Jove,  by  inauspicious  signs,  prevented 
their  wishes  from  being  carried  into  effect. 

Ver.  478. — The  nursing-fee. 

Qpkirrpa.  aTreScoKc  (xvii.  302).  This  natural  duty  inherent  in 
children  to  pay  back  by  love  and  kindly  services  the  labour  and 
care  bestowed  upon  them  by  their  parents  in  the  helpless  years  of 
their  infancy,  is  often  alluded  to  by  the  ancients.  Vid.  ^schyl. 
Sept.  Theh.  472,  Tpo4>dov. 

As  a  counterpart  of  this  natural  obligation  on  the  part  of  the 
offspring,  the  Roman  law  established  a  legal  right  or  claim  on  the 
part  of  the  parents  [Digest,  Lib.  xxi.  tit.  iii.)  from  which  the  Scotch 
law  of  alimentation  in  the  case  of  parents  was  borrowed. 

Ver.  514. — The  Tritonian  maid. 

TpiToyeveia — literally,  Triton -horn.  The  grounds  that  may  guide 
us  to  the  probable  meaning  of  this  epithet — for  certainty  is  out  of 
the  question — are  these  : — (1.)  the  word  t/di'twv  has  evidently  some- 
thing to  do  with  loater,  for  it  is  the  name  of  a  class  of  sea-gods, 
and  of  a  stream  that  flows  into  the  Copaic  lake  in  Boeotia.  (2.) 
Boeotia  is  a  country  which  at  an  early  period  of  Greek  history 
played  a  prominent  part,  and  it  is  reasonable  to  think  that  some  of 
the  epithets  of  the  more  famous  gods  should  have  come  from  that 
quarter.  (3.)  With  respect  to  Athene,  there  is  this  further  reason 
to  seek  the  origin  of  Tpiroyeveta  in  the  Boeotian  stream,  that  she 
is  actually  called  the  goddess  of  AlaJcomencB  by  Homer  in  this 
very  book  (ver.  8),  a  town  close  by  the  river  Triton.  Having 
such  a  iwima  facie  probability  for  a  local  Grreek  origin  of  the 
epithet  of  a  Greek  goddess,  I  see  no  reason  for  going  to  Egypt 
(Herod,  iv.  180),  or  for  taking  refuge  with  Hayman  in  the  unwar- 
ranted modern  gloss  of  "  third-born.''  The  interpretation  which 
appears  to  me  so  decidedly  preferable  is  supported  by  Pausanias 
among  the  ancients  (tx.  38-4),  and  Miiller  among  the  moderns 
(Orrhom.  349).     Compare  Duncker.  Grs   Alt.  iii.  31. 


BOOK  TV.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILTAD.  155 

Ver.  520. — Sea-washed  yEnos. 

Many  an  Euglish  gentleman  may  perhaps  recall  here  from  his 
early  studies  the  line 

jEtieadasque  meo  vomen  de  nomine  fingo? 
The  town  is  mentioned  several  times  in  the  later  history  of  Greece 
and  Rome  (Thucyd.  vii.  5.  57 ;  Liv.  xxxi.  16),  but  makes  no  pro- 
minent figure.  Pliny,  in  his  description  of  Thrace,  says,  "  Os 
Hebri,  portus  Stentoris,  oppidum  JEnos  liherum  cum  Polydori 
tumulo  :  Ciconura  quondam  regio." 

Ver.  521.— The  Italian  Thoas. 

This  Thoas  is  rather  a  prominent  character  in  the  Iliad  (ii.  C38  ; 
VII.  168;  XIII.  216;  xv.  281),  and  is  mentioned  twice  by  Pau- 
sanias  (v.  3.  4,  and  x.  38.  3) ;  but  there  is  nothing  particular  to  be 
noted  about  him. 

Ver.  533. — The  Thracian  troop  vnth  tufted  crou'7is. 

About  the  meaning  of  the  word  aKpoKoixoi,  no  man  who  knows 
Greek  ought  to  have  the  slightest  doubt.  The  only  other  possible 
meaning,  "  at  the  tip  of  the  chin,"  is  brought  out  in  the  passage 
from  Polybius  (Str.  208),  by  the  addition  imo  tw  yeretw.  The 
doubts  expressed  by  some  of  the  ancients  arise  from  a  bad  habit 
which  they  had  of  doubting  where  there  was  no  reason  to  doubt, 
and  of  asserting  confidently,  when,  from  the  very  nature  of  the 
case,  confident  assertion  was  impossible.  Such  fantastic  methods 
of  dealing  with  the  hair  are  common  with  all  sorts  of  savage  and 
semi-civilized  peoples.  Glad.  (ii.  230)  instances  the  Suevi  from 
Tacitus  {Mor.  Ger.  i.  38);  with  which  the  fashion  of  the  Abantes 
(ii.  542)  may  be  contrasted.  See  also  Martial,  Spect.  iii.,  of  the 
Sicambri,  and  other  barbarians,  whose  oddities  of  costume  added 
a  quaint  grace  to  the  Roman  triumphal  processions. 

^  Viro-il,  ^11.  III.  18. 


15G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 


BOOK   V. 

The  section  of  the  Iliad  contained  in  this  book  and  the  first  half 
of  the  next  was  called  by  the  ancients  Aio/>i7y8eos  d/nVreta,  or  the 
2)rowess  of  Diomede.  Its  importance  in  the  plan  of  the  poem  is 
discussed  in  Dissertations,  p.  250,  with  which  compare  P.  Knight, 
Frolegom.  24.  With  regard  to  Diomede,  Colonel  Mure  says  of 
him,  that  "  among  the  heroes  of  the  Iliad,  there  is  none  who  does 
so  much  and  speaks  so  little,"  quite  a  man  after  Carlyle's  own 
heart.  His  history,  and  that  of  his  family,  comes  out  pretty  fully 
in  various  parts  of  the  Iliad.  He  was  by  birth  an  ^tolian,  but 
connected  himself  by  marriage  with  the  royal  family  of  Argos,  and 
thus  came  directly  into  the  sphere  of  Agamemnon,  and  the  chiefs 
who  took  part  in  the  Trojan  expedition  (x\pollodor.  i.  8.  5).  His 
fortune,  history,  and  especially  his  robbery  of  the  Palladium  (Virg. 
yEn.  ir.  163,  and  Overbeck,  Gall.  p.  583),  and  his  activity  in  the 
south  of  Italy  (Str.  vi.  284)  form  a  large  chapter  in  mythological 
tradition,  but  are  not  alluded  to  in  the  poems  of  Homer. 

Ver.  9. — A  priest  of  Vvlrav,  Dares  hiijht. 

Two  things  with  regard  to  the  Greek  priesthood  are  noteworthy 
here  : — First,  It  is  not  accidental  that  the  poet  calls  the  priest  of 
Vulcan  a  wealthy  man,  d(^i/eios;  for,  though  among  the  Greeks  there 
was  no  exclusion  of  any  class  from  the  high  office  of  serving  the 
gods  (such  as  there  was  in  Rome  before  the  Ogulnian  Law),  there 
was  no  doubt  a  tendency  lo  look  upon  the  priesthood  as  a  sort  of 
ministry  peculiarly  aristocratic,  and  naturally  belonging  to  the 
upper  and  wealthier  classes  of  society.  Aristotle  I^Pol.  viir.  9)  says 
expressly,  ovTe.  yap  yewpyov  ovre  (36.vavuov  Upka  Karaa-Tareov — 
neither  farmers  nor  tradesmen  are  to  he  made  priests,  for,  he  adds, 
"  it  is  seeiiili/  that  f/ie  (jods  receive  lionoiir  from  the  citizens.''  Besides, 
even  when  not  naturally  wealthy,  the  priests  attached  to  famous 
temples  accumulated  great  riches  from  the  offerings  of  the  faithful 


IK^OK  V.  NOTES  TO  Till-:  ILIAD.  157 

(Horn.  H(jni.  A-jji'll.  5o7 ;  Schol.  Aristoph.  Tcs.  1440).  It  is 
interesting  to  contrast  this  old  heathen  idea  with  the  practice  of 
some  modern  Christian  churches,  where,  as  in  Scotland,  the  ministry 
of  the  gospel  has  become  a  grand  field  of  moral  and  intellectual 
ambition,  constantly  open  to  the  poor,  aiid  the  poorest  classes  of 
society,  but  generally  considered  beneath  the  ambition  of  the  rich. 
Second^  we  observe  that  the  ancient  Trojans,  whose  manners  in  this 
respect  are  quite  Hellenic,  had  no  idea  of  an  enforced  celibacy  of 
the  ministers  of  religion.  This  idea  indeed  could  never  spring 
up  in  a  country  where,  as  in  Greece,  not  only  the  conscience  and 
the  will,  but  every  function  of  human  and  of  universal  nature,  in  its 
healthy  and  normal  state,  was  esteemed  divine  and  holy.  To  treat 
the  flesh  of  man,  with  its  feelings  and  functions  as  altogether  an 
unholy  thing,  was  an  exaggeration  of  Christian  purity,  the  natural 
product  of  that  sickly  devotionalism  which  appeared  in  various 
places  of  the  Roman  empire  at  the  time  of  the  spread  of  Christianity, 
as  an  extreme  and  violent  reaction  against  the  rank  sensualism  and 
grossness  of  the  age.  The  only  examples  of  religious  celibacy  that 
the  life  of  ancient  Greece  presents,  are  confined  to  the  service  of 
particular  deities,  such  as  Diana  and  Minerva,  who  had  voluntarily 
assumed  the  virgin  character.  To  such  virgin  deities  a  virgin 
service  was  suitable  ;  and  in  Arcadia,  where  the  worship  of  Artemis 
was  very  general,  we  find  a  priestly  celibacy  of  this  kind  particu- 
larly described  by  Pausanias  (viii.  5.  8,  and  13.  1).  The  Greeks, 
however,  were  the  last  people  in  the  world  among  whom  the  idea  of 
any  particular  sanctitude  inherent  in  celibacy  could  become  popu- 
lar ;  and  we  find  accordingly  that,  where  custom  required  that  the 
ministers  of  any  god  or  goddess  should  be  unmarried,  they  were 
content  with  the  fact  that  the  priests  should,  at  the  actual  time  of 
ministry,  be  free  from  sexual  connexion  and  family  bonds ;  and  it 
was  sometimes  particularly  insisted  on  that  a  priestess  should  at  no 
time  have  been  the  wife  of  more  than  one  husband,  that  is,  should 
not  have  been  married  a  second  time  (Pans.  vii.  25.  8).  This  is 
probably  what  St.  Paul  alludes  to  (1  Tim.  iii.  2).  See,  on  the 
whole  subject.  K.  F.  Hermann,  EpI.  AU.  §  34. 


158  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  Y. 

Ver.  63  — For  durt-rejoicimj  Dian  loocd  him  ivell. 

•'  Every  good  gift  and  every  perfect  gift  is  from  above,  and 
cometh  down  from  the  Father  of  lights,  with  whom  is  neither  vari- 
ableness nor  shadow  of  tm-ning."  So  the  apostle  James  (i.  17) 
taught  to  the  infant  Christian  Church ;  and  the  j^olytheistic  Greeks 
had  a  deep  sense  of  the  same  important  truth,  as  appears  constantly 
in  Homer.  If  a  man  exhibits  great  skill  in  hunting,  he  receives 
his  skill  from  Artemis,  the  huntress  of  the  sky  ;  if  he  is  a  cunning 
carpenter,  Minerva  has  been  his  instructor  (ver.  61),  and  so  on. 
The  same  principle  is  recognised  distinctly  in  Leviticus  xxxv.  30. 
The  error  of  the  Greeks  lay  only  in  the  assumed  separate  person- 
ality of  the  object  of  the  feeling,  not  in  the  feeling  itself,  nor  in  the 
divine  power  to  which  that  feeling  had  reference.  All  wisdom  and 
all  skill,  as  well  as  all  higher  inspiration  of  every  kind,  comes  from 
the  operation  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  This  is  a  fundamental  doctrine 
of  natural  religion,  and  is  nowhere  denied,  except  in  ages  when  the 
monstrous  conceit  of  that  knowledge  which  puifeth  up,  or  the 
meagreness  of  that  science  which  believes  only  in  fingers  and  eyes, 
seeks  to  throw  ofi"  the  feeling  of  a  living  dependence  on  God  as 
something  barren  and  unprofitable.  But  it  is  never  unprofitable 
for  a  man  clearly  to  recognise  his  own  true  position  in  the  system 
of  things  ;  and  the  true  position  of  all  finite  things  is  a  pious  depend- 
ence on  the  Infinite. 

Ver.  77. — Scamander^s  holy  priest. 

All  religion,  as  above  remarked,  is  founded  on  the  salutaiy  feel- 
ing of  dependence  on  a  superior  Power,  and  this  feeling  will  natur- 
ally be  most  strongly  exercised  towards  those  objects  on  which  the 
worshipping  creature  is  most  dependent.  The  most  natural  deities 
of  a  polytheistic  people  are  the  Sun  and  the  Sky  above,  the  Earth 
and  the  Waters,  and  of  all  waters,  specially  the  Rivers,  for  on  them 
the  existence  of  animal  life  depends,  and  their  course  is,  in  fact, 
in  all  countries  identical  with  the  progress  of  civilisation.  Among 
the  Egyptians,  the  dependence  of  the  whole  country  on  the  great 
river  which  virtually  makes  the  laud  was  so  manifest,  that  mytho- 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  To  Tin:  lUAD.  159 

logical  speculators  were  coustuutly  in  doubt  whether  their  great 
beneficent  god,  Osiris,  signified  the  Sun  or  the  River.  The  rever- 
ence paid  by  the  Hindus  to  the  Ganges  is  of  a  similar  description. 
Among  the  ancient  Grreeks,  all  rivers  and  all  fountains  were  holy 
and  sacred.  So  the  Scamander  in  this  place  is  holy,  and  has  his 
priest ;  for  in  respect  of  religion  the  Trojans  are  everywhere 
treated  by  Homer  as  genuine  Greeks,  and  there  nowhere  appears 
the  shadow  of  a  difi"erence.  Gladstone's  ingenious  arguments  to 
the  contrary,  in  his  third  volume,  left  me  unconvinced. 

Ver.  yi. —  Wlit'it  (jreut  Juce  nana  down  liiti  fiuuds. 

Zei)s,  as  the  humanized  inipersouatiou  of  the  old  elemental 
Oupavos,  is  naturally  worshipped  as  the  giver  of  rain,  and  in  this 
capacity  was  named  vkrio<;  (Pans.  ii.  19.  7),  or  ojj.ppio'i  by  the 
Greeks,  and  Phivius  by  the  Romans.  Rain  indeed  was,  in  the  Greek 
mind,  so  habitually  associated  with  Jupiter,  that  "  the  water  coming 
doAvn  from  the  god"  was  often  used  as  a  circumlocution  for  rain 
(Pans.  VIII.  7.  1).  In  dry  countries,  as  in  Argos,  there  were  special 
altars,  where,  in  times  of  drought,  Jupiter  (and  with  him  sometimes 
Here)  was  invoked  (Pans.  ii.  25.  9).  The  "  rain-making  priests," 
among  certain  modern  idolaters,  are  well  known  to  the  readers  of 
Missionary  Records ;  and  Pausanias,  in  his  chapter  on  the  Lycaean 
Jupiter  in  Arcadia  (viii.  38.  3)  gives  an  account  of  a  similar  pro- 
cess of  pious  rain-making  which  was  practised  by  the  inhabitants  of 
that  country,  particularly  conservative  as  it  was  of  all  old  religious 
traditions  and  usages.  "  In  times  of  long-continued  drought,"  he 
says,  "  the  priest  of  Lycsean  Jove  having  prayed  and  sacrificed  at 
the  fountain  called  Hagno,  dips  an  oaken  branch  into  the  fountain, 
and  on  the  movement  of  the  water  there  rises  a  slight  mist,  which, 
gradually  attracting  to  itself  the  vapours  of  the  atmosphere,  forms 
clouds,  and  brings  down  rain  on  the  land."  There  is  a  well-known 
image  of  Jupiter  Pluvius  on  the  column  of  Antoninus  at  Rome,  in 
the  shape  of  an  old  man  with  wings,  long  hair  and  beard  stream- 
ing down,  his  arms  also  outstretched,  with  streams  of  rain  falling 
from  them  also  (Muller,  Denk.  i.  395). 


HiO  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAI*.  BOOK  V. 


Vek.  127. — Lo  !  from  iliy  vimon  I  rciiturr  the  initst. 

There  is  a  fine  deep  feeling  of  pliilosophical  piety  involved  in 
the  function  here  assigned  to  Minerva,  as  the  patron  goddess  of  the 
strong-voiced  ^tolian  hero.  She  removes  the  mist  from  his  eyes, 
and  then,  and  not  till  then,  does  he  see  the  superhuman  agency 
which  is  mixed  up  with  the  battle,  apparently  conducted  only  by 
mortal  men.  So  the  case  is,  in  fact,  in  everyday  life,  in  science, 
in  art,  and  in  all  provinces  of  human  activity.  We  all  go  about 
busy  and  bustling  enough,  peeping  at  all  things,  and  fingering  all 
things,  but  seeing  only  what  is  obvious  and  superficial;  till  some 
day,  as  the  reward  of  deep  thought,  honest  prayer,  and  heroic 
struggle,  God  removes  the  veil  of  human  conventions,  phrases,  and 
formulas  from  our  eyes,  and  we  begin  to  see  God  in  all  things,  and 
cherish  a  kindly  reverence  for  the  Divine  significance  of  the  most 
common  events,  and  learn  with  an  infallible  touch  to  discriminate 
between  what  is  substantial  and  what  is  accidental,  what  is  perma- 
nent and  transitory  in  phenomena. 

Ver.  15o. — J^Vic  suns  of  I'luenops,  dear  as  life  to  liiin. 

TyjXvyeros, — I  do  not  think  that  either  Buttraann  or  Passow,  or 
any  other  modern  philologer,  has  added  anything  to  our  real  know- 
ledge of  this  word,  as  we  have  it  from  the  E.  M.  and  other  ancients. 
They  make  it  equivalent  to  oi/'tyovos,  that  is,  horn  late,  born  far 
on  in  point  of  time  ;  hence,  by  a  natural  transition,  dearly-beloved, 
in  the  manner  of  Benjamin ;  and  hence,  further,  tender,  delicate, 
spoiled  (xiii.  470).  The  etymology  may  be  right,  or  it  may  be 
wrong ;  but  at  all  events  it  supplies  a  probable  theory,  which  ex- 
plains all  the  facts.  That  Homer  used  it  with  any  distinct  recog- 
nition of  its  original  meaning  I  do  not  believe.  With  him  it  was 
only  a  strong  phrase  for  dyairrjros  ;  and  the  vague  meaning  which 
it  had  already  acquired  in  liis  time,  defies  all  attempts  at  being- 
curious  about  its  application  in  individual  cases  now. 


liOMK  V.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  IGl 

Xfai.  15S. — A  stranger  heir  Jiin  hoarded  ivcalth  possessed. 

It  is  happily  of  no  consequence  to  the  poetical  significance  and 
feeling  of  this  passage,  to  determine  the  exact  meaning  of  x^pwa-Ta't^ 
an  old  word,  which  occurs  in  exactly  the  same  way  in  Hesiod 
{Theog.  600).  Only  legal  writers  will  be  sorry  that  we  cannot  in- 
form them  whether  the  ol  Kar'  ouSei'a  rpoTrou  Trpocri'jKorTes  toj  yei/et 
of  one  of  the  scholiasts,  or  the  ot  ixaKpodeu  avyyeveis  of  Hesych.,  be 
the  exact  meaning.  Perhaps  the  word  was  wide  enough  to  include 
both  what  we  call  collateral  relations,  distant  relations,  or  connexions 
by  marriage,  and  total  strangers,  who,  with  the  functions  of  judicial 
curators,  were  appointed  by  the  legal  authorities  to  manage  pro- 
perty of  which  no  natural  heir  appeared. 

Yer.  196. —  (liamj)  sjielt  and  barley  grain. 

oXvpa,  according  to  Lenz,  is  the  Triticum  spelta  of  Linnjieus,  the 
s/ieJta  farro  and  grano  farro  of  the  Italians.  From  Dioscorides 
(3Iat.  3Ied.  ii,  12  and  13)  it  is  evident  that  oXvpa  and  ^eia  were 
merely  different  species  of  the  same  thing ;  and  it  is  notable,  in 
this  regard,  that  Homer,  in  a  passage  of  the  Odyssey  (iv.  594), 
where  various  kinds  of  food  for  horses  are  enumerated,  mentions 
{■fia  along  with  white  barley,  in  the  same  way  that  oXvpa  is  men- 
tioned here,  so  that  the  two  words  seem  practically  identical.  And 
Herodotus,  in  the  curious  place  (ii.  35)  where  he  says  that  the 
Egyptians  act  in  most  things  contrary  to  all  mankind,  gives,  among 
other  practices,  the  fact  that  spelt,  oXvpa — or,  as  some  call  it,  ^eid 
— is  food  for  horses  in  Greece,  and  for  men  in  Egypt. 


Yer.  2n.~Sthenel 


as. 


Sthenelus  is  the  son  of  that  impious  Capaneus,  the  Argive  chief, 
who  marched  against  Thebes,  in  the  famous  expedition  dramatized 
by  jEschylus,  and  proudly  boasted  that  he  would  take  the  city, 
Jove  willing  or  Jove  not  willing.  He  was  smitten  by  a  thunder- 
bolt while  in  the  act  of  scaling  the  walls  of  the  seven- gated  city. 
His  son  seems  to  have  been  a  much  more  pious  and  proper  person , 

VOL.  IV.  L 


1G2  NOTES  TO  THE  ILTAlt.  BOOK  Y. 

and  appears  in  the  Iliad  (ui  all  occasions  as  the  modest,  faithful, 
and  brave  attendant  of  Diomede.  Above  (iv.  405),  we  have  his 
goodly  vaunt  that  he  had  assisted  in  the  taking  of  that  Thebes 
which  the  previous  generation  had  only  besieged.  At  the  taking 
of  Troy  he  received  as  his  part  of  the  booty,  among  other  spoils, 
the  ancient  image  of  the  three-eyed  Jove,  which  was  afterwards 
consecrated  at  Argos.      See  Dissertations,  p.  21. 

A^ER.  330. — He  the  queen  of  love  did  chase. 

The  designation  of  KvTrpi<s,  or  "  the  Cyprian,"  by  which  Venus  is 
mentioned  three  times  in  this  book  (here  and  422  and  458),  deserves 
particular  notice  as  the  earliest  indication  of  that  Oriental  origin  of 
the  worship  of  Aphrodite,  which  the  historians  (Herod,  i.  105)  and 
archaeologists  of  Greece  (Pans.  i.  14.  6)  were  afterwards  so  forward 
to  acknowledge.  The  celestial  Aphrodite  of  these  passages  was,  be- 
yond all  question,  the  MvXiTra  of  the  Babylonians  (Herod,  i.  199  ; 
Hesychius  on  MrAy^rav;  Miinter,  JReligion  der  BabyJonier,  1827, 
p.  22).  The  early  commercial  intercourse  between  Phoenicia  and 
Greece,  to  which  the  prophet  Ezekiel  alludes  (xsx.  7) — whatever 
nB"''^N  may  mean,  'HAi?,  or  'EAAa's,  or  AtoAets — could  not,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  fraternizing  genius  of  polytheism,  remain  without 
leaving  some  very  manifest  traces  of  Syrian  idolatry  in  the  prin- 
cipal cities  of  the  Greek  coasts ;  and  in  fact  Cyprus  and  Cythera 
stand  out  as  j^lain  stepping-stones,  by  which  we  may  trace  the 
journey  of  the  'A(f)po8iT7]  ovpavia  from  Sidon  to  Athens  (Pans,  tdii 
supra)  and  Corinth,  where  her  votaries  in  the  classical  ages  revelled 
so  wantonly.  At  the  same  time,  the  Greeks  always  kept  up  a 
recognised  distinction  between  the  Phoenician  Venus  and  their  own 
proper  Hellenic  personation  of  the  principle  of  love.  Nay,  Hesiod 
could  show,  by  an  ingenious  myth  {Theoej.  195),  how  the  daughter 
of  Uranus  found  her  principal  seat  of  worship  in  Cyprus,  without 
having  known  the  coast  of  Tyre  and  Sidon  ;  just  in  the  same  proud 
spirit  of  nationality  in  which  it  was  afterwards  attempted  to  be 
shown  that  the  Egyptians  had  derived  their  Isis  from  the  Greek  To, 
not  the  reverse;  nor  is  theie  indeed  the  slightest  historical  autlm- 


BOOK  Y.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  1  G.'} 

rity  for  saying  that  the  Hellenes,  as  a  people,  had  no  original  sym- 
bolism of  the  power  of  procreant  love  in  the  system  of  things, 
independentl}'^  of  what  they  borrowed  from  the  Phoenicians.  As  to 
the  part  which  Venus  plays  in  the  Iliad,  that  appears  to  me  to 
depend  on  no  local  element,  but  simply  on  the  fact  that  the  fasci- 
nation exercised  over  Paris  by  the  charms  of  the  fair  Spartan, 
could,  consistently  with  the  principles  of  polytheistic  piety,  be 
explained  on  no  other  principle  than  that  the  goddess  of  love 
patronizes  all  successful  amorous  passion,  whether  lawful  or  unlaw- 
ful in  its  social  aspects.  With  the  lawfulness  or  unlawfulness  of 
the  intercourse  between  the  sexes,  Jupiter,  the  Fates,  and  the 
Furies  have  to  do,  not  Venus.  No  doubt,  the  legends  of  Adonis 
and  Anchises  equally  prove  the  original  Asiatic  haunts  of  the  god- 
dess ;  but  before  Homer's  time  she  had  been  thoroughly  naturalized 
as  a  European  Greek,  and  the  propriety  of  motives  must  have  made 
her  side  with  the  Trojans,  apart  from  all  local  traditions.  The 
figure  of  Aphrodite  in  the  Iliad,  and  the  character  which  she  ex- 
hibits, is  exactly  what  she  maintained  through  the  many  centuries 
which  followed  Homer,  till  the  overthrow  of  heathenism  in  the  early 
Cliristian  centuries.  As  to  her  moral  influence,  of  course,  we  can- 
not shut  our  eyes  to  the  abuses  in  which  her  worship  culminated  at 
Corinth  and  other  places  (Str.  viii.  379,  on  the  lepoSovXoi  ywatKcs). 
It  was  as  easy  to  quote  Venus  to  give  a  divine  sanction  to  fornication 
as  to  invoke  Bacchus  to  consecrate  drunkenness.  But  there  was 
always  moral  health  enough  in  the  Hellenic  social  atmosphere,  to 
teach  a  well-constituted  man  how  to  worship  the  goddess  of  beauty 
without  making  himself  a  beast,  and  to  revel  in  the  cups  of  Dionysus 
without  falling  into  a  ditch.  In  fact,  a  sound-minded  polytheist 
knew  where  to  strike  the  balance  between  the  claims  of  adverse 
deities,  just  as  we  do  to  make  a  compromise,  when  necessary,  between 
our  stern  principles  and  our  strong  passions.  Under  the  proper 
correction  of  higher  and  generally  acknowledged  principles,  the 
worship  of  the  golden  Aphrodite  upon  the  whole  exercised  a  bene- 
ficial influence  on  the  Greek  mind,  and  tended  to  elevate  and  in- 
tensify amongst  all  classes  that  delight  in  the  beautiful,  graceful. 


1  (U  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 

and  attractive,  which  was  so  notable  a  trait  in  the  Greek  mind.  A 
sensibility  to  beauty,  as  impersonated  in  fair  women,  has  always 
been  a  prominent  characteristic  of  the  strongest  characters,  and  the 
most  richly  endowed  minds;  and  the  Homeric  narrative  (xiv.  153), 
which  makes  even  the  all-wise  Thunderer  be  deceived  by  the  seduc- 
tive power  of  the  girdle  of  Venus,  though  seemingly  undignified, 
carried  no  offence  to  a  pious  polytheist,  and  should  not  be  without  a 
certain  deeper  significancy  to  us.  Of  the  idle  tales  of  the  mytho- 
logists,  as  of  the  perplexing  embranglements  of  Providence,  we  may 

equally  say, 

"  All  tilings  are  right  when  rightly  understood, 
And  when  well  used  all  evil  things  are  good." 

But  there  is  a  class  of  persons  in  the  world  who  will  always  lay 
hold  of  the  knife  by  its  blade  rather  than  by  its  handle ;,  and  these 
deservedly  get  their  hands  cut. 

Ver.  333. — Enyo,  tow7i- destroyer. 

About  Kuyo,  the  female  counterpart  of  Mars,  there  is  very  little 
to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  the  Greeks,  beyond  what  appears  on 
the  face  of  the  Iliad.  She  is  certainly  not  a  mere  poetical  simile, 
but  a  thoroughly  individualized  mythological  personage,  and  as  such 
had  a  statue  along  with  Venus  in  the  temple  of  Mars  at  Athens 
(Paus.  T.  8.  5).  From  her,  or  from  the  etymon  of  her  name,  Mars 
received  his  well-known  surname  of  EnyaVius.  For  the  rest,  see 
Welcker,  (/.  /.  i.  124. 

Ver.  347. — Strong -voiced  Diomede. 

I  decidedly  protest  against  that  prosaic  principle  of  interpreta- 
tion which  would  make  l3oi]  here  mean  anything  else  than  a  simple 
shout,  roar,  or  loud  cry.  Donaldson  (N.  C.  284)  quotes  from  the 
old  lexicographers  and  grammarians,  who  made  it  a  regular  busi- 
ness in  such  matters  to  turn  poetry  into  prose.  Diomede  was 
simply  a  lusty-lunged  hero — a  quality  extremely  useful  whether  on 
the  battle-field  or  the  hustings  ;  and  there  is  nothing  more  to  be 
made  of  it.  and  nothing  less. 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  1G5 

Ver.  370. — Diones  sacred  feet,  Iter  jjiothcr. 

Dione  appears  to  us  a  very  pale  figure  in  the  mythological  gallery 
of  Homer;  and  yet  that  she  was  a  very  important  personage  in  the 
oldest  religion  of  Greece,  before  her  place  was  occupied  by  Here, 
or  other  more  modern  deities,  or  names  of  one  deity,  is  quite  cer- 
tain. Her  appearance  among  the  original  six  Titanesses  of  the 
Greek  speculative  theology  (A poll.  i.  1)  may  indeed  go  for  little; 
but  that  she  was  practically  recognised  as  the  spouse  of  Jupiter  in 
the  Pelasgic  wor,*hip  of  Dodona  is  quite  certain  (Str.  vii.  329, 
Schol.  Od.  Butt.  iii.  01).  We  have  therefore  every  reason  to  con- 
sider her,  with  Welcker  (<j.  I.  i.  353),  as  one  of  the  oldest  forms  of 
Gee,  or  the  Earth,  with  the  designation  of  the  Divine.  As  one  of 
the  most  important  heavenly  personages,  she  appears,  in  the  Delian 
hymn  to  Apollo  (93),  at  the  birth  of  that  god.  Her  position  in 
Homer,  as  the  mother  of  Venus,  is  sufficiently  dignified,  and  was 
no  doubt  practically  recognised  by  the  Greek  mind  ;  though  we, 
through  the  influence  of  more  modern  poets,  are  more  familiar 
with  the  pretty  conceit  that  the  goddess  of  beauty  sprang  originally 
from  the  foam  of  the  sea — a  conceit,  however,  which  has  a  certain 
root  in  the  fact,  that  through  all  Oriental  mythologies  the  goddess 
of  fecundity  has  to  do  with  water  and  moisture,  without  which 
generation  is  impossible. 

Ver.  383. — Not  few  (he  iUs  that  gods  horroiv  from  mortal  men. 

The  note  on  i.  399  endeavoured  to  give  some  explanation  of 
those  remarkable  accounts  of  wars  among  the  gods,  so  common  in 
all  polytheistic  mythologies.  The  present  passage  goes  a  step 
farther,  and  touches  on  the  more  human  topic  of  hostility  between 
gods  and  men,  of  which  a  somewhat  diiFerent  explanation  has  to  be 
given.  It  must  be  observed,  however,  that  the  mortals  who  do 
violence  to  the  gods  on  these  occasions  are  not  common  mortals, 
but  the  sons  either  of  Jove  or  of  Neptune  ;  exactly  as  we  find  in 
the  well-known  notice  of  antediluvian  n'^'S3  (ytyavres)  in  Gen.  vi.  4. 
Nevertheless  they  partake  of  death,  and  must  in  any  view  be  looked 


IGG  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  Y. 

on  as  represeuting  man,  his  aspirations  and  liis  struggles,   much 
more  than  Prometheus,  who  was  in  every  respect  a  god,  co-equal, 
so  far  as  parentage  went,  with  the  supreme  Jove.     What  then  are 
we  to  understand  by  those  sufferings  which  the  immortal  gods  have 
to  endure  at  the  hands  of  mortals  ?     No  doubt  generally  there  is  a 
moral  meaning  in  these  traditions,  directed  against  the  pride  and 
insolence  of  mighty  men,  who,  glorying   either   in  their  physical 
strength,  or  in  their  advanced  intelligence  and  the  progress  of  the 
age,  and  so  forth,  think  that  they  can  defy  the  common  laws  of 
nature,  and  execute  heaven-scaling  schemes  whether  God  will  or 
whether  he  will  not.     Such  vain  imaginations  and  their  results,  are 
typified  for  all  times  in  the  Mosaic  history  of  the  tower  of  Babel,  and 
Horace  clearly  recognised  the  same  moral  in  the  Greek  legends  about 
the  battles  of  the  giants  (Carm.  iii.  4.  42).     So  far,  these  traditions 
spring  out  of  a  perfectly  natural  and  healthy  moral  feeling  ;  but  there 
is  a  class  of  cases  in  which  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the  feeling  which 
inspired  the  legend  was  essentially  unhealthy,  and  founded  on  a  cow^- 
ardly  and  unproductive  superstition.  Pausanias,  than  whom  no  writer 
represents  more  accurately  the  general  tone  of  Hellenic  piety,  in  men- 
tioning the   attempt  that  had  been  made  by  the  Emperor  Nero  to 
cut  through  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth,  and  make  the  Morea  an  island, 
after  instancing  another  futile  attempt  of  the  same  kind  at  Mount 
Mimas,  in  Asia  Minor,  goes  on  to  say  that  such  attempts  can  never 
be  expected  to  succeed  :  oi'tw  ^o-X^ttuv  dvOpomco  to.  ^eia  jSidaaaOai 
(ii.  1.  5) — sn  difficidt  if  is  for  mortal  men  to  do  violence  to  tJiiiKjn 
divinely  ordained.     According   to   this  notion,   the    most  impious 
persons  in  modern  times   are  the   engineers  and  railway-makers, 
who  make  tunnels  and  ignore  the  divinely-instituted  plan  and  for- 
mation of  inequalities  of  surface  on  the  globe.     Now,  that  some 
superstitious  feeling  of  this  kind  was  the  true  inspiration  of  some 
of  the  old  stories  of  struggles  between   men  and  gods — that  is,  in 
modern  language,  between  man  and  nature,  —  seems  to  me  quite 
certain  ;  for  we  find  that  Hercules,  for  instance,  fights  with  the  god 
Achelous  in  one  place,  and  with  the  Lernajan  Hydra  in  another, 
precisely   in   those   pai«ts    of  Greece   where   an   inspection   of  th.e 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  1(57 

ground  shows  distiuctly  that  uo  agricultural  iuiprovouiciit  could 
have  taken  place  without  some  such  violence  done  to  nature  as  is 
symbolized  in  the  legend  (see  Mui-e's  Greece^  ii.  194).  Taking 
this  example  of  Hercules  as  a  great  agricultural  improver  for  our 
guide,  we  may  find  good  reason  to  agree  with  Preller  [Myth.  i. 
p.  69)  and  Nitzsch  {Od.  xi.  305-314),  that  in  the  legend  of  the 
Aloadae  we  have  the  exaggerated  portraits  of  some  heroes  of  early 
civilisation,  whose  hearts  were,  perhaps,  lifted  up  by  their  achieve- 
ments, and  thus  incurred — as  pride  always  does  in  some  shape  or 
other — the  righteous  indignation  of  the  gods.  In  this  case,  as 
Preller  well  observes,  the  hostility  between  these  champions  of 
agricultural  improvement  and  the  god  Ares,  would  only  be  the 
natural  hostility  between  the  arts  of  peace  and  war  ;  and  the  pro- 
bability of  this  view  is  made  stronger  by  the  fact  that  in  the  local 
traditions  of  Ascra  in  Boeotia,  Otus  and  Ephialtes  really  were 
reverenced  as  early  civilizers  of  the  district,  and  were  said  to  have 
introduced  the  worship  of  the  Muses,  long  previous  to  the  well- 
known  influences  which  proceeded  from  Pieria  and  Thrace  (Pans. 
IX.  29,  and  particularly  Miiller,  OrcJiom.  380).  These  observa- 
tions may  satisfy  the  thoughtful  reader  that  whatever  explanation 
of  these  strange  myths  may  seem  the  most  probable,  there  is  at 
least  not  the  slightest  necessity  for  interpolating  into  Greek  mytho- 
logy any  hint  of  that  monstrous  power  of  mortal  men  over  the 
immortal  gods,  which  is  so  prominent  a  characteristic  of  the  sacred 
poems  of  the  Hindus. 

Vjou.  397. —  With  tlieliiiKj  of  livJl  in  coiithat  slrarc  at  PijIiJt^. 

The  wonder-working  strength  of  the  Greek  Samson  could  not  be 
considered  to  have  reached  its  proper  climax  till  he  should  have 
joined  combat  with  the  immortal  gods,  and  to  a  certain  extent  pre- 
vailed in  the  strife.  Hence  the  collision  of  the  son  of  Alcmena 
with  xVpollo,  Poseidon,  and  Pluto,  which  Pindar  sings  and  his 
scholiast  expounds  (O/.  ix.  40-50).  The  details  of  the  expedition 
here  mentioned,  in  which  Hercules  overcame  the  very  god  of  death, 
will  be  found  in  the  scholiast  to  Pindar  and  in  Pausanias  ;  tlie  parti- 


1G8  XOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 

cular  l*ylus,  of  course,  where  so  notable  a  feat  took  place,  was  a 
matter  of  dispute  (ii.  591),  but  the  good  citizens  of  Elis  had  surely 
a  very  strong  claim  to  advance  in  favour  of  their  city,  if,  as  Pausa- 
nias  reports  (vi.  25.  3),  they  were  the  only  Hellenic  people  who 
paid  regular  worship  to  the  grim  king  of  tlie  infernal  realm.  Of 
course  there  were  intermeddlers  with  the  Homeric  text,  who,  to 
display  their  ingenuity,  or  because  they  could  not  construe  Iv 
j/e/cuecrcrt  (ia\(i)v  as  I  have  done  in  the  text,  were  forced  to  change 
riuAw  into  YivXy^  i.e.,  nj  rwv  I'eKpQv;  but,  not  to  mention  the  vio- 
lence thus  done  to  popular  tradition,  the  Homeric  use  imperatively 
requires  that  we  speak  of  the  gates  of  hell  in  the  plural,  as  in  ix. 
312,  not  the  singular.  This  is  my  view  ;  but  Drb.  and  D.,  in  their 
version,  have  the  high  authority  of  Aristarchus  and  Spitzner  on 
which  to  repose.     Bekker  prints  with  a  capital. 

Ver.  401. — Then  Pceon  dropt  into  his  ivound  the  juice. 

In  this  line,  and  ver.  899  below,  we  have  a  remarkable  instance 
of  the  theology  of  Homer  not  being  followed  up  by  the  usage  of  the 
Greek  people.  Generally  speaking,  Herodotus  was  right  when  (ii. 
53)  he  named  Homer  and  Hesiod  as  the  grand  authorities  in  all 
matters  of  Greek  theology  ;  but  with  regard  to  Pason  both  Homer 
and  Hesiod  (schol.  Od.  iv.  232)  agree  in  laying  down  a  distinction 
between  this  god  and  Phoebus  Apollo,  which  the  future  religious 
doctrine  of  Greece  did  not  recognise  ;  and  accordingly  we  find  that 
a  mark  was  placed  at  ver.  899  by  the  Alexandrian  critics,  on 
account  of  the  singularity  of  making  any  other  god  than  Apollo  the 
heavenly  physician ; — for  that  Apollo  was  the  great  source  of  all 
healing  power,  though  the  practice  was  delegated  by  him  to  his  son 
^sculapius,  cannot  be  doubted.  He  was  the  grand  larpofJLavTi';, 
physician  and  soothsayer  in  one,  of  the  Greek  religion  (^^^sehyl. 
E'um.  62) ;  he  is  often  invoked  by  the  name  of  Paeon  (Hom.  Hi/)n. 
ApoU.  272  ;  Eurip.  Ion,  124)  ;  and  Tratdi',  when  it  signifies  a  hymn, 
has  a  special  application  to  Apollo  (i.  473).  It  is  quite  certain, 
however,  that  in  Homer  there  is  no  trace  of  Paeon  being  identical 
with    Apollo.      Wl\at   the   proper  force    of  the  word    was  is   diffi- 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  TO  THJ:  ILIAD.  109 

cult  to  say.  Ilatwi'tos  afterwards  became  au  adjective,  signifying 
healing  or  curative  generally  (^schyl.  Again.  98)  ;  but  whether  this 
was  the  original  meaning  of  the  phrase  we  cannot  say  with  cer- 
tainty. It  seems,  however,  not  improbable  that  the  word  IlaKOF 
or  Haidv  was  originally  only  an  epithet  given  to  Apollo  as  aKe- 
o-ios  or  the  healer  (Pans.  vi.  24.  5),  and  that  in  some  local  wor- 
ship this  epithet  might  have  assumed  the  prominence  of  a  separate 
personality. 

Ver.  447. — Latona. 

"  Why,"  asks  Gladstone  (ii.  147),  "has  this  pale  and  colourless 
figure  such  very  high  honours  so  jealously  asserted  for  her?"  and 
then  he  goes  on  to  explain  w^hy,  by  a  theory  in  harmony  with  his 
peculiar  way  of  interpreting  Greek  mythology.  The  fact  is,  there 
is  nothing  strange  about  the  matter,  and  nothing  that  requires  to 
be  explained  by  a  reference  to  "  the  strong  element  of  traditive 
theology  in  Homer,"  or  any  other  profound  cause.  If  she  is  com- 
paratively pale  and  colourless  among  the  bright  array  of  the  Olym- 
pian personages,  it  is  for  the  same  reason  that  the  Virgin  Mary  has 
so  little  prominence  given  to  her  in  the  gospel  history  ;  simply  be- 
cause the  progeny  and  not  the  parent  is  the  grand  object  of  interest. 
If,  notwithstanding  this  pale  and  colourless  personality,  she  never- 
theless has  certain  high  honours  assigned  to  her,  it  is  just  for  the 
same  reason  that  smiilar  honours  of  a  much  higher  kind  are  paid  to 
the  Virgin  Mary  in  the  worship  of  the  Roman  Church.  It  seemed 
incongruous  to  worship  the  son  and  daughter,  and  to  let  the  mother 
go  altogether  without  notice.  As  to  the  significance  of  this  mater- 
nity, I  think  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  Welcker  and 
other  German  mythologists  are  right  in  considering  that  ArjTio  is 
connected  with  XavOdvio,  Xt^Otj,  Jafeo,  and  means  what  is  secret  and 
hidden,  ohscure  and  dark ;  and  it  is  consistent  with  the  genius  of 
all  mythological  genealogies,  which  proceed  not  on  the  notion  of 
metaphysical  causation,  but  on  that  of  succession  as  observed  by 
the  senses,  to  make  sun  and  moon,  that  is,  Apollo  and  Artemis, 
born  of  Darkness,  just  as  Cosmos  comes  out  of  Chaos.     With  this 


170  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 

significance   the    epithet    KuavoTreTrAos,    HaUe-vcdcd,    giveu    to    the 
goddess  in  Hesiod  {Tlieoij.  406),  completely  corresponds. 

Ver.  bm.—YcUoto  Geres. 

^rjjxriTrjp  is,  as  Grladstone  remarks,  "  a  feeble  luminary  in  the 
Homeric  heavens."  That  she  should  be  so,  in  the  Iliad  at  least, 
is  nothing  strange,  as  in  an  essentially  warlike  poem  there  was  no 
part  to  play  for  the  j^rinciple  of  agricultural  productiveness.  In 
the  Odyssey,  no  doubt,  she  might  have  been  brought  into  promin- 
ence by  Eumseus,  the  divine  swineherd,  had  the  poet  so  wished  ;  but 
Homer  had  too  much  sense  to  be  ever  dragging  gods  and  goddesses 
into  his  canvas,  just  to  show  that  he  knew  something  about  them. 
As  to  the  meaning  of  the  word,  there  is  a  concurrent  tradition 
of  the  ancients  that  At}  (a  root  which  occurs  separately  only  in 
Hesych.)  is  an  old  Doric  form  of  Vrj^  the  Earth  (^Esch.  Prom.  580, 
scbol. ;  and  Theoc.  iv.  17,  schoL),  an  etymology  which  gives  a  most 
natural  and  kindly  significance — mother  Earthy— to  the  power  which 
causes  flowers  to  blossom  and  corn  to  ripen.  This  doctrine  of  the 
ancients  has  been  strongly  defended  by  Welcker  {(j.  1.  i.  o86),  but 
as  strongly  controverted  by  Ahrens  (Dud.  Dor.  p.  80),  a  high  autho- 
rity on  such  matters,  and  Schoemann  on  the  passage  of  ^-Eschylus 
just  quoted.     I  do  not  feel  my  mind  quite  ripe  for  decision. 

Vek.  509. — The  golden-swarded  ApoUo. 

Though  we  are  not  accustomed  to  the  idea  of  Apollo  wearing  a 
sword,  yet  the  usage  of  Homer  does  not  warrant  us  in  translating 
Xpv<rd(op  otherwise  than  golden-sworded.  That  the  word  aop  signi- 
fies «  sivord  in  Homer,  is  manifest  from  many  passages,  and  especially 
from  Od.  VIII.  403-6,  where  it  is  explained  by  ^t</)os.  The  ensigns 
and  badges  of  the  gods  in  early  times  were  by  no  means  always 
the  same  as  those  by  which  they  were  uniformly  distinguished  in 
the  pakny  days  of  Grecian  art  (see  Miiller's  Dorians,  ii.  8,  17). 
We  have  even  an  ey^^etos  'At^poSm;,  a  spear-learing  Feni^s,  familiar 
to  the  ear  of  every  Cyprian,  but  recovered  by  us  only  with  dusty 
diligence  out  of  a  moth-eaten  old  lexicographer  (Hesych.  in  roee)  ; 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  1  71 

iuid  I  caunot  help  agreeing  with  Passow,  when  he  says,  that  with 
warlike  nations  the  sword,  generally,  like  the  spear,  was  an  emblem 
of  authority  and  power,  and  might  be  given  to  Apollo  or  to  Jove 
(Str.  XIV.  600)  as  well  as  to  the  god  of  war.  I  do  not,  however, 
deny  that  in  the  popular  imagination,  when  the  epithet  xpvcrd- 
opos  was  applied  to  Demeter,  for  instance,  as  in  Hom.  Hym.  Dem.  4, 
it  might  be  interpreted,  hearing  a  golden  sicMe,  while,  when  applied 
to  Artemis  (Herod,  viii.  77),  it  might  seem  to  mean,  hearing  a 
golden  hovj  and  arroio,  the  more  so  that  the  word  aop  ctymologically 
signified  not  the  sword,  but  the  belt  from  which  the  sword  was 
suspended,  and  might  therefore  be  taken  for  any  instrument  sus- 
pended from  a  belt  (compare  English  hanger).  Newman,  however, 
is  not  justified  by  such  considerations  in  translating  the  word 
"golden-belted"  in  this  passage,  first,  because  there  is  a  confusion 
thus  introduced  between  aop  and  (wa-rrjpj  and  again,  because, 
according  to  Homeric  usage,  aop  means  a  srvord,  and  only  a  sword. 

Ver.  543. — WJiose  sire  in  wcll-huiU  Pherce  dtvelt. 

There  is  no  dispute  now  among  the  learned  that  the  Homeric 
Pherce  is  the  modern  Kalaraata,  a  town  at  the  head  of  the  large 
bay  which  divides  the  southernmost  district  of  Messene  from  the 
same  district  of  Sparta.  The  ancient  town,  according  to  the  ac- 
counts of  Str.  (viir.  361),  and  Paus.  (iv.  31.  1),  was  much  nearer 
the  sea  than  the  modern  one ;  but  the  gradual  encroachment  of 
the  land  upon  the  sea  in  certain  flat  situations  at  the  mouths  of 
rivers,  a  fact  well  known  to  the  ancients  (Paus.  viii.  24.  5),  has 
been  set  forth  by  Lyell  and  other  geologists  with  the  certainty  of  a 
law.  Kalamata  retained  its  importance  through  the  middle  ages  ; 
it  was  the  birthplace  and  favourite  residence  of  William  Ville- 
hardouin  ii.,  and  played  a  prominent  part  also  in  the  military 
movements  of  later  times.  In  the  Odyssey  (iii.  488),  it  is  the 
resting  place  of  Telemachus,  in  his  journey  from  Pylus  to  Sparta. 
The  discrepancies  between  the  topographic  possibilities  of  the  dis- 
tance between  this  place  and  Sparta,  and  the  description  of  the 
journey  of  Telemachus  in  the  Odyssey,  do  not  concern  us  here ; 


172  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 

but  those  who  do  not  worship  the  mere  letter  of  Homer  will  be 
glad  to  see  them  cleverly  handled  by  Clark  in  his  Peloponnesus 
(ch.  xiii.),  with  whose  view  of  the  matter  I  entirely  concm-.  That 
Homer  is  always  a  picturesque  topographer  there  can  be  no  doubt; 
but  that  he  knew,  or  cared  to  know,  every  minute  detail  of  the 
comprehensive  geography  which  his  works  embrace,  as  well  as  Sir 
Walter  Scott  knew  the  braes  of  Tweeddale,  or  Robert  Burns  the 
banks  of  the  Doon,  I  will  believe  when  it  is  proved  that  Moses 
was  a  great  astronomer,  and  not  sooner. 

Yer.  612. — Fcesus. 

The  Uaicros  of  this  passage  is  by  Strabo  held  to  be  a  mere  varia- 
tion of  'ATTuto-os  (ii.  828).  This  word  is  an  excellent  instance  of 
the  power  of  the  accent  in  the  living  speech  of  the  ancient  Greeks, 
which  our  British  scholars  so  unscientifically  pervert ;  for  there 
cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt,  with  those  who  know  the  history 
of  language  as  a  living  organism,  not  as  a  dead  tradition  in  a 
book,  that  this  variation  was  caused  principally  by  the  force  of 
the  oxytone  accentuation. 

Ver.  628. — Hercules'  son,  Tlepolemus. 

This  hero,  to  whom  we  were  introduced  above  (ii.  653),  and 
whose  story  is  there  sufficiently  told,  represents  to  us  the  Doric 
element  which  peopled  Rhodes,  and  the  part  taken  by  the  Doric 
isles  of  the  ^gean  in  the  great  Trojan  war.  The  minute  points 
in  his  history,  with  their  legendary  variations,  as  they  may  be  seen 
in  Clinton  (i.  79)  and  Midler  [Dor.  i.  128),  need  not  detain  us. 
He  has  received  a  noble  consecration  from  the  genius  of  Pindar 
[01.  VII.) 

Ver.  693. — The  green-spread  oak. 

We  are  apt  to  translate  ^Tjyo?  hccch,  but  Pans.  (viii.  12.  1) 
says  distinctly  that  it  was  a  kind  of  oak.  Nothing  is  more  difficult, 
in  many  cases,  than  to  fix  down  to  a  particular  species  the  loose 
descriptions  of  objects  of  natural  history  which  we  inherit  from  the 


BOOK  V.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  173 

ancients ;  but  when  supplemented  by  the  testimony  of  intelligout 
modern  travellers,  these  accounts  often  supply  a  species  of  evidence 
which,  to  a  reasonable  mind,  is  quite  satisfactory.  On  the  ^•'jyos, 
Curtius  has  the  following  remarks  (Pelop.  i.  p.  157)  : — '"  Among 
the  forest-trees  of  Arcadia,  which  owe  their  sturdy  growth  to  the 
many  mountain  springs,  the  oaks  are  the  more  remarkable,  that  the 
traditions  of  the  Arcadians  connect  them  with  the  first  beginnings 
of  civilisation.  Among  the  many  species  of  oak  indigenous  to  the 
south  of  Europe,  there  are  some  so  free  from  acridness  as  to  be 
useful  for  human  food,  either  raw  or  roasted.  It  is  extremely 
difficult  to  decide  the  exact  species  which  was  called  cjirjyos  by  the 
Greeks,  and  honoured  as  a  bread-tree  by  the  Pelasgi,  not  only  on 
account  of  the  great  similarity  of  the  different  kinds,  but  also  be- 
cause, according  to  the  express  testimony  of  Theophrastus,  the 
names  of  the  various  species  of  oaks  were  used  very  loosely. 
According  to  Link  the  <^7jyos  is  the  quercus  cegilops,  the  most 
beautiful  forest-tree  of  the  Morea,  of  which  the  tooth-like  leaves  run 
out  into  a  long  point  like  a  brush,  and  are  renewed  every  year. 
Link's  view  is  confirmed  by  the  local  tradition  of  the  language  ;  for 
the  modern  Greek  name  Velanidia  is  manifestly  a  diminutive  from 
(SdXavos,  the  name  given  by  the  ancients  to  the  fruit  of  the  <^^yos. 
The  tree  is  of  great  importance  to  the  modern  Greeks,  on  account 
of  the  extensive  use  of  the  cups  of  the  flower,  under  the  name  of 
Valonea,  for  tanning,  one  of  the  most  important  exports  of  Greece." 
This  evidence  should  certainly  be  held  sufficient  to  establish  a  pre- 
sumption that  (fi7]y6s  in  Homer  means  oak,  till  some  indications  to 
the  contrary  shall  appear. 

Ver.  749. — The  gates  of  heaven,  kept  by  the  Hours. 

The  Hours  or  Seasons  are  secondary  or  ministering  goddesses, 
naturally  belonging  to  the  train  of  Jove,  as  the  god  of  the  skies, 
and  for  this  reason  represented  by  Phidias  on  the  pedestal  of  the 
statue  of  the  Olympian  at  Elis  (Pans.  y.  11.  2).  In  the  present 
passage  (and  viii.  393)  they  are  assigned  to  Here  as  the  female 
Jove.     Their  significance  is  obvious  enough.     Originally  they  seem 


174  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  V. 

to  have  been  only  two  in  number,  and  under  the  appropriate  names 
of  Karpo  and  Tuallo  (fruit  and  flower)  were  worshipped  at 
Athens  and  elsewhere  (Pans.  ix.  35,  iii.  18.  7 ;  Poll.  thi.  106). 
Though  they  were  originally  essentially  physical,  yet  the  moralizing 
and  theologizing  poets  of  Greece  very  soon  introduced  a  moral  ele- 
ment into  their  nature ;  and  accordingly  in  Hesiod  (TJieog.  901) 
they  appear  as  daughters  of  Jupiter  and  Themis,  with  the  ethical 
designations  of  Eunomia,  Dike,  and  Irene.  This  decided  moral 
personality  stands  in  instructive  contrast  to  their  purely  physical 
character  in  the  Iliad,  and  their  utter  want  of  all  personality  in  the 
Odyssey ;  for  in  this  poem,  as  Welcker  justly  remarks,  there  is  no 
passage  in  which  they  appear  with  even  the  dignity  of  a  personifi- 
cation ;  the  Aios  wpa6  in  xxiv.  344  being  no  more  distinct  from 
Jove  than  the  Atos  fxoLpa  is  in  some  parts  of  the  Iliad.  Both  the 
ixoipai  and  the  copai,  therefore,  may  stand  as  most  interesting 
examples  of  the  gradual  development  of  ideas  to  which  all  popular 
religions  are,  by  the  law  of  growth,  necessarily  subject.  The  well- 
marked  Fate  of  later  writers  is  to  be  found  in  Homer  just  as  little 
as  the  Hours  of  Hesiod  are  to  be  found  in  the  Odyssey. 

Ver.  754. — Sitting  on  many-rid'jed  Olympus'  tnjmiost  jicah  alone. 

In  a  spiritual  religion  like  Christianity  the  word  Heaven  will 
always  be  kept  as  vague  as  possible  ;  in  an  imaginative  and  sen- 
suous religion,  like  the  Greek,  it  must  be  localized.  A  Zeus  with 
human  shape  and  members  must  sit  on  a  terrestrial  seat ;  and  the 
only  seat  proper  for  him  is  the  highest  mountain  in  the  country  to 
which  he  belongs.  Now,  as  the  original  seat  of  the  Greeks,  when 
they  rested  from  their  long  journey  by  the  Caspian  and  Euxine 
westward,  was  the  plains  of  Macedonia  and  Thessaly,  the  necessary 
locality  for  the  throne  of  the  Supreme  God  and  the  council  of  the 
Immortals  was  Olympus,  the  extreme  east  end  of  the  long  Cam- 
bunian  range  separating  Thessaly  from  Macedonia,  to  the  north  of 
the  Peneios  and  the  defile  of  Tempe.  This  mountain  rises  from 
the  coast  of  the  ^gean  to  the  height  of  9000  feet.  Its  lower  part 
is  well  Avoodcd,  but  its  top  presents  a  long  ridge,  terminating  in  a 


P.OOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  175 

peak.  The  "  wide  welkin,"  or  heaven,  and  "  the  long  or  steep 
Olympus,"  are  distinctly  contrasted  in  infra^  877,  and  xv.  192-3. 
The  conception  of  the  Greek  Olympus  as  being,  with  its  serene  top. 
above  the  clouds  and  storms  of  this  lower  world,  is  beautifully  given 
in  Mr.  Worsley's  version  of  Od.  vi.  41  : — 

"  There,  as  they  tell,  the  gods  securely  bidi; 
In  regions  where  the  rough  winds  never  blow, 
Unvisited  by  mist  or  rain  or  snow, 
Veiled  in  a  volant  ether,  ample,  clear, 
Swept  by  the  silver  light's  perpetn.al  flow  ; 
Wherein  the  happy  gods  from  year  to  year 
C^fuaff  pleasure." 

In  modern  times  this  mighty  mountain  has  afforded  a  secure  retreat 
to  the  wild  Greek  patriots,  who,  under  the  name  of  Klephts,  carried 
on  an  unremitting  warfare  against  the  Turks. 

'OaOL  KL   S.V  7j(TT€   KXetpTULS  CFTO.   ^7?Xa  ^OVVO., 

"OXot  va  KaTe^r]Te,  drro  rbv  "OXv/ultto 
Kt  oXoi.  va  irpoaKvvrjare  rbv  'AX-^  iracra., 

as  the  ballad  has  it.  On  01ymj)us  my  authority  is  Le  Mont  Olymjie 
et  VAcarnanie,  par  L.  Heuzey  :  Paris,  18(30. 

Ver.  845. — riafo's  viewless  liehn. 

Jack  the  Giant-killer,  if  I  recollect  rightly,  had  a  coat  that  made 
him  invisible,  and  Fortunatus  had  a  cap.  Interesting  that  these 
fancies  of  our  modern  nursery-tales  should  rest  on  such  grave 
authority  as  lies.  Scut.  Ill ;  Plato,  Rep.  x.  G12  b  ;  and  this  pas- 
sage of  Homer ! 


BOOK  VI. 


Ver.  24. — Bom  in  secret  Jove  vjliich  Jaiv  refused  to  own. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  often  illegitimacy  occurs  in  the 
legendary  history  of  old  Greek  heroes.     We  may  thence  conclude 


170  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

that  the  general  tone  of  public  feeling — to  adopt  a  modern  phrase 
— in  those  times,  was  not  pronounced  very  strongly  against  such 
connexions,  any  more  than  it  is  now  in  certain  countries,  and 
among  certain  classes.  That  the  '■^  concuhitus  vagus'''  of  mere 
animal  appetency  has  been  wisely  made  subject  to  the  restraints  of 
marriage  as  they  are  now  observed  in  all  Christian  countries,  no 
philosopher  can  doubt.  But  the  beneficial  nature  of  all  moral  re- 
straints is  admitted  long  before  they  are  practised  ;  and  the  procrea- 
tive  impulses  of  nature  are  so  strong  as  to  have  hitherto  defied  all 
the  wisdom  of  the  wisest,  and  all  the  goodness  of  the  best,  to  make 
them  submit  in  all  cases  to  a  salutary  control.  In  such  cases  as 
we  have  here,  the  nymph  who  haunted  any  wood,  or  green  slope, 
or  river  side,  seems  to  have  usurj)ed  in  the  popular  imagination 
the  place  of  the  real  human  shepherdess — a  metamorphosis  which 
would  readily  happen  when  the  son  was  a  person  of  particularly 
gallant  bearing  and  noble  achievement. 

Ver.  34. — Where  Satnius  rolls  his  flood. 

The  2aTvto6is,  or  Satnius,  as  I  have  shortened  it,  is  a  smaU 
river,  or  rather  mountain-torrent,  in  the  south  part  of  the  Troad, 
which  Strabo  introduces  in  his  description  going  eastward  from  the 
promontory  of  Lectum  to  the  town  of  Assos  (xiii.  605). 

Ver.  39. — A  tamarisk-tree. 

Fraas  makes  the  ixvpUrj  (x.  466,  xxi.  18)  the  Tamarix  Africana, 
but  Lenz  seems  to  make  it  the  articulaia.  Both  quote  Dioscor. 
[3Iat.  Med.  I.  116),  who  says  that  it  grows  in  marshy  places,  pro- 
duces catkins,  and  a  fruit  of  the  nature  of  gall-nuts. 

Ver.  76. — Helenus,  who  scans  each  ominous  hird. 

Helenus,  according  to  the  account  given  us  by  Pausanias  (v.  22), 
was  as  famous  for  wisdom  among  the  Trojans  as  Ulysses  among 
the  Greeks  ;  but  his  wisdom,  at  least  so  far  as  it  is  shown  in  the 
Iliad,  was  of  a  different  description,  being  manifested  principally 
by  his  skill  in  the  sacred  art  of  divination.     The  prominence  of 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  177 

soothsayers  and  diviners  in  ancient  history  and  poetry,  must  have 
struck  even  the  most  superficial  observer  of  national  character- 
istics, and  is  specially  alluded  to  as  a  distinguishing  mark  of  idola- 
trous peoples  by  the  prophet  Isaiah  (ii.  6).  This  class  of  ministers 
of  religion  is  carefully  to  be  distinguished  from  the  Upevs,  or 
priest,  whose  great  function  was  prayer  and  sacrifice,  and  who  was, 
moreover,  generally  confined  in  his  influence  to  some  particular 
locality  where  sacred  tradition  and  hallowed  habit  had  formed  a 
focus  for  the  devout  feelings  of  a  people  towards  some  particular 
god.  On  the  other  hand,  the  //.avris,  or  soothsayer,  as  exercised 
with  the  interpretation  of  signs  whieh  might  occur  anywhere,  was 
confined  to  no  particular  locality,  and  moved  about  with  a  man's 
household,  with  a  royal  suite,  or  with  a  military  expedition,  as  an 
indispensable  adjunct  (Thucyd.  vi.  69  ;  Plut.  Nic.  4).  Though  the 
dignity  of  the  /xavrt?,  therefore,  might  be  less,  yet  his  influence,  ex- 
cept in  the  locality  where  a  priest  presided,  was  greater  ;  exactly  in 
the  same  way  that  the  mendicant  orders  and  travelling  friars  in  the 
middle  ages  acquired  an  influence  among  the  people  superior  to  that 
of  the  resident  clergy.  The  eager  desire  to  pry  into  futurity,  which 
has  always  been  a  disease  of  the  human  mind,  made  the  services  of 
these  persons,  who  were  a  superior  order  of  fortune-tellers,  always 
necessary  ;  and  where,  as  in  Rome,  they  formed  a  college  of  men 
of  high  birth  and  station,  their  craft  of  interpreting  the  divine 
will  by  signs  asserted  itself  not  seldom  in  such  a  way  as  to  control 
the  whole  machinery  of  government  (Liv.  viii.  23).  The  signs  by 
which  they  pretended  to  read  the  divine  will  were  various ;  but 
those  derived  from  the  flight  and  cries  of  birds — which  have  a 
certain  foundation  in  nature — were  so  predominant,  that  a  diviner 
by  birds,  as  in  the  present  passage — oioivottoAos — gave  name  to 
the  whole  class.  Of  their  importance  in  the  Homeric  times, 
various  passages  in  the  Iliad  give  sufficient  indication  (see  par- 
ticularly II.  308  and  xiii.  70).  Nevertheless  their  art,  as  one 
particularly  liable  to  be  abused  by  feeble  or  interested  persons, 
was  nut  allowed  on  all  occasions  to  reign  over  the  consciences  of 
men  without  contradictimi.  of  wliicli  the  famous  sentence  of  Hector 
VOT>.  IV.  M 


178  NOTES  TU  THE  ILIAD.  JSUOK  VI. 

in  XII.  243  is  a  good  examjjk!  ;  and  so  early  as  the  days  of  Pericles 
(Plut.  Per.  6)  we  find  philosophy,  in  the  person  of  Auaxagoras, 
coming  in  to  explain  the  physical  cause  (airta)  of  these  portents, 
which  could  not  fail  to  weaken  considerably  the  faith  of  the  in- 
telligent in  the  reAos,  or  final  cause  of  their  appearance  on  which 
the  whole  science  of  augury  was  based.  The  whole  art  of  augury, 
as  practised  among  the  ancients,  is  one  of  the  most  instructive  ex- 
amples on  record,  of  how  far  a  morbid  curiosity,  acting  along  with 
uuinstructed  intellect,  may  go  in  elevating  a  pretentious  nothing 
into  the  dignity  of  a  grave  something,  which  shall  not  only  help 
the  fool  to  look  wise,  but  direct  the  destinies  of  states,  make  the 
wise  man  to  forego  his  wisdom,  and  the  strong  man  to  lose  the 
might  of  his  right  hand. 

A^EE.  77. — u^ncas  brave  and  Hector  hohl. 

After  Hector,  ^neas  is  the  greatest  and  most  prominent  of  the 
Trojan  champions  in  the  Iliad  ;  for  Sarpedon,  who  performs  such 
great  feats  in  Book  xii.,  is  a  Lycian.  The  Ach^ans,  according  to 
Philostratus  (Her.  13),  used  to  say  that  Hector  was  the  hand,  and 
..^neas  the  mind  of  the  Trojans,  and  the  patriotic  rage  of  the  one 
did  not  achieve  greater  deeds  than  the  sober  valour  of  the  other. 
In  the  Iliad,  he  is  singled  out  as  a  worthy  antagonist  of  Achilles, 
when  that  hero  reappears  in  the  battle,  glowing  with  the  fire  of  a 
terrible  vengeance  (xx.  175),  but  here,  as  on  other  occasions,  with 
all  his  valour,  he  seems  to  make  rather  a  poor  figure,  as  the  popular 
tradition  forced  the  poet  to  save  his  life  on  each  occasion  by  the 
special  intervention  of  a  god.  For  this  tradition  taught,  that,  when 
the  gods  had  satiated  their  wrath  on  old  Priam  and  his  house, 
^neas,  the  great-grandson  of  Tros,  and  nearly  related  to  the  royal 
family,  should  be  spared  to  continue  the  race  of  Dardans  in  the 
region  of  Mount  Ida,  and  give  a  local  consecration  to  the  memory 
of  the  ill-fated  Priam  (Dionysius  realizes  this  in  the  person  of 
Ascanius,  R.  A.,  i.  47).  This  tradition  Homer  knew,  and  has 
specially  mentioned  (xx.  307),  from  which  passage  Mr.  Gladstone, 
with  certain  ancients  (D.  H..  E.  A.  t.  53)  concludes,    -in  all  pro- 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THP:  ILIAD.  17 'J 

bability  the  poet  must  have  seen  the  grandchildren  of  ^5l]neas 
reigning  over  the  land  of  Priam,"  of  which  small  remnant  of  the  mag- 
nificent old  kingdom  of  the  Troad,  there  is  indeed  distinct  histori- 
cal evidence  of  the  most  unquestioned  kind  (Herod,  v.  12'2).  How 
from  this  relic  of  the  royal  line  of  Priam,  divinely  preserved  in 
one  of  the  defiles  of  Mount  Ida,  the  magnificent  legend  grew,  out 
of  which  Virgil  constructed  his  great  poem,  has  been  very  ingeni- 
ously explained  by  Miiller  (Dor.  ii.  2,  -i).  Nothing,  indeed,  was 
more  natural  than  that,  when  the  great  stream  of  emigration  went 
from  Greece  to  the  south  of  Italy,  traditions  should  in  various  ways 
arise  connecting  the  most  notable  colonies  of  Magna  Gra'cia  with 
the  most  renowned  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war  ;  and  when  Rome  rose 
in  importance  above  all  the  Italian  cities  south  of  the  Apennines, 
she  would  naturally  claim  her  part  in  the  heroic  and  divine  ancestry 
which  belonged  to  the  whole  region  over  which  her  influence  ex- 
tended. The  faculty  of  lying,  ingeniously  employed  in  the  service 
of  real  or  imagined  national  afiinities,  in  conscious  and  unconscious 
bosoms,  is  always  waiting  ready  for  such  reputable  uses.  Homer 
knew  nothing  of  an  ^neas  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  yEgean  sea, 
because  the  piety  of  his  poem  allowed  him  to  rest  content  with  the 
simple  fact  that  a  remnant  of  the  royal  house  of  Priam  still  survived 
in  one  of  their  native  glens ;  but  whosoever,  with  Riickert  (Troja, 
249),  finds  the  legend  of  ^neas  too  deeply  seated  in  the  faith  of 
the  early  Romans  to  have  arisen  without  some  real  historical 
foundation,  will  believe  nothing  that  is  absurd  or  contrary  to 
probability. 

Ver.  90. — Thence  let  her  fake  fJte  richest  rohe. 

The  TreTrAos.  It  is  extremely  difficult  to  attempt  giving  anything 
like  exactness  to  our  conception  of  this  word,  as  the  ancients 
themselves  (Poll.  vii.  50)  felt  that  there  was  a  great  vagueness  in 
its  use,  and  that  it  seemed  to  signify  sometimes  a  garment  like  a 
shawl,  thrown  over  the  other  garments,  and  sometimes  what  we  call 
a  gown,  drawn  closely  over  the  body.  These  points,  however,  are 
certain — (1.)  that  Chapman  was  wrong  in  translating  it  ''  a  veil," 


18U  NOTES  To  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

for  though  it  might  be  employed  to  cover  the  head  and  face,  and  is 
often  so  represented  in  the  monuments  (see  Smith,  Diet.  Ant., 
Pephwi),  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  whether  in  the 
shape  of  an  'ivSvfxa  or  an  e7rt/3Ar^/xa,  it  was  large  enough  to  cover 
the  whole  body.  For  (2.)  that  it  was  not  a  small  garment  of  any 
kind,  whether  veil  or  light  scarf,  is  obvious  from  its  most  general 
use  in  those  passages  of  Plomer  where  it  signifies  large  cloths, 
(juilts,  or  coverlets  for  covering  chariots  (v.  194)  or  couches 
(Od.  VII.  96).  (3.)  It  is  quite  certain  also  that  in  many  passages 
of  the  Attic  dramatists,  it  is  used  for  that  part  of  female  dress 
which  when  torn  displays  the  breast  (Soph.  Track.  920).  (4.)  In 
Homer,  it  is  exclusively  a  female  garment,  and  in  the  famous  pas- 
sage (ver.  834),  the  TreTrAos  of  Athene  seems  expressly  contrasted 
with  the  \nm'  of  Jove.  (5.)  With  regard  to  this  TrejrAos  of 
Athene,  as  it  was  known  in  later  times,  it  is  expressly  testified  by 
Pollux  {iihi  supra),  that  it  was  an  upper  garment  thrown  over  the 
under  garment  or  gown,  which  was  closely  adapted  to  the  body. 
(6.)  The  female  figures  in  full  dress,  exhibited  in  works  of  ancient 
art,  entirely  justify  Mr.  Yates  (Smith's  Did.  A^it.)  in  stating  that 
the  large  outer  garment  worn  by  these  figures  is  the  TreTrAos,  while 
the  x'''''wv,  tunic,  or  gown,  distinctly  appears  below.  ]?ut  (7.)  in 
reference  to  the  oldest  Homeric  vestment,  Eustathius  may  be  quite 
right  when,  in  his  commentary  on  Iliad  v.  734,  and  elsewhere,  he 
maintains  decidedly  that  the  Homeric  peplus  is  a  yvvaiKdo<i 
^LTOiv  6V  ovK  iveSvovTo  dAA'  irrepovrn'To ;  and  such  a  primitive  old 
Hellenic  ttctt Aos  =  ;(tTwi'  was  in  all  likelihood  that  which  we  see 
represented  in  bronzes  from  Herculaneum  {Mus.  Borh.  ii.  4.  6 ; 
Bekker's  Char.  Excurs.  i.  sc.  11). 

So  much  for  the  significance  of  the  word.  With  regard  to  the 
action,  the  dressing  of  the  gods,  and  the  presentation  of  splendid 
robes  to  adorn  their  images,  was  a  natural  consequence  of  having 
gods  made  after  tlie  likeness  of  men  ;  and  accordingly  we  find 
tliat  among  the  various  ava^Tj/nara,  or  votive  gifts  to  the  gods, 
splendidly  embroidered  robes  were  not  the  least  notable  (Eurip. 
Ion,  320).     In  some  states  it  was  the  jiractice  at  sacred  festivals 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  181 

to  present  publicly  an  embroidered  robe  to  the  principal  goddess, 
as  to  Here  every  five  years  at  Olympia  (Pans.  v.  IG.  2).  But  the 
most  celebrated  presentation  of  this  kind  was  that  made  to  the 
patron  goddess  of  Athens,  at  the  feast  of  the  Panathenoea,  where 
the  saffron  TreTrAos  was  beautifully  embroidered  with  the  battle  of 
the  giants,  in  which  Pallas  performed  a  similar  part  to  that  which 
belongs  to  St.  Michael  in  Christian  legend.  This  peplus  was 
affixed  to  a  pole  or  mast,  and  drawn  through  the  streets  of  Athens 
in  a  vehicle,  shaped  like  a  ship,  till  it  found  its  proper  resting-place 
in  the  temple  of  Athena  Polias  in  the  Acropolis  (see  Smith,  Diet. 
Ant.^  Do7iaria).  We  have  only  to  add,  that  on  ver.  92,  Strabo 
(xiii.  601)  remarks  properly,  that  according  to  the  plain  meaning 
of  language,  the  statue  of  Pallas  here  alluded  to  must,  like  many 
of  the  Egyptian  statues,  have  been  in  a  sitting  posture,  though  in 
later  times  the  erect  attitude  for  this  goddess  had  become  universal. 

Ver.  109. 

A  yod,  tliey  said,  luith  aid  to  Tna/  liath  .stooped  J rom  t/ie  sky. 

Under  a  polytheistic  system  of  religion  the  idea  must  always  be 
present  to  the  mind  of  pious  believers  that  whenever  any  extra- 
ordinary display  of  power  is  made  by  a  being  in  human  shape,  that 
being  may  perhaps  be  not  a  mere  mortal,  but  a  god  in  the  disguise 
of  a  man.  Of  this  tendency  the  well-known  scene  at  Lystra  and 
Derbe,  Acts  xiv.  11,  is  a  familiar  example ;  and  an  exactly  similar* 
scene  is  painted  by  Euripides  in  Iphuj.  Taur.  267. 

Ver  127. 
For  unly  sires  of  hopeless  sons  approach  to  horrow  fear  from  me. 

The  thoughtful  reader  will  not  fail  to  note  here  and  in  other 
places  (vii.  199)  that  a  certain  boastfulness  and  triumphant  self- 
assertion  is  one  of  the  moral  characteristics  of  the  Homeric  heroes, 
a  peculiarity  which  was  noted  as  a  gross  fault  in  Homer's  concep- 
tion of  the  heroic  character  by  De  la  Motte  [Discours  sur  Homerr, 
p.  31);  but,  in  truth,  though  it  may  not  be  altogether  free  from 
blame,  when  measurcil  by  tlie  highest  ."Standard,  it  is  a  far  mnr(> 


182  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAI>.  BOOK  VI. 

truthful,  noble,  and  healthy  thing  than  the  artificial  modesty  and 
mock  humility  so  much  practised  in  these  times.  It  is  certain 
indeed  that  the  value  of  humility  has  been  not  a  little  overrated  by 
Christian  moralists,  so  as  seriously  to  interfere  with  the  foundation 
of  all  excellence,  truth,  and  nature.  In  the  Psalms  of  David,  with 
abundance  of  himiiliation  on  all  proper  occasions,  we  have  at  the 
same  time  a  tone  of  honest  self-estimate  and  healthy  self-esteem, 
which  stands  strongly  contrasted  with  the  exaggerated  expressions 
of  humility  traditional  among  certain  modern  Christians ;  with 
regard  to  which  spurious  virtue  one  may  say  well,  with  an  ingenious 
and  learned  Scotsman,^  "  that  the  humility  which  shuts  its  eyes 
when  it  ought  to  use  them  is  stupid,  and  the  humility  which  would 
constrain  others  to  shut  theirs  is  insolent."  We  must  not  suppose, 
however,  that  arrogance  and  vain  self- exaltation  was  viewed  as  a 
harmless  frame  of  mind  even  by  the  Greeks  ;  on  the  contrary,  v(3pi<; 
is  constantly  characterized  by  them  as  not  only  a  great  sin,  but  as 
the  mother  of  all  great  sins.  In  this  doctrine  the  oldest  ante- 
Homeric  legends,  as  that  of  Capaneus,  the  language  of  our  hero  in 
this  place  (ver.  129-141),  the  gravest  tragic  wisdom  of  the  later 
Greeks,  and  the  sober  conclusions  of  Socrates  and  Aristotle,  con- 
spicuously agree. 

Vek.  130. — i'or  tven  Dri/as'  kirujly  sun,  Lycurgus. 

This  strange  passage  from  the  sacred  legend  of  Dionysus  was 
always  a  great  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  those  ancients  who, 
like  pious  old  Plutarch,  exercised  themselves  in  the  laudable  endea- 
vour to  reconcile  the  crude  allegories  of  an  elemental  theology  with 
the  sober  conclusions  of  ripe  reason  (Dionys.  Arch.  Bom.  ii.  19). 
And,  indeed,  like  the  legend  of  Briareus  in  Book  i.,  it  has  more 
affinity  with  the  exaggerated  myths  of  the  Hindus  and  ancient 
Egyptians  (Plut.  7s.  and  Os.  25)  than  with  the  natural  and  grace- 
ful mythology  of  the  Greeks.  Dionysus  altogether,  when  we  look 
beyond  his  superficial  aspect  as  a  mere  wine-god,  shows  many  fea- 

'  Dr.  ]'>allant3iic,   First  Three   Chapters  of  Genesis,   Sanscrit   ami  Englisli, 

1,(111(1(111  :    ISt'.O. 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  183 

tures  of  Asiatic  wildness  and  fierceness  which  do  not  harmonize 
well  with  the  rhythmical  and  well-ordered  worship  of  the  Hellenic 
Apollo.  Some  of  the  most  ancient  usages  and  ceremonies  practised 
in  his  worship,  specially  in  Boeotia  (Pint.  Qua;st.  Grcvc.  p.  299 
Xyl. ;  Ant.  Lib.  10— MtvmSts;  Pans.  ix.  8.  1;  Plut.  Them.  13; 
Clem.  Al.  Prof.  ch.  3),  speak  plainly  of  an  age  in  the  religious  his- 
tory of  Greece  when  the  sacred  rage  of  infuriated  devotees  found 
a  horrid  gratification  in  the  shedding  of  human  blood ;  and  though 
these  savage  traits  are  found  occasionally  in  the  worship  of  gods 
the  most  completely  Hellenic,  as  in  the  well-known  case  of  Lyc?ean 
Jove  in  Arcadia,  nevertheless,  in  the  present  case,  along  with  other 
significant  circumstances,  they  may  be  taken  as  indications  that  the 
worship  of  Dionysus  was  originally  foreign  to  the  Hellenic  religion, 
and  was  introduced  at  an  early  period  from  abroad,  in  the  same 
manner  that  Cybele  was  brought  from  Phrygia  to  Rome  at  the  time 
of  the  Punic  wars.  Two  things  are  certain — (1.)  that  Herodotus 
not  only  classes  Dionysus  with  such  inferior  deities  or  demigods  as 
Hercules  and  Pan,  but  says  distinctly  that  these  three  were  the 
youngest  of  the  gods  (ii.  145)  ;  (2.)  that  he  never  obtained  a  place 
among  the  proper  Olympian  gods  of  Glreece,  and  is  mentioned  in 
Homer  only  twice  in  the  Odyssey  (xi.  325  and  xxiv.  74)  in  the 
most  incidental  way,  and  in  the  Iliad  oidy  in  the  present  remark- 
able passage.  Here  also  it  is  to  be  noted  that  he  does  not  figure 
on  Greek,  but  on  Thracian  ground ;  and  that  the  native  seat  of  his 
worship  was  Thrace  and  Macedonia  is  a  fact  than  which  there  is 
nothing  better  attested  in  the  whole  range  of  the  most  ancient  Hel- 
lenic tradition  (Herod,  v.  7;  Arrian,  AJer.  iv.  8;  Plut.  Alex.  2; 
Str.  X.  471).  Naxos,  indeed,  the  great  seat  of  Dionysiac  worship, 
and  whose  coins  were  stamped  with  the  face  of  the  wine-god,  was 
originally  a  Thracian  colony  (Diod.  Sic.  v.  50).  If,  with  these 
distinct  indications  of  an  originally  non-Hellenic  character  in  the 
worship  of  this  god,  we  venture  to  interpret  the  myth  of  Lycurgus 
and  Dionysus  in  the  plain  historic  sense  of  a  fact  in  the  history  of 
religion,  wc  shall  surely  not  make  ourselves  liable  to  the  reproach  of 
a  meagre  imagination  and  a  prosaic  Euhomerism.     That  the  strug- 


184  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

gles  of  rival  religious  form  a  natural  theme  for  mythological  fiction 
in  a  mythological  age  cannot  be  denied,  and  is  recognised  by  the 
interpreters  of  the  Puranas  in  the  most  express  terms  (Wilson, 
Vishnu  Purana^  p.  61) ;  and  in  the  particular  case  of  Dionysus  it 
is  not  merely  in  this  legend  of  the  king  of  Thrace,  but  in  the  story 
of  Orpheus,  belonging  to  the   same  region,   and  in  the  Boeotian 
legend  of  Pentheus,  that  we  seem  to  discover  distinctly  the  traces 
of  a  great  religious  struggle  and  conflict  caused  by  the  intrusion  of 
the  wild  Oriental  worship  of  the  wine-god  into  regions  pre-occupied 
by  devotion  to  more  mild  and  sober  deities.     As  to  the  real  nature  of 
the  god  who  from  such  doubtful  beginnings  rose  afterwards  to  share 
with  Apollo  and  Demeter  the  highest  honours  of  Hellenic  piety,  the 
prominence  given  to  the  plialhis  in  the  representative  imagery  of 
his  worship  leaves  no  room  to  doubt  that  the  generative  and  pro- 
creant  power  of  nature  in  its  masculine  function  is  the  main  idea 
represented  by  Dionysus,  of  which  all-pervading  and  all-powerful 
principle  wine  of  course  is  only  an  external  and  popular  symbol. 
Why  the  wine-god,  when  suffering  a  momentary  defeat  from  the 
Thracian  monarch,  retreats  into  the  sea  and  is  saved  by  Thetis,  it 
is  perhaps  over  curious  to  inquire ;  but  there  is  no  inconsistency  in 
supposing,  with  Welcker,  Gerhard,  Mackay  [Progress  of  the  Intel- 
lect, I.  256),  and  others,  that  in  his  original  character  this  god  repre- 
sented the  principle  of  humidity  generally,  as  that  without  which 
no  growth  and  no  life  is  possible.     I  need  scarcely  add  that  Uschold 
and  other  G  erman  trauscendentalists  find  it  easy  work  to  trans- 
mute the  king  of  Thrace  into  an  epithet  of  the  sun.     According  to 
these  theorists  there  is  no  such  thing  as  even  the  smallest  historical 
nucleus  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  mass  of  old  Greek  religious  and 
heroic  tradition.     Not  only  Lycurgus  and  Pentheus  and  Perseus, 
but  Achilles  and  Diomede,  and  the  king  of  men  himself,  are  merely 
epithets  of  old  Pelasgic  or  ante-Pelasgic  gods,  degraded  into  heroes 
with  a  human  history  by  the  ignorance   and  prejudice  of  more 
recent  intrusive  races.     What  particle  of  truth  these  fancies  con- 
tain has  been  already  indicated   {Dissertations,  p.   67).     Bunsen 
[Bihelwerl',  v.  p.  17)  laments  that   the  mythical  mania  raging  in 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  ■  185 

Germany  for  two  generations  like  a  pestilence,  has  driven  many 
ingenious  and  learned  men  to  within  a  few  degrees  of  absolute 
madness. 

Ver.  152-210. — Ephyre^  Sisyphus,  and  Bellerophon. 

Ephyre  is  the  old  name  of  Corinth,  and  Sisyphus  is  the  great 
local  hero  of  that  city,  so  early  distinguished  by  maritime  enter- 
prise, commercial  wealth,  and  Phoenician  connexions  (Curt.  Pel. 
ii.  518  and  590).  Whether  his  name  has  anything  to  do  with 
cro(/)os,  as  naturally  occurred  to  the  ancients,  w^ere  rash  to  assert ; 
but  certainly  he  stands  forward  in  old  tradition  as  one  of  the  most 
prominent  types  of  that  practical  wisdom,  far-reaching  foresight, 
and  cunning,  which  the  Greeks  so  much  admired.  The  fables 
about  him  accordingly  are  wild  enough,  going  even  so  far,  according 
to  Eustathius,  as  to  give  him  the  credit  of  fettering  the  king  of 
terrors,  and  causing  a  temporary  cessation  of  the  work  of  death 
upon  the  earth  ;^  but  these  marvellous  exaggerations  need  not 
hinder  us  from  accepting  the  historical  significance  of  his  name  in 
the  words  of  Professor  Curtius,  as  follows  : — "  Among  the  mixed 
population  of  Corinth,  a  royal  house  of  ^-Eolian  princes  occurs. 
The  founder  of  it,  Sisyphus,  the  father  of  Porphyrion,  the  sea- 
purple  man,  and  also  the  founder  of  the  worship  of  Melicertes,  is 
distinguished  for  cunning,  love  of  gain,  and  wicked  wiles ;  his 
character  is  identical  with  that  of  Palamedes,  a  type  of  the  wander- 
ing, sharp-witted  race  of  merchant-sailors,  inhabitants  of  the  coast, 
by  whom  the  simple  agriculturists  of  the  inland  districts  were  so 
often  overreached."  I  am  willing  to  go  a  step  further,  and  say, 
that,  though  I  could  not  sit  down  and  give  a  serious  history  of  the 
royal  house  of  Sisyphus  in  Corinth,  I  think  it  quite  as  probable 
that  he  was  a  real  king  representing  a  class,  as  a  mere  type  chosen 
to  symbolize  a  class.  With  regard  to  Bellerophon,  his  blameless 
grandson,  his  story  is  told  in  Homer  with  a  modest  simplicity,  that 
lof>ks  much  more  b'ke  reality  than  any  of  that  solar  or  Neptunian 

'  .See  this  part   of  the  legend  (if  Sis\]ilius  ailniiralily  worked  out   hy  Sir  E, 
Bulwer  Lytton  in  his  Lost  Tales  of  Miktus. 


ISC)  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

syuiboliHiu  so  dear  to  the  fancy-hunters  and  idea-mongers  of  Gler- 
many.  The  well-known  legend  of  the  winged  horse,  on  which  the 
Corinthian  hero  was  mounted,  and  in  the  pride  of  aerial  horseman- 
ship attempted  to  assail  Olympus  (Pind.  Isfh.  vii.  64),  is  manifestly 
the  invention  of  a  later  age ;  as,  indeed,  all  myths  which  can  be 
historically  traced  through  different  stages  exhibit  a  process  of 
growth  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  natural  to  the 
marvellous.  Surely  from  this  simplicity  of  form  in  many  of  the 
most  ancient  mythological  traditions,  the  Grermans  might  have 
drawn  an  inference  not  at  all  favourable  to  their  pet  notion  of 
recognising  in  all  mythological  personalities  only  religious  symbols 
and  types.  Had  IJellerophon  been  originally,  as  Uschold  in  his 
wild  way  will  have  it,  a  predicate  of  the  sun,  afterwards  the  sun 
himself,  and  then  the  same  god  degraded  into  a  solar  hero,  or.  had 
he  been  "  a  type  of  a  very  ancient  Lycian  worship  of  light,"  as 
Preller  conceives  (ii.  54),  it  would  appear  natural  that  the  further 
we  go  back  into  his  story,  the  more  clearly  the  marvellous  traces 
should  appear  of  his  winged  horse,  airy  travels,  and  other  signs  of 
kinship  with  Phcjebus  Apollo.  But  the  reverse  is  the  case.  Homer 
tells  a  plain  human  story  with  very  little  exaggeration,  and  the 
celestial  embellishment  comes  afterwards.  As  for  the  Greeks 
themselves,  they  believed  in  l^ellerophon  precisely  as  we  believe  in 
St.  Columba  and  divers  saints  of  the  middle  ages,  while  to  the 
Corinthians  he  was  as  much  a  reality  as  Theseus  to  the  Athenians, 
and  ^sculapius  to  the  good  people  of  Tricca,  before  their  skilful 
mortal  leech  became  a  skill-imparting  immortal  god.  In  the 
Craneion,  or  public  gardens  of  that  voluptuous  city,  the  grandson 
of  Sisyphus  had  a  shrine  where  he  was  worshipped  as  a  demigod 
(Paus.  II.  2.  4).  On  the  coins  of  that  city  also  his  winged  horse 
constantly  appears  ;  his  exploits  were  painted  on  the  vestibule  of 
the  temple  of  Delphi  (Eurip.  /o»,  204),  and  in  many  works  of  art; 
and  now  the  remarkable  connexion  between  Corinth  and  Lyeia  in 
the  person  of  this  hero,  which  Homer  describes,  has  received  an 
enduring  testimony  from  the  Xanthian  marbles  brought  from  Lycia 
by  the  late  Sir  Charles  Fellowcs,  and  now  exhibited  in  a  special 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  187 

chamber  of  the  British  Museum.  On  these  marbles  the  form  of 
the  dread  Chimera  is  clearly  seen,  a  mythological  portent  which  is 
most  naturally  referred  to  the  volcanic  character  of  the  country 
(Spratt  and  Forbes'  Travels  in  Lycia,  p.  159,  and  other  authorities 
m  ProUer,  ii.  58),  though  here  also  the  perverse  ingenuity  of  some 
mythological  expositors  has  not  been  slow  to  seek  for  other  and  less 
obvious  explanations  (P.  Knight,  Symbol.  127  ;  Forchhanimer,  Hell. 
241).  As  for  the  Solymi,  that  a  historical  reality  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  their  contest  with  Bellerophon  is  clearly  indicated  by 
Herodotus  in  a  familiar  passage  (i.  173).  The  Solymi  were  the 
original  inhabitants  of  the  plain,  whom  the  intrusive  Lycians,  said 
to  be  of  Cretan  origin,  drove  back  into  the  mountains.  The  third 
enemy  with  whom  Bellerophon  had  to  contend  was  the  Amazons, 
whom  Uschold  as  usual  transmutes,  by  mythological  jugglery,  into 
an  epithet  of  the  moon-goddess,  but  the  historical  germ  of  whose 
fabulous  history  has  been  clearly  pointed  out  by  Welcker  (Anhang 
zur  Trilogie),  and  acknowledged  by  Gerhard  (3Iyth.  865).  There 
are  a  great  number  of  accredited  testimonies  with  regard  to  certain 
states  in  which  the  women,  by  law  of  succession  and  otherwise, 
asserted  an  allowed  superiority.  Aristotle  makes  distinct  mention 
of  these  yvvaiKOKpaTovfX€voi  [Pol.  II.  9) ;  Plutarch  testifies  the 
same  with  regard  to  the  Celts,  De  Virtute  Mul.  p.  246,  Xyl.)  Poly- 
bius  speaks  indubitably  with  regard  to  the  Locri  Epizephyrii 
(xii.  5),  and  Herodotus  of  the  Issedones  (iv.  26).  Diodorus  men- 
tions some  usages  of  the  same  kind  that  prevailed  in  Egypt  (i.  27), 
and  Tacitus  (Germ.  45)  is  not  a  little  scandalized  when  he  has  to 
record,  with  regard  to  one  of  the  German  tribes,  the  Sitones,  that 
Femina  dominatur.  But  these  analogies  need  scarcely  be  cited 
now,  when  the  explorations  of  recent  African  travellers  have  made 
the  panoplied  figures  of  the  Dahomey  Amazons  familiar  to  every 
taster  of  the  current  literature  of  the  hour. 

Had  the  ancient  Spartans,  instead  of  dwelling  next  door  to  the 
Athenians,  been  a  people  living  on  the  borders  of  the  Black  Sea, 
;it  the  roots  of  Caucasus,  the  gymnastic  exercises  practised  by  their 
women  would  have  furnished  material  enough  for  the  growth  of  a 


188  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

legion  of  Amazonian  fables.  The  proper  country  of  the  Amazons 
lies  on  the  coast  of  the  Black  Sea  (Str.  xi.  503  ;  Hamilton,  Asia 
Minor,  i.  283  ;  Ap.  Rhod.  ir.  979),  and  if  they  are  mentioned  as 
being  found  in  Africa  and  elsewhere,  this  is  no  confirmation  of 
Uschold's  wild  notion  that  they  merely  represent  the  wanderings 
of  the  moon ;  but  the  name  of  Amazons,  having  once  gained  cur- 
rency, would  be  transferred  in  mythological  language  to  all  countries 
where,  in  apparel,  warlike  dances,  or  otherwise,  the  female  seemed 
to  present  herself  with  some  part  of  that  bellicose  aspect  which 
naturally  belongs  to  the  male. 

These  remarks,  intended  generally  to  vindicate  the  historical 
reality  of  the  Amazons,  though  certainly  not  to  advocate  the  accept- 
ance of  all  their  alleged  achievements  with  a  literal  faith,  as  Grillies 
(ch.  i.)  following  Arrian  (vii.  18)  seems  to  have  done,  do  not,  of 
course,  preclude,  but  rather  invite,  any  special  explanation  of  so 
remarkable  a  phenomenon  proceeding  on  a  historical  basis.  Of 
these,  by  far  the  best  is  that  which  is  largely  set  forth  in  one  of 
the  best  books  which  we  owe  to  the  profound  research  and  compre- 
hensive speculation  of  the  Germans,  viz.,  Duncker's  Geschichte  des 
Alterthums  (i.  p.  232).  This  writer  finds  the  origin  of  the  Amazons 
in  the  worship  of  the  war-goddess  at  Comona  in  Cappadocia,  so 
well  described  by  Strabo,  himself  a  Cappadocian  (xii.  535  and  557). 
The  servants  of  this  goddess  would  naturally  be  of  the  female  sex, 
and  of  their  worship  the  war- dance,  with  appropriate  costume,  would 
be  a  characteristic  element.  Accordingly  we  find  that  the  Amazons, 
when  in  their  progi'ess  westward  they  came  to  Ephesus,  worshipped 
a  goddess,  whom  the  Greeks  identified  with  their  Artemis  (Paus. 
VII.  2.  4),  and  that  the  principal  part  of  the  worship  consisted  of  a 
Pyrrhic  dance,  described  by  Callimachus  (Hym.  Dian.  237).  The 
strange  apparition  of  these  warlike  priestesses,  at  various  places 
where  their  religion  might  be  carried,  would  be  germ  enough  for 
the  invention  of  all  those  fabulous  expeditions,  in  which  Hercules, 
Theseus,  and  old  Priam  (iii.  189)  took  so  distinguished  a  part. 
So  much  for  the  great  points  of  this  beautiful  legend  of  BcUerophon. 
One  or  two  minor  things  remain  to  bo  noted.     Vov.  ir»9  has  always 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  189 

attracted  attention,  as  being  the  only  one  in  Homer  where  allu- 
sion is  made  to  writing  and  written  correspondence.  But  there 
cannot  be  a  doubt  that  the  words  used  are  too  vague  to  authorize 
any  conclusion  with  regard  to  the  use  of  writing  in  the  poet's  time  ; 
for  neither  does  cr-J^/za  mean  ypafifia^  nor  does  ypa.<f)0}  in  such  a  loose 
connexion  necessarily  mean  writing  (vii.  187).  In  ver.  174,  the 
reader  will  note  the  frank  usage  of  ancient  hospitality,  the  most 
sacred  virtue  in  the  ancient  code  of  morals,  whereby  entertainment 
is  given  to  the  stranger  for  nine  days  before  his  name  is  asked  (so 
in  the  Gudrun  twelve  days).  Matters  are  now  reversed.  We  must 
have  the  name  and  certification  first,  and  not  till  then  a  warm  recep- 
tion and  an  open  board.  In  ver.  200,  the  latter  days  of  this 
brilliant  hero  are  described  with  a  simple  truthfulness  to  which  the 
ambitious  melodramatic  finale  of  the  legend  as  afterwards  embel- 
lished, forms  a  striking  contrast.  The  lives  of  not  a  few  remarkable 
characters,  which,  after  being  spent  in  the  excitement  of  great 
and  brilliant  achievement,  end,  by  a  sort  of  collapse,  in  moody 
indifference  and  lonely  melancholy,  present  a  fine  parallel  (see  par- 
ticularly Plutarch's  Li/Sander^  2).  Of  course,  in  the  language  of 
ancient  polytheistic  piety,  a  man  who  becomes  the  prey  of  melan 
choly,  and  finds  no  joy  in  his  existence,  is  said  to  be  "  hated  of  all 
the  gods."  The  beautiful  phrase,  oi'  '^v/xnv  KareSwi',  has  been 
imitated  by  Spenser — 

"  He  could  not  rest,  hut  did  his  stout  heart  eat, 
And  waste  his  inward  gall  vjith  deep  dispiyht." 

F.  Q.  I.  c.  2. 

In  V.  201,  the  "  Aleian  plain,"  whether  it  has  anything  to  do 
with  the  root  aA,  signifying  to  wander^  or  with  the  aA  in  ^ KO-qvi] 
aAea,  signifying  hot  or  hurning,  was  well  known  to  the  ancients  as 
a  real  Cilician  plain  (Herod,  vi.  95  ;  Str.  xiv.  676).  In  ver.  205, 
the  death  of  the  hero's  daughter  by  the  arrow  of  the  wrathful 
Artemis  is  to  be  explained  of  the  sudden  death  of  a  young  and  beau- 
tiful person,  which,  not  being  in  the  usual  course  of  nature,  was 
attributed  to  the  wrath  of  that  goddess,  to  whom  all  female  deaths 
of  which  no  cause  was  obvious,  were  wont  to  be  attributed.     In 


100  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

the  case  of  a  male,  the  sudden  death  was  attributed  to  Apollo 
(see  XXIV.  758;  Od.  iii.  279;  xv.  409).  Notice  further,  in  this 
beautiful  episode,  the  peculiarly  tender  tie  of  hospitality  established 
among  the  fierce  old  Hellenic  warriors  (ver.  215),  and  the  custom  of 
exchanging  garments,  familiar  to  the  readers  of  the  Old  Testament 
(1  Sam.  xviii.  4),  and  King  Arthur  (i.  c.  81),  and  Spenser  {F.  Q. 
I.  9,  19).  So  also  there  is  an  exchange  of  gifts  and  good  feeling 
in  the  most  chivalrous  fashion  between  Ajax  and  Hector  (vii.  299). 

Ver.  234. — Kronus'  son  in  his  wits  did  Glaucus  fine. 

The  Greeks  had  always  a  shrewd  notion  of  the  value  of  money ; 
and  here  the  minstrel  shows  his  essential  genus  as  a  poet  of  the 
people  by  expressing  sympathy  rather  with  the  utilitai'iau  specta- 
tor than  with  the  chivalrous  actors  in  the  scene.  A  modern  poet 
would  have  done  quite  otherwise.  In  ver.  236  we  observe  that 
money  value  is  not  yet  known  ;  men  and  women  are  estimated 
only  as  being  worth  so  many  beeves  (Od.  i.  43}.  Every  school- 
boy knows  that  the  Latin  word  pecunia  comes  from  p''cus ;  and  it 
is  plain  from  the  series  of  quotations  in  Jamieson  (Fe),  that  our 
own  word/ee  can  be  traced  back  to  the  German  word  Vieh — cattle. 
The  wealth  of  the  patriarch  Job  (i.  3),  and  of  rich  Hebrews  gene- 
rally (1  Sam.  XXV.  2  ;  compare  Gesen.  in  ™p.o),  is  estimated  in  the 
same  way.  As  a  significant  mythological  expression  of  this  change 
in  the  phraseology  of  value,  we  may  take  the  god  Hermes  (xiv.  491), 
who  was  first  an  Arcadian  god  of  sheep,  and  afterwards  the  pro- 
tector of  merchants  and  the  patron  of  thieves  and  stockjobbers. 

Ver.  242. — Hence,  to  the  palace  straight  he  hied. 

The  minute  details  of  the  Greek  house  belong  to  the  Odyssey, 
where  they  form  the  most  important  part  of  the  scenery.  For  our 
purpose,  it  will  be  sufficient  to  notice  the  matter  as  briefly  as  the 
incidental  allusions  in  the  Iliad  demand.  Between  the  Greek  dwell- 
ing in  days  of  Athenian  refinement,  and  the  same  house  in  the 
age  of  Homeric  simplicity,  a  marked  difi"erence  will  naturally  be 
expected.     Of  the  earliest  form  of  the  Greek  house,  the  old  Doric 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  191 

temple — an  oblong  parallelogram — preserved  in  some  respects  a 
permanent  type.  The  essential  part  of  the  building  was  the 
fxkyapov,  or  great  hall,  corresponding  to  our  dining-room,  and  hold- 
ing exactly  the  same  relation  to  the  whole  structure  that  the  nave 
of  a  cathedi-al  does  to  the  subordinate  parts.  This  fxeyapov  appears 
everywhere  in  the  Odyssey,  as,  for  all  social  and  public  purposes, 
substantially  the  house  ;  the  other  parts  are  for  private  and  special 
uses.  No  trace,  I  agree  with  Hayman,  is  to  be  found  in  either 
poem,  of  a  division  of  this  great  public  room  into  two  great  rooms 
— "  a  liberty-hall  for  the  men,  and  a  prison  for  the  women," — 
according  to  the  arrangement  of  later  times.  A  special  dvSpwv 
and  yvvaiKun'iTi? — separate  public  rooms  for  men  and  Avomen — 
would  have  been  inconsistent  equally  with  the  simplicity  of  the 
Homeric  life  and  the  manners  of  the  heroic  age.  Neither  do  we 
find  in  Homer  any  trace  of  the  double  avAvj,  or  ojjen  court,  both 
within  the  precincts  of  the  house,  which  so  prominently  appear 
in  later  times.  The  Greek  avXj  of  later  times  was  an  admirable 
contrivance  both  for  securing  good  ventilation,  and  for  always  pro- 
viding a  due  supply  of  shade  or  sunshine,  according  to  the  sea- 
son, which  the  Bavarian  architects,  who  built  great  part  of  modern 
Athens,  would  have  done  well  to  imitate.  But  of  this  internal  avXij, 
so  distinctly  mentioned  in  Plut.  De  gen.  Soc.  32,  and  other  familiar 
places  of  the  later  classics,  there  is  no  vestige  in  Homer.  On  the 
contrary,  his  aiX-i^  is  outside  the  house  proper,  and  plainly  nothing 
more  than  that  quadi-angular  enclosure  in  front  of  the  dwelling- 
place  which  is  so  natural  an  appendage  to  a  farm-house.  The 
places  that  mention  the  evepK^^s  avXtj,  or  well-fenced  court-yard 
in  the  front  of  the  house,  are  quite  distinct  (Odyssey  xxii.  449, 
xviii.  101,  XIV.  5,  with  which  the  passage  in  the  Iliad,  ix.  472-6, 
where  Phoenix  describes  his  escape  from  his  father's  house,  accu- 
rately corresponds).  In  the  tent  of  Achilles,  the  ai\y]  is  a/x<^t  his 
tent  (xxiv.  459),  which  means  /«  front,  and  to  a  certain  breadth 
on  either  side.  In  the  midst  of  this  avAry  there  was  an  altar  to 
Zevs  €pK€tos,  so  called  from  the  epKo<;,  fence  or  wall  with  which  the 
court  was  surrounded.      This  sacred   site  of  the  family  altar  was 


192  NOTES  TO  THE  I F,I AD.  BOOK  VI. 

preserved  in  ancient  times,  when  the  avXi]  was  transferred  into 
the  interior,  as  we  see  in  Plato  (Rep.  i.  328).  In  this  open  court 
old  Priam  performs  his  sacrifice  to  Jove  (xxiv.  304) ;  and  in  the 
same  manner  Nestor  describes  Peleus  as  performing  the  rites  of 
family  piety  in  Thessaly  (xi.  774).  Within  the  avA^  in  front  of 
the  house,  or  it  may  have  been  also  all  round  the  avX-q,  were  cer- 
tain long  galleries,  vestibules,  corridors,  or  lobbies,  corresponding 
to  the  Trpovao?  in  the  Greek  temples,  and  the  peculiar  vestibule 
in  Ely  and  other  English  cathedrals.  These  were  called  aWovaai, 
gloiving,  or  shining,  because,  as  being  in  the  front  of  the  whole 
building,  and  opening  to  the  court,  they  were  full  of  light.  The 
modern  Greeks  use  this  word  for  any  hall  or  saloon ;  but  in  Homer 
it  is  either  a  place  of  assembly  or  sort  of  public  open  parlour  (xx. 
11),  or  it  is  turned  into  a  sleeping-place  for  strangers  who  are  to 
leave  the  house  with  sunrise  (Of?,  iii.  399).  Hence  it  is  fre- 
quently mentioned  on  occasion  of  the  departure  of  guests  ;  and 
in  XXIV.  323,  old  Priam  drives  away  eK  irpoOvpoLo  Kal  aWovcn]'i 
epi8ovirov.  The  epithet  of  echoing,  or  sounding,  here  and  elsewhere 
given  to  it,  naturally  arose  from  the  contrast  between  the  quiet  of 
the  internal  part  of  the  house,  and  the  clatter  that  often  prevailed 
here  ;  for,  in  all  probability,  in  some  of  these  front  corridors  were 
places  for  wains  and  chariots  ;  and  the  Ivwirta  Tra/x^avdwvra  (viii. 
435)  were  the  bright-polished  or  white-washed  walls  of  the  aWova-ax, 
against  which  the  cars  were  leaned  when  the  horses  were  un- 
yoked.  Opposed  to  the  aWova-a  was  the  /x^x^'S  Souov,  or  innermost 
chamher,  farthest  from  the  door — "/o?-  hen,"  as  we  say  in  Scotch 
— where  the  master  and  mistress  of  the  house  had  their  private 
^aAa/xos  or  sleeping-chamber  (ix.  663,  xxiv.  675).  In  these  pas- 
sages the  disposition  of  the  parts  in  the  hut  of  Achilles  is  evidently 
the  same  as  in  the  princely  palace  (Od.  iii.  402).  The  other 
^dXafioL  or  chambers,  of  which  there  might  be  many  or  few  as  the 
family  required,  would  naturally  find  their  place,  either  in  the 
wings  of  the  ixkyapov,  like  the  chapels  of  a  cathedral,  or  perhaps, 
in  large  establishments,  might  form  a  range  of  building  detached 
from  the  main  pile  in  the  avXi],  as   seems  to  be  indicated  in  ver. 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  193 

24S  of  this  passage.  Only  two  ijther  poiiits  seem  worth  luention- 
ing.  There  was  unquestionably  an  upper  storey  sometimes  in  the 
Homeric  house,  or,  if  not  a  whole  storey,  at  least  a  chamber  or 
chambers  in  some  part  of  the  building  to  which  the  ascent  was 
made  by  a  stair.  This  was  called  virepiSov  and  Stv^pes  (Poll.  i.  84). 
A  similar  arrangement  was  used  afterwards  sometimes,  especially 
in  small  houses,  as  appears  from  a  well-known  passage  in  Lysias 
(Gaed.  Erat.  p.  92,  Steph.)  The  vrrepwov  in  the  Iliad  (ii.  514)  and 
Odyssey  (ii.  358),  and  in  the  passage  of  Lysias,  is  manifestly  a 
woman's  chamber.  As  for  the  roofs,  that  they  were  generally  flat 
may  be  presumed  both  from  the  common  practice  in  that  part  of 
the  world,  and  from  special  incidental  notices  (Od.  x.  559,  Plant. 
Mil.  Glor.  II.  2.  1);  but  the  comparison  of  the  attitude  of  the 
wrestlers  in  xxiii.  712  'Poll.  i.  82)  suggests  that  the  dfiei/SovTe^  or 
rafters  of  a  house,  leaning  against  one  another  with  an  acute  angle, 
might  naturally  form  a  sloping  roof.  Of  windows  (^vpiSe?)  there 
is  no  mention  in  Homer.  That  they  were  used  afterwards  is 
certain  (Ar.  Thesmo'ph.  797).  The  materials  of  this  note  I  owe 
principally  to  Pollux,  Bekker's  Char.  Eoccurs.  i.  3,  and  Hayman's 
Odi/ss.  vol.  i.  App.  F,  who  confesses  his  obligations  to  Rumpfs 
well-known  treatises  on  this  subject. 

Ver.  290. — Rirhes  frnin  Hidou  Jiyought. 

Of  all  ancient  non-Hellenic  peoples,  the  Phoenicians  are  that  one 
whose  existence  and  activity  is  most  distinctly  appreciable  both  in 
the  Hiad  and  the  Odyssey.  In  this  latter  poem  they  figure  as 
merchants,  swindlers,  and  kidnappers  (xiv.  288,  xv.  415;  and 
Herod,  i.  1).  In  the  Iliad  they  are  mentioned  more  favoui'ably  as 
skilful  manufacturers,  both  in  woven  tissues,  as  here,  and  in  articles 
of  gold,  silver,  and  copper  (xxiii.  742).  These  metals  they  brought 
home  in  their  ships  from  the  ends  of  the  earth :  copper  from 
Cyprus,  gold  from  Thasus,  silver  from  Andalusia,  and  tin  from 
Cornwall  (Diod.  Sic.  v.  35 ;  Str.  in.  148  ;  P^ust.  in  Dionys.  Perieg. 
517).  Their  woven  tissues  are  specially  noted  in  vai'ious  places  of 
the  Old  Testament  (2  Chron.  ii.  14;   Ezek.  xxvii.) ;  but  whether 

VOL.  IV.  N 


1<)4  ^'OTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

manufactured  by  the  Sidonians  themselves,  or  imported  from  the 
East,  and  merely  dyed  at  Tyre,  may  be  doubted.  The  most  famous 
manufacture  of  Sidou  was  glass  (Pliny,  xxxvi.  26j.  It  is  a 
remarkable  fact  that  Sidon  only,  and  not  Tyre,  is  named  in  Homer, 
as  also  in  the  books  of  Moses  (Gen.  x.  15,  and  xlix.  IB)  ;  but  the 
conclusion  thence  drawn  that  Sidon  is  the  older  city  of  the  two, 
though  probable,  is  by  no  means  certain.  All  we  can  conclude 
from  Homer  is  that  in  the  parts  of  the  ^gean  with  which  he  (or 
his  authorities)  was  acquainted,  Sidonian  ships  were  better  known, 
and  the  cunning  workmanship  of  the  Sidonians  more  famous. 
That  Tyre  was  a  famous  city  before  the  date  usually  assigned  to 
Homer  is  quite  certain  ;  and  the  great  Phoenician  colonies  in  Africa 
and  Spain  always  celebrated  Tyre,  and  not  Sidon,  as  their  founder 
(Str.  XVI.  756).  Of  the  state  of  Phoenicia  generally  in  the  oldest 
Homeric  and  ante-Homeric  times,  there  is  an  admirable  sketch  in 
Duncker  {Ges.  Alt.  i.  p.  299). 

Ver.  299. — Theano,  spouse  of  Antenor. 

On  the  subject  of  celibacy  among  the  ancient  Greek  priests  and 
priestesses,  see  above  on  v.  9 ;  and  to  the  passages  there  quoted 
add  Pans.  ii.  33.  3,  ix.  27.  5;  Hesych.  Havaua ;  Plut.  Num.  9; 
Dionys.  Arch.  ii.  07.  It  is  remarkable  that  the  contrast  between 
the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  which  the  Chaeronean  here  draws 
exists  still  in  the  modern  Christian  churches  of  the  respective 
peoples.  Roman  priests,  as  all  the  world  knows,  practise  celibacy ; 
Greek  priests  marry.  Note  further  that,  according  to  the  most 
natural  interpretation  of  the  word  Wr]Kav  (ver.  300),  the  priestess 
of  Athene  in  Troy  was,  like  the  bishops  in  the  early  Christian 
Church,  elected  by  the  people,  as  was  also  the  case  at  Pallene,  in 
Achaia,  though  the  more  honourable  families  had  always  a  prefer- 
ence (Pans.  VII.  27.  7).  In  many  places  of  Greece  proper,  how- 
ever, the  priesthoods  were  hereditary  (Hermann,  Reh  Alt.  34.  18). 

Ver.  326. — Not  loisehj  (hifJi  (dif/er  su-ai/  tin/  hreast. 
There  is  somethina'  here  certainlv  that  iui<:']it  luive  been  made 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  195 

clearer.  What  the  cause  of  the  xO'^o?  was  we  may  guess,  but  never 
can  know.  The  ancients  appended  their  SittA^  here,  and  Chap- 
man indulges,  after  his  fashion,  in  a  sort  of  paraphrase  altogether 
unjustifiable. 

Ver.  395.— ^eYiOJi's  daughter  fair. 

Of  Andromache  there  is  little  to  tell  beyond  what  is  to  be  found 
in  the  verses  of  the  Iliad  here  and  in  Books  xxii.  437  and  xxiv. 
723.  On  the  taking  of  Troy,  as  most  schoolboys  have  read  in 
Virgil  (JEn.  iii.),  she  fell  into  the  hands  of  Pyrrhus,  the  son  of 
Achilles,  wnth  whom  she  went  to  Epirus,  and  became  the  mother  of 
three  sons.  Afterwards  she  was  joined  in  wedlock  to  Helenus,  her 
first  husband's  brother.  Tradition  brought  her  back  again  to  Troy, 
where  she  was  honoured  with  a  >}/3wov  or  shrine  (Pans.  i.  142). 

Ver.  420. — Oread  nymplis^  J(irp\s  dmighters. 

Those  who  lament  the  want  of  the  element  of  the  pictukesque 
in  classical  poetry  ought  to  remember  that  they  possess  a  rich  com- 
pensation for  it  in  the  mythological  figures  which  peopled  earth, 
sea,  and  sky  to  every  Greek  imagination,  and  which  are  in  fact  the 
sentiment  of  the  picturesque  elevated  into  the  dignity  of  a  person. 
Of  those  gods  that  represent  our  modern  sentimental  and  descrip- 
tive poetry,  the  nymphs  or  maidens,  in  their  various  troops  of  sea 
nymphs,  nymphs  of  the  fountain  and  meadow,  nymphs  of  the  moun- 
tain, the  forest,  and  the  sparry  cave,  are  the  most  typical  examples. 
Whoever  shall  carefully  consider  the  passages  of  the  Odyssey  in 
which  these  graceful  and  delicate  conceptions  of  pious  Hellenic 
fancy  are  made  to  walk  before  us,  can  scarcely  fail  to  see  that  the 
people  who  habitually  cherished  such  pictures,  not  as  a  matter  of 
mere  aesthetic  sentiment,  but  of  genuine  practical  piety,  either  pos- 
sessed some  fine  appreciation  of  natural  scenery,  or  something  per- 
haps higher  and  better.  See  particularly  Od.  vi.  102,  xii.  318, 
XIII.  102,  356,  XVII.  211.  The  beautiful  rural  pictures  which 
these  passages  present  belong  naturally  and  peculiarly  to  the 
Odyssey ;  but  the  conception  of  the  nymphs  was  far  too   deeply 


19G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI.. 

seated  in  the  tenderest  region  of  every  Greek  heart  to  be  absent 
from  the  Iliad,  which,  from  its  preponderant  warlike  character, 
requires  passages  of  pathos  to  be  interwoven  by  way  of  contrast. 
So  here ;  and  again  in  a  pathetic  description,  xxiv.  614.  The 
high  dignity  assigned  by  the  Greek  imagination  to  the  nymphs, 
notwithstanding  their  slight  and  semi-mortal  texture,  is  evident 
from  their  presence  at  the  great  assembly  of  the  gods  in  xx.  8. 
On  the  word  vv/u.<^)/  the  article  in  L.  and  S.  is  full  and  instructive. 

Ver.  442. — Long-traived  Trojan  vomen  fair. 

The  epithet  eAKeo-iVcTrXoi  is  applied  to  the  Trojan  dames  again 
(xxii.  105),  and  forms  no  doubt  a  part  of  that  conception  of  luxury 
and  delicacy  with  which  the  Greeks  viewed  the  Orientals  generally 
as  opposed  to  the  hardy  European  Greeks;  so  much  so,  that  when 
the  Athenians  laid  aside  the  plain  old  Doric  dress,  and  adopted  a 
TToSyjpr]  xtTwra,  they  are  universally  agreed  to  have  done  so  from  an 
Asiatic  infection  (Herod,  v.  88).  Compare  below  on  eAKfxtTcuves 
xiiT.  685.  N.B. — It  is  plain  from  this  passage  that  Ti-tTrAos  means 
a  gown  or  long  robe,  not  a  shawl  or  scarf. 

Ver.  471. — The  father  laughed,  the  mother  smiled. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  verb  yeAaw,  as  contrasted  with 
i)7royeXaco  and  /xeiSiaw,  properly  means  to  laugh,  and  not  to  smile. 
There  can  be  as  little  doubt,  however,  that  there  is  a  vagueness  in 
the  use  of  the  word  which  does  not  belong  to  our  English  "  laugh," 
and  thiit  even  without  the  diminutive  preposition  it  sometimes 
passes  into  the  sense  of  smile,  as  in  ver.  484  immediately  below. 
There  will  therefore  always  be  a  difficulty  in  certain  cases,  whether 
the  one  or  the  other  version  is  the  proper  one.  In  my  trans- 
lation of  ^schylus  {Prom.  Vivct.  ver.  90)  I  gave  reasons  which 
still  appear  satisfactory  to  me  for  translating  the  well-known 
dv/jpiOfJLov  yeXacTju.tt  not  "  many-dimpled  smile,"  but  "  multitudinous 
laughter."  The  present  passage  requires  much  more  delicate  hand- 
ling. For  not  only  have  we  the  verb  yeXdw,  but  the  compound 
eKyeXaw,  which  is  an  intensive ;  and  yet  one  would  think  a  woman 


BOOK  VI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  197 

in  Andromache's  situation  would  not  laugh  on  such  an  occasion,  but 
only  smile.  Cowper,  with  great  faithfulness,  has  given  "  laughed," 
but,  as  if  conscious  of  the  impropriety  just  stated,  he  gives  a  note 
of  the  scholiast,  </)vo-tKov  Tii^a  kol  /xiTpiov  yeXiora.  But  if  the  Eng- 
lish translation  be  wrong,  the  note  of  an  old  scholiast  will  not  mend 
it.  P.  has  "smiled;"  V.,  "  Idchelnd ;"  D.,  like  an  etymologist 
rather  than  a  poet,  instead  of  smoothing  down  the  original,  has  put 
up  its  bristles  more  stoutly  by  the  rendering,  "  hud  aiiflachte." 
The  good  taste  and  sentiment  inherent  in  every  Frenchman  made 
Montbel  follow  Pope,  "  le  pere  sourit,  ainsi  que  cette  tendre  mere," 
where  the  tendre  is  a  peculiarly  French  version  of  TtoTvia  invented 
specially  for  this  passage.  Ch.  has  altogether  evaded  the  difficulty 
by  leaving  the  lady  out  of  the  case,  and  saying  very  stupidly  of  the 
father,  "  laughter  affected  the  great  sire.'"  My  translation  is  an 
attempt  to  hit  the  mean  between  the  two  extremes,  and  embrace 
both  the  meanings  of  yeXday.  That  the  lusty  father  shoukl  laugh, 
and  even  laugh  loudly,  I  have  no  objection  ;  but  that  the  "  tender  " 
mother  in  such  a  situation  should  "  hiugh  loud  out,"  or  laugh  at  all 
in  our  broad  sense  of  the  word,  is  inconceivable.  No  poet  would 
ever  make  such  a  blunder. 

Ver.  489. — Their  fixed  foreivoven  doom. 

On  the  Homeric  fiolpa — -fate  or  destini/ — I  have  seen  no  reason 
to  alter  or  modify  the  very  decided  opinion  which  I  expressed  on 
this  point  in  my  essay  on  "  Homeric  Theology,"  in  the  Classical 
Museum,  vol.  vii.  p.  437.  I  shall  therefore  extract  here  the  whole 
proposition  (ix.)  relating  to  this  point,  with  the  accompanying 
note  : — 

"  Of  an  omnipotent  Fortune,  or  all -controlling  Fate,  as  a  separate 
independent  power,  to  which  gods  and  men  must  equally  yield,  the 
practical  theology  of  Homer  knows  nothing  ;  nevertheless  there  are 
certain  dim  indications  of  an  irreversible  order  of  things — it  is  not 
said  how  arising — to  which  even  the  gods  submit.  This  the  later 
theology  of  the  Greeks  seems  to  have  magnified  into  the  idea  of  a 
separate  independent  divine  power  called  Fate. 


l'J8  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

"  The  coninion  idea,  that  the  Greek  theology  represents  the  godci 
as  subject  to  a  superior  power  called  Fate,  or  the  Fates,  is  derived 
from  the  tragedians,  and  from  later  writers  generally,  certainly  not 
from  Homer.  In  the  Homeric  poems,  Jove  and  the  gods  are  the 
only  prominent  and  all-controlling  actors  in  the  great  drama  of 
existence.  None  of  Homer'd  pious  heroes,  when  narrating  their 
fortunes,  set  forth 

'Fortiiiia  Oninipotens  et  ineluciabile  Fatuiii,' ' 

as  the  great  authors  of  their  bliss  or  bane.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
certain  that  jxotpa  or  atb-a  is  merely  the  lot  or  portion  dealt  out  by 
the  supreme  providence  of  the  gods,  and  that  whatsoever  is  fxopa-ifiov 
or  fated  to  a  man,  is  so  because  it  is  S^ecrc^aroj/,  or  spoken  by  the 
divine  decree.  These  words  are,  in  fact,  identical  (Od.  iv.  561 ; 
X.  473).  Zeus  is  especially  named  as  the  sender  of  a  man's  /j-olpa 
{Od.  XI.  560),  and  in  the  same  style  occurs  Aios  afcra  (//.  xvii. 
321 ;  IX.  608;  Od.  IX.  52),  and  ^eov  fiolpa  {Od.  xi.  291).  And 
these  passages  come  upon  us,  not  only  with  their  own  distinct  evi- 
dence, but  with  the  whole  weight  of  the  general  doctrine  of  the 
overruling  providence  of  Geot  and  Zeus,  which  we  find  under  every 
possible  variety  of  shape  in  almost  every  page  of  the  Homeric 
writings.  There  is  no  such  sentiment  in  Homer  as  that  in  Herodo- 
tus, quoted  by  Niigelsbach, — T^v  ■n-eTrpwixevqv  fxoipav  aSuvara  ecm 
aTTvcfivyeeiv  Kal  ^ew  (Clio.  91),  nor  that  which  -^schylus  puts  into 
the  mouth  of  Prometheus  (v.  516) — 

Oi}kovv  clv  (Kcpvyot  ye  [i.e.  Zei)s)  ttji'  Trtirpiioixeviqv 

and  though  it  be  quite  true  that  the  idea  of  jxoipa,  like  that  of  "At?/ 
and  Ky)p  is  in  some  places  impersonated  (//.  xix.  87  ;  xx.  ll^S  ; 
Od.  vn.  197),  I  can  see  no  proof  that  the  poet  looked  upon  this 
Aura,  the  spinner  of  fatal  threads,  as  any  more  substantial  person 
than  "Arrj ;  much  less  can  I  see  the  slightest  reason  to  exalt  her 
above  those  very  supreme  rulers,  of  whose  functions  she  is  only 
a  cloudy  and  half-developed  incarnation.  I  say  half-developed, 
because    there    is    a    great    and    marked    difierence    in    Homer 

1  Virgil,  J^.ii.  viu.  .",34. 


BOOK  V[.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  190 

between  the  full-grown  gods,  clad  with  all  the  dignity  of  a  person, 
and  such  personages  as  "At?;,  Moi/ja,  and  the  Harpies,  who,  like 
the  Egyptian  frogs  mentioned  by  Diodorus,  if  gods  at  all,  have 
not  yet  acquired  strength  enough  to  shake  themselves  free  from 
the  slime  out  of  which  their  complete  physiognomy  has  to  be 
shaped. 

''  Altogether,  Homer  is  a  poet  of  too  sunny  a  complexion  to  deal 
much  in  the  dark  idea  of  a  remorseless  Fate  ;  and  if,  on  a  sad  occa- 
sion (//.  VI.  487),  Hector  comforts  Andromache  by  saying,  that  no 
one  can  take  away  his  life  virep  aicrav,  and  that  no  one  can  escape 
his  fioLpa,  this  manner  of  speaking  is  not  Turkish  any  more  than  it 
is  Calvinistic  ;  it  is  only  human.  Such  a  thought  occurs  to  all  men 
under  certain  circumstances.  That  no  man  can  escape  death  when 
his  day  is  come  (//.  xii.  326),  is  what  any  man  may  say  as  well  as 
Sarpedon. 

"  But  though  I  cannot  allow  that  anything  like  a  regular  doctrine 
of  Fate  superior  to  Jove  is  taught  by  Homer,  it  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  there  are  expressions  and  situations  in  his  poems  from  which 
the  Hellenic  mind,  if  so  inclined,  might  easily  work  out  such  a 
doctrine  as  the  tragedians  shaped  forth  from  the  idea  of  Ate.  And 
there  is  nothing  more  obvious  than  the  necessity  of  thought  which 
led  the  Greeks  to  work  out  this  idea  of  Fate  to  the  stature  which 
we  find  it  has  attained  in  that  passage  of  Herodotus,  and  in  the 
tragedians.  For  to  the  thoughtful  mind,  in  reference  to  many  things 
that  daily  happen  in  this  world,  the  divine  power  being  first  postu- 
lated as  unbounded,  the  question  will  always  arise, — if  the  Divine 
poioer  coui.D  have  made  the  vMvkl  otherwise,  whi/  did  it  not  do  so  f 
This  question  the  Homeric  men — if  they  had  no  tradition  of  the 
doctrine  of  Moses,  that  the  world  lies  under  a  curse  for  the  sin  of 
the  first  man,  and  if  they  did  not  believe,  as  they  certainly  did  not, 
in  a  Devil — could  only  answer  by  saying,  that  things  are  what  they 
are,  and  as  they  are,  hy  some  inherent  necessity  of  nature,  and  that 
not  even  a  god  could  make  them  otherwise  than  they  are  made. 
That  some  dim  idea  of  this  kind  may  have  hovered  before  Homer's 
mind  is  extremely  probable,  though  he  certainly  has  not  worked  it 


200  NOTES  TO  THE  ILTAD.  BOOK  VI. 

iij)  into  any  system  which  his  reader  can  tangibly  lay  hold  of. 
Homer,  as  the  future  proved,  had  said  enough  to  feed  the  meta- 
physico -imaginative  wit  of  his  countrymen;  and  had  dropt  the 
seed  out  of  which  a  regular  personal  Moipa  or  'AvayK-*^  above  Jove 
might  grow ;  and  if  there  were  theological  sects  iu  ancient  Greece 
inclined  to  wrangle  about  the  comparative  powers  of  Motpa  and 
Zct's,  as  our  theologians  draw  swords  about  liberty  and  neces- 
sity, both  parties,  with  that  ingenuity  of  which  religious  sects  are 
seldom  void,  would  readily  find  in  the  Homeric  bible  texts  suffi- 
ciently pliable  to  their  several  opinions."  ^ 

Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  noted  in  Pausanias  two  passages 
plainly  showing  the  dependent  and  ministerial  character  of  the 
Motpai  in  reference  to  Zevs.  In  the  wall  of  a  portico  beside  the 
temple  of  the  Aeo-Ttotva  in  Arcadia,  that  pious  old  topographer  found 
a  bas-relief  representing  the  Moipai,  with  Zevs  as  Moipayerijs  (viii. 
37.  1),  evidently  the  same  relation  that  subsists  between  the  Muses 
and  Apollo,  with  the  well-known  title  Movcrayerrjs.  And  in  nar- 
rating the  legends  about  the  black  Demeter,  the  same  author  in  the 
same  book  (42.  2),  tells  us  that  on  one  occasion  "  the  Fates  were 
sent  to  Demeter  by  Jupiter,  and  that  she  obeyed  them,'"  just  as 
Iris  and  Hermes  are  ministrant  messengers  of  the  Thunderer  in  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  With  regard  to  these  notices,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  they  both  relate  to  Arcadia,  a  country  where  the 
oldest  religious  notions  were  longest  preserved ;  and  they  are  to 
be  taken  generally  as  expressing   the  ancient  Greek  idea  of  the 

'  "  Nagelsbach,  after  reviewing  the  passages  which  seem  to  speak  for  the  inde- 
l)eiKlent  Junctions  of  the  "Motpa,  with  a  more  serious  and  favourable  eye  than  I 
have  been  able  to  do  in  tlie  text,  concludes  thus:  — '  The  will  which  rules  the 
Olympian  commonwealth  is  not  so  absolute  as  that  every  existing  might  neces- 
sarily retreats  before  it.  For  the  human  mind  is  formed  with  an  irrepressible 
desire  to  give  a  head  to  the  multiform  congregation  of  the  gods,  to  provide  a 
principle  of  unity,  which  shall  hold  together  the  articulated  organism  of  the 
celestial  society  ;  and  tlie  product  of  this  desire  is  the  Moipa,  a  power  made 
supei'ior  to  the  gods ;  another  essay  of  the  human  mind  to  satisfy  its  innate 
loiginff  for  a  monotheistic  view  of  the  vniverse,'  p.  127.  I  cannot  see  that 
Homer  had  anything  so  very  definite  in  view  when  he  talks  of  the  Moipa.  It 
appears  to  me  that  he  never  conceived  of  it  distinctly  as  anything  indcpc  ndcnt 
of  the  will  of  the  gods.'  " 


BOOK  VI.  N0TK8  TO  THE  ILIAD.  201 

MotpaL  as  contrasted  with  what  it  afterwards  became  in  the  hands 
of  the  tragedians  and  kiter  specuUitors.  Quintus  8niyrn?eus,  though 
a  great  imitator  of  Homer,  diifers  from  him  in  nothing  so  much  as 
in  his  distinct  and  unqualified  assertion  of  the  superiority  of  Fate 
or  the  Fates  to  Jove  (ii.  172,  xiii.  560,  xiv.  98). 

Ver.  490. — But  (JO  thuu  ic/'tJi  quiet  heart. 

The  Grreeks  had  a  verj'  decided  notion, — a  notion  Avhich  the 
apostle  Paul  stamped  with  his  apostolic  authority  (Tit.  ii.  5), — that 
the  proper  sphere  of  women  was  in  the  house,  and  that  "  gadding 
abroad,"  or  interfering  in  business,  war,  or  politics,  was  altogether 
out  of  their  orbit.  See  what  Telemachus  says  to  his  mother  (Of/. 
I.  35,  36).  Of  the  exaggeration,  however,  to  which  this  sentiment 
was  pushed  by  the  later  Athenians,  we  find  no  trace  in  Homer ;  he 
never  couples  "  children,  women,  and  slaves"  in  the  same  category 
of  serene  hopeless  contempt  which  so  often  appears  in  Plato. 
Taking  Hellenic  culture,  however,  in  its  whole  sweep,  I  do  not 
think  there  is  a  vestige  of  truth  in  Gladstone's  idea  (Address  to  the 
University  of  Edinburgh,  1865),  that  it  did  anything  for  putting 
women  on  that  honourable  platform  which  they  occupy  in  this 
island  of  gentlemen  and  Christians. 

Ver.  506. — Evev  as  a  horse  in  stall  confined. 

This  famous  simile  of  the  crraTos  i'ttttos,  imitated  by  Virgil  (xi. 
492),  and  Tasso  (ix.  75),  is  in  xv.  263  applied  to  Hector,  cer- 
tainly with  much  more  propriety ;  and  if  the  Homeric  poetry  is  to 
be  judged  by  the  same  severe  rules  that  regulate  the  compositions 
of  a  modern  master,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  poet  cheapens 
the  value  of  his  own  simile,  as  applied  to  Hector,  by  conferring 
its  full  dignity  upon  so  inferior  a  warrior  as  Paris.  Whether  the 
peculiar  circumstances  under  which  the  Homeric  poetry  was  com- 
posed (on  which  see  the  Dissertations)^  do  not  form  a  sufficient 
apology  for  this  oiFence,  the  judicious  reader  will  consider.  The 
iTnr(j)i'  of  ver.  511  has  been  rendered  "  mares"  by  most  English 
translators,  following  Virgil ;  but  this  seems  to  me  to  introduce  a 


202  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VI. 

disturbing  idea  ;  for  liberty,  not  love,  is  the  key-note  of  the  passage  ; 
so  with  N.  I  content  myself  with  the  general  term  "horses,"  which 
may  include  both  genders. 

Ver.  513. 

Far-gJeaming  in  his  burnislied  brass,  like  the  light  that  lords  the  day. 

It  is  evident  from  xix.  338,  that  'i]XeKTwp  is  an  epithet  of  the 
sun,  and  the  comparison  demands  that  this  epithet  should  signify 
bright.  And  so  strongly  did  this  signification  lie  in  the  word  that 
Empedocles  could  use  it  instead  of  irvp,  for  one  of  his  four  elements — 

TjXeKTWp  re  x^ui;'  re  Kal  ovpavbs  t)5^  'itcCKa.aaa.} 

And  the  yXeKrpov  of  the  Odyssey  (iv.  73),  whether  we  take  it  for 
amber,  or  for  a  metallic  mixture  of  gold  and  silver  well  known  to 
the  ancient  artists  (Paus.  v.  12.  6),  means  a  substance  remarkable 
for  glance  and  brightness.  That  Gladstone  (iii.  403)  should  have 
had  the  courage,  in  the  face  of  all  this  evidence,  to  assert  that 
TjXkKTwp  in  this  passage,  and  in  this  passage  only,  should  mean 
"  a  cock,"  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  instances  that  I  know  of 
how  far  the  devotion  to  a  favourite  idea  can  lead  a  man  away  from 
all  authority  and  analogy,  and  even  common  sense. 

Ver.  522. — In  all  a  warrior  s  part  thou  spotless  art  from  hlame. 

The  character  of  Paris,  in  the  Trojan  legends,  is  modelled  after 
a  very  common  type  in  the  military  world.  A  good-looking  young 
fellow,  with  a  fair  amount  of  briskness  and  dash  about  him — a 
character  very  often  combined  with  strong  amorous  propensities, — 
but  deficient  in  lofty  ambition,  sober  calculation,  and  firmness  of 
purpose,  is  naturally  drawn  to  the  military  life,  and  will  make  a 
good  soldier  certainly — if  some  Cleopatra  does  not  interpose  at  the 
wrong  moment  too  potently, — but  not  a  good  general.  The  story  of 
Paris,  his  judgment  of  the  golden  apple,  and  his  abandonment  of 
Q^]none,  his  original  innocent  love,  and  his  abduction  of  the  fair 
Laccdfemonian,  are  so  much  the  common  property  of  every  culti- 
vated imagination,  that  they  need  not  be  related  here.  After  the 
1  Karsten,  Phil.  Grcec.  Bel  327. 


HOOK  VII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  203 

fall  of  Ti'oy,  he  had  the  good  fortune,  according  to  the  common 
tradition,  to  conquer  the  conqueror  of  Hector  (xxii.  359),  not, 
however,  in  a  brave  and  open  way,  for  that  would  have  been  poeti- 
cally impossible,  but  by  a  stratagem,  and  by  the  help  of  Apollo 
(Did.  Gret.  iv.  10).  The  end  of  his  own  career,  also,  was  brought 
on  not  ignobly  by  a  wound  from  an  arrow  shot  by  Philoctetes  ; 
this  (Enone,  though  it  was  in  her  power,  like  a  fair  heathen  as  she 
was,  refused  to  cure  ;  her  fickle  lover  died,  and  was  burnt  upon  a 
pyre  on  Mount  Ida  ;  on  which  the  unhappy  maiden,  seized  by  a  fit 
of  repentance  for  her  previous  harsh  conduct,  flung  herself  on  the 
pyre,  and  died  amid  the  flames  (Q.  Smyrn.  x.)  Paris  is  often 
represented  on  ancient  monuments  with  the  Phrygian  cap  on  his 
head,  covering  rich  curly  locks,  Phrygian  trousers  on  his  legs,  and 
the  apple  of  Aphrodite  in  his  hand  (Museo.  Pio.  Clem.  vol.  ii.  PI. 
37 ;  Overbeck,  Gall  PI.  xii.  8). 


BOOK  VIL 


Ver.  9. — Arithoiis,  a  stout  chth-hearing  loigJd. 

That  the  custom  of  fighting  with  clubs  was  the  most  ancient  in 
the  world,  is  manifest  from  the  consideration  that  the  materials  for 
making  sharp  instruments  for  piercing  and  cutting  were  not  every- 
where to  be  found,  and  even  where  they  did  exist,  required  skill  to 
adapt  them  •  for  lethal  purposes.  A  club,  therefore,  of  hard  and 
knotted  wood,  became  the  natural  war  instrument  of  all  savage  and 
half- civilized  tribes,  of  which  fact  our  Museums  everywhere  supply 
abundant  proof.  It  is  evident  also  that,  even  after  arms,  first  of 
copper  and  then  of  iron,  had  been  introduced,  not  a  few  of  the 
L(^9i[ioi  ■>]pu)e<s  of  the  olden  times  would  glory  in  retaining  the  use 
of  the  stout  old  club,  making  it  more  formidable  sometimes  by  iron 
studs  (144  infra;  Herod,  vii.  63),  partly  from  the  conservation  of 
old  habits  inherent  in  human  natvu-e.  but  even  more  from  the  sure 


204  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VII. 

witness  of  vigour  and  power  which  that  weapon  bears  to  the  man 
who  successfully  wields  it.  With  our  modern  machinery  of  gun- 
powder and  hollow  tubes  and  iron  balls,  a  weak  child  may  kill  a 
strong  giant ;  and  with  a  sharp-pointed  rapier  a  beardless  pupil  of 
a  military  school  may,  with  a  little  alertness,  perform  the  same 
exploit ;  but  when  the  tool  is  rough  and  clumsy,  the  workman  can 
only  succeed  by  momentum,  and  when  blow  meets  blow  fairly,  the 
strongest  arm  must  win  the  battle.  For  this  reason,  the  great 
impersonation  of  bodily  strength  among  the  Greeks,  Hercules, 
bore  a  club,  not  a  sword.  So  also  the  stout  and  insolent  pugilists 
of  the  Propontis,  who  defied  the  Argonauts,  wielded  Kopvvas  and 
(TLyvvvovi  (Ap.  Kh.  II.  99),  and  our  own  mediECval  giants,  whom 
the  illustrious  Cornishman  despatches  so  cleverly,  use  the  same 
weapon.  It  was  natural  also  that  even  in  historical  times  some 
traces  of  this  old  custom  should  remain.  The  Thebans  certainly 
seem  to  have  had  a  body  of  club-bearers  at  the  time  of  Epaminondas, 
perhaps  in  honour  of  Hercules  (Xen.  HeU.  vii.  520).  Koppen, 
who  quotes  this,  notices  also  that  the  body-guard  of  Pisistratus 
was  composed  of  KopwrjcpopoL,  not  8opv(f)6pot  (Herod,  i.  59).  With 
regard  to  the  particular  club-bearer  here  mentioned,  the  Arcadians 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Mantinea  had  a  tradition  of  his  existence, 
and  showed  a  mound  with  a  Kpi]Tr[s  of  hewn  stone  as  his  monu- 
ment (Pans.  VIII.  11.  3). 

Ver.  61. — In  form  lile  vultures. 

Whatever  Koppen  and  Heyne  may  object,  it  can  never  be  beneath 
the  dignity  of  the  gods  to  appear  in  any  disguise  they  please ;  for 
in  their  real  shape  they  seldom  or  never  appear  to  mortals,  and 
the  disguise  of  some  animal  may  often  be  more  convenient  and 
more  significant  than  the  likeness  of  a  man.  It  appears  quite  cer- 
tain also,  that  if  the  gods  are  to  assume  the  shape  of  any  animal, 
they  can  adopt  none  more  pleasing  to  the  popular  imagination,  and 
more  significant  than  that  of  a  bird.  For  there  is  something  in 
the  light  movements  and  the  fine  aerial  life  of  this  creature,  which 
has   always  seemed    to   symboiize  some  part   of  heaven  to   heavy 


BOOK  VII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  205 

earth-treading  mortals  ;  and  accordingly  we  find  in  the  Romaic 
ballads  that  nothing  is  more  common  than  a  superhuman  message 
coming  to  men  through  a  bird  ;  and  in  one  ballad — the  well-known 
one  of  o  xa'pos  Kal  i)  Kop-q — tlie  god  of  death  appears  in  the  shape 
of  a  black  swallow. 

Kt  6  X'^pos  ^ycve  irovXi  era  fiaOpo  xf^'56w. 

Passow,  p.  297. 

There  is  no  doubt  also,  that  to  the  ancients,  with  whom  the  vulture 
was  a  bird  peculiarly  significant  in  augury,  the  representation  of 
the  gods  as  appearing  in  tliat  shape  would  convey  no  undigni- 
fied association.  For  Gladstone's  idea  (ii.  99)  that  the  power  of 
changing  themselves  into  birds,  in  the  case  of  Minerva  and  Apollo, 
belongs  to  "a  general  supremacy  over  nature,  which  the  other 
Olympian  deities  do  not  share,"  I  cannot  find  the  slightest  foun- 
dation. 

Ver.  75. — My  godlike  force. 

That  Hector  should  call  himself  the  godlike  Hector,  contrary  to 
all  oitr  ideas  of  propriety,  is  to  be  explained  partly  from  a  certain 
boastfulness  which  we  have  already  noted  as  characteristic  of  the 
ancient  heroes  (vi.  127),  partly  from  the  fact,  to  which  we  have 
also  alluded  elsewhere  (in.  180),  that  in  popular  poetry  epithets 
are  apt  to  stick  so  closely  to  a  name  that  they  do  not  fall  off  even 
when  the  healthy  taste  of  the  poet  might  wish  to  get  quit  of  them. 
When  Hector  calls  himself  8109  we  have  no  cause  to  call  him  a  great 
boaster ;  and,  in  the  same  way,  when  Helen  styles  herself  kwwttis 
we  shall  not  wisely  fall  into  any  special  raptures  with  the  fair 
Spartan  Magdalene. 

Ver.  86. — Broad-streamiw/  Hellespont. 

To  us,  who  take  our  ideas  of  the  Hellespont  mostly  from  its 
appearance  on  a  map  of  Europe,  TrAarvs  does  appear  to  be  a  very 
strange  epithet  for  such  a  long  and  narrow  strait.  But  Homer 
never  saw  a  map  ;  and  the  epithet  applied  by  him,  or  rather  which 
he  found  the  people  applying  to  this  stream,   may  be  explained 


20G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  I'.OOK  V][. 

satisfactorily  in  one  of  two  ways  :  either  the  epithet  was  originally 
imposed  by  those  inhabitants  of  the  Troad  who  dwelt  directly  on 
the  strait,  with  reference  to  their  own  peculiai'ities,  abilities,  and 
necessities,  as  the  people  at  Edinburgh  might  call  the  Firth  of  Forth 
generally  broad,  though  it  is  narrow  opposite  Burntisland,  both  as 
compared  with  itself  ab'ove  and  below,  and  as  contrasted  with  the 
open  sea.  This  is  the  view  of  Boucher  James  in  Smith's  Did., 
who  quotes  Herodotus  (vii.  35),  where  this  strait  of  the  sea  is 
actually  called  a  river.  But  I  confess  I  do  not  place  any  value  on 
this  special  quotation,  partly  because  the  word  Trorafios  may  have 
been  put  contemptuously  into  the  mouth  of  Xerxes,  partly  because 
the  ocean  itself  is  often  called  a  river  by  the  ancients.  The  other 
explanation  is  similar  to  that  which  has  proved  so  satisfactory  in 
explaining  the  tossings  of  St.  Paul  on  the  stormy  waves,  as  they 
are  narrated  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  (xxvii.  27).  As  in  that 
passage  all  difficulty  with  regard  to  the  position  of  the  island  of 
MeAiTTy  is  removed  by  taking  the  word  'AS/jias  in  a  wider  sense 
than  our  modern  word  Hadriatic  can  bear,  so  here,  if  we  sup- 
pose that  the  word  Hellespont  at  an  early  period  included  also  the 
north  part  of  the  ^gean,  no  explanation  is  required.  To  this 
view  Heyne  and  Gladstone  (iii.  310)  incline ;  and  I  confess  my 
own  opinion  leans  strongly  the  same  way.  In  xv.  233  it  seems 
pretty  plain  that  Hellespont  is  used  generally  for  the  open  sea- 
beach  of  the  Troad,  not  strictly  for  the  Dardanelles.  The  other 
epithet  of  the  Hellespont  in  Homer,  ayappoos  (ii.  845  and  xii.  30), 
of  course  refers  to  the  strong  current  which  is  generally  found 
where  the  sea  forces  its  way  through  a  long  narrow  passage. 

Ver.  99-100.  —  Would  ye  might  melt  like  water. 

I  have  expanded  here  a  little  the  short  Greek  expression,  I'iSwp 
Kttt  yala  yevotcrde,  May  you  become  earth  and  ioater,  that  is  to  say, 
in  our  language,  May  you  become  dust  to  dust ;  return  to  that  from 
which  yon  came.  The  Homeric  phrase  is  in  literal  conformity 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  old  philosophy  :  "  EmpedocJes  prima 
membra  singula  ex  terra   quasi  ftregvate  pasaim  edita  deiride  rnii^t^e 


BOOK  Vll.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  20 7 

et  effecisse  soUdi  lioviinis  materiam  iy'ni  simul  et  iimore  j^crmixtuw. 
Hcec  eadem  opinio  efiam  in  Parmenide  Eliensi  fiiit." — Censorinus, 
De  die  Nat.  cap.  4.     See  Gerhard,  ITijfh.  636.  3  ;   Glad.  ii.  275. 

Ver.  135. — Girt  Pheia  round  with  hristling  ivar. 

Pheia,  a  town  of  some  importance  from  its  position  on  the  long 
promontory  which  juts  out  on  the  coast  of  Elis  between  the  mouths 
of  the  rivers  Peneus  and  Alpheus.  It  is  mentioned  in  the  Odyssey 
(xv.  297)  as  a  place  passed  by  Teleraachus  in  his  voyage  home- 
ward from  Pylos  to  Ithaca  (Str.  viii.  342) ;  and  plays  a  part  after- 
wards in  the  naval  operations  of  the  Peloponnesian  war  (Thucyd. 
II.  25).  The  lardanus — apparently  a  Phoenician  name,  as  we  find 
Scandinavian  names  on  the  north-west  coast  of  Ross-shire, — is 
a  small  torrent  in  the  vicinity  of  Pheia^  recognised  by  Strabo. 
About  the  "Celadon"  I  can  find  nothing.  Some  people  read  the 
whole  line  differently,  and  referred  the  scene  to  localities  in  the 
Lepreatis  farther  south.  On  Pheia  more  specially  see  Curt.  Pel. 
ii.  44,  and  Leake,  Mor.  ii.  190.  Gladstone  has  drawn  the  lardanus 
into  his  Pelasgic  speculations  (ii.  171). 

Ver.  167. — Eucemon's  nohJe  son,  Euryj)ylns. 

The  company  in  which  this  hero  appears  in  this  passage  plainly 
points  him  out  as  one  of  the  most  prominent  mighty  men  of  Aga- 
memnon. We  had  his  native  place  and  fatherhood  before  in  the 
catologuc  (ii.  734).  Afterwards,  at  the  most  critical  period  of  the 
strife,  during  the  absence  of  Achilles,  when  Hector  and  Sarpedon 
are  about  to  storm  the  rampart,  he  is  carried  off  the  field  with  the 
other  principal  captains,  and  is  tended  kindly  by  Patrockis  (xi. 
809,  XV.  390).  At  the  taking  of  Troy  this  Thessalian  hero  stum- 
bled upon  the  perilous  prize  of  a  sacred  chest  containing  an  image 
of  Dionysus,  a  peep  into  which  instantly  drove  him  mad  ;  but  out 
of  this  evil  there  sprang  a  good ;  for,  wandering  in  his  distraction 
to  the  oracle  of  Delphi,  he  received  an  answer  which  led  him  to 
Patras,  on  the  opposite  Achaean  coast,  where  he  was  not  only 
healed  of  his  personal  affliction,  but  by  his  presence  caused  the 


208  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VII. 

pious  people  of  that  place  to  cease  from  a  griin  habit  of  sacrificiug 
human  beings,  of  which  an  interesting  record  is  preserved  by 
Pausanias  (vii.  19). 

Ver.  171. — Shake  void  the  lots. 

There  is  nothing  in  this  proposal  to  choose  the  champion  by  lot 
which  might  not  have  happened  in  any  country  and  at  any  time  as 
well  as  in  ancient  Glreece.  But  the  reader  should  not  forget  that  a 
peculiar  sacredness  attached  to  the  lot  in  ancient  times,  according 
to  which  absolute  chance  was  supposed  to  be  the  medium  in  some 
sort  of  a  special  divine  direction.  The  most  ancient  Greeks  prac- 
tised divination  by  lots — KXrjpoixavreta,  or  '^i](f)0[JLavT€La — of  vari 
ous  kinds  (schol.  Pind.  Pi/th.  iv.  337,  and  other  passages  in 
Hermann's  Bel.  Alt.  39.  15,  16);  and  in  the  present  instance  the 
casting  of  the  lot  is  accompanied  by  a  prayer  (ver.  177),  which 
plainly  shows  the  sacredness  of  the  act.  So  Acts  i.  24-26  ;  and 
in  the  Old  Testament.  Prov.  xvi.  33.  The  manner  in  which  the 
lot  is  here  taken  possesses  a  peculiar  interest  in  connexion  with 
the  famous  passage  vi.  168,  on  which  we  remarked  that  it  contains 
no  proof  of  the  art  of  writing  having  been  commonly  used  for  the 
purposes  of  communication  in  the  Homeric  age  ;  for  as  in  that  pas- 
sage not  ypa/x/xara  is  used,  but  only  a-^fxara,  so  here  the  godlike 
heroes  do  not  write  their  names  on  the  lot,  but  only  put  their  mark 
on  it  (icrr^fjL'qvavTo),  in  all  probability  because  they  could  not  write. 
Certain  it  is  that  in  the  only  two  places  where  Homer  might  natu- 
rally have  mentioned  writing,  he  talks  of  marl's  or  signSj  and  not  of 
letters,  which  warrants  a  presumption  that  they  were  not  commonly 
i;sed  in  his  time. 

Ver.  206. — Ajax  round  him  dreir  his  mail. 

It  was  evidently  the  plan  of  Homer,  following  the  indication  of 
the  ballad  materials  which  he  used,  to  give  all  the  great  heroes  of 
the  Trojan  war  an  opportunity  of  exhibiting  their  prowess,  each  as  a 
principal  figure  in  a  separate  part  of  his  great  poem.  As  Diomede 
was  the  hero  of  the  Hfth,  so  x\jax  is  the  prominent  character  in  the 


BOOK  VII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  209 

seventh.  This  hero  iu  the  Iliad  is  generally  called  the  Telamonian, 
to  distinguish  him  from  the  lesser,  or  Locrian  Ajax.  He  was  the 
son  of  Telamon,  and  grandson  of  ^acus,  king  of  ^gina,  from  which 
Salamis,  the  native  country  of  Ajax,  was  colonized  (Pans.  i.  35.  2). 
Next  to  Achilles,  he  is  the  stoutest  warrior  of  the  Achaean  host  (Od. 
II.  768  and  xi.  550).  He  is  emphatically  called  the  "bulwark  of 
the  Achseans,"  and  he  plants  himself  like  a  tower  in  front  of  the 
enemy.  But  the  most  notable  thing  about  him  is  his  stature.  He 
is  emphatically  /^eyas,  the  hiy  or  tall^  so  that  even  Agamemnon 
shows  no  more  like  the  bull  among  the  herds  in  his  presence. 
In  later  times  extraordinary  stories  were  told  of  the  sea  having 
washed  away  the  soil  from  a  cave  where  his  bones  were  laid, 
which,  when  displayed,  were  of  the  most  gigantic  dimensions,  his 
knee-pan  being  as  big  as  a  quoit  (Philost.  Her.  668  ;  Pans.  r.  35. 
3).  His  shield  was  as  famous  and  as  big  as  himself,  and  is 
minutely  described  in  this  passage  (219).  The  memory  of  this 
shield  tradition  consecrated  in  the  name  of  one  of  his  sons  who 
was  called  Eurysaces,  or  Broad-shield  (Soph.  Ajax,  575),  to  whom 
there  was  an  altar  at  Athens  (Pans.  i.  35.  2).  In  the  character 
of  the  Telamonian,  as  presented  in  the  Iliad,  we  find  no  coarse  or 
repulsive  feature,  except  that  Hector  on  one  occasion  (xiii.  834) 
calls  him  jSovyd'ie — you  hi(j  lubherlij  fellow^ — language  which  he 
certainly  would  not  have  used  to  Achilles.  But  the  later  tradi- 
tions, of  which  we  have  a  specimen  in  the  well-known  play  of 
Sophocles,  represent  him  as  fierce  and  violent,  and  even  savage, 
upon  occasions,  to  a  remarkable  degree.  More  unforgiving  even 
than  Achilles,  he  retains  his  stately  grudge  in  Hades  (Plat.  i^ep.  x. 
620  b),  and  when  addressed  by  Ulysses  stalks  off  in  silent  haugh- 
tiness. After  his  death  his  memory  always  remained  sacred  among 
the  Greeks.  The  Athenians  who,  in  the  time  of  Solon,  seized 
on  Salamis,  called  one  of  their  tribes  by  his  name,  and  the  people 
of  the  island  honoured  him  with  a  temple,  a  statue,  and  sacred 
feasts  (Hesychius,  Aiavn's  and  Atavria).  To  indicate  the  extra- 
ordinary valour  and  efficiency  of  Ajax,  the  poet  has  allowed  him- 
self to  exaggerate  a  little  the  effect  of  his  appearance  even  on 
VOL.  IV.  0 


210  NOTES  TO  THE  TLl AD.  BOOK  YII. 

Hector,  whom  he  has  no  reason  to  suppose  less  valiant.  This 
patriotism  is  a  prominent  trait  in  the  Homeric  muse  ;  but  modern 
translators  and  commentators,  anxious  that  the  sun  of  Homer's 
genius  should  be  altogether  without  spots,  have  sometimes  shown 
an  anxiety  to  explain  away  the  obvious  sense  of  TraTacrcrev  in 
ver.  216.  But  Homer  was  too  good  a  Greek  to  be  able  to  keep 
his  patriotism  within  the  bounds  of  propriety  in  such  cases.  The 
behaviour  of  Hector  in  Book  xxii.  in  presence  of  Achilles,  has 
always  appeared  to  me  unworthy  and  ridiculous ;  and  if  so,  the 
fault  arose  no  doubt  from  the  same  human  weakness  in  the  poet. 
A  singer  of  popular  ballads,  like  a  preacher  of  popular  sermons,  a 
writer  of  popular  leading  articles,  or  a  maker  of  popular  political 
speeches,  never  thinks  curiously  about  justice.  Themis  is  the 
assessor  of  Jove  in  Olympus,  but  she  is  not  a  goddess  whose  wor- 
ship has  ever  been  largely  popular  among  mankind. 

Ver.  320. — To  Ajax  the  whole  unbroTcen  chine. 

This  simple  method  of  rewarding  military  valour  is  highly  ap- 
proved of  by  Plato  {Rejj.  v.  468  d),  and  was  followed  out  in  Sparta, 
where  the  kings  at  supper  got  a  St/iotpia,  or  double  portion  (Xen. 
Pol.  Lac.  15).  Compare  the  mess  of  Benjamin  (Gen.  xliii.  34). 
The  phrase  vwroicrt  Str^ve/ceecrcrt  has  been  imitated  by  Virgil  {^Mn. 
vin.  183).  Other  passages  in  Homer  alluding  to  the  same  custom 
are  iv.  345  and  viii.  162. 

Ver.  328. 
FuV  many  of  the  long-haired  Greehs  here  died  in  fight. 

The  present  passage  seems  to  call  for  a  few  remarks  on  the 
funeral  rites  of  the  ancients,  as  they  are  represented  in  Homer, 
and  as  they  were  practised  among  the  ancients  generally.  The 
pious  care  bestowed  on  the  remains  of  the  dead,  which  universal 
human  feeling  dictates,  was  increased  in  the  case  of  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  by  the  superstitious  idea  which  they  cherished  that 
the  souls  of  unburied  persons  stood  at  a  great  disadvantage  in  refer- 
ence  to  their   position   in    Hades,  whether    it  was  only  that  the 


BOOK  YII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  211 

regularly  interred  dead  refused  to  admit  them  into  their  fellowship 
on  equal  terms  (xxiii.  72,  and  Nitzsch,  Od.  xi.  51-58),  or,  as  the 
well-known  legend  afterwards  had  it,  that  they  were  condemned  to 
wander  a  hundred  years  on  this  side  of  the  Styx,  not  being  received 
by  Charon  into  his  boat  (Virgil,  jEn.  vi.  326).  With  reference  to 
the  method  of  disposing  of  the  dead  body,  there  is  in  Homer  no 
allusion  to  any  custom  but  burning  the  dead ;  and  if  we  take  his 
testimony  for  the  earliest  times,  along  with  the  express  words  of 
Lucian  (De  luctu,  21),  6  |U,ev"EAAr;v  eKava-ev  o  6e  Tlepcrrj?  Waifcv,  we 
shall  be  apt,  with  Bottiger,  to  make  the  conclusion  that  burying, 
properly  so  called  (^KaTop-vrmv),  was  a  very  rare  exception  to  the 
almost  universal  practice  of  cremation  amongst  the  Greeks.  But 
the  testimony  of  Homer,  however  valuable,  relates  only  to  that 
section  of  the  variously  divided  Hellenic  people  with  whom  he  was 
acquainted,  and  omits  the  mention  of  many  very  old  Greek  prac- 
tices, of  which  the  memory  is  preserved  by  Pausanias  and  other 
writers.  As  to  Lucian,  his  testimony  certainly  proves  that,  in  his 
day,  burning  was  the  general  practice  among  the  Greeks ;  but  as 
many  things  change  in  the  course  of  centuries — a  point  which  we 
are  only  too  apt  to  forget  in  our  bird's-eye  view  of  antiquity, — 
such  a  general  assertion  can  never  be  allowed  to  shut  our  ears  to 
adverse  testimony  from  other  writers,  and  about  other  times. 
Now,  it  is  quite  certain  that  in  many  parts  of  Greece,  inhumation 
existed  as  the  regular  method  of  disposing  of  the  dead  body.  Thus, 
with  regard  to  the  people  of  Sicyon,  Pausanias  says,  "  That  they 
hide  the  body  in  the  ground,  and  building  over  it  a  basement 
(KprjTTLs)  of  stone,  they  erect  pillars  upon  that,  and  write  an  inscrip- 
tion on  the  pediment,  as  is  the  custom  in  temples.  This  inscription 
is  very  simple,  containing  nothing  but  the  name  of  the  departed, 
his  father's  name,  and  a  farewell  salutation,  ^alpi.''  And  that  this 
practice  of  interment  was  not  confined  to  the  Sicyonians  is  mani- 
fest from  various  testimonies.  Cicero,  in  his  Book  of  the  Laws 
(ii.  22-25),  while  expressing  his  opinion  that  inhumation  was  the 
most  ancient  practice,  not  only  in  Persia,  but  in  Borne,  says  ex- 
pressly, "  Et  Atiienis  jam  tile  mos  a  Cecrope,  ut  aiunt,  permansit 


212  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  YII. 

mortutim  terra  humandi;''  and  there  are  various  accounts  in  Hero- 
dotus, Pausanias,  and  Plutarch,  of  the  finding  of  the  dead  bodies  of 
famous  heroes  in  stone  coffins,  which  clearly  prove  that  inhumation 
was-  a  general  and  recognised  practice  among  the  earliest  Greeks 
(Herod.  1. 68  ;  Plut.  T/ies.  36).  Socrates,  in  the  Phcedo  (115  c),  when 
asked  how  his  body  is  to  be  disposed  of,  answers,  that  thei/  may 
burn  him  or  hurij  him  as  theij  please ;  and  surely  this  impl'es  that 
both  customs  were  equally  familiar  to  the  hearers  whom  he  thus 
addressed  (compare  Poll.  x.  150).  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the 
custom  of  cremation,  in  the  days  of  Lucian  so  universal,  was,  before 
the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century,  so  completely  abolished,  that 
Macrobius  {Sat.  vii.  7)  tallcs  of  it  as  a  curious  piece  of  antiquity. 
The  custom  of  inhumation  was  no  doubt  brought  in  by  the  Chris- 
tians from  the  Jews  (Jahn,  Bill.  Antiq.  210),  though  the  Jews 
themselves  at  one  period  of  their  history  were  as  decidedly 
addicted  to  the  practice  of  burning  as  any  Homeric  hero  of  the 
isles  of  Elisha  (Jer.  xxxiv.  5  ;  2  Chron.  xvi.  14). 

The  only  other  point  which  seems  to  require  notice  here  is  the 
TVfj.po'i  or  sepulchral  monument  mentioned  in  ver.  336.  What- 
ever may  be  the  etymology  of  this  word,  and  its  cognate  Latin 
tumulus  (Gaelic  torn),  it  is  plain  from  the  verb  x^^:  "^^^^  which 
it  is  coupled  in  Homer,  that  it  signifies  nothing  but  a  conical 
mound-barrow,  or  cairn  loosely  thrown  up.  When  it  covered  a 
very  large  number  of  men  slain  in  battle,  this  mound  would  become 
a  considerable  conical  hillock,  and  was  then  called  a  TroXvdv8piov, 
as  in  the  famous  one  at  Chjeronea  in  Boeotia  (Pans.  ix.  40.  4), 
on  the  top  of  which  a  lion  was  put,  which  we  have  imitated  at 
Waterloo.  This  primitive  form  of  the  sepulchral  monument  first 
received  the  character  of  rudimentary  architecture  by  a  Kp-qwi's  or 
basement  of  regular  stonework  (Pans.  viii.  11.  3),  and  out  of  this 
grew  first  the  Egyptian  pyramid,  the  sepulchre  of  the  Pharaohs, 
and  then  tlie  cylindrical  monument,  of  which  the  best-known 
example  is  the  tomb  of  Caecilia  Metella,  near  Rome,  imitated,  at 
a  great  distance,  by  David  Hume's  monument  in  the  Calton  bury- 
ing-ground,    P]dinburgh.       This    cylindrical   sepulchre   afterwards 


BOOK  VII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  213 

gave  rise  to  the  beautiful  small  circular  churches,  of  which  we  have 
examples  in  Cambridge.  Northampton,  and  the  Temple  Church, 
London ; 

"  From  such  small  seeds  such  miglity  flowers  expand, 
And  all  was  little  once  which  now  is  grand." 

Ver.  347. — Then  rose  Antenor^  prudent  prince. 

Antenor  was  the  Nestor  of  the  Trojans  (Plat.  Sympos.  221  d). 
Accordingly  he  always  appears  in  the  Iliad  as  the  advocate  of  wise 
and  moderate  measures,  as  here,  where  he  is  willing  to  restore 
Helen ;  and  in  iii.  205,  where  he  describes  himself  as  having 
received  the  Greek  chiefs  with  gi'eat  politeness,  and  expresses  a 
generous  admiration  of  their  appearance  and  heroic  qualities.  In 
the  extra-Homeric  traditions,  the  wise  spirit  of  moderation  and 
conciliation  which  he  exhibits  is  exaggerated  into  a  traitorous  par- 
tiality for  the  Greeks,  insomuch  that  he  and  his  wife,  Theano 
(vi.  298),  who,  as  priestess,  had  the  custody  of  the  Palladium,  are 
reported  to  have  betrayed  this  sacred  image,  the  pledge  of  national 
existence,  into  the  hands  of  the  Greeks  (Suid.  TraAAaStov).  On 
the  Lesche  at  Delphi,  the  house  of  Antenor  in  Troy  was  painted 
with  a  panther's  skin  on  it,  as  a  sign  to  the  Greeks  that  they  should 
spare  the  dwelling  of  a  friendly  foe  (Paus.  x.  27.  2).  After  the 
fall  of  Troy,  the  favourite  tradition,  at  least  with  the  Roman  writers, 
seems  to  have  been,  that  this  friend  of  the  Greeks,  like  ^neas 
saved  from  the  ruin  of  his  country,  went  with  the  Heneti,  a  Paph- 
lagonian  people  (ii.  852)  to  Thrace,  and  from  thence  to  the  north- 
western coast  of  the  Adriatic  (Str.  xiii.  608;  Virg.  ^n.  i.  242). 
But  Pindar  brings  the  'AvravoptSat  with  Helen  to  Cyrene  {Pyth. 
V.  109). 

Ver.  358. — eXiroiJ-ai  iKTeXeecrdai  I'va  /x?)  pi^o(iev  w?.e. 

Every  one  must  agree  with  Faesi,  that  this  verse  (ejected  by 
Bek.)  is  both  redundant  and  awkward,  for  which  reason,  as  a  trans- 
lator, I  am  glad  to  omit  it;  but  whether  Homer  may  not  have 
written  it,  either  as  it  stands,  or  with  some  slight  modification  of 


214  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VII. 

the  particles,  uo  mau  cau  tell,  as  the  good  old  miustrel  is  sometimes 
sufficiently  loose  in  his  phi-aseology,  and  not  at  all  averse  to  various 
kinds  of  tautological  expression. 

Vek.  380. — Th'iy  ^«^e  the  strengthening  food. 

This  verse,  as  Faesi  well  observes,  is  neither  necessary  nor 
complete.  It  must,  therefore,  either  be  ejected,  with  Bekker,  or 
complemented.  As  a  translator,  I  have  thought  the  latter  course 
preferable,  and  repeated  ver.  371  after  380,  chiefly  to  make  the 
transition  from  the  night-assembly  to  tJco^cv  Se  (ver.  381)  less  abrupt. 

Ver.  412. — Then  high  his  sceptre  reared. 

•'  The  oath  was  taken  by  lifting  up  the  sceptre"  (Ar.  Pol.  iii. 
14).  Jupiter,  as  the  moral  governor  of  the  universe,  in  his  capa- 
city of  opKios,  is  the  proper  god  appealed  to  (iii.  276). 

Ver.  436. — They  raised  a  mighty  mound. 

With  regard  to  the  reixo?  or  rampart,  the  question  has  been 
asked  seriously,  why  it  is  mentioned  here  for  the  first  time,  as, 
according  to  all  military  propriety,  it  ought  to  have  been  built  as 
soon  as  possible  after  the  landing  of  the  fleet,  in  the  first  year  of 
the  war.  Jlr.  Grote  takes  so  much  ofi'ence  at  this  impropriety, 
that  he  mentions  it  among  his  other  imaginary  proofs  that  books 
II. -VII.  are  a  great  interpolation,  not  belonging  to  the  original  poem 
of  "  the  wrath  of  Achilles."  The  obvious  answer  to  this  is,  that 
Homer  was  not  a  military  strategist,  that  he  was  quite  careless 
about  military  exactness  in  a  matter  of  this  kind  ;  but  that  as  a 
poet  he  wanted  to  bring  in  the  greatest  variety  of  effective  points 
into  his  song,  and  the  Ter;)^os  was  one  of  them.  For  the  erection  of 
such  a  purely  defensive  work,  no  season  could  poetically  be  more 
suitable  than  the  time  when  the  absence  of  their  great  offensive  arm, 
AchiUes,  at  once  rendered  the  Trojans  more  aggressive,  and  the 
Greeks  less  able  to  repel  aggression.  On  this  subject  Heyne  very 
sensibly  says, — "  Ex  Homer i  ceconomia  Trojani  usque  ad  hoc  tern- 


BOOK  VII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD,  215 

pus  muris  inclusi  se  (enuerunt  ;^^  and  Mure's  remarks  (i.  461)  are 
equally  rational. 

Vbr.  443-464. 

Some  of  the  ancient  Alexandrians  (Schol.  Ven.)  who,  like  cer- 
tain modern  scholars,  had  very  meddling  intellects,  would  have  it 
that  these  twenty-two  verses  (443-464)  were  interpolated.     Why? 
Because  the  whole  story  about  the  rampart  and  its  demolition  by 
Neptune  is  told  at  the  beginning  of  Book  xii.,  and  therefore  the 
telling  of  it  in  this  place  is  premature  and  supererogatory.     To 
this  remark  the  reply  is  obvious,  that  old  Homer  was  as  much  en- 
titled as  a  modern  barrister  to  bring  forward  a  strong  point  in  his 
case  more  than  once,  the  more  so  that  his  song  originally  was  not 
composed  for  continuous  recitation,  and  the  persons  who  heard  one 
canto  sung,  very  rarely,  if  ever,  had  the  opportunity  of  hearing  the 
whole  sequence  of  the  tale.     The  rampart,  famous  in  local  tradi- 
tion, must  fitly  be  spoken  of,  both  on  occasion  of  its  original  erec- 
tion, and  when  it  was  overridden  by  the  impetuous  valour  of  Hector 
and  Sarpedon.     With  regard  to  the  fact  itself,  which  Homer  has 
twice  commemorated,  the  disappearance  of  this  once  famous  bar- 
rier, nothing  was  more  natural  than  that  in  such  near  vicinity  to 
the  sea  it  should  be  exposed  to  the  danger  of  being  swept  away 
altogether  by  some  rush  of  waters  borne  in  upon  the  shore  by  the 
Thracian  blasts,  as  whole  parishes  on  the  east  coast  of  England 
and  Scotland  have  been  buried  in  drifting  sands.     Of  course,  when 
this  took  place,  the  obvious  agent  being  the  sea-god,  the  cause  of 
his  anger  was  instinctively  sought  and  found  in  some  omission  of 
the  due  sacrificial  rites  by  the  builders  of  the  rampart.     Compare 
an  ancient  legend  in  Pans.  viii.  22.  6,  where  the  whole  country 
about  Stymphalus  in  Arcadia  was  flooded  by  the  stopping  up  of  a 
gap  in  one  of  the  subterranean  river-passages  so  common  in  that 
country  ;  which  flood  happened  immediately  after  the  perfunctory 
performance  of  certain  sacrifices  to  Artemis,  and  the  pos<  hoc  ergo 
propter  hoc  logic,   so  dear  to  medical  men  and  theologians,  was 
immediately  called  into  requisition. 


216  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VII. 

Ver.  467. — A7id  in  the  roads  ivtre  Lemnian  ships. 

The  geographical  position  of  Lemnos  rendered  it  almost  indis- 
pensable to  the  Greeks  during  their  long  siege  of  Troy ;  and  we 
shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  it  mentioned  here  as  a  place  from 
which  they  occasionally  di'ew  supplies.  In  another  passage  (ix. 
72)  Tlu'ace  generally  is  mentioned  as  furnishing  the  besiegers  with 
wine.  The  Thracian  wine  was  famous  (Athen.  i.  31  b),  and  the 
potations  of  the  Homeric  heroes  in  Lemnos  are  specially  noticed 
(viii.  230).  The  method  of  purchasing  by  barter,  described  in 
verses  472-5,  is  worthy  of  notice  in  the  history  of  political  eco- 
nomy. Copper  and  iron  are  here  given  in  exchange  for  wine,  but 
not  as  money,  only  as  hides,  oxen,  slaves,  or  any  other  marketable 
article.  With  regard  to  the  slaves  in  ver.  475,  suspicion  was 
thrown  upon  the  line  by  the  ancients  (Schol.  Ven.)  on  the  ground 
that  avSpciTToSov  was  a  post-Homeric  word,  and  is  nowhere  found  in 
the  poet  except  in  this  one  passage.  On  a  point  of  this  kind,  the 
ancients  might  have  been  better  judges  than  we  are  ;  but  it  appears 
to  me  that  the  very  peculiar  form  of  the  word,  as  used  in  our  text, 
should  be  allowed  to  plead  strongly  for  its  genuineness ;  for  a  late 
interpolator  would  naturally  have  written, 

SXKoi  5'  avbpair65oL%  irldevro  6^  daira  ^dXeiav. 

With  regard  to  the  famous  legend  of  the  Argonautic  expedition,  to 
which  a  distant  allusion  is  here  made,  mythologists  of  different 
schools  of  course  differ  as  to  its  interpretation.  I  regard  it  as  a 
great  historical  fact,  most  significant  of  the  grand  old  commercial 
dynasty  of  the  Minyans,  of  which  the  traces  are  sufficiently  obvious 
in  the  prominence  given  to  Boeotia  in  the  catalogue  of  the  ships. 
But  neither  this  expedition  nor  its  leader  Jason  enters  into  the 
action  of  the  Iliad,  and  so  both  may  be  quietly  dismissed  here. 


BOOK  Vlll.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  217 


BOOK  VIIL 

Ver.  1. — And  now  the  morning  saffron-stoled. 

Welcker  ((/.  I.  i.  681)  remarks  with  great  truth  that  morning  is 
altogether  a  more  distinct  and  a  more  important  phase  of  natural 
time  in  warm  countries,  such  as  Greece  and  Italy,  than  it  is  in  the 
grey  North.  With  us  the  day  for  the  most  part  is  not  felt  to  be 
fully  itself  till  the  dawn  has  passed  away  into  the  free  splendour  of 
the  mounting  sun ;  with  the  southerns  the  same  height  of  the  sun 
is  generally  the  warning  to  creep  into  some  shaded  corner  and 
escape  the  arrows  of  the  god,  whose  force  is  then  sensibly  more 
keen  than  kind.  Hence  the  prominence  given  to  'Hws,  dawn  or 
MORNING,  in  the  Greek  mythology.  In  the  present  passage  one 
scarcely  sees  the  person  appear  out  of  the  early  beam  which  she 
represents ;  nevertheless  the  poet  no  doubt  had  the  person  in  his 
mind,  and  I  would  have  done  better  to  print  w^ith  an  initial  capital. 
In  Hesiod  [Theog.  371)  Eos  appears  as  one  of  the  earliest  of  the 
mundane  goddesses,  sister  to  the  sun  and  moon,  and  sprung  from 
Theia  and  Hyperion,  who  both  belong  to  the  original  elemental 
Titans  [Theog.  134).  Like  the  sun,  Aurora  has  her  chariot  drawn 
by  two  celestial  steeds,  Lampus  and  Piiaethon,  that  is,  the  hright 
and  the  shining  {Od.  xxiii.  247).  The  epithet  "golden-throned" 
(Hymn.  Ven.  218)  she  enjoys  along  with  other  goddesses;  her  com- 
moner epithets,  "rosy-fingered"  and  "saffron-stoled,"  explain  them- 
selves to  all  men  who  have  an  eye  for  colour  in  the  welkin.  As  a 
genuine  Hellenic  goddess,  of  course  Aurora  must  have  her  husband 
and  lovers.  She  is  represented  in  Homer  as  carrying  off  Orion 
{Od.  V.  121)  and  Tithonus  (Hymn.  Ven.),  with  whom  she  sleeps 
in  her  chamber  by  the  streams  of  ocean  (Od.  xxi.  244)  till  the 
appointed  hour  of  her  uprising  (xi.  1).  How  the  glorious  Tithonus 
should  have  had  his  pedigree  assigned  as  a  son  of  the  Trojan  king 
Laomedon  (xx.  237)  is  hard  to  see.  ApoUodorus  (Bihl.  ui.  143) 
makes  Tithonus  the  son  of  Eos.     Originally,  no  doubt,  he  and 


218  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

Orion  and  Cephalus  had  a  poetical  significance,  which  we  may 
leave  to  the  fancy  of  the  reader  to  work  out,  helped  by  Pro- 
fessor Max  Miiller  {Oxford  Essays,  1856).  The  well-known  myth 
of  the  goddess  of  the  Dawn  having  succeeded  by  her  entreaty  in 
gaining  immortality  for  her  husband,  but  forgotten  to  secure  youth 
along  with  it,  is  told  in  the  Homeric  hymn  to  Venus  as  above 
quoted,  and  has  borrowed  new  graces  in  modern  times  from  the 
genius  of  Tennyson.  Welcker  remarks  well  that  nothing  connected 
with  Dawn  can  preserve  its  freshness,  as  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of 
the  early  dew  to  melt  away  from  the  green  leaf  and  leave  the  hard 
and  arid  stalk  behind. 

Ver.  2. — Jove  called  the  gods  around  his  throne. 

The  celestial  polity  indicated  here  and  in  other  passages  of  the 
Hiad  is  in  its  main  outline  an  imitation  of  the  form  of  government 
here  below  most  generally  known  and  recognised  in  the  heroic  age, 
viz.,  a  monarchy  limited  by  an  aristocracy,  though  in  Olympus  the 
monarchic  element  is  much  stronger  than  on  earth.  See  above  (ii. 
51  and  204).  The  StJ/xos,  of  course,  or  popular  element,  altogether 
disappears ;  for  every  god  naturally  belongs  to  an  aristocracy  ;  and 
as  it  would  be  invidious  to  exclude  any  Olympian  from  the  counsels 
of  Jove,  the  whole  assembly  of  celestials  is  called  dyopd,  and  a 
special  ^ovX-q  or  privy  council  is  not  necessary  in  heaven.  The 
aristocracy  in  Olympus  is  in  fact  both  aristocracy  and  StJ/xos,  every 
select  Srjfj.o'i  being  a  Stj/aos  and  an  aristocracy ;  as  our  ten-pounders 
are  a  S^/^os  amongst  themselves,  but  an  aristocracy  in  reference 
to  the  excluded  multitude.  Aristotle,  in  the  second  chapter  of  his 
Politics,  makes  the  remark,  that  "  as  men  have  given  the  gods  a 
shape  and  figure  like  their  own,  so  they  have  also  made  their 
manner  of  life  conformable;"  and  monarchy  having  been  the  origi- 
nal form  of  all  governments,  as  also  that  which  is  most  deeply 
rooted  in  human  nature,  the  celestial  polity  is  everywhere  monar- 
chical, Tovs  S-eovs  Travres  (fiaal  /Saa-tXevea-dai.  He  takes  no  notice 
of  the  aristocratic  element ;  and  the  tone  of  the  present  passage 
seems  to  indicate  that  he  had  very  good  reasons  for  the  omission  ; 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  219 

— for  though  the  father  of  gods  and  men  calls  the  assembly  of  gods 
solemnly  together  in  this  passage,  it  is  not  to  ask  their  opinion,  or  to 
hold  counsel  with  them,  but,  like  the  king  of  Prussia,  to  indicate  his 
despotic  decree,  and  to  remind  them  of  his  absolute  power.  And  it 
is  quite  certain  that  in  the  theological  conception  of  Homer  and  the 
Homeric  age  the  supreme  Zeijs  is  omnipotent,  and  may  carry  out  his 
pui-poses  over  the  heads  of  all  the  other  gods  (Hes.  TJieog.  49  and 
386,  and  ^sch.  Prom.  50).  Such  an  unquestioned  superiority  in 
the  person  of  the  monarch  of  the  gods  was  absolutely  necessary  in 
order  to  give  unity  and  consistency  to  the  plan  of  providence,  and 
prevent  the  aiFairs  of  heaven  and  earth  from  falling  into  that  state 
of  dissension  and  lawless  anarchy  which  would  be  the  necessary 
consequence  of  a  polytheistic  system  consistently  carried  out.  If 
unlimited  democracy  in  human  societies  always  tends  to  confusion 
and  overthrow,  a  democracy  in  heaven,  which  an  unqualified  poly- 
theism must  produce,  would  result  in  a  cosmical  chaos.  It  was 
necessary  therefore  to  put  the  king  of  the  gods — that  is,  the  moral 
governor  of  the  universe — in  a  position  of  absolute  dictatorship, 
where  he  would  be  in  no  danger  of  having  his  plans  thwarted  by  the 
dissentient  purposes  and  plots  of  a  host  of  gods  naturally  opposed 
to  one  another,  and  each  strong  enough  to  assert  his  own  right,  and 
jealous  of  encroachment  on  his  peculiar  domain.  Nevertheless  we 
must  believe  that  in  practice  Jove  generally  showed  a  kindly  and 
prudent  regard  to  the  wishes  of  his  Olympian  aristocracy  ;  other- 
wise the  dignity  of  the  personages  of  the  celestial  polity  would  have 
been  altogether  sunk,  and  their  liberty  of  action  in  their  particular 
sphere  nullified.  Of  this  we  have  a  remarkable  example  in  the 
speech  of  Jove  (iv.  30-50),  where  the  sovereign  ruler  of  the  world 
confesses  that  had  he  been  left  to  his  own  feelings  he  never  would 
have  consented  to  the  destruction  of  Troy ;  but  he  had  allowed 
this,  he  says,  only  in  the  way  of  compromise  to  please  Here — 

Koi  yap  iyii  aoi  dwKa  eKihv  diKovri  ye  ^v/xifi. 

The  simile  of  the  golden  chain  in  ver.  19,  though  by  no  means  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  in  the  Iliad,  has,  from  its  position  at  the  open- 


220  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

ing  of  one  of  the  great  divisions  of  the  poem,  and  from  its  applica- 
tion to  illustrate  one  of  the  most  notable  attributes  of  Deity,  always 
attracted  great  attention.     No  simile,  in  fact,  of  any  poet  has  so 
triumphantly  travelled  through  the  fine  imaginings  of  a  long  series 
of  philosophers,  theologians,  and  poets,  and  been  at  the  same  time 
so  very  much  improved  in  the  travel.     The  fact  is,  there  is  some- 
thing extremely  simple,  and  to  our  conception  even  childish  and 
ludicrous,  in  this  way  of  illustrating  the  right  of  Jupiter  to  his  most 
significant  title  of  Almighty.     The  simple  announcement  of  the 
"T^  W  (^potenlissimus),  Gen.  xvii.  1,  if  it  gives  nothing  to  amuse  the 
imagination,  is  certainly  much  better  calculated  to  excite  reverence. 
To  Homer,  no  doubt,  w\\o  lived  in  simple  times,  and  had  to  do 
with  a  simple,  and  at  the  same  time  not  over-serious  people,  the 
simile  was  an  eflfective  one ;  but  the  thinkers  and  speculators  of  a 
more  mature   age,  brought  up   from  their  infancy  to  reverence 
Homer  as  the  Jews  reverenced  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  were  led 
by  a  convenient  sort  of  instinct  to  interpret  a  deeper  significance 
into  the  simple  thought  of  the  old  minstrel,  and  thus  changed  a 
picture  meant  to  amuse  children  into  a  symbol  fit  to  instruct  men. 
The  golden  chain  of  Homer  was  interpreted  in  every  physical  and 
metaphysical  way  that  the  inventive  wit  of  centuries  could  ima- 
gine ;   Plato   [Thecet.   153   c)   gave   currency   to   the   idea  that   it 
meant  the  sun ;  but  his  followers   in   Alexandria,   and   the   pious 
theosophists  of  the  sixteenth  century,  looked  more  deeply  into  the 
matter,  and  asserted  with  truth  that  the  ctci/d^  ^pva-di^^  if  it  was  to 
receive  a  meaning  worthy  of  the  greatest  of  all  epic  poets,  could 
only  signify  the  living  chain  of  mysterious  causes  and  effects  which 
makes  up  the  world,  deriving  its  xvhole  supjjort  from  the  divine  voli- 
tion, and  its  whole  virtue  from   the  divine  energy.     Those  who  are 
curious  to  see  how  widely  the  idea  of  the  aurea  catena  Homeri  has 
spread  itself  through  the  world  of  books,  may  consult  a  learned 
paper  on  the   subject   in   Notes  and   Queries,   January  24,    1857, 
which,  starting  from  a  notice  of  a  curious  work  on  Hermetic  lore 
called  the  Aurea  Catena  Homeri,  mentioned  by  Goethe  in  his  auto- 
biography, proceeds  to  give  a  series  of  quotations  of  the  manner  in 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  221 

which  this  famous  simile  has  been  used  and  adapted  for  their  pecu- 
liar purposes  by  various  philosophers,  theologians,  and  poets,  from 
Plato  down  to  Tennyson.  Of  these  quotations  I  shall  allow  myself 
to  appropriate  three  : — 

I.    MACROBIUS. 

"  Invenietur  pressius  intuenti  a  summo  Deo  usque  ad  uUimam 
rerum  foeceni  una  mutuis  se  vinculis  religans  et  nusquavi  interrupta 
connexio;  et  hwc  est  Homeri  aurea  Catena,  quam  pendere  de  coeln 
in  terram  Deum  jussisse  commemorat."  ^ 

II.    LORD  BACON. 

"  Out  of  the  contemplation  of  nature,  or  ground  of  human  know- 
ledge, to  induce  any  unity  or  persuasion  concerning  the  points  of 
faith,  is,  in  my  judgment,  not  safe.  Da  Fidei,  quce  Fidei  sunt ; 
'  Give  unto  Faith  the  things  that  are  Faith's.'  For  the  heathens 
themselves  conclude  as  much  in  that  excellent  and  divine  fable  of 
THE  GOLDEN  CHAIN  ;  that  men  and  gods  toere  not  aUe  to  draiv  Jupiter 
down  to  the  earth ;  hut  contrariwise,  Jupiter  was  able  to  draiu  them 
up  to  HEAVEN.  So  we  Ought  not  to  attempt  to  draw  down  or  sub- 
mit the  mysteries  of  God  to  our  reason,  but  contrariwise  to  raise 
and  advance  our  reason  to  the  divine  truth."  ^ 

ni.    TENNYSON. 

"  Pray  for  my  soul.     More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 
Than  the  world  dreams  of.     Wherefore  let  thy  voice 
Rise  like  a  fountain  for  me  night  and  day. 
For  what  are  men  better  than  sheep  and  goats 
That  nourish  a  blind  life  within  the  brain, 
If,  knowing  God,  they  lift  not  hands  of  prayer 
Both  for  Iheruselves  and  those  who  call  them  friend  ? 
For  so  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  hy  strong  cliains  about  the  feet  o/God."* 

That  our  English  translators,  who  were  thoroughly  impressed  with 
the  idea  that  Homer  must  always  be  grand,  were  completely  in- 

'  Somn.  Scip.  i.  14.  ^  Advancement  of  Learriincj  (Pickering),  p.  132. 

'  Morte  d'Artlmr. 


222  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

fected  with  this  ideal  metamorphosis  of  the  simple  old  minstrel's 
childlike  simile,  is  evident  at  a  glance.  Pope  says  strongly,  as  if 
he  were  borrowing  a  couplet  from  his  own  Essmj  on  Man  : — 

"  Let  down  our  golden  everlasting  cbain, 
Whose  strong  embrace  holds  heaven  and  earth  and  main." 

"  Our  chain"  is  evidently  a  part  of  the  system  of  the  universe; 
and  Chapman,  by  the  mere  use  of  the  same  possessive  pronoun, 
showed  that  he  meant,  though  with  no  philosophical  verbiage,  to 
convey  the  same  idea.  Cowper,  by  the  definite  article  the^  not  less 
certainly  says  the  same  thing.  But  Homer  knew  nothing  of  such 
a  chain,  any  more  than  he  did  of  the  Book  of  Job  or  the  first  chap- 
ter of  Grenesis ;  he  only  supposes  a  chain  literally  to  be  brought 
into  play,  for  the  occasion,  as  the  German  faithfully  gives  it — 
"  EiNE  goldene  Kette  befestigend  oben  am  Himmel.'" 

This  is  only  one  example,  among  many,  of  the  chivalrous  piety  by 
which  Homeric  commentators  and  translators  have  been  led  to 
make  their  author  say  profound  and  sublime  things  which  in  his 
position  a  man  even  of  the  highest  genius  never  could  have  been 
led  to  conceive  ;  an  error  of  sesthetical  judgment  of  which  we  have 
many  examples  everywhere  in  the  current  interpretation  given  to 
various  passages  of  the  Christian  Scriptures.  How  many  ideas  have 
been  interpreted  into  the  Psalms,  for  instance,  of  which  David, 
when  he  sung  them,  had  no  conception,  and  which  are  manifestly 
foreign  both  to  the  plain  meaning  of  the  text  and  to  the  whole 
scheme  and  purpose  of  the  composition  ! 

Ver.  47. — Many-fountained  Ida,  mirse  of  toild  beasts. 

Mount  Ida  forms  the  background  of  the  great  military  drama 
which  the  genius  of  Homer  has  made  world-famous,  and  so  demands 
a  word  here.  In  Homer  (and  with  the  ancients  generally,  I  ima- 
gine), Ida  is  a  generic  name,  signifying  a  range  of  mountains,  like 
the  Grampians  in  Scotland;  and  in  this  sense  Strabo  is  to  be 
understood  when  he  says  that  it  extends  to  the  promontory  of 
Lectdm,  in   the  ^gean,  westward,  and  to  Zeleia  and  the  lower 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  223 

region  of  the  ^sepus  to  the  north-east  (xiii.  583).  This  generic 
name  the  poet  qualifies  in  the  present  passage  by  the  specification 
Tdpyapov,  that  is,  the  part  of  the  range  so  called,  just  as  in  xiv. 
284  he  says  first  "IS-qv  and  then  Acktov.  Now,  with  regard  to  the 
part  of  Ida  thus  specialized,  there  happily  does  not  reign  the 
slightest  doubt ;  for  not  only  do  Hesychius  (m  voce)  and  Demetrius 
of  Scepsis  (Str.  583)  expressly  say  that  Gargarus  is  the  aKpov  or 
highest  part  of  Ida,  but  we  are  distinctly  told  that  there  was  a  town 
on  the  northern  coast  of  the  gulf  of  Adramyttium,  between  Assos 
and  Antandros,  bearing  the  name  of  Glargarus  (Str.  606).  This 
name  of  course  it  could  only  have  received  from  its  connexion  with 
the  part  of  Ida  of  the  same  name  ;  and  these  indications  all  point 
with  certainty  to  the  modern  Kaz  daqh  overlooking  the  north-east 
corner  of  the  Adramyttian  gulf  as  the  genuine  Homeric  Gargarus. 
The  mountain  of  Ida,  more  strictly  so  called,  consists  of  this  its 
loftiest  peak  (above  5000  feet  high),  and  two  other  summits,  the 
first  to  the  north-east,  called  the  Adjeuldere-dagh,  and  the  other, 
forming  the  extreme  north  wing  of  the  chain,  called  the  Aghy-dagh, 
these  three  forming  together  an  almost  perfect  semicircle  (in  the 
manner  so  common  also  in  the  Scottish  Highlands),  of  which  the 
hollow  (or  corrie)  looks  to  the  north-west,  that  is,  direct  to  the  south 
end  of  the  Dardanelles  and  the  plain  of  Troy  (Tchihatcheff,  Asie 
Mineure,  i.  p.  480).  Looking  out  from  these  heights,  a  series  of 
summits  are  seen  gradually  sinking  in  all  directions  towards  the 
coast,  so  as  to  fall  down  into  a  gently  undulated  country  before 
reaching  the  sea,  and  in  some  places,  as  at  Troy  and  Adrasteia,  to 
spread  out  into  wide  alluvial  plains.  Only  on  the  south  side,  be- 
tween Antandros  and  Lectum,  there  is  no  room  for  plains  of  any 
extent ;  but  the  coast,  varied  by  the  ridges  of  Gargarus  spreading 
their  straggling  arms  to  the  sea,  is  described  as  remarkably  pic- 
turesque. 

Considering  the  celebrity  of  Mount  Ida  as  a  bearer  of  classical 
traditions,  and  its  vicinity  to  Constantinople,  it  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  ascended  very  frequently.  That  Texier  and  Tchihatcheif 
were  at  the  top  I  presume  from  the  minuteness  and  comprehen- 


224  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

sivetiess  of  their  descrij^tions.  There  is  an  account  of  an  ascent 
by  Dr.  Hunt,  in  March  1801,  in  Walpole's  Travels  {i.  p.  119), 
but  this  gentleman  was  unhappy  in  having  his  view  blinded  by  a 
snow-storm.  Dr.  E.  D.  Clarke  was  more  fortunate  ;  and  his  de- 
scription of  the  peril  of  the  ascent  is  almost  sufficient  to  tempt 
some  member  of  the  Alpine  Club  to  court  a  sublime  neck -breaking 
in  this  region.  Clarke  describes  the  scenery  in  ascending  the 
Scamander  towards  G-argarus  as  "  uncommonly  fine,  and  re- 
sembling the  country  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Salerno,  where 
Salvator  Rosa  studied  and  painted  the  savage  and  uncouth  features 
of  nature  in  his  great  and  noble  style."  He  then  in  the  ascent 
passes  the  ruins  of  some  medifeval  oratories  and  hermitages,  with 
rude  paintings  of  the  all-holy  Virgin  staring  out  from  the  old 
stuccoed  wall ;  and,  traversing  the  belt  of  forest  from  which  the 
mountain  got  its  name  (tSvj,  loood.,  Herod,  and  Theoc),  saw  the 
marks  of  the  wild  boars  which  inhabit  this  region,  and  justify  the 
Homeric  epithet,  /xrjrepa  S-rypoiv ;  nay,  even  leopards,  he  was  as- 
sured, and  tigers,  still  keep  alive  the  classical  memories  of  the  ground. 
Onward  still  he  mounted,  and  came  into  the  zone  of  the  summit, 
where  all  was  icy,  bleak,  and  fearful,  and  where,  as  usual,  he  was 
deserted  by  his  guides,  who  have  no  conception  of  the  dare-devil 
enterprise  and  persistency  of  a  scientific  John  Bull  on  such  an  ex- 
pedition. He  was  soon  afterwards  gratified,  as  all  great  mountain 
climbers  are,  by  finding  himself  "  on  the  brink  of  a  precipice  so 
tremendous,  that  the  slightest  slip  of  the  foot  would  have  aiforded 
a  speedy  passage  to  eternity."  However,  by  cutting  holes  in  the 
ice  for  his  hands  and  feet,  and  following  the  footsteps  of  tigers,  he 
overcame  all  difficulties,  and  stood  victorious  upon  the  summit ; 
and  then,  what  a  spectacle  !  "It  seemed  as  if  all  European  Tiir- 
key,  and  the  whole  of  Asia  Minor,  were  lying  modelled  before  him 
on  a  vast  surface  of  glass.  The  great  objects  drew  his  attention 
first ;  afterwards  he  examined  each  particular  place  with  minute 
observation.  The  eye,  roaming  to  Constantinople,  beheld  all  the 
Sea  of  Marmora,  the  mountains  of  Prusa,  with  the  Asiatic  Olympus, 
and  all  the  surrounding  territory,   comprehending,  in  one  survey, 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  225 

all  Propontis  and  the  Hellespont,  with  the  shores  of  Thrace  and 
Chersonesus,  all  the  north  of  the  ^gean,  Mount  Athos,  the  islands 
of  Imbrus,  Samothrace,  Lemnos,  Tenedos,  and  all  beyond,  even  to 
p]iiboea ;  the  entrance  to  the  Gulf  of  Smyrna,  almost  all  Mysia, 
and  Bithynia,  with  part  of  Lydia  and  Ionia.  Looking  down  upon 
Troas,  it  appeared  spread  as  a  lawn  before  him.  He  distinctly 
saw  the  course  of  the  Scamander  through  the  Trojan  plain  to  the 
sea."  And  a  little  below,  he  makes  an  observation  which,  as  it 
illustrates  a  passage  in  the  Iliad  (xiv.  283),  may  also  be  extracted 
in  fall : — "  There  is  yet  another  singular  appearance  from  the  sum- 
mit of  this  mountain,  and  as  this  is  pointedly  alluded  to  by  Homer, 
it  seems  to  offer  a  strong  reason  for  believing  that  the  poet  had 
himself  beheld  it  from  the  same  place.  Looking  towards  Lectum, 
the  tops  of  all  the  Idaean  chain  diminish  in  altitude  by  a  regular 
gradation,  so  as  to  resemble  a  series  of  steps,  leading  to  Gargarus, 
as  to  the  highest  point  of  the  whole.  Nothing  can  therefore  more 
forcibly  illustrate  the  powers  of  Homer  as  a  painter,  in  the  display 
he  has  given  of  the  country,  and  the  fidelity  with  which  he  delineates 
every  feature  in  its  geography,  than  his  description  of  the  ascent  of 
Juno  from  Lectum  to  Gargarus  by  a  series  of  natural  eminences, 
unattainable  indeed  by  mortal  tread,  but  presenting,  to  the  great 
conceptions  of  poetical  fancy,  a  scale  adequate  to  the  power  and 
dignity  of  superior  beings." 

Ver.  53. — Each  Argive  ivight  partakes  the  morning  meal. 

In  Homer  three  words  are  used  to  name  the  different  meals 
taken  in  the  course  of  the  day,  from  which  the  ancients  perhaps 
rather  rashly  concluded  that,  in  the  Homeric  times,  the  heroes 
actually  took  three  separate  meals  each  day  (Athen.  i.  11).  The 
general  impression  left  on  my  mind  certainly  is,  that  they  never 
took  more  than  two  meals  a  day ;  but,  as  is  well  remarked  by 
Smith  [Did.  Ant. — SetTrvov),  "  we  should  be  careful  how  we  argue 
from  the  unsettled  habits  of  a  camp  to  the  regular  customs  of  ordi- 
nary life."  The  morning  meal.,  under  the  name  of  apicrrov,  occurs 
only  twice  in  Homer  ;  once  in  Od.  xvi.  2,  a/x'  rjol — along  ivith  the 
VOL.  IV.  P 


22G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  YIII. 

dawn — which  makes  its  acceptation  undoubted  ;  and  again  in  xxiv. 
124,  where  a  morning  meal  also  is  the  natural  meaning  (compare 
v.  4).  As  little  doubt  can  there  be  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  word 
SopTTos  in  Homer — the  eveniiuj  meal  (xxiv.  '2,  and  xix.  208).  But 
the  third  word,  Belirvov^  is  used  more  equivocally,  so  as  to  have  led 
Nitzsch  to  the  opinion  {Od .  i.  124)  that  it  signifies  generally  the 
principal  meal  of  the  day,  whensoever  taken ;  and  no  doubt  he  is 
right  in  adding,  that  a  soldier  going  early  to  battle  might  take  his 
^eiTTvov  earlier  than  a  person  whose  time  was  more  at  his  disposal. 
All  we  can  say  is,  that  in  the  present  passage,  by  Se"7n'oi',  an  early 
meal  before  commencing  the  business  of  the  day  is  evidently  in- 
tended ;  whereas  by  the  same  word  in  xi.  86 — a  passage  which 
speaks  of  a  usual  habit — a  mid-day  meal  (JMittagHessen,  as  the 
Germans  call  dinner)  is  meant.  On  this  subject  generally,  and 
the  special  difficulty  attaching  to  Od.  iv.  61,  see  Brosin,  De  Coenis 
Homericis  (Berlin,  1861,  p.  12). 

Ver.  70. — Stiff-oufstrctcJmuj  Death. 

The  scholar  will  recognise  here  the  transference  into  our  lan- 
guage of  one  of  the  most  beautiful  descriptive  epithets  in  Homer, 
of  which  our  English  translators,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  even  the  most 
recent,  seem,  without  any  good  reason,  to  have  fought  shy.  That 
the  traditional  gloss  of  this  epithet,  /xaKpoKoifjLrjTos,  is  untenable  on 
philological  grounds,  seems  plain  ;  nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  as  to 
the  strictly  scientific  analogies  on  which  the  modern  interpretation, 
transferred  from  Passow  by  L.  and  S.,  is  founded.  The  Germans 
say,  "  langhinhettend,"  V.,  and  "  langhinstreckendj"  D.  ;  and  we, 
whose  great  dramatist  talks  of  "  tJie  sight-outrunnmg  light7iing,"  cer- 
tainly should  have  no  reason  to  boggle  at  a  compound  word  of  this 
kind.  The  two  lines,  73,  74,  were  objected  to  by  the  ancients,  as 
talking  of  K'^pes  in  the  plural,  while  only  two,  one  for  each  party, 
are  spoken  of  in  the  previous  lines.  After  peire  8'  aiatjxov  rjiiap 
'A^atwv  they  certainly  appear  quite  superfluous.  Sp.  brackets, 
and  Bekker  ejects  them  altogether.     I  follow  his  example. 


BOOK  Ylll.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAU.  227 

Ver.  83. — Deadliest  strikes  an  arrow  there. 

On  this  subject  I  am  favoured  with  a  note  from  Professor 
Gramgee,  of  the  Albert  Veterinary  College,  London.  ''  Homer 
evidently  referred  to  the  part  where  the  spinal  cord  can  be  readily 
severed  with  an  arrow,  knife,  or  other  instrument,  between  the  first 
cervical  vertebra  and  the  occiput.  In  some  parts  of  Italy,  the 
cattle  are  very  dexterously  destroyed  by  pithing.  A  man  faces 
the  ox,  taps  it  on  the  nose  with  a  short  dirk,  and  as  the  nose  is 
turned  in  towards  the  chest,  the  space  at  the  upper  part  of  the 
neck  is  widened,  and  no  difficulty  is  experienced  in  severing  the 
cord.  Any  person  standing  by  a  horse's  head,  and  striking  '  on 
the  top  of  the  head  where  the  highest  hairs  of  the  mane  grow,'  if 
he  directed  his  knife  in  a  somewhat  slanting  direction  from  before 
back,  could  scarcely  fail  to  pierce  the  spinal  canal,  and  induce  in- 
stant death.  It  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  to  protect  troop-horses 
with  some  metallic  contrivance  (usually  a  chain  with  flat  links)  at 
the  upper  pai't  of  the  bridle,  which  covers  the  part  you  name,  as  it 
would  be  an  easy  matter  to  destroy  a  horse  with  a  sword  thrust  on 
this  vulnerable  part." 

Ver.  135. — Flame  a,nd  sulphurn}is  smnJce. 

Objects  struck  by  lightning  (xiv.  415)  emit  a  smell,  not  of  sul- 
phur, but  of  a  substance  called  by  chemists  ozone. 

Vers.  164-6. 

These  three  verses  were  disallowed  by  some  of  the  ancients  for 
various  reasons,  of  which  only  one  deserves  notice.  The  ancient 
grammarians  all  felt  that  the  use  of  Sat/xwi/  in  the  sense  and  in  the 
manner  of  the  present  passage  is  quite  un-Homeric.  Mr.  Trollope, 
indeed,  in  his  notes  to  Homer,  says,  that  "  instances  of  this  usage 
will  frequently  be  met  with  in  Homer."  But  the  ancients  knew 
better  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  Sat/^cov  in  the  nominative,  as  an  agent, 
though  we  may  translate  it  fate  or  ill-fortune,  always  retained  to 
the  G-reek  mind  its  natural  force  of  "a  god;"  while  the  phrase 


228  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

•'  I  will  give  thee  a  god,"  in  this  passage,  seems  to  belong  to  a 
later  era — the  age  of  tragedians — when  the  active  force  inherent 
in  the  idea  of  Sat/xcov  was  often  scarcely  felt  (see  Eurip.  IpJiig. 
113G).  It  is  not,  however,  at  all  necessary,  on  account  of  this 
single  doubtful  phrase,  to  throw  suspicion  on  the  whole  three  lines. 
On  the  contrary,  the  poetry  imperatively  requires  them,  as  a  climax 
to  the  address  of  Hector.  Nothing  was  more  natural  than  that 
the  rhapsodists  who  recited  Homer,  while  repeating  his  verses, 
should  here  and  there  use  individual  phrases  that  had  become 
fashionable  in  their  own  age ;  and  thus,  with  regard  to  a  poet 
like  Homer,  whose  verses  were  in  everybody's  mouth,  it  becomes  a 
law  of  criticism  that  the  occurrence  of  individual  phrases  demon- 
strably of  a  later  age,  can  never  prove  the  recent  origin  of  the 
whole  passage  in  which  they  are  found.  Homer,  for  all  that  we 
know,  may  have  svmg  iroTfiov  e0r;o-co,  which  was  the  reading  of 
Zenodotus. 

Vek.  185,  189. 

The  ancients  threw  a  not  altogether  unmerited  suspicion  on 
these  lines,  for  several  reasons  : — (1.)  We  have  four  horses,  which 
is  contrary  to  the  usage  of  the  Homeric  heroes  ;  (2.)  we  have 
the  dual  number  ;  and  (3.)  the  names  of  the  horses  seem  bor- 
rowed from  other  well-known  passages.  But  all  these  reasons  are 
not  strong  enough  to  authorize  the  summary  ejection  of  line  185, 
which  Sp.  has  not  even  bracketed.  As  to  the  use  of  four  horses, 
the  mention  of  the  rerpaopta  in  Od.  xiii.  81  seems  certainly  suffi- 
cient to  defend  it ;  and  the  dual  number  is  natural,  from  the 
custom  of  reckoning  the  four  horses  in  a  quadriga  by  pairs.  The 
third  reason  is  invalidated  by  the  consideration  that  in  popular 
poetry  favourite  names  for  horses,  as  for  men,  are  apt  to  obtain 
currency,  and  receive  a  very  various  application.  The  objection 
made  to  ver.  189, 

oiv6i'  r'  iyKcpdaaaa  Tne'ii',  ore  '^vp.bs  dpilyoi, 

is  more  serious.     Not  only  does  it  seem  absurd  to  give  hor!--es  wine, 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  229 

but  after  the  Tr/jorepotcrt  in  the  previous  line,  the  ear  naturally 
looks  for  the  i;  in  immediate  sequence,  and  the  intervening  line  is 
an  incumbrance.  I  have  therefore  omitted  it  altogether.  Whether 
any  uations,  ancient  or  modern,  in  Africa  or  elsewhere,  have  been 
in  use  to  steep  the  horses"  corn  in  wine,  I  shall  not  curiously  in- 
quire. Enough  that  the  Greeks  knew  nothing  of  such  a  usage  ; 
that  the  expression  of  the  present  passage  is  exactly  such  as  would 
imply  wine  mingled  in  the  common  way  with  water,  to  be  drunk 
by  a  man,  not  by  a  horse ;  that  interpolation  from  simihir  verses 
occurring  elsewhere  was  natural ;  and  that  the  whole  passage  reads 
much  better  without  the  line  than  with  it. 

Vkr.  222. —  Uli/sses'  black  liiuje  JivUmv  ship. 

The  word  fieyaKT^rei,  applied  by  the  poet  to  the  ship  of  Ulysses, 
is  translated  by  Newman,  "  Jiuye  like  to  some  leviathan,^'  which  I 
notice  as  an  instance  of  a  tendency  very  natu^ral  to  scholars  of 
translating  according  to  etymology.  Even  if  the  etymology  be 
quite  certain,  this  tendency  may  often  lead  us  wrong ;  for  words 
are  to  be  interpreted,  not  according  to  the  meaning  which  they 
might  have  originally  had,  but  according  to  the  meaning  which 
usage  has  stamped  upon  them  at  the  period  with  which  the  inter- 
pretation has  to  do.  In  the  present  case  there  is  no  certainty  or 
even  probability  that  the  element  k-Jjtos  in  the  compound  word 
conveyed  to  the  Greek  ear  in  Homer's  time  any  notion  about  a 
whale  or  other  sea-monster.  One  would  willingly  indeed  translate 
the  jxeyuKi^rea  ttovtov  (Od.  iii.  158)  by  "  the  deep  in  mighty 
monsters  abounding;"  but  the  striking  analogy  of  the  word  kutos, 
applied  to  the  sea  in  Ps.  Ixiv.  8,  and  the  most  natural  and  obvious 
meaning  of  k7^tw€(,s  applied  to  Lacedjemon,  forbid  us  to  believe  that 
this  word  even  in  that  place  means  more  than  the  "  mighty  depths 
of  the  sea."  The  fundamental  idea  of  the  root  ktjt  or  kvt  is  not 
size,  but  hoUowness,  as  in  the  familiar  Scotch  word  ki/fe  =  renter^  of 
which  Jamieson  has  noticed  the  Teutonic,  but  not  the  Hellenic 
aflBnities.  From  tliis  idea  the  word  came  to  be  used  of  n-hales  and 
seo/.s,  as  blown-up  hollow  bags  of  animated  organism. 


230  NOTES  TO  THE  ILLVP.  BOOK  VIII. 

Ver.  247. — And  sent  Ms  eagle,  chiefest  Vird. 

The  appearance  of  an  eagle,  "  the  most  perfect  of  winged  crea- 
tures," is  here,  as  elsewhere  (xiii.  821,  xxiv.  315),  the  most  cer- 
tain announcement  of  the  favour  of  Jove,  of  whom  that  bird  is  the 
minister.  In  such  cases  it  has  often,  both  iu  the  poets,  and  on 
ancient  coins  and  gems,  a  serpent,  a  hare,  a  fawn,  or  some  other 
victim  in  its  claws.  The  application  that  would  be  made  of  this  is 
obvious.  Of  so  universally  recognised  an  omen,  adaptations,  of 
course,  could  not  be  wanting  in  Vii'gil  (see  JEn.  xii.  247). 

Ver.  250. — AU -voicing  Jovf. 

The  word  d^K^iy  in  Homer,  as  distinguished  from  ocrcra,  (^wvt^. 
av8-q,  and  oi/',  is  always  used  of  divine  voices  or  oracles ;  and  Zevs 
is  iu  this  passage  properly  called  Travo/x^atos,  as  the  all-wise 
source  from  which  oracular  voices,  revealing  the  divine  will  to  men, 
necessarily  proceed ;  for  the  functions  of  ApoUo  in  this  field  are 
only  secondary,  and  under  subjection  to  the  inherent  superiority 
of  the  king  of  gods  and  men.  It  is  as  identical  with  Apollo,  I 
presume,  that  the  sun  iu  Q.  Smyrn.  v.  626  receives  the  epithet 
Travo^t^atos.  On  the  oracular  kA,7;Soi'€s  and  ofxcfiat  generally,  see 
Hermann,  Rel  Alt.  38.  18. 

Ver.  273. — Whom  then  did  Teucer  slay? 

Though  the  bow  was  not  a  weapon  of  which  the  Greeks  were 
particularly  proud,  and  though  they  delighted  rather  to  exhibit  the 
Trojans  and  other  Orientals  as  skilled  in  archery,  yet  they  could 
not  afford  to  do  altogether  without  yv/xi'rJTe'i  or  light-armed  sol- 
diery ;  and  as  the  representative  of  this  class,  Teucer  appears  here 
and  in  xiii.  170.  Teucer  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  Telamon  by 
Hesionc,  daughter  of  Laomedon,  king  of  Troy  (ApoU.  iii.  12.  6), 
brought  up  along  with  Ajax  iu  his  father's  house ;  illegitimacy  in 
those  days  of  various  concubinage  being  tolerated  by  both  the  lady 
and  gentleman  of  the  heroic  family  in  a  way  of  which,  in  these 
more  correct  times,  we  have  nu  conception.     Compare  the  conduct 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  231 

of  Theano  (v.  70).  The  after  fortunes  of  this  famous  bowman,  as 
the  founder  of  a  new  dynasty  in  Cyprus  (Pans.  ii.  29.  4 ;  Find. 
Neiii.  IV.  75),  are  well  known,  and  specially  commemorated  by 
Horace  in  a  familiar  passage  (Carm.  i.  7). 

Ver.  304. — ^syme. 

Eustathius  and  Steph.  Byz.  make  this  a  city  of  Thrace  ;  no  doubt 
the  same  as  Ola-vfjn],  with  a  different  initial  vowel,  mentioned  in 
Thucydides  (iv.  107)  as  a  colony  of  Thasos.  On  its  presumed 
situation  opposite  Thasos,  on  the  coast,  east  of  the  Strymon,  see 
Leake's  Northern  Greece^  iii.  179. 

Ver.  349. — Gkirimj  like  Gorgon. 

The  word  yopyos,  which  in  modern  Greek  is  used  generally  for 
d)Kvs,  sioift  (compare  yopyov  koX  evKLurjTov,  Ar.  Plat.  561,  schol.), 
where  I  have  observed  it  in  ancient  writers  generally  has  associated 
with  it  the  idea  of  terrible,  fearful,  as  applied  to  the  piercing  glance 
of  a  strong  eye.  (See  Lucian,  Alex.  Pseud.  3 ;  Hermot.  1 ;  and 
Heliodor.  ^thiop.  i.  3 ;  Joseph.  Antiq.  vi.  8.  1,  of  King  David's 
eyes.)  The  effect  of  yopyoTrys  in  the  eye  was  pretty  much  the 
same,  therefore,  as  that  Seivorrys  for  which  the  look  of  Pallas  Athene 
was  remarkable  (i.  200),  only  more  human,  and  less  terrible.  In 
the  well-known  mythological  personage,  the  Medusa,  this  penetrat- 
ing power  in  the  eye  was  represented  as  so  strong  that  any  mortal 
encountering  it  was  immediately  turned  into  stone.  As  to  these 
Gorgons,  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  Homer,  as  in  the  case  of  Moipa, 
knows  them  not  in  the  plural ;  he  has  only  one  Gorge,  whether 
in  the  Odyssey  (xi.  634)  or  in  the  Iliad  (v.  741) ;  the  same  whom 
Perseus  slew — 

"  Here  too  I  slew  in  my  craft  Medusa  the  beautiful  horror." 

Hesiod  (Tlteog.  275),  as  in  other  matters,  so  here,  shows  himself  at 
once  more  modern  and  more  complete.     He  has  three  Gorgons — 

Ideivw  T   EvpvdXri  re  Medovad  re  \vypa  Tradovaa, 

whom  in  the  shield  of  Hercules  (233)  he  describes  as  '•  girt  with 


232  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

snakes,"  and  dressed  with  various  other  terrors.  What  these  fear- 
ful maidens  exactly  were  is  difficult  to  say ;  but  so  much  is  plain 
that  they  were  impersonations  of  certain  fearful  watery  powers  in 
the  far  western  ocean  (see  Hesychius,  yopyiSes  and  yopydSoiv, 
and  their  pedigree  from  Pontus  in  Apoll.  i.  2)  at  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  where  Hesiod  places  their  habitation.  Prosaic  minds  in 
later  times  identified  them  with  a  tribe  of  warlike  women  in  Africa 
(Diod.  Sic.  III.  52  ;  Pans.  ii.  21.  6) ;  but  there  is  nothing  in  the 
strange  dim  legends  connected  with  them  that  would  entitle  us  to 
attribute  to  them  that  historical  reality  which  has  been  success- 
fully vindicated  for  the  Amazons. 

Ver.  366. — Oh,  had  I  knoivn  what  now  I  know,  etc. 

It  is  noted  by  Pausauias  (iii.  25.  4)  that  though  Homer  knows  the 
infernal  hound,  watch  of  hell-gate,  yet  he  knows  not  his  name, 
KepfSepos,  neither  does  he  mention  his  triple  head,  though  I  have 
taken  the  liberty  of  filling  up  my  verse  with  the  familiar  epithet. 
Hesiod,  as  a  well-instructed  doctor  of  theology,  of  course  knew 
more  {Theog.  310),  and  gives  him  both  name  and  parentage,  and  a 
brazen  throat,  and  fifty  heads  to  boot.  The  epithet  TrvXdprrjs, 
which  I  have  rendered  "  hrazen-gated,'^  refers  to  the  "  gates  of 
Hades,"  familiar  to  the  ancient  poets  (ix.  312),  and  mentioned  also 
in  a  well-known  passage  of  the  New  Testament.  Erebus  is  one  of 
the  few  familiar  Greek  words  that  seem  distinctly  traceable  to  a 
Hebrew  origin,  3^»,  evening.  With  regard  to  Styx,  a  well-known 
passage  in  Pausanias  (viii.  17,  18)  assigns  to  this  hated  river  of 
hell  a  distinctly  terrestrial  locality  near  Nonacris,  in  the  north  of 
Arcadia.  But  in  Homer  the  Styx,  as  an  infernal  river  {Od.  x. 
514),  has  and  can  have  no  place  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  though 
certain  earthly  rivers,  as  that  in  Thessaly  (ii.  755)  were  imagined 
to  have  a  secret  connexion  with  the  infernal  fountain.  How  the 
Arcadian  waterfall  came  to  usuip  the  dread  honours  of  this  invis- 
ible stream  we  do  not  know ;  most  probably  it  arose  from  the  more 
accidental  coincidence  of  the  name,  cumbined  with  certain  horrors 
of  the   landscape,  well   described   liy   Curtius   (i.    105),   and   well 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  233 

worked  upon  by  the  popular  imagination.  I  have  seen  not  a  few 
such  places  in  the  Scottish  Highlands,  which,  if  Ossian  were  as 
well  known  in  Britain  as  Homer  was  in  Grreece,  might  have  had  a 
fair  chance  to  be  quoted  as  a  squirt  from  Hell-pool,  breaking  out 
on  the  upper  surface  of  the  earth.  Clark  in  his  Peloponnesus 
(p.  301)  has  an  excellent  chapter  on  the  subject.  (See  also  Leake, 
Mor.  iii.  160,  and  Hayman's  Odyssey,  i.  App.  d).  Some  of  these 
writers  seem  to  speak  as  if  Homer  really  had  the  Arcadian  Styx  in 
his  eye,  of  which  there  is  not  the  vestige  of  a  proof.  The  belief  of 
the  Arcadians  themselves  in  the  identity  of  the  terrestrial  and 
subterranean  rivers  (Herod,  vi.  74),  or  even  of  the  Greeks  gene- 
rally, is  not  worth  a  rush.  In  no  region  is  imagination  more  fertile 
than  in  creating  identities  of  this  kind.  A  name  in  Homer  with- 
out local  identification  was  as  incomplete  as  a  daughter  of  Israel 
without  a  husband. 

Ver.  398. — Golden-wmged  Iris. 

Iris,  like  Oceands,  Urands,  Boreas,  and  other  Greek  gods,  bears 
her  elemental  significance  plainly  on  her  face ;  for  the  word  Tpis  is 
used  literally  of  the  rainbow  by  Homer  himself  (xi.  27),  though 
the  old  minstrel,  with  his  completely  anthropomorphized  theology, 
nowhere  expresses  the  slightest  consciousness  of  the  original  iden- 
tity of  the  physical  phenomenon,  and  the  divine  potency  from  which 
it  springs.  That  Virgil  does  this  (^n.  iv.  700)  is  only  a  proof  of 
the  very  different  point  of  view  from  which  the  two  poets  looked  on 
the  popular  theology.  More  than  four  hundred  years  before  Virgil, 
Euripides  had  accustomed  the  quick- eyed  audience  who  witnessed 
the  Greek  tragedy  to  identify  their  anthropomorphic  gods  with  the 
physical  forms  and  forces  out  of  which  they  sprang.  The  original 
identity  of  Iris  with  the  rainbow  is  clearly  indicated  by  her  parent- 
age and  kinship,  in  the  following  lines  of  Hesiod  {TJieog.  265) — 

"  Tluiumas  married  Electra,  the  daughter  of  deep  flowing  Ocean, 
Siie  swift  Iris  did  bear,  and  the  Harpies  with  beautiful  ringlets, 
Swifter  tlian  birds,  or  tlie  winds  that  drive  the  rack  in  the  welkin." 

Here  the  rainbow  has  the  ocpan  for  her  parents,  and   the  winds  for 


234  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

her  sisters  ;  which  is  just  what  we  should  expect.  The  fatherhood 
in  the  person  of  Thauuias,  or  Wonder,  a  son  of  Pontus,  is  a  fine 
conceit,  which  justly  excited  the  admiration  of  Plato  (Thecet.  155). 
It  was  remarked  by  the  ancients  that  in  the  Iliad  Iris  is  the  favourite 
messenger  of  Jove,  while  in  the  Odyssey  Hermes  only  appears,  a 
difference  from  which  curious  critics,  both  ancient  and  modern,  have 
drawn  hasty,  and,  as  it  appears  to  me,  unwarrantable  conclusions 
with  regard  to  the  supposed  separate  authorship  of  those  books. 

Vek.  478. — lapeUis  and  ancient  Kronos. 

The  Titans  are  mentioned  four  times  in  the  Iliad ;  here,  and 
under  the  generic  name  in  xiv.  278,  where  Here  swears  by  them, 
and  in  which  passage  also  (ver.  274)  they  are  called  ol  d[X(f)l 
Kpovov,  as  the  followers  of  Kronos  their  chief ;  then  in  xv.  225, 
where  they  bear  the  same  designation  ;  and  lastly,  in  v.  898,  where 
they  are  called  Ovpavtwves,  or  the  sous  of  Uranus,  a  passage  in 
which  I  entirely  agree  with  Welcker  (g.  I.  i.  p.  263),  a  person  must 
be  altogether  blind  to  the  whole  analogy  of  Homer's  phraseology 
who  does  not  recognise  the  ol  ajxc^l  KpoFov  of  the  other  passages. 
In  the  Homeric  Hymns  they  are  mentioned  precisely  in  the  same 
way  [Apull.  Pijtli.  156),  and  in  all  these  passages,  though  the 
mention  is  merely  incidental,  yet  it  is  plainly  such  an  incidental 
mention  as  one  makes  of  a  familiar  and  universally  current  matter  ; 
and  Welcker  (/.  c.)  is  unquestionably  right  in  concluding  tliat  in 
Homer's  day  the  legend  of  the  Titans  existed  as  a  complete  and 
well-rounded  old  sacred  legend,  though  of  course  we  do  not  possess 
it  painted  out  in  its  full  proportions  till  we  come  to  Hesiod.  The 
assertion  of  Pausanias  (viii.  37.  3),  that  Homer  was  the  first  to 
introduce  the  Titans  into  poetry,  has  therefore  no  more  weight 
than  the  well-known  assertion  of  Herodotus,  that  the  poet  was  the 
first  to  teach  the  Greeks  the  names  of  their  gods.  Homer  in  all 
mythological  matters  plainly  invented  nothing ;  he  only  gave 
greater  importance  to  what  he  adopted,  as  the  Queen  docs  to  a  man 
of  note  when  she  dubs  him  a  knight.  As  to  Hesiod,  he  was  a 
regular  doctor  of  divinity,  ana  no  doubt,  in  an  age  when  there  was 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  235 

no  Bible,  aud  no  symbolical  books  to  bind  him,  might  have  drawn, 
in  certain  accessory  matters,  to  a  considerable  extent  on  his  own 
fancy.  The  account  which  he  gives  of  the  Titans  agrees  well  with 
the  explanation  of  their  significance  which  is  given  by  Preller  and 
Welcker,  aud  which  the  whole  analogy  of  comparative  mythology 
indicates  to  be  the  true  one.  The  names  of  the  twelve  Titans — 
offspring  of  Heaven  and  Earth  (Milton,  P.  L.  i.  508) — given  by 
the  old  theologer  (Theog.  134),  so  far  as  their  etymology  can  be  de- 
pended on,  plainly  show  that  they  were  elemental  powers  of  nature 
and  primary  forces  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  world.  Hyperion 
(I  retain  Shakspeare's  quantity  of  the  penult),  one  of  them,  is  known 
in  Homer  (ver.  480)  only  as  an  epithet  of  the  Sun  ;  Themis  is  Law, 
and  Mnemosyne  is  Memory.  We  have  therefore  here,  under  a 
poetical  vesture,  a  system  of  speculative  theology,  which  deduces 
all  the  gods  from  the  primary  forces  of  the  physical  and  spiritual 
world,  and  sees  in  the  great  changes  that  are  constantly  going  on 
within  and  without  us,  a  grand  system  of  ^'progression  hy  anta- 
gonism.'" What  the  actual  historical  fact  is  that  might  have  under- 
lain this  scheme  of  reflective  theology  may  seem  more  doubtful ; 
but  Welcker's  notion  that  in  the  grand  struggle  between  the 
Titans  and  the  other  gods  of  the  same  pedigree,  which  ended  in 
the  sovereignty  of  Jove,  we  see  a  great  change  in  the  form  of  the 
popular  faith,  from  its  elemental  germ  to  its  full  anthropomorphic 
flower,  delineated  in  the  form  of  a  battle  and  victory,  seems  quite 
reasonable.  That  such  a  change  did  take  place  on  the  Hellenic 
mind  at  some  period  of  their  early  history  is  quite  certain,  just  as 
we  can  trace  a  similar  change  in  the  religious  views  of  the  Hindus 
by  contrasting  the  earliest  Vedas  with  the  Puranas  ;  and  if  the 
change  did  take  place,  there  was  in  those  times  no  more  obvious 
way  of  representing  it  than  under  the  aspect  of  a  "  war  in  heaven." 
So  much  for  the  general  significance  of  this  famous  legend.  A 
single  word  now  on  those  two  Titans  who  are  specially  named  in 
this  passage  (43),  Iapetus  and  Kronos.  Of  the  former  we  have 
only  to  say  that  his  importance  is  altogether  owing  to  the  celebrity 
of  his  four  sons.  Atlas,  Menoetius,  Prometheus,  and  Epimetheus, 


23C  NO-JES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  YIII. 

who  are  universally  looked  on  by  mythologists  as  the  earliest 
representatives  of  the  human  race  in  their  relation  to  the  gods  ; 
but,  as  not  one  of  them  is  mentioned  in  the  Iliad,  they  may  pass 
without  comment  in  this  place.  As  to  Kronos,  the  ancients  were 
generally  of  opinion  (Dionys.  Hal  i.  38  ,  ScIkA.  Apoll.  Rhod.  i. 
1098;  Lydus,  De  Mens,  init.,  Plut.  Qitcest.  Rom.  p.  266,  Xyl.) 
that  his  true  significance  lay  in  the  most  obvious  etymology  of  his 
name,  X/doi'os,  tlmSj  of  which  Kpdvos  is  only  an  Ionic  variation 
(Buttmann,  Myllwl.  ii.  p.  33);  and  though  the  love  of  innovation,  so 
characteristic  of  German  scholars,  has  led  to  the  proposal  of  other 
and  less  obvious  etymologies,  it  is  satisfactory  to  find  that  Welcker 
in  his  last  great  work  has  been  content  simply  to  assert  the  old  one. 
That  Kpop-os  is  merely  a  theological  conception,  and  means  Time, 
as  one  of  the  grand  necessary  conditions  of  all  possible  existence  of 
which  man  can  have  any  notion,  seems  evident  from  these  four 
considerations — (1.)  In  a  theological  genealogy,  such  as  that  of 
Hesiod,  where  almost  every  other  power  and  function,  whether  of 
nature  or  of  mind,  is  represented,  an  impersonation  of  time  was  to 
be  looked  for,  just  as  naturally  as  the  sun  and  the  moon  are  to  be 
looked  for  in  a  system  of  purely  elemental  worship.  (2.)  This 
presumption  is  satisfied  by  the  appearance  of  Time,  both  in  Phere- 
cydes  and  the  Hesiodic  genealogy,  among  the  very  earliest  gods 
as  the  son  of  Heaven  and  Earth,  and  the  father  of  that  Jove 
who  was  destined  to  sit  permanently  on  the  throne  of  the  firmly 
established  world. ^  (3.)  The  attributes  and  actions  of  Kronos — 
as,  for  instance,  the  well-known  legend  of  his  devouring  his  own 
children — find  their  natural  explanation  in  the  theory  that  he 
represents  Time.  (4.)  That  Kronos  was  originally  a  theologico- 
metajihysical  idea,  rather  than  a  god  actually  believed  in,  appears 
certain  from  the  extreme  rareness  of  his  worship,  even  in  later 
times,  when  he  had  become  clothed  with  a  recognised  personality. 
He  appears,  indeed,  to  have  asserted  himself  as  a  celestial  person, 
scarcely  otherwise  than  as  an   adjunct  of  Jove,   in   virtue   of  his 

'  Zei'S  fj-iv  Kul  xp6»'os  fis  del  Kal  x0wv  iji'  (Diog.  Laert.  i.  11,   willi  Wt-kker's 
Note  in  <j.  I.  i    p.  1  13. 


IJUUK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  237 

fatherhood  (Paus.  i.  18.  7,  vi.  20.  1)  ;   and  this  in  ju.st  wliat  we 
should  have  expected  on  the  supposition  that  he  had  no  real  his- 
toric root  in  the  faith  of  the  Hellenic  race,  but  was  only  an  idea, 
by  the  habit  of  those  early  times  necessarily  conceived  as  a  person. 
One  of  the  most  remarkable  legends  with  regard  to  Kronos  is 
that  which  makes  him  the  terrestrial  god,  or  celestial  king  of  the 
famous  golden  age,  when  the  gods  dwelt  upon  earth  on  a  familiar 
footing  with  men  (Paus.  viii.  2.  2),  and  everybody  enjoyed  every- 
thing without  any  trouble  about  anything.     But  this  conception, 
however   familiar  to   Hesiod  (Op.   169,  with  Buttmann,  Myth.  ii. 
p.  63)  and  Pindar  {01.  ii.  138),  is  one  of  which  Homer  knows 
nothing.     With  him  Kronos  shares  the  fate  of  the  other  Titans, 
who  are  all  forced  to  yield  to  the  controlling  omnipotence  of  the 
supreme  Jove.     At  the  same  time,  nothing,  as  Buttmann  has  shown 
(p.  36),  was  more  natural  than  this  new  shoot  from  the  old  stock. 
For  Time  means,  of  course,  pre-eminently  the  old  Time  ;  and  the 
old  time  in  the  traditions  of  all  nations,  as  in  the  memory  of  most 
individuals,  is  the  golden  time ;  and  so  the  crafty  old  Titan  was 
metamorphosed  into  the  lord  of  a  far-distant  reahii  of  all  imagin- 
able blessedness.     This  conception,  along  with  the  obvious  parallel 
of  the  Attic  feast  of  Kpovta  (Hesych.  in  voce),  with  the  Roman 
Saturnalia,  led  to  the  identification  of  the  Latin  Saturn  with  the 
Hellenic  Kronos  ;  but  as  identifications  of  this  kind  were  every- 
where  eagerly  sought  for  by  all  polytheistic   nations,  and  found 
without  any  curious  criticism,  we  shall  always  look  upon  them  with 
a  wise  suspicion.     And  as  the  Hellenizing  Romans  found  their 
Saturn  readily  enough  in  the  Greek  Kpovos,  so  the  Greeks  were 
not  backward  to  find  their  old   Pelasgic   impersonation   of  Time 
devouring  his   own  children   in  the  Phoenician  Moloch,  to  whom 
human  sacrifices  were  ofi"ered,  and  whose  worship  was  well  known 
all   over  the  Mediterranean   (Str.   iii.   169).     But  whatever  may 
have  been  the  connexion  between  Phoenician  and  Pelasgic  theo- 
gonies  in  ages  beyond  the  boundary  of  historical  cognition,  it  is 
certain  that,  as  the  evidence  now  stands,  there  is  no  better  proof 
of  the  Phoenician  origin  of  Kronos,  than  there  is  of  the  Egyptian 


238  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  VIII. 

origin  of  lo,  or,  as  the  Greeks  preferred  to  view  it,  the  Hellenic 
origin  of  Isis.     So  much  for  the  Titans. 

Ver.  480. — Divorced  from  clear  IIyj:)er ion's  light. 

Hyperion,  in  Hesiod  (Theog.  133),  is  one  of  the  great  original 
elemental  powers  or  functions — in  fact,  the  Titans, — the  father  of 
the  Sun,  and  the  Moon,  and  the  Morning.  But  in  Homer  this  word 
is  often  only  an  epithet  of  the  sun,  as  here,  or  put  nakedly  for  the 
sun,  as  in  Od.  i.  24.  The  only  safe  etymology  for  the  word  is  to 
connect  it  with  virep,  above,  as  the  quantity  of  the  penult  renders 
the  poetical  vei-sion,  "he  that  walketh  aloft,"  very  suspicious. 
The  strange  confusion  of  {m-eptwv  and  vTreptoviS-qs  in  Od.  xii.  133 
and  176  involves  questions  about  which  decision  is  not  at  all  easy 
(see  Ameis  on  Od.  i.  8). 

Ver.  527. — These  hounds  whom  baleful  fiends  sent  here. 

It  is  very  seldom  that  I  venture  to  use  the  words  "fiend," 
"  demon,"  with  their  modern  Gothic  and  Christian  associations,  in 
translating  Greek  ;  but  for  the  Kijpes,  in  such  a  compound  as 
Kr)pe(T(Ti(f)op-qTov'5,  I  think  the  expression  may  be  allowed.  As  to 
the  next  line,  which  most  editions  include  within  brackets,  what- 
ever authority  it  may  have  in  strictly  textual  appreciation,  it  is 
certainly,  as  Sp.  says,  "  otiosus  et  molestus,"  and,  by  a  translator 
at  least,  may  be  held  pro  non  scripto. 

Ver.  548-552.  — From  epBov  to  TJpidp,oio. 

These  five  lines,  all  except  the  second,  do  not  occur  in  the  text 
of  Homer,  but  were  first  inserted  by  Barnes  from  Plato  (Alcibiad. 
II.  149  d).  They  describe  a  sacrifice;  but  in  the  present  passage 
I  certainly  agree  with  Heyne  that  a  solemn  sacrifice  is  altogether 
out  of  place.  ^^  Vesper i  a  pugna  recedunt  ;  qnce  tamen  potest  hoc 
tempore  et  in  exercitu  e  pugna-  fesso,  esse  hecatonibarum  aut  omnino 
sacrificii  cura?"  I  therefore  think  it  best,  following  the  bold 
tactics  of  Bekker,  to  eject  them  altogether  from  the  text,  and  re- 
turn to  the  simplicity  of  the  old  editions. 


BOOK  VIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  239 

Ver.  555-559. — As  when  the  sfara  in  the  cloudless  sky^  etc. 

I  am  afraid  my  three  lines  will  appear  very  tame  and  meagre 
when  set  against  the  gorgeous  mass  of  rich  sonorous  description — 
twelve  lines — into  which  Pope  has  expanded  the  five  lines  of  the 
original.  But  I  am  convinced  that  Zenodotus,  Aristarchus,  and 
the  ancient  critics  in  the  Venetian  Scholia  a,  were  right  in  marking 
the  two  lines  557-558  as  wrongly  transferred  from  xvi.  299.  For 
the  €K  T  'i(fia.vev  and  the  vireppdyrj  plainly  imply  a  sudden  bursting 
out,  as  the  ancient  critics  observed,  wliich  agrees  admirably  with 
the  context  of  xvi.  299,  but  is  utterly  incongruous  here,  where  a 
beautiful,  bright,  clear,  permanent  quietude  gives  a  tone  to  the 
picture.  In  fact,  the  ck  t'  'i(f)avev  and  the  vTreppdyy]  in  xvi.  299  are 
Eesthetically  dependent  on  the  Kivijcry  TrvKunjv  ve^kXrjv  of  ver.  298, 
and  have  no  sufficient  motive  in  the  vi]vejxo<s  aidyp  of  this  passage  ; 
not  to  mention  the  clumsy  sort  of  tautology  which  the  double  men- 
tion of  the  al9i]p  introduces.  On  the  whole,  therefore,  I  subscribe 
to  Heyne's  dictum  most  heartily  :  "  Nee  certius  quicquam  esse  j^otest 
quam  hos  versus  hie  esse  insititios,"  and  am  not  in  the  least  moved 
by  the  art  with  which  Tennyson  and  other  skilful  artists  in 
verse  may  have  so  softened  the  ofi"ence  as  to  make  it  even  appear 
a  beauty.  On  this  muoh-bespoken  passage  generally,  see  Disser- 
tations, p.  433  ;  Wilson's  Essays,  iv.  p.  114  ;  Gladstone,  iii.  421  ; 
Cope,  in  Cambridge  Essays,  1856  ;  Clark,  Peloponnesus,  p.  118. 
The  Greeks  were  no  view-hunters  or  landscape-painters ;  but 
they  lived  much  in  the  open  air,  and  looked  on  the  great  pictures 
of  nature,  as  the  divine  scenery  of  the  sacred  drama  of  human  life, 
with  a  cheerful,  healthy  delight. 


BOOK   IX. 


Ver.  14. — A  dark-watered  fountain. 

We  have  a  notable  example  here  of  the  utter  want  of  special 
propriety  with  which  Homer  uses  his  epithets.     Water  when  fall- 


240  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  HOOK  IX. 

iug  down  a  rock  is  never  dark,  but  white.  The  epithet  applies  to 
the  aspect  of  the  water  generally,  not  to  its  appearance  in  the  act  of 
falling.  Wilson  {Essays,  p.  130)  does  not  appear  to  me  properly 
to  appreciate  this ;  nor  has  the  darkness  of  the  water  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  the  gloom  of  Agamemnon's  mind.  Water  is 
always  /^eXas  or  ioei8i]s  (Hes.  Theog.  3),  and  5vo<^€/jov  is  the  same 
quality  repeated  according  to  a  tautology  of  which  Homer  and  all 
popular  minstrels  are  particularly  fond. 

Ver.  34. — A  harhed  word  of  sharp  reproach  thmt  once 
didst  cast  on  me. 

Agamemnon  had  said  nothing  of  the  kind  just  now ;  but  the 
allusion  is  plainly  to  the  reproach  thrown  out  by  the  king  in  iv. 
370,  which  the  Tydidan  at  that  time  bore  with  the  meekness  of  a 
Quaker — 

aldeffOels  ^affiKyjos  i.vnrr)v  aidoioio  ; 

but  having  now  found  a  more  convenient  season,  is  determined  to 
fling  back  the  charge  upon  the  accuser.  Is  not  this  good  memory 
of  Diomede  a  strong  proof  that  the  two  Books,  iv.  and  ix.,  were 
wTitten  by  the  same  poet  ? 

Ver.  70. — Spread  thou  a  banquet  for  the  chiefs. 

I  have  often  heard  it  remarked  that  at  Presbytery  dinners  a 
tumbler  of  toddy  often  washes  down  a  good  deal  of  gall  that  had 
been  copiously  effused  into  the  system  under  the  excitement  of  the 
previous  debate  ;  and  of  this  beneficent  effect  of  generous  liquor, 
taken  sociably,  the  wise  old  Pylian  knight  seems,  from  the  present 
passage,  to  have  been  fully  aware.  That  the  ancient  Germans, 
and  their  Aryan  cousins,  the  Persians,  had  the  custom  of  discuss- 
ing the  most  important  matters,  in  the  first  place,  over  their  cups, 
is  well  known  (Tacit.  De  Mor.  Germ.  22;  Herod,  i.  133);  and 
Plutarch,  in  his  symposiacal  problems,  has  treated  this  important 
matter  with  becoming  learning  and  seriousness.  My  own  opinion 
decidedly  is  that,  as  human  nature  is  at  present  constituted. 
for  healing  hasty  breaches  of  the  peace,   arising,  whether  out  of 


BOOK  IX.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  241 

the  small  occasions  of  social  life,  or  the  large  necessities  of  political 
and  ecclesiastical  party,  there  is  no  remedy  at  once  so  obvious  and 
so  effectual  as  a  glass  of  good  wine. 

Ver.  122. — Seven  tripods  that  ne'er  l-nevj  the  fire ^ 

airvpovi  TptTToSa? — not  merely  that  they  had  never  been  touched  by 
the  fire,  but  possibly  also  that  a  certain  class  of  tripods  actually 
were  only  ornamental,  at  least  meant  only  to  be  hung  up  as  votive 
ofi"erings  in  the  temples  (so  the  Schol.  Ven.  a,  d).  And  Athen- 
ceus  (ii.  37j  further  tells  us  that  anciently  there  were  two  kinds  of 
tripods,  of  which  the  one  was  a  common  caldron  or  kettle  placed 
on  the  fire  (e^7rvpt/?7yTijs),  and  the  other  only  a  Kpar-qp  or  bowl  for 
mingling  the  wine  with  water.  The  word  TpiVoi)?,  indeed,  had 
various  significations ;  sometimes  it  was  applied  to  a  small  table 
with  three  legs  (vicl.  Xen.  Anah.  vii.  3.  21,  and  Smith's  Diet.  Ant., 
Mensa) ;  sometimes  to  a  bronze  altar  for  sacrificing,  shaped  in  the 
same  way  (see  the  sacrifice  from  the  arch  of  Constantino  in  Smith's 
Diet.  Ant.,  Signa  Militaria).  On  the  whole  subject,  see  the  same 
authority,  Tripod.  In  ver.  128  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether 
\kfiri<i  means  a  water-hason  or  a  kettle. 

Ver.  129. 

Seven  Lesbian  maids,  ahove  all  trihes  of  fairest  v;omen  fair. 

The  island  of  Lesbos,  lying  as  it  did  in  the  Adramyttian  Gulf, 
right  before  the  south  coast  of  the  Troad,  naturally  belonged  to 
Priam,  and  is  mentioned  as  part  of  his  kingdom  (xxiv.  544).  It 
is  spoken  nf  in  the  Odyssey  (iv.  342)  as  a  place  of  importance. 
Its  early  celebrity  as  the  centre  of  the  musical  and  lyrical  culture 
of  the  Cohans  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  names  of  Sappho  and 
Alcaeus,  Arion  and  Terpander  (Str.  xtii.  617).  The  beauty  of  its 
women,  praised  in  this  passage  by  Homer,  seems  to  have  continued 
in  after  ages ;  for  they  are  reported  to  have  entered  into  regular 
public  competitions  of  female  beauty  with  their  neighbours  of  Tene- 
dos,  as  we  have  flower-shows  and  cattle-shows  (Athen.  xiii.  610  a). 
That  this  excessive  admiration  of  bodily  beauty  did  not  always  keep 

VOL.  IV.  g 


242  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

itself  within  the  bounds  which  crax.ppocrvv'i]  demanded,  the  pro- 
verbial use  of  the  verb  XecrfSi^eiv  shows  plainly  enough.  See  Plehn, 
Leshiaca,  p.  120. 

Ver.  146. — For'  these  no  dower  he  shall  pay. 

In  ancient  times,  when  the  world  was  not  overpeopled,  children 
in  general  were  a  fortune  to  their  parents ;  and  daughters,  specially 
if  beautiful,  were  worth  their  weight  in  gold.  We  may  almost  say 
literally  that  in  those  days  fair  women  were  bought  by  their  hus- 
bands (see  XI.  243 ;  Od.  ir.  53  and  vm.  318).  The  Old  Testa- 
ment examples  of  this  practice  are  well  known  (Gen.  sxxiv.  12; 
1  Sam.  xviii.  25).  In  Hebrew,  the  verb  i™  signifies  to  buy,  and 
the  corresponding  substantive,  mohar,  the  price  or  doivry  paid  for  a 
wife  (see  Gesenius).  The  modern  Albanians  have  the  same  cus- 
tom (see  Hahn). 

Ver.  149. — Seven  fair-sited  forts  I'll  add. 

The  seven  cities  here  named  all  lie  either  on  the  south-west 
coast  of  Laconia,  bordering  on  Messenia,  or  the  south-east  coast  of 
Messenia,  bordering  on  Sparta  ;  but  with  what  propriety  they  can 
be  said  all  to  be  situated  vearat  UvXov  rjfxadoevTo?,  the  worshippers 
of  the  Homeric  letter  will  require  all  their  subtlety  to  explain 
(see  Clark,  Pel.  p.  205).  Cardamyle  is  at  once  recognised  in  its 
modern  popular  form,  'ZKapSaixovXa,  with  the  broad  Doric  vowel, 
and  the  accent  on  the  penult,  faithfully  preserved  through  the 
stormy  roll  of  long  centuries  by  the  stout-hearted  old  Maniotes  (L. 
Mor.  i.  331).  It  is  described  by  Strabo  as  situated  on  a  strong 
rock  (viii.  360),  whichi  Curtius  (ii.  285)  describes  as  4000  feet 
above  the  level  of  the  sea.  The  bay  at  Cardamyle  forms  the  natu- 
ral landing-place  for  those  who  wish  to  proceed  from  this  coast  in  a 
direct  line  over  the  highest  peak  (St.  Elias)  of  Taygetus  to  Sparta. 
The  next  town,  Enope,  follows  in  the  coast  route  of  Pausanias, 
north  of  Cardamyle,  and  was  supposed  to  be  the  Gerenia  from 
which  Nestor  derived  his  well-known  Homeric  designation.  It  was 
also  famous  for  the  tomb  and  temple  of  the  physician  Machaon  (Paus. 


BOOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAlJ.  243 

III.  26.  3).  Curtius  finds  it  in  the  old  Frankish  castle  of  Zarmata, 
north  of  Cape  CepMli.  These  two  towns  are  described  by  Paiisanias 
at  the  end  of  his  Spartan  tour.  He  next  passes  north  into  Messenia, 
and  first  in  order  on  the  same  coast  he  gives  Abia  as  identical  with 
the  Homeric  Hire,  and  which  Leake  and  Curtius  agree  in  recognis- 
ing decidedly  as  the  modern  Mandinia.  The  next  step  brings  us  to 
the  well-known  PnERiE  of  the  Odyssey,  concerning  which  see  above 
on  V.  543.  The  next  name,  Antheia,  is  referred  by  the  ancients 
generally  to  Thcria,  an  inland  town  of  some  consequence  about  ten 
miles  up  the  valley  of  the  Pamisus,  north  of  Pherse  (Pans.  iv.  31.  2  ; 
Str.  VIII.  315;  Curt.  ii.  162).  The  "beautiful  ^peia"  in  the 
next  line  is  identified  by  Pausanias  with  Corone  (iv.  34.  2),  on  the 
western  coast  of  the  gulf  right  opposite  Abia,  and  famous  as  one  of 
the  towns  which  Epaminondas,  after  his  humiliation  of  the  Spartans, 
planted  with  native  Messenians  brought  back  from  the  northern 
land,  where  they  had  long  been  strangers,  to  their  original  haunts. 
It  is  now  the  seat  of  a  colony  of  Maniotes.  The  last  town  in  the 
list,  Pedasus,  south  of  Navarino,  and  opposite  the  island  of  Sapienza, 
has  never  been  lost  to  history,  but  under  the  names  of  Metlwne  and 
Modon  appears  frequently  on  the  scene,  from  the  time  of  the  Mes- 
senian  wars  to  the  days  of  Roman  dominion  and  of  Venetian  and 
Turkish  rivalry  (Paus.  iv.  35 ;  Curt.  ii.  169).  Its  Homeric  cele- 
brity for  wine  appears  also  in  the  name,  Oinousce  (from  ofvos), 
which  the  adjacent  islands  bear.  On  all  these  seven  towns,  Glad- 
stone (iii.  23)  remarks  that  there  is  "  a  nexus  of  ideas  attached  to 
them  that  excites  suspicion."  The  nexus  is  that  they  do  not  appear 
in  the  catalogue.  Of  this  various  explanations  may  be  imagined  ; 
but  the  most  obvious  remark  to  make  on  the  matter  is  that,  consi- 
dering the  character  of  the  floating  popular  materials  which  Homer 
used,  it  is  a  great  marvel  that  suspicious  passages  of  this  kind  are 
not  more  common. 

Ver.  171. — From  luords  of  ugly  omen  abstain. 

€V(f)7]iJL7Jcra.L — the  well-known  favete  Unguis  of  the  Romans — i.e., 
speak   loords  of  good  ovien,   or  refrain  from    words  of  had  omen, 


244  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

which  was  best  done  by  maintaining  a  revei'ential  silence.     The 

solemn  embassy  to  Achilles  is  duly  commenced  by  a  religious 

libation. 

Ver.  186. 

Where  with  the  clear-toned  lyre  he  did  delight  his  soid. 
Mr.  Alison,  in  his  elegant  hunt  after  Associations  (ch.  i.),  re- 
marks on  this  passage  : — "  It  was  impossible  for  the  poet  to  have 
imagined  any  other  occupation  so  well  fitted  to  the  mighty  mind  of 
Achilles,  or  so  effectual  in  interesting  the  reader  in  the  fate  of 
him  whom  Dr.  Beattie  calls  with  truth  the  most  terrific  human 
personage  that  poetical  imagination  has  feigned."     This  may  be  all 
very  true ;  but  the  real  fact  is  that  the  poet's  imagination  has  less 
to  do  with  the  matter  than  the  actual  life  of  the  Greeks,  of  which 
the  poet's  song  was  only  an  echo.     There  are  several  points  here 
worthy  of  attention  :  —First,  the  characteristic  prominence  given  to 
music  as  a  necessary  branch  of  education  in  an  accomplished  Greek 
gentleman  of  the  heroic  age ;  in  which  respect,  indeed,  the  heroic 
age  was  only  the  early  germ  of  the  whole  growth,  flower,  and  fruit- 
age of  the  rich  Hellenic  mind.     There  never  was  a  people  whose 
whole  life  was  so  essentially  pervaded  and  moulded  by  the  divine 
power  of  music  as  were  the  ancient  Greeks.     The  extended  appli- 
cation made  in  their  daily  language  of  words  derived  from  fieXos 
and  pvOfj.o'i  has  often  struck  me  as  the  most  remarkable  proof  of 
this.     There  is  no  more  true  index  to  the  character  of  a  man  or  a 
people  than  their  favourite  similes.     The  oldest  traditions  of  the 
Greek  all  point  to  music  as  the  grand  instrument  of  moral  and 
intellectual  culture.     Hercules  is  represented  as  awkward  at  the 
use  of  the  plectrum  merely  because  the  tone  of  popular  legend, 
which  loves  exaggeration  and  contrast,  wished  to  exhibit  him  as 
a  mere  miracle  of  muscular  strength  (iElian,    V.  H.  iii.  32).     In 
historical  times  skill  in  music  was  always  recognised  as  one  of  the 
characteristic  points  of  Greek  nationality  (Nepos,  Proem.)     Aris- 
tophanes, in  his  well-known  eulogy  of  the  stout  men  of  Marathon, 
mentions  skill  in  the  lyre  as  one  of  their  grand  qualifications ;  and 
Plato,  though  he  had  a  quarrel  with  many  things  essentially  Hel- 


BOOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  245 

lenic,  had  not  the  most  remote  notion  of  extirpating,  but  wished 
only  to  regulate  and  control  that  divine  art,  of  which  he  says  (Rep. 
III.  401  e)  :  on  jxaXidra  ets  to  Ivtos  ttjs  xpv;^7]s  KaraSuerat  Kal 
eppw/xevccTTaTa  aivr^rai  avrijs.  But  notwithstanding  this  wise  sen- 
tence of  the  loftiest  of  ancient  thinkers,  and  the  concurrent  witness 
of  all  the  greatest  thinkers,  down  to  Gioberti  {Del  Buono,  ii.)  it  is 
sad  to  see  how  we  English  and  Scotch  have  degenerated  in  this 
matter,  not  only  from  the  wisdom  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  but  from 
the  wisdom  of  our  own  forefathers.  Nothing,  in  fact,  is  more  char- 
acteristic of  the  highest  British  schools  and  colleges  than  the 
general  absence  of  anything  like  musical  culture.  In  this  respect 
the  ragged  schools  are  much  more  natural  and  healthy  than  most 
seminaries  of  instruction  for  the  upper  classes.  The  second  point 
to  be  noted  here  is  the  theme  which  occupies  the  hero  while  he 
sings  to  his  lyre.  It  is  the  KAe'a  avS/xSv,  the  praises  of  famous 
heroes.     So  Hesiod  also  has  it'  — 

doi56s 
Moucrdwc  'itepdviov  KKtia  irpoTepiov  dvdptbTrwv 
vpLVTjcrr],  fxaKapas  re  ^eods,  ol'  "OXvimttov  exovcriv — 

a  passage  which,  translated  into  our  language,  means  that  the  ori- 
ginal stock  of  all  poetry  is  hist  or  iced  hallads  and  hymns  to  the  gods, 
as  Plato  also  testifies,  who  was  willing  to  retain  only  these  two 
species  of  poetry  within  the  sacred  bounds  of  his  ideal  republic  (x. 
607  a).  The  third  observation  is  a  simple  one,  and  relates  to  the 
instrument  to  which  Achilles  sang.  The  word  At'pa,  so  fiimiliar  to 
Pindar  and  the  later  poets,  does  not  occur  in  Homer,  but  only 
(j)6piJiiy^  or  KidapLs  (our  modern  guitar,  Germ,  zither),  which  are 
manifestly  the  same  instrument  (Od.  i.  153-5).  This  was  the  great 
national  instrument  of  the  Greeks  as  contradistinguished  from  the 
Phrygian  flute  (which,  however,  was  also  peculiarly  Doric),  and 
was  the  instrument  of  cheerful  song,  remote  equally  from  mournful 
wail  and  passionate  excitement.  Its  invention  was  attributed  to 
Hermes,  the  patron  god  of  the  pastoral  Arcadians ;  and  the  god  who 
held  supreme  mastery  over  its  soothing  tones  was  Apollo.     The 

>  Hes.  T/ieog.  ino. 


24:0  NOTES  TO  THP:  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

Athenians  represent  their  favourite  hero  Alcibiades  as  refusing  to 
play  the  Boeotian  flute,  on  account  of  the  unbecoming  manner  in 
which  it  caused  the  player  to  puff  out  his  cheeks.  "  And  of  this," 
he  said,  "  our  gods  give  us  a  lesson,  for  Pallas  flung  away  the  flute, 
and  Apollo  flayed  the  flute-player"  (Plut.  Alcih.  2). 

Ver.  203. — Mingle  small  loater  with  tlie  wine. 

The  ancient  Greeks  always  mixed  their  wine  with  water,  and 
the  bowl  in  which  the  mixture  was  made  was  called  Kpar-qp 
(Kepdvvvfxc).  The  orthodox  proportions  of  the  mixture  were  two  of 
water  to  one  of  wine,  as  the  genuine  Anacreon  sings — 

"A7e  Stj,  (pep'  Tjfuv,  w  waT, 
K€\e^7)v  OKWS  afj-vaTiv 
TTpoiriw,  TO.  fj.ev  5eV  eyx^o-^ 
v5aT0s,  TO,  irevre  6'  olvov 
Kvddovs,  lis  dw^piaTi 
dvd  Srjdre  ^aaaaprjcrw. 

To  this  custom  the  modern  Greek,  often  a  faithful  interpreter  of 
ancient  customs,  bears  testimony  in  the  word  Kpacri,  which  has 
taken  the  place  of  olvo?  in  popular  usage.  The  custom  of  drink- 
ing strong  wine  without  water  seems  to  belong  to  the  cold  climates 
of  the  north.  Hence  the  Spartans  attributed  the  madness  of  their 
king,  Cleomenes,  to  his  having  learned  ((aporepov  Trtveiv  from  the 
Scythians,  which  practice  was  therefore  called  iTTLcrKvOi^eiv  (Herod. 
VI.  84).  That  Achilles  should  seem  to  have  given  any  counte- 
nance to  a  barbarian  practice  scandalized  many  of  the  ancients 
not  a  little;  '^  incredibile  est,'^  says  Heyne,  "  quot  modis  hoc  ^(upo- 
Tepov  vexarint  veteres  ;"  of  which  we  have  a  specimen  in  Aristotle 
(Poet.  25)  among  the  other  puerilities,  certainly  not  from  the  great 
master-mind,  whicb  occur  at  the  end  of  that  treatise.  To  a  plain 
man  there  is  no  oSence  in  saying — "  Mivgle  the  tvine  to-day  a  little 
stronger  than  usual ;"  as  if  a  Scotch  toddy-drinker  should  say, 
'■'■Put  another  half-glass  into  your  tumhler ;  this  man's  health  must 
not  he  drunlx  hit  in  liquor  of  the  stiffpst  qualify  !" 


ROOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  TJIK  ILIAD.  247 

Ver.  20G.' — Then  a  flesh  hoard  he  placed  before  the  fire. 

The  simplicity  of  the  Homeric  meals  has  been  often  remarked 
(Athen.  i.  8  f).  The  heroes  eat  only  roasted  flesh,  which  of 
course  required  less  culinary  apparatus  than  boiling,  though  we 
cannot  absolutely  conclude  from  this  that  the  boiling  of  flesh  was 
altogether  unknown  in  those  early  times  (see  Wolf,  Prol.  p.  80) ; 
and  of  the  great  delicacy  of  fish,  by  which  the  nice  palates  of  a 
later  generation  were  titillated,  they  were  altogether  ignorant. 
Like  the  patriarchs  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  (xviii.  4-8),  they  prepare 
and  dress  the  food  with  their  own  hands.  The  only  condiment 
that  they  recognise  is  salt,  the  virtue  of  which  they  value  so 
highly,  that,  like  all  very  excellent  things,  they  call  it  "divine." 
Whether  the  oj/'a  which  kings  feast  on  {Od.  in.  480)  was  anything 
other  than  dainty  bits  of  flesh  is  not  expressly  said.  It  seems, 
however,  in  that  passage  to  stand  for  Kpeas,  and  nothing  more. 
See  Brosin,  De  Coenis  Horner.^  p.  3. 

Observe,  also,  with  regard  to  the  Homeric  meals,  that,  by  the 
witness  of  the  verb  ffev  (ver.  218)  the  ancient  Greeks  sat  at  meals, 
and  did  not  recline,  KaTaKkivecrdat  (Athen.  i.  17  f).  Afterwards 
all  reclined,  as  we  find  in  the  Gospels  (Luke  xiv.  8),  only  women 
and  boys  sat  (Xen.  Sympos.  i.  8  ;  Hermann,  Gr.  Fr.  Alt.  272). 
The  Cretans  are  noted  as  having  retained  the  ancient  Greek  prac- 
tice (Heracl.  Pol.  3),  which  Alexander  the  Great  also  occasionally 
did  (Athen.  /.  c.) 

Ver.  24U. — The  crests  of  (he  lofty  poop. 

o.(jiXa(jTa  fxlv  TO,  Trpv/xyrjcrLaj  Kopv/x/ia  8e  to.  TT^Kop^^crta,  says  the 
E.  M. ;  but  Hesychius  makes  Kopyfj-fSa  and  acfjXao-ra  identical ; 
and  certainly  in  Homer  I  think  we  are  wise  to  follow  Heyne  in 
ruling  this  passage  by  xv.  715,  where  that  actually  takes  place 
which  is  here  apprehended.  The  crests  or  flourishes  at  both  ends 
of  the  Greek  ships  may  be  seen  in  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  articles 
Ship  and  Ancora. 


248  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

Ver.  2d4:.  — Pallas  avd  Here. 
Why  these  two  specially  ?  Athene  plainly  enough  is  the  goddess 
of  war,  and  the  patron  goddess  of  all  heroes  ;  but  what  Here  has  to 
do  with  KotpTos  does  not  at  first  appear.  The  truth  seems  to  be 
that  Here,  as  pre-eminently  an  Argive  goddess,  must,  along  with 
Athene,  come  forward  as  the  special  protector  of  the  great  hero  of 
the  Argive  host.  This  is  stated  distinctly  in  i.  196.  Further,  as 
the  Achaeans  came  from  Thessaly,  and  settled  in  Argos,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  whatever  celestial  powers  were  supremely  reverenced  in 
the  place  of  final  settlement  must  have  been  supreme  also  in  the 
original  seat.  Therefore,  even  independently  of  the  expedition  of 
Agamemnon,  Thessalian  tradition  may  have  given  prominence  to 
Pallas  and  Here  as  the  celestial  patronesses  of  chivalrous  youth. 

Yer.  328. — Tivelve  cities  of  the  Trojans. 

On  this  passage  Strabo  (xiii.  5S4)  has  a  long  commentary,  touch- 
ing the  extent,  and  composition  of  Priam's  kingdom. 

Ver.  382. — Egyptian  Thehes. 

This  is  the  only  passage  in  the  Iliad  in  which  allusion  is  made 
to  Egypt.  In  the  Odyssey,  in  consequence  of  the  voyages  of  Mene- 
laus  and  Ulysses,  it  is  more  frequently  mentioned  {Od.  xiv.  286 ; 
XV.  448).  Of  Thebes,  the  "  mighty  city  of  Jove  "  (Diod.  Sic.  i. 
45),  the  "  populous  A^o"  of  the  Old  Testament  (Nahum  iii.  8),  the 
/xepls  'A/x^ojv,  the  'portion  of  Ainnion,  of  the  Septuagint  transla- 
tors (see  Gescn.  in  ^^),  it  is  not  necessary  that  we  should  speak 
at  length  here.  The  chariots  of  the  Egyptians  arc  familiar  to  the 
readers  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  are  prominent  on  the  monu- 
ments. Bunsen  [Ef/yjit.  iv.  590,  Eng.)  has  some  curious  specula- 
tions on  the  date  of  the  Trojan  legends,  as  connected  with  the  cele- 
brity of  Thebes. 

Ver.  390. — Golden  Venus. 
In  all  popular  poetry  the  vulgar  admiration  of  gold  and  silver 
plays  a  prominent   part,    and   the   epithet   golden    is   accordingly 


BOOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  249 

lavislily  applied,  sometimes  without  due  discrimination  (see  Owen 
Meredith,  Servian  Ballads,  p.  99).  I  have  often  noticed  the  same 
thing  to  a  quite  ridiculous  extent  in  the  Romaic  BaJlada.  Homer, 
as  a  genuine  aoiSos,  has,  of  course,  a  touch  of  this  fashion,  but  he 
generally  keeps  himself  within  the  bounds  of  good  taste.  As  ap- 
plied to  the  goddess  of  love  (iii.  54  and  v.  427),  the  epithet  seems 
exceedingly  appropriate,  love  being  the  best  and  most  valuable  of 
all  mortal  possessions. 

Ver.  405.— Py/Ao'.s  Tuchy  hold. 

On  Pytho,  see  ii.  519.  The  wealth  of  such  a  central  oracular 
shrine  for  the  whole  Greek  race  must  have  been  prodigious.  Euri- 
pides talks  of  TTo\v)(^pv(Ta  Xarpevfjcara  of  Apollo  at  Delphi  (Tpliig. 
Taur.  1275).  But  its  wealth  exposed  it  specially  to  the  rapacity 
of  every  plunderer,  so  that  in  the  days  of  Strabo,  though  the  greater 
number  of  votive  tablets  and  statues  remained,  in  respect  of  avail- 
able money  the  temple  was  extremely  poor  (ix.  420),  "  because," 
as  he  wisely  remarks,  "  money  is  a  thing  very  difficult  to  be  kept, 
even  when  sacred."  Duncker  [Gcs.  Alt.  iii.  329)  remarks  justly 
that  in  Homer  generally  Dodona  has  a  preference  over  Delphi. 
This  arose  from  the  connexion  of  the  Homeric  legends  with  Thes- 
saly,  the  cradle  of  Hellas. 

Vkk.  442. —  The  art  to  wield  the  tvell-poised  vjord. 

All  that  is  or  can  be  in  the  intelligential  and  sensible 
world  is  included  under  the  three  categories  of  thought,  ivord,  and 
deed,  of  which  the  two  last  only  are  here  mentioned,  as  being  the 
completely  incarnated  expression  of  the  first.  Among  all  nations, 
before  the  invention  of  books  and  printing,  the  spoken  word  pos- 
sesses a  power  of  which  we  in  the  present  day  have  a  weak  con- 
ception ;  for  with  us,  an  ill-delivered  address,  if  only  well  reasoned, 
will,  when  printed  in  the  daily  papers,  produce  as  great  an  effect 
as  the  most  eloqvient  speech  of  Demosthenes.  Hence  we  are  not 
to  be  surprised  that  the  ancients  took  hold  of  this  line  of  Homer 
as  a  text  from  which  to  preach  on  the  importance  of  eloquence 


250  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

combined  with  habits  of  business  to  all  public  men.     So  Cicero 
(Z>e  Oral.  iii.  15),  "  Olim  vetus  quidem  ilia  doctrina  eadem  videtur 
et  rede  faciendi  et  bene  dicendi  magistra  ;  neque  disj'uncti  doctores, 
sed  iidem   erant  vivendi  prceceptores  atque   dicendi ;    ut  ille  apud 
Homerum  Phoenix,  qui  se  a  Peleo  patre  Aehilli  juveni  comitem  esse 
dicit  ad   helium,   ut  ilium  efficeret  oratorem  verbormn  actoremque 
rerum.'"      How    different    is    our   modern    style    of   pedagogy  in 
England,  where  the  very  last  thing  generally  that  a  scholastic  or 
academical  teacher  thinks  of  is  how  his  pupil  may  be  able  to  deliver 
himself  of  a   single  English   sentence   gracefully  and  effectively  ! 
The  consequence  of  this  is  that  an  ignorant  collier  or  weaver  will 
often  address  a  mixed  multitude  from  the  pulpit  with  more  of  the 
natural  power  of  words  than  a  highly  educated  scholar.     To  this 
neglect  of  popular  eloquence  is,  no  doubt,  in  a  great  measure  to 
be  ascribed  the  success  of   the  Methodists  and  other  Dissenting 
preachers,  in   competition  with  the  more  highly  educated  English 
clergy.      But  the    Greeks   were   always  an  eloquent  people,  and 
though  they  wrote  many  books,  wisely  took  care  that  their  writings 
should  never  smell  of  books,  and  that  their  faculties  should  not  be 
smothered  by  loads  of  cumbersome  learning,  or  by  a  timid  respect 
for  conventional  proprieties.     See  on  this  subject  Plato,  Gorg.  485, 
and  Gladstone,   iii.    104,  who   has   certainly  a  right  to   expatiate 
on  the  Homeric  sanction  for  that  noble  art  of  which  he  is  so  con- 
summate a  master. 

Ver.  454. — The  Furies'  hateful  vengeance. 

The  Erinnyes,  or  Furies,  are  among  the  few  divine  powers  of  the 
Greek  Pantheon  who  have  their  origin  merely  in  the  human  soul, 
without  any  type  in  pliysical  phenomena  from  which  a  transfer- 
ence, as  in  the  case  of  Zeus,  Here,  etc.,  was  made.  Like  Pallor 
and  Payor  in  Livy  (i.  27),  the  Erinnyes  are  merely  the  impersona- 
tions of  a  passion,  viz.,  the  indignation  that  bursts  out  wildly  in 
the  breast  of  a  man  in  Avhose  person  the  fundamental  rights  of 
our  moral  nature  have  been  outraged.  Pausanias  (viii.  25.  4)  says 
tliat   epivvv^Lv   in   old  Arcadian   Greek  was    identical    with  S-vyuo? 


BOOK  IX. 


NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  251 


XPwOai,  to  cherish  anger,  and  the  other  name,  by  which  the  Furies 
are  designated  in  Greek,  'Apai  (iEsch.  Eiivi.  395),  Curses,  is  only 
the  special  form  which  the  indignation  assumes  under  the  circum- 
stances which  call  the  Furies  into  existence.  It  is  needless  to 
quote  all  the  passages  where  the  Furies  are  mentioned  in  Homer, 
as  no  light  can  be  thence  drawn  beyond  the  general  statement  now 
made.  The  whole  idea  of  these  awful  personages — the  2e/xvat  of 
the  later  Athenians — is  kept  by  Homer  in  a  dark  vagueness,  which 
enhances  their  terror.  He  even  eschews  to  limit  them  by  number, 
as  was  done  in  later  times,  when  the  necessities  of  the  plastic  art 
forced  men  to  deal  more  distinctly  with  the  creations  of  the  popu- 
lar imagination.  Homer  knows  as  little  of  Alecto,  Megaera,  and 
Tisiphone,  as  of  Clotho,  Lachesis,  and  Atropos.  Hesiod,  who  on 
points  of  systematic  theology  knows  more  than  Homer,  introduces 
them  as  among  the  earliest  born  of  divine  powers,  having  been 
generated  from  .the  bloody  drops  which  fell  upon  the  earth  when 
Kronos  mutilated  his  father  Uranus  {Theog.  185).  Tlie  best  con- 
ception of  the  actual  moral  power  which  these  dread  divinities 
exercised  over  the  minds  of  the  Greek  people,  will  be  gained  by 
reading  iEschylus's  grave  and  sublime  tragedy  of  the  Eumenides. 

Ver.  457. —  Tlie  Jove  tclio  reigns  beneath  the  ground. 

This  is  the  only  passage  in  Homer  where  Pluto  is  called  the 
Subterranean  or  Infernal  Jove ;  his  common  name  is  Hades  ;  but 
this  is  surely  no  reason  why  we  should  suspect  the  line  as  spurious, 
and  say,  with  Heyne,  "  Zews  tVi^^^ovtos,  serioris  cevi  esse  videtur  et 
teletarum  loquendi  usum  redolet,"  with  whom  Payne  Knight,  in  his 
note  on  this  line,  agrees.  There  is  nothing  contrary  to  the  tone  of 
Homeric  thought  in  such  a  designation,  and  his  using  it  only  once 
must  be  regarded  as  purely  accidental.  In  after  ages,  artists  some- 
times combined  both  these  Joves  as  a  sort  of  duality  in  unity.  So 
in  the  British  Museum,  there  is  a  small  statue  of  Jove,  with  the 
eagle  at  one  foot  and  Cerberus  at  the  other.  As  to  Proserpine, 
who  occurs  only  in  this  line,  and  performs  no  part,  she  is  univer- 
sally allowed,  as  the  daughter  of  Ceres,  to  represent  the  seed  which 


252  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

is  dropt  into  the  dark  earth,  there  to  die  and  live  again,  according 
to  the  simile  used  by  St.  Paul  in  his  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians. 
As  such  she  was  a  fit  image  of  death,  and  became  the  (jueen 
of  the  dead,  because  the  dark  Earth,  that  is  Pluto,  receives  her 
into  his  invisible  domain  ;  for  that  the  idea  of  the  Earth,  and  not 
merely  of  Death,  originally  belonged  to  the  subterranean  Jove,  as 
well  as  to  Demeter,  is  evident  from  the  manner  in  which  he  is 
conjoined  with  Demeter  in  the  peasant's  prayer  (Hes.  Op.  465),  as 
well  as  from  the  etymology  of  his  familiar  Latin  name,  ttAovtos, 
luealth,  which  comes  out  of  the  bowels  of  the  earth.  In  Homer  he 
is  often  alluded  to,  but  never  appears.  In  one  passage  he  is  men- 
tioned as  having  made  a  triple  partition  of  the  globe  with  Zeus  and 
Poseidon  (xv.  191).     See  Welcker,  g.  /.  vol.  i.  p.  392. 

Ver.  483 — Dolopian  men  in  PJithia's  utmost  bounds. 

The  Dolopians  were  a  Thessalian  tribe,  who  receive  no  special 
mention  in  the  catalogue,  simply  because  they  were  a  mere  adjunct, 
or  small  subdivision,  of  the  Phthiotes  of  Achilles  (ii.  683,  and  Str. 
nx.  431).  They  appear,  however,  as  a  distinct  clan  in  the  conven- 
tion of  the  old  members  of  the  Amphictyonic  Council  given  by 
Pausanias,  in  whose  days,  however,  they  had  utterly  died  out  (x.  8). 
See  Heyne  on  ApoU.  Observat.  iii,  138. 

Ver.  503. — In  the  dark  track  of  Aid's  march  thei/  yo. 

"  In  Ate,"  says  Mr.  Gladstone  (ii.  159),  '•  we  find  the  old  tradi- 
tion of  the  Evil  One,  the  Tempter."  Not  at  all.  She  is  rather 
the  most  transparent  allegory  in  the  Iliad.  She  is  a  sort  of  rudi- 
mentary female  devil,  no  doubt,  but  only  for  the  occasion,  not  a 
real  acknowledged  personal  devil,  but  only  an  impersonation  of  evil 
consciously  shaped  out  into  a  goddess  for  the  nonce,  by  that  imper- 
sonating instinct  which  is  always  actively  at  work  in  the  imagination 
of  polytheistic  peoples.  It  is  only  in  this  passage,  indeed,  and 
in  XIX.  91,  that  drt],  one  of  the  most  familiar  .words  in  Homer,  is 
elevated  into  the  dignity  of  a  person.  She  is,  in  fact,  no  more  real 
than  the  Atra;',  with  whom  in  this  passage  she  is  accompanied,  and 


BOOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  2.53 

is  properly  classed  by  Welcker  {g.  I.  12.5,)  along  with  oo-cra,  <^o/3os, 
"Ept?,  and  other  "  merely  poetical  momentary  personifications." 
The  word  arij,  connected  with  the  verb  0.0.(0,  properly  means  harm, 
scath ;  but  there  is  generally  coupled  with  it  the  idea  of  moral 
guilt,  at  least  of  a  certain  recklessness,  and,  as  it  were,  infatuation, 
which  leads  a  man  into  a  course  of  action  which  sober  reason  con- 
demns, and  which  must  infallibly  end  in  ruin  and  misery.  Accord- 
ing to  this  idea,  a  Greek  acting  under  the  influence  of  ctrr;,  as 
Eteocles  does  in  the  Seven  against  Thebes,  of  ^schylus,  is  very 
much  in  the  same  moral  state  as  the  man  who  is  styled  "/ey"  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  Heart  of  MidJotliian.  "  His  step  was 
irregular,  his  voice  hollow  and  broken  ;  his  countenance  pale ;  his 
eyes  staring  and  wild ;  his  speech  imperfect  and  confused,  and  his 
whole  appearance  so  disordered,  that  many  remarked  he  seemed  to 
be  '/ey,'  a  Scottish  expression  meaning  the  state  of  those  who  are 
driven  on  to  their  ruin  by  the  strong  impulse  of  some  irresistible 
necessity."  This  notion  of  irresistible  necessity,  essential  both  to 
the  Scottish  word  fey  and  the  Glreek  word  uttj,  leads  to  the  etymo- 
logy of  the  former  from  the  Latin  fatuvi,  hence  f^IJi  fairy,  and,  in 
the  case  of  the  latter,  shows  how  the  individual  under  its  influence 
so  naturally  throws  the  guilt  back  from  himself  upon  some  super- 
human power.  Further,  in  Hesiod  {Theog.  230),  the  whole  pro- 
geny of  "Ep6s,  with  whom  "Arrj  is  coupled,  are  plainly  allegorical, 
and  without  the  slightest  trace  of  any  distinctly  recognised  person- 
ality ;  and  with  regard  to  jiEschylus,  though  he  uses  her  name 
often  in  his  tragedies,  I  scarcely  think  that  he,  any  more  than 
Homer,  meant  to  give  her  a  distinct  place  and  personality  in  the 
Hellenic  Pantheon.  The  fact  is,  any  distinct  abiding  conception 
of  a  devil  or  evil  spirit  was  altogether  foreign  to  the  Greek  mind. 

As  to  the  Airai,  or  supplications  which  form  the  residue  of  this 
allegory,  I  agree  with  Kceppen  and  Heyne,  that  they  are  called 
daughters  of  Jove  plainly  on  account  of  his  well-known  function  as 
iKecrios,  or  protector  of  stip)plia7its,  one  of  the  most  amiable,  and,  in 
its  operation,  most  humanizing  attributes  of  the  supreme  god  of  the 
Hellenes. 


254  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

Ver.  534. 

At  harvest's  mellow  feast  to  soothe  her  heart  luitli  sacrifice. 

One  of  the  most  natural  and  graceful  acts  of  ancient  piety  was 
the  offering  of  the  first-fruits  of  field  and  flock  to  the  gods.  The 
feast  at  which  these  were  offered  corresponded  to  our  harvest-home, 
and  is  called  QaXvo-ba  in  this  passage,  and  in  Theoc.  vii.  3.  The 
goddess  to  whom  this  offering  naturally  belonged  was  Ceres,  or  the 
Earth,  viewed  in  its  productive  capacity,  to  whom  accordingly,  in 
the  island  of  Cos,  the  first-fruits  were  offered,  as  the  scholiast  on 
that  idyll  of  Theocritus  informs  us.  But  in  Homer  Artemis  enjoys 
the  honour,  either  from  her  general  position  in  ^Etolia,  a  country  of 
hunters,  or  because  the  offence  of  Tydeus  might  have  related  to 
some  of  those  animals  of  which  Artemis  is  the  protector.  The 
laying  aside  of  a  special  portion  of  a  feast  or  sacrifice  to  the 
gods  is  mentioned  under  the  name  of  apy/xara,  in  the  description  of 
the  rustic  piety  of  the  "  divine  swineherd,"  in  Od.  xiv.  446.  The 
common  prose  word  was  aTvap^aL  (Thucyd.  iii.  58).  On  the  im- 
portance attached  to  this  act  of  ancient  piety,  there  is  a  remarkable 
deliverance  of  the  oracle  at  Delphi  in  Theopompus  (p.  283,  Miiller), 
which  the  student  will  do  well  to  read.  The  Jewish  law  about  the 
n^s'f^n  (Lev.  ii.  12,  Jahn's  Bihl.  Ant.)  was  equally  prominent.  Of 
the  beautiful  and  poetic  usages  connected  with  this  act  of  heathen 
piety,  our  meagre  "thanksgiving"  in  Protestant  countries  remains 
the  only  remnant.  At  Munich,  in  the  month  of  October,  I  remem- 
ber, some  years  ago,  witnessing  a  pi'ocession  of  girls  and  boys 
bearing  the  flowers  and  fruits  of  the  year  in  baskets,  a  graceful 
pomp,  in  remarkable  contrast  with  the  glistering  mummery  gener- 
ally practised  by  the  Romish  Church,  and  which  made  me  wish  for 
the  moment  that  I  were  a  Catholic.  That  this  was  one  of  the 
heathen  usages,  as  old  as  Homer,  which  the  early  Christian  mis- 
sionaries wisely  retained  and  consecrated  to  the  true  God,  T  cannot 
doubt.  But  even  the  stern  monotheism  of  the  Hebrews  was  not 
without  its  graceful  pomp  of  physical  exhibition  (Psalm  Ixviii.  25) 
which  seems  now  irrecoverably  lost,  in  Presbyterian  lands  at  least. 


BOOK  TX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  255 

as  if  gaiety  and  piety  were  two  emotions  that  must  remain  eternally 
divorced.     On  the  QaXvcrLa  generally,  see  Herm.  Eel.  Alt.  25.  9,  10. 

Ver.  539. — A  fierce  and  white-tusked  boar. 

There  is  a  word  here,  x^o-uvrjs,  concerning  which  Sp.  truly  says, 
"qtiod  quo  referant  divinarunt  magis  quam  intellexerunt  veteres." 
I  have  read  all  ttat  has  been  written  on  the  subject,  and  feel  my- 
self more  at  a  loss  than  when  I  began.  I  omit  the  word,  and  refer 
the  scholar  to  Paley ;  ^sch.  Einn.  179;  Gottling  on  Hesiod, 
Sent.  160  ;  ^1.  Hist.  Animal,  vi.  25.  3  ;  Suidas,  in  evvovxos. 
Whoever  shall  discover  an  etymology  that  will  harmonize  all  these 
passages  without  force  will  do  himself  credit. 

Ver.  548. — Meleager,  son  of  (Eneus. 

Concerning  this  well-known  ^tolian  hero,  the  text  is  so  full  in 
this  place  that  there  is  little  need  of  illustration.  The  hunt  of 
the  Calydonian  boar  was  a  favourite  subject  with  ancient  artists 
(Pans.  VIII.  45.  4),  and  may  be  seen  on  sarcophagi  and  vases 
in  almost  every  European  museum  of  any  note.  It  is  remarkable 
how  some  of  the  more  ornate  points  of  the  story  do  not  appear  in 
Homer,  but  were  evidently  the  work  of  a  more  recent  imagination. 
No  mention  is  made  in  this  passage  of  the  striking  incident  of  the 
fatal  firebrand,  with  which  the  life  of  the  hero  is  bound  up  in  the 
later  legend.  This  is  another  instance  of  that  process  of  develop- 
ment in  the  popular  faith,  of  which  the  attentive  reader  of  these 
notes  must  already  have  noticed  not  a  few  ;  a  process,  indeed, 
which  to  the  human  mind  is  so  natural,  that  in  the  Christian 
Church  not  all  the  firmness  of  a  historical  foundation  nor  all  the 
rigidity  of  a  dogmatic  creed  has  been  able  to  prevent  it. 

Ver.  557. — Marpessa's  daughter . 

As  Ulysses  gave  up  the  society  of  a  goddess  that  he  might  see 
his  mortal  wife  again,  and  his  dear  fatherland,  so  Marpessa,  the 
daughter  of  Evenus — a  king  bearing  the  same  name  as  the  ^tolian 
river  that  flowed   through  his  kingdom — being  wooed  by  Apollo, 


256  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

preferred  the  mortal  Idas,  son  of  Aphareus,  for  her  husband,  from 
the  very  prudent  consideration,  that  the  god,  rejoicing  in  the 
brightness  of  eternal  youth,  would  naturally  despise  and  abandon 
her  when  she  grew  old  (Apoll.  i.  7,  8).  Homer  follows  some  tra- 
dition which  said  that  Apollo  even  carried  her  away  from  her 
chosen  lord,  which  made  her  wail  with  the  wailing  notes  of  the 
halcyon.  With  regard  to  tlie  halcyon,  the  note  of  this  beautiful 
bird  is  said  to  be  "shrill  and  piercing"  (Dallas'  Animal  King- 
dom) ;  and  out  of  this  slight  indication  the  active  imagination  of 
the  Greeks  invented  the  familiar  myth,  that  Alcyone,  the  wife  of 
Ceyx,  was  so  dearly  attached  to  her  husband,  that  when  he  perished 
in  shipwreck  (Hygin.  65),  she  threw  herself  into  the  sea,  and  was 
changed  into  a  kingfisher  with  a  shrill  and  wailing  note.  To  which 
tale  there  grew  up  in  time  the  wonderful  addition  that  Jove,  for 
love  to  this  loving  bird,  during  the  seven  days  of  its  incubation 
caused  the  sky  to  observe  a  miraculous  serenity  (E,  M.  in  voce). 
Hence  the  English  phrase,   "  halcyon  days.'' 

Ver.  568. — TT'7f/(  violent  hand  slie  smote  the  earth. 

The  ancients,  when  they  prayed  to  the  gods  above,  lifted  up  their 
hands  to  heaven  ;  when  addressing  the  infernal  powers  they  beat 
the  ground  (Schol.) 

Ver.  594. — Loiv-zoned  maids. 

A  literal  translation  of  (iaOv^^vovi^  an  epithet  which  seems  to 
have  caused  no  small  perplexity  to  our  translators.  Chapman  has 
"  siveet  ladies.'"  Pope,  finding  epithets  generally  rather  cumber- 
some for  his  antithetic  couplets,  omits  it  altogether.  Cowper 
makes  it  "chaste;"  Derby,  "  deep-hosomed  ;"  Wright,  Dart,  and 
Worsley,  '■^deep-zoned;"  Newman,  "  broadly-girdled  ;"  Yoss,  "  tief- 
gegurtet."  Monti  and  Monbel  follow  Pope,  and  omit.  I  do  not 
see  why  there  should  be  any  difficulty  about  the  matter.  Our 
ladies  talk  of  a  "  low  body,'"  why  not  of  a  low  sash  ?  Boeckh,  in 
his  notes  to  Pindar  (01.  in.  35),  says,  "  voce  /3a^i;^wvo§,  </iia  Leda, 
lit  nohiles  pnelke  decpqne  fere  onines,    inKignifnr.   cincfura   non   snh 


BOOK  IX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  257 

inamviis,  sed  inferiori  corporis  parte  designatur  qua  sinus  vesti- 
menti  plenus  et  profundus  redditur ;  quod  pertinet  ad  lonicinn 
vestitum,  <p.mm  contra  Doricus,  fhidis  nexd  veste^  sinum  nnn 
prwheret."  According  to  this  explanation,  Lord  Derby  may  be 
right  in  identifying  it  with  the  /3a9vKoXTrot  of  xviii  339  ;  but  this 
latter  epithet,  it  is  quite  obvious,  may  more  naturally  be  inter- 
preted of  the  rich  full-rounded  physical  beauty  of  the  busts  of  the 
well-conditioned  Dardan  ladies. 

Ver.  600. 

Nor  let  a  god  inspire  thy  heart  inith  vnJful  thoughts. 

Cowper  has  here  "  demon,' ^  and  Monte,  ^' demone  maligna.'''' 
This  I  merely  mention  as  a  hint  to  the  student  that  there  is  no 
Greek  word  which  is  made  the  handle  of  smuggling  in  Christian 
ideas  into  Greek  poetry,  so  frequently  as  Sat'/uwv.  Derby  has  here 
"  thy  god,"  which  is  not  Hellenic.  Wright  preserves  the  Greek 
conception. 

Ver.  633. — Blood-money  oft  the  kinsmen  moved. 

In  the  early  stages  of  society,  when  deeds  of  violence  are  fre- 
quent, and  every  strong  man  in  the  hour  of  passion  is  the  judge  of 
his  own  right,  manslaughter  was  often  punished  as  deliberate 
murder  by  the  incensed  relations  of  the  party,  unless  the  homicide 
was  happy  enough  to  escape  into  a  foreign  country,  and  wait 
till  the  storm  blew  over.  Sometimes,  however,  the  crime  was 
compensated  by  a  sum  of  money  ;  and  the  laws  of  all  the  early 
European  nations  contain  a  scale  of  value  in  this  matter,  which  is 
often  very  curious.  The  word  iroivri  used  here  is  the  same  as  the 
Latin  word  pa'va,  from  which  our  penalty.  See  on  this  subject, 
Duncker,  Ges.  Alt.  iii.  268,  and  Lobeck,  Aglaoph.  i.  p.  301. 

Ver.  648. — An  unvalued  nameless  loon. 

The  jealousy  with  which  the  ancients  generally  guarded  their 
rights  of  citizenship  is  well  known.  We  have  something  per- 
fectly analogous  in  the  exclusive  privileges  of  the  guilds  and  corpor- 

VOL.  IV.  K 


258  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  IX. 

ations  of  the  middle  ages,  which  the  wider  sphere  of  modern  social 
life,  and  the  more  ..ee  intercourse  of  man  with  man,  has,  in  this 
country  at  least,  completely  broken  up.  But  even  in  these  more 
large  and  liberal  times,  the  position  of  a  stranger  in  a  country, 
after  years  of  settlement,  is  something  very  sad,  and  often  realizes 
in  England  the  latter  half  of  the  famous  old  complaint  in  the 
Anthology  :  — 

17V  5'  aTTOprjs,  dviapdv. 

Ver.  668. — Steepy  Scyros. 

According  to  the  tradition  of  the  TpwiKa,  Achilles  was  sent  to 
the  island  of  Scyros  at  an  early  age,  his  mother  Thetis  beii  g 
anxious  to  have  him  out  of  the  way  when  the  fateful  Trojan  war 
commenced  ;  and  to  secure  this  object  more  effectually,  she  caused 
the  young  hero  to  be  dressed  in  woman's  clothes.  But  his  sojourn 
as  a  damsel  among  damsels  was  not  long  of  being  discovered  ;  for 
Deidamia,  the  daughter  of  Lycomedes,  king  of  the  island,  bore  a 
child  to  him,  called  Pyrrhus,  afterwards  Neoptolemus.  This  dis- 
covery being  bruited,  Ulysses,  as  usual  the  diplomatist,  was  em- 
ployed to  bring  the  young  warrior  to  the  war  ;  and  a  single  blast 
of  the  war-trumpet  was  sufficient  to  achieve  his  object.  So  Apol- 
lodorus  (m.  13.  8). 

Geographically  we  have  to  note  that  Scyrus  (trKipos,  harJ, 
rugged  ;  Gaelic,  sgeir;  whence  skerryrore)  is  an  island  to  the  east 
of  Euboea,  seen  from  the  middle  of  the  rocky  eastern  coast  of  that 
island.  It  is  famous  in  Hellenic  story,  not  only  for  its  connexion 
with  the  early  history  of  Achilles,  but  for  its  being  inwoven  also 
with  the  history  of  the  great  Attic  hero,  Theseus,  who  was  hurled 
into  the  sea  here  from  one  of  the  steep  rocks,  by  the  king  of  the 
Dolopes,  a  Pelasgic  race  who  peopled  it  (Thucyd.  i.  98  ;  Steph. 
Byz.  in  ^Kvpos).  In  after  times,  the  recovery  of  the  bones  of 
Theseus,  and  their  transference  in  festal  pomp  to  Athens — like 
those  of  Napoleon  in  modern  times  from  St.  Helena  to  Paris — was 
one  of  the  brightest  gems  in  Cinion's  crown  of  glory  (Phit.  Ci»i.  8). 


BOOK  X.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILFAl).  i-'iO 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  illustrative  strongly  of  the  obstinate  clinging 
of  traditional  story  to  localities,  that  a  bay  on  the  east  side  of  the 
island,  a  little  north  of  the  town  of  Scyros,  is  still  called  'A;(6AAt 
— the  'Ax^XXetov  of  Eustathius  (xix.  327) — preserving  to  the  pre- 
sent hour  the  memory  of  the  hero's  departure  for  the  eastern  scene 
of  his  glory  and  his  death.  This  was  visited  in  1841  by  Professor 
Ross  (Wanderungen^  ii.  p.  34),  with  whom  I  entirely  agree,  that  in 
so  remote  a  situation  the  name  'A)(tAAt  cannot  be  classed  with 
those  revivals  of  classical  names,  of  which,  in  the  more  frequented 
places  of  Greece  since  the  liberation  war,  patriotic  zeal  has  been  so 
lavish. 

Ver.  69J-. — [ivOov  dya(Tcra^ei/or  />taAa  yap  Kparepwq  dyopivcrev. 

This  line  is  ejected  by  Bekker,  and  for  the  best  reasons.  There 
could  be  no  particular  energy  in  the  manner  of  Ulysses  telling  the 
sad  result  of  his  embassy.  I  omit  the  line,  which,  indeed,  is  just 
one  of  those  commonplaces  which  unthinking  minstrels  would  be 
apt  to  bring  in  when  it  suited  the  occasion,  and  when  it  did  not. 


BOOK   X. 


^^ER.  13. — And  heard  the  din  of  'pipe  and  finfe. 

As  the  auAoi,  /?(t^e  or  pipe^  was  pre-eiuinently  an  Oriental  instru- 
ment, used  by  the  Lydians  (Herod,  i.  17),  and  in  the  Phrygian 
worship  of  Cybele,  it  is  most  likely  that  Homer  introduces  it  here, 
along  with  its  modification,  the  criipty^,  as  characteristic  of  tlic 
Trojans.  It  is  mentioned,  however,  in  one  other  passage  (xviii. 
495),  in  connexion  with  festive  music,  where  there  is  no  special 
mention  of  the  Trojans.  In  the  Pythian  games,  it  was  introduced 
for  the  first  time  in  the  48th  Olympiad  (Pans.  x.  7.  '!).  Ilesiod 
{Scut.  281)  introduces  it  into  a  koj/^os,  or  revel.  It  is  spoken 
of  by   the  ancients    generally   as    the    natural  accompaniment    uf 


260  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  X. 

wild  and  exciting  music,  and  contrasted  with  the  cheerful  grace 
of  the  lyre,  which  was  the  peculiarly  Attic  or  Ionian  instrument, 
while  the  flute,  so  far  as  it  was  not  Oriental,  was  Doric,  and  used 
by  the  Thebans  (Mas.  Tyr.  xxiii.  2)  and  Spartans.  See  ix.  186, 
and  Miiller,  Dor.  ii.  8,  11. 

Ver.  56. — The  sacred  chosen  band  that  keepeth  xvatch. 

It  appears  to  me  that  sacred  is  an  epithet  applied  by  Homer  to 
anything  peculiarly  excellent  and  highly  valued.  Paley  compares 
lepot  ■KvX.awpo'i  in  XXIV.  681,  and  thinks  "  it  is  likely  that  Upoi  was 
a  complimentary  epithet  given  to  picquets  generally." 

Ver.  68. — And  name  their  kin  and  clan. 

It  is  a  pity  that  people  in  authority  should  ever  require  to  be 
told  how  much  a  little  kindly  attention  to  their  dependants,  in  the 
way  of  noticing  their  names,  and  inquiring  into  their  family  con- 
nexions and  concerns,  may  increase  their  influence.  Good  men 
should  be  led  to  do  this  from  the  impulse  of  a  good  heart ;  ambi- 
tious men  from  policy.  In  ancient  times  the  gentile  element  was 
so  strong  that  a  man  could  hardly  look  upon  himself  as  being  de- 
cently recognised  at  all  unless  his  father  was  named  along  with 
himself.  Heyne  quotes  Thucyd.  (vii.  69),  who  says  of  Nicias,  in  a 
critical  moment,  that  he  appealed  to  eVa  eKao-rov,  iraTpoOev  re  Itto- 
I'Ojua^ojv  Kal  a^TOvs  ovofiaa-rl  Kai  (fivXi]V. 

Ver.  84. — 7)6  rtv'  ovp-qcov  Si^'vy/xevos,  ->}'  rti''  kralpiov. 

On  this  line  the  scholiast  remarks,  dderdTai  oVt  aKaipos  rj  ipu)- 
rr^o-ts,  a  suspected  line,  because  an  ill-timed  question.  The  verse 
no  doubt  may  be  defended,  but  the  poetry  is  better  without  it ;  so, 
with  Bekker,  I  eject. 

Ver.  164. — Ohl  man,  a  terrible  force  is  thine. 

This  is  an  excellent  passage  for  bringing  out  the  true  force  of 
the  characteristically  Homeric  word  crxexAtos,  commented  on  above 
(11.    112).     Its  force  is  here  explained  in  vor.  167  by  the  word 


BOOK  X.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  261 

afi-qyavb^^  wliich  means  a  person  with  whom  there  is  no  iJLt]xavi], 
one  with  whom  there  is  no  way  to  deal  otherwise  than  he  pleases 
himself. 

Ver.  182. — They  found  them  sitting  on  the  ground. 

Eustathius  remarks  that  the  sentinels  had  wisely  chosen  the 
Aristotelian  mean  between  the  attitude  of  lying,  which  is  apt  to 
slide  into  sleep,  and  that  of  standing,  which  causes  unnecessary 
weariness.  There  is  no  do^^bt  great  wisdom  in  this,  if  the  watch 
requires  to  spare  himself ;  but  if  his  only  object  is  to  save  the  army, 
one  can  hardly  help  agreeing  with  Pope,  that  the  army  is  always 
safest  from  surprise  whose  sentinel  is  on  his  legs. 

Ver.  215. — A  sheep  ivith  dark  luool  thick  and  fine. 

Cowper,  with  a  too  simple  faith  in  the  old  commentators,  a  com- 
mon and  very  natural  fault  with  the  old  translators,  has  quoted  with 
approval  the  puerile  subtlety  of  a  scholiast,  who  says  that  the  ewe 
was  black  (or  "  sable/'  as  he  calls  it,  to  do  justice,  as  he  thought,  to 
the  grand  style  becoming  the  epic  poet),  "  because  the  expedition 
was  made  by  night,  and  that  each  had  a  lamb  as  typical  of  the  fruit 
of  their  labours  !"  This  is  interesting,  as  proving  that  learning  as 
well  as  religion  can  make  people  forget  common  sense,  and  that 
modern  theologians  are  not  the  only  persons  who  love  to  talk  non- 
sense about  types.  Heyne,  who  had  a  vigorous  and  masculine,  as 
well  as  an  acute  intellect,  says  quietly,  "  Hoc  tandem  est  ineptire ! 
Imo  fetu  ovis  opes  auget,  et  nigra  est  pra;stantior  sui  generis ^ 
Koeppen  had  previously  remarked  that  Ulysses,  in  the  cave  of 
Polypheme  (Od.  ix.  426),  wishing  to  pick  out  the  stoutest  and  best 
sheep,  had  chosen  those  who,  among  other  good  qualities,  "  had  a 
dark  fleece  (toSve^es  e(/)o?  e;(oi'ras).  This  is  quite  satisfactory  ; 
but  he  quotes  also  Columella  (ii.  R.  vii.  2),  "  sunt  etiam  sudpte 
natura  pretio  commendahiles  pullus  atque  ruscus  color^  qicos  pr(e~ 
bent  in  Italia  Pollentia,  in  Baetica  Corduba."  Pliny  also  (N.  H. 
VIII.  48)  expatiates  on  the  different  colours  of  the  wool  of  sheep  in 
different  countries. 


262  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAK.  I'.nOK  X. 

VeR.  2(35. — Til  is  heh)i  from  EJeon  he  took. 

Eleon  is  a  town  in  Boeotia,  mentioned  in  the  catalogue  (ii.  500). 
In  ver.  268  I  have  omitted  SKarSeta — Scandia, — a  sea-port  town 
and  naval  station  in  Cythere  (Pans.  Jii.  23  ;  Thucyd.  it.  54),  for 
metrical  convenience.  There  is  no  epithet  attached  to  it ;  and  it 
is  utterly  insignificant  here.  On  the  island  Cythera,  see  below, 
XV.  432.  Chapman  has  made  a  curious  blunder  here.  "  Cytherius, 
surnamed  Amphidamas,"  as  indeed  he  is  full  of  such  things, 
which  do  him  no  harm,  and  only  show  how  little  minute  learning 
has  to  do  with  high  poetry. 

A"ek.  274. — Athene  sent  a  heron  on  the  rlyhf. 

Some  of  the  ancient  scholiasts,  never  content  with  what  is  obvious 
if  only  something  recondite  could  be  excogitated,  express  surprise 
that  Athene  should  send  a  heron  here  instead  of  her  own  bird,  the 
owl ;  but,  as  Heyne  well  remarks,  it  was  not  Athene,  but  the 
marshy  ground  about  the  Scamander  that  had  to  do  with  this  par- 
ticular bird,  as  a  child  might  know.  Among  a  people  with  whom 
the  flight  of  birds  generally  was  significant  of  fate,  the  heron, 
appearing,  as  it  generally  does,  in  waste  lonesome  places,  where 
the  wayfarer  is  apt  to  feel  "eerie,"  as  our  expressive  Scotch  lan- 
guage has  it,  would  naturally  excite  peculiar  attention  (Pans.  x. 
29.  2).  The  remark  of  the  scholiast,  that  the  heron  is  a  warlike 
bird,  and  therefore  sent  by  a  warlike  goddess  to  warriors,  though 
fortified  with  a  Sanscrit  analogy  by  Mr.  Gladstone  (ii.  98),  does 
not  seem  to  rest  on  any  proper  authority  (Hermann,  Rel.  Alt.  38. 
6).  The  herons  generally,  no  doubt,  with  their  long  channelled 
mandibles,  and  their  huge  gape,  make  war  on  poor  trouts  and  eels 
with  great  execution ;  but  this  is  easy  game,  and  would  scarcely 
entitle  them  to  be  perched  up  with  the  cock  as  assessors  of  Mars 
and  adjutants  of  Minerva. 

Ver.  315. 
TroXvxpv*To<i  ttoXvx'i^Xkos. — I  have  taken  Bcntley's  hint,  which 


BOOK  X.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  263 

Heyne  approved,   and  changed  these   nominatives  into  genitives. 
Compare  ver.  380. 

Vbr.  335. — A  casque  of  locaseVs  sldn. 

The  iKTts  is  described  by  Aristotle,  Hist.  Ayi.  ix.  7.  This  word 
and  yaA^  and  aI\Qvpo<;  are  used  with  great  vagueness  by  the 
Greek  writers ;  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  a  weasel  or  a 
ferret  be  meant.  Both  species  belong  to  the  same  natural  family, 
the  semi-plantigrades^  and  have  similar  habits  (see  Adams'  App. 
to  Dunbar  ;  Groshaus  on  Tlie  Zoohxjy  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  Clas. 
Mus.  iv.  p.  265  ;  and  Lenz,  Zoolog.  der  Griechen,  p.  92).  It  is 
amusing  to  note  how  Chapman,  in  the  true  style  of  our  brilliant 
Elizabethans,  never  satisfied  without  a  witticism,  says  here — 

"  And  witli  a  helm  of  weasel'.s  skin  did  arm 
His  iceasel  bead  !  " 

Uf  course  no  such  conceit  is  hinted  at  in  Homer. 

Ver.  353 — Be  of  good,  cJteer  ;  thou  art  not  doomed,  to  die. 

Observe  the  deliberate  falsehood  of  this  assurance.  Ulysses  does 
not  keep,  and  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  keeping,  his  promise. 
When  passions  are  strong,  in  war,  and  in  religion  sometimes,  the 
obligation  of  truth  is  apt  to  appear  very  faint.  The  most  culti- 
vated Christian  nations  allow  stratagems  in  war ;  and  spoken  lies 
may  not  seem  worse  than  acted  ones.  But  the  Greeks  were  not  a 
truthful  race,  even  in  their  best  times ;  and  that  o-o(/)ta,  which 
achieved  such  great  things  in  their  books,  often  became  low  cunning 
and  deliberate  falsehood  in  their  lives.  Contrast  the  strict  honour 
of  Zerbino  in  reference  to  the  diabolical  hag  Gabrina  in  Ariosto, 
O.  F.  XXI. 

Vkr.  394. — I  throngh  the  dark  f ast- fitting  night. 

Our  translators  have  been  not  a  little  puzzled — as  indeed  the 
ancients  also  were — what  to  make  of  '^m)  as  an  epithet  to  i^i'^. 
That  we  must  translate  svift  there  can  be  no  d(jubt ;  but  does  it 


264  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  X. 

mean  night  coming  stviftly  on,  siuoopiruj  swiftly  on,  or  night  fleeting 
swiftly  aivay  ?  On  either  supposition  the  difficulty  is  great ;  for 
the  night  rather  seems  to  creep  slowly  on,  and  to  glide  slowly  away, 
than  to  move  quickly.  Perhaps  the  best  way  would  have  been 
simply  to  translate  "  siviftj"  and  leave  the  explanation  to  the 
reader.  What  Donaldson  (iV.  C.  474)  says  about  this  expression 
is  both  unscientific  and  unpoetical ;  ^oos  never  can  mean  "  dread- 
ful." I  am  inclined  to  think  the  phrase  must  have  been  invented 
by  shepherds,  watching  Iheir  flocks  on  the  long  summer  days,  to 
whom  the  night  could  not  but  appear  a  fleet  and  flitting  phenome- 
non in  the  round  of  their  daily  lives. 

Yek.  427. — Behold,  tlie  truth  I  tell  to  thee,  etc. 

On  the  Trojan  auxiliaries  here  mentioned,  see  notes  to  the  cata- 
logue, II.  816.  The  only  names  not  mentioned  there  are  the 
Leleges  and  Gaucones.  Strabo,  in  a  remarkable  passage  (vii.  321) 
tells  us  that  anciently  the  whole  of  the  Peloponnesus  was  peopled 
by  barbarians,  and  specially  the  Dryopes,  the  Caucones,  the  Pelasgi, 
and  the  Leleges.  They  were  evidently  the  difi'erent  subdivisions  of 
those  Argive  tribes  afterwards  known  to  the  world  as  Greeks,  who 
peopled  first  the  Asiatic  coast  of  the  ^gean,  and  then,  by  the  way 
of  Thrace,  forced  themselves  south,  first  into  Thessaly,  and  then 
into  the  Morea.  The  Leleges  here  meant  are  of  course  those  who 
dwelt  on  the  south  coast  of  the  Troad,  whom  the  geographer  in 
another  place  specializes  (xiii.  49),  and  whom  the  poet  again  names 
(xxi.  86).  See  Clinton,  i.  p.  34;  Curtius,  Gr.  Ges.\.4:\.  The 
Caucones,  who  appear  again  in  xx.  329,  had  their  principal  Euro- 
pean seat  in  Ells  and  the  Triphylia  (Str.  viii.  345) ;  but  those  who 
came  to  assist  Priam  were  of  course  Asiatics  from  the  banks  of  the 
Parthenius,  where  their  principal  site  is  known  to  have  been.  The 
Thymbra,  in  ver.  434,  is  a  place  well  known  to  all  who  have  taken 
any  part  in  the  controversy  about  the  site  of  Troy ;  for,  in  xiii. 
598,  Strabo  speaks  of  the  "  plain  of  Thymbra,  and  the  river  Thym- 
brius  flowing  through  it,  which  flows  into  the  Scamander,  beside 
the  temple  of  the  Tliymbraean  Apollo"  (Virgil,  ^n.  iii.  85),  as  a 


BOOK  X.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  265 

point  of  importance  in  settling  the  situation  of  Troy.  Maclareu 
{Plain  of  Troy,  p.  39)  says  that  the  Thymbrius  of  Strabo  is  beyond 
doubt  the  Kimair ;  but  these  are  slippery  matters,  and  Welcker 
finds  the  real  Thymbrius  rather  in  the  Dombrek  (Kleine  Schriften, 
ii.  p.  43).  As  to  the  Thracians,  we  had  them  already  (ii.  844) 
in  the  catalogue  ;  they  appear  throughout  in  the  Trojan  legends  as 
most  intimately  related  to  the  family  of  Priam  ;  and  their  king, 
Rhesus,  witli  his  wind-swift  horses,  here  giving  glory  to  Ulysses 
and  Diomede,  appears  afterwards  on  the  Attic  stage  to  illustrate 
the  genius  of  Euripides.  Over  him  the  sedulous  commentator 
passes  with  easy  quill ;  for  the  only  notable  event  in  his  life,  as 
an  Irishman  might  say,  was  his  death. 

Ver.  487. — He  slew  a  goodly  twelve. 

This  killing  of  men  in  their  sleep  is  Grreek,  and  not  at  all  chival- 
rous.    The  knights  of  the  middle  ages  scorned  such  a  deed. 

"  Di  tanto  core  e  it  f/enercso  Orlando 
Che  nan  degnu  ferir  gente  die  derma." 

Aeiosto,  0.  F.  IX.  4. 

Ver.  498. — t^v  vvkt,  OlvelScio  Trai's  Sta  fj.rjTLi>  'A6r]vr]S. 

"  Aristophmies  et  Zenodotus  dejecerant  ;  cujus  judicii  causas 
uberius  refert  scliol.  a.  Ac  profedo,  si  quis  alius,  hie  versus  gram- 
matici  ptfodif  industriam,  qui  qvalis  fuerit  terror  jjer  somnium 
Tliracum  regi  a  Minerva  ohjectus  erat  explicaturus  (Spitzner).  Of 
course,  in  these  matters  certainty  is  not  to  be  expected  ;  but  the 
poetical  effect  of  this  passage  is,  in  my  opinion,  improved  by  the 
omission  of  the  line.     Cowper  gives — 

"  For  at  his  head 
All  evil  dream  that  night  had  stood,  the  t'oiiu 
Of  Diomede  by  Pallas'  art  devised." 

Ver.  505. — With  a  mighty  suxiy  uplift  it. 

It  appears  from  this  that  the  war-chariots  of  the  ancients,  like 
the  beds  of  the  sick  in  the  New  Testament,  must  have  been  very 


2GG  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  X. 

light  and  portable.  They  were,  in  fact,  so  light  that  they  could  be 
hung  up  on  temples,  like  shields  and  coats  of  mail  (Virg.  J^n.  vii. 
183).     See  the  article  Currus,  in  Smith's  Did.  Ant. 

Ver.  631. — Nyyus  evri.  ykaffivpds,  k.t.A.. 
"  Defuit  in  Ven.  Vind.  nn.  d  Toiml.  et  irrepsit  fortasse  ex  xi.  520. 
Eustathius,  quamquam  enm  abundare  fatetur,  tamen  phirihus  de- 
vwnstrare  shidet,  nihil  inesse  quo  magnopere  offendamur"  (Spitzner). 
Just  so  ;  and  the  translator  may  wisely  deal  with  such  lines  as 
the  convenience  of  his  verse  may  dictate. 

Yer.  576-7. — Into  the  hollow  hath  they  went. 
The  early  use  of  warm  baths  among  the  Greeks  is  evident  both 
from  this  passage  and  from  the  Odyssey.     The  excess  in  which 
this  luxury  was  used  by  the  later  Greeks,  seems  to  have  driven  the 
advocates  of  a  rigorous  and  bracing  system  of  living  to  denounce 
the  hot  bath  altogether  ;  but  on  this  one  point  at  least,  the  Unjust 
Discourse  in  Aristophanes  has  completely  the  advantage  over  his 
adversary ;  for  he  proves  that,  according  to  the  universal  tradition  of 
the  ancients,  Athene  supplied  warm  baths  to  Hercules  at  Thermo- 
pylfe,  when  he  was  worn  out  with  his  severe  labours  (Schol.  Ar. 
Nub.  1050).     Various  passages  of  the  Odyssey  likewise  point  to 
baths  as  an  ordinary  service  done  to  all  guests  after  a  long  journey 
(ill.  468,  IV.  48)  ;  and  though  it  is  not  expressly  mentioned  in  all 
these  passages,  it  is  quite  plain  from  others  (x.  360)  that  hot  water 
is  meant.     The  well-known  instance  of  the  murder  of  Agamemnon 
in  the  bath  which  Clytemnestra  gave  him  on  his  disembarkation 
points  to  the  universality   of  the  practice.     In  the   times   of  the 
general    corruption    of  morals    under    the   Roman   Emperors,   the 
Church  Fathers  inveighed  with  great  zeal  as  much  against  baths 
as  against  gymnastics  and  gladiator  shows,  denouncing  cold  baths 
frequently  as  violently  as  hot  ones ;  and  there  were  no  doubt  in 
those  days  moral  considerations  of  the  gravest  kind,  which  might 
iustify  a  general  riiilippie  of  this  sort,  that  in  theory  appear  alto- 
gether unreasonable  and  absurd.     Along  with  ablution,  the  Greeks 


TUiOK  X.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  207 

practised  also,  as  this  passage  shows,  the  anointing  of  the  body  with 
oil,  a  practice  of  which  frequent  mention  is  made  in  the  Ohl  Testa- 
ment (Ruth  iii.  8  ;  2  Sam.  xii.  20  ;  Prov.  xxvii.  9  ;  Dan.  x.  3). 
For  an  account  of  the  ancient  system  of  baths,  part  of  which 
survives  in  the  Turkish  Bath,  while  other  parts  have  been  revived 
by  Priessnitz  and  the  hydropathists,  see  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  Art. 
Baths. 


BOOK  XI. 


Ver.  13,  14. — Toto-t  8'   at^ap,  K-.T.A. 

These  lines  certainly  appear  much  UKire  naturally  in  ii.  453, 
so  that,  whether  interpolated  or  not  in  this  place,  the  translator 
luay  wisely  give  them  the  go-by.  They  are  bracketed  by  Sp.  and 
Bauml.,  and  ejected  by  Bek. 

Ver.  I.'). 

Then  Agamemnon  h/iaj  called  all  the  Aiyire  men  to  arms. 

The  eleventh  book  is  the  apia-rua  'Ayafxefivovos,  or  ijrowess  e>f 
Agamemnon,  and  is  so  quoted  by  all  ancient  writers.  Here,  there- 
fore, were  the  fitting  place  to  note  anything  about  this  famous 
character,  beyond  the  action  of  the  poem,  which  might  interest  an 
intelligent  reader.  But  in  fact  there  is  so  little  to  add,  or  what 
might  have  been  added  has,  by  the  genius  of  the  Attic  tragic 
poets,  becoine  so  widely  the  common  property  of  all  educated 
persons,  that  a  detailed  note  will  readily  be  excused  here.  The 
tragic  death  of  the  king  of  Mycenae  after  the  taking  of  Troy  is 
alluded  to  in  the  Odyssey  (i.  35,  in.  304,  xi.  387),  and  exhibited  by 
^schylus  in  a  tragedy  containing  some  scenes  of  which  Shakspeare 
might  have  been  proud.  After  his  death  Agamemnon  received  at 
Amyclae  the  usual  honours  which  were  given  to  heroes,  by  a  reli- 
gious acknowledgment  similar  to  the  canonization  of  the  Boman 


268  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

Church  (Paus.  iii.  19.  5).  In  the  Trojau  legends,  and  in  the 
Iliad,  he  is  manifestly  rather  the  respected  bearer  of  the  whole  than 
the  brilliant  exponent  of  any  part ;  he  is  the  sceptre-bearing  king, 
whom  all  reverence,  not  the  popular  champion,  of  whose  exploits 
all  voices  are  full.  His  courage  on  the  field,  however,  is  more  than 
sufficient  to  support  his  dignity  on  the  throne ;  and  if  in  policy  he 
on  critical  occasions  displays  wavering  and  irresolution,  and  even 
faint-heartedness,  this  will  readily  be  forgiven  in  a  man  whose  posi- 
tion forces  him  to  be  dependent  more  on  the  will  of  others  than  on 
his  own  aspirations. 

Ver.  20. — That  hauberk  good  which  Cinyras  gave. 

Cinyras  is  famous  in  the  oldest  traditions  of  Cyprus  as  the 
founder  of  Paphos,  and  the  father  of  a  family  of  priests,  who  wor- 
shipped the  goddess  of  love  in  that  island,  not  in  human  shape,  but 
under  the  emblem  of  a  conical  stone.  The  interesting  description 
of  Tacitus  (Hist.  ii.  3)  must  be  familiar  to  many.  See  further, 
Pindar,  Pyth.  ii.  27,  and  Apoll.  iii.  14.  3,  who  makes  Cinyras  a 
descendant  of  Cephalus  and  Tithonus.  The  next  verse  (21)  is  the 
only  passage  in  the  Iliad  in  which  the  island  of  Cyprus  is  men- 
tioned. In  the  Odyssey  it  occurs  several  times,  in  iv.  83,  xvii. 
442,  and  in  viii.  362,  specially  in  connexion  with  the  worship  of 
Venus,  described  by  Tacitus,  and  of  which  the  emblems  and  whole 
character  were  of  Oriental  and  Phoenician  rather  than  of  European 
and  Hellenic  type.  The  topography  and  history  of  an  island  lying 
so  completely  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  action  of  the  Iliad  need 
not  detain  us. 

Ver.  24. — Ten  bars  of  <lark-hiied  tnineral  blue. 

The  word  Kvavos  requires  remark:  (1.)  As  a  colour,  this  word 
properly  means  blue,  and  specially  light  blue ;  for  Pausanias,  in  a 
remarkable  passage  (x.  28.  4),  describes  the  colour  of  the  blue-bottle 
flies  which  invade  the  larder  as  a  middle  hue  between  /zeAas  and 
Kuavos,  which  has  no  meaning  unless  this  word  mean  light  blue. 


BOOK  XI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILTAD.  209 

Eustathius  also  on  the  present  passage  distinctly  says  that  kwvos 
is  the  colour  of  the  sky  ivhen  it  is  quite  cloudless  ;  and  the  well-known 
name  of  the  corn-flower,  called  ciano  in  Italian  to  this  hour,  proves 
the  same  thing.  (2.)  Nevertheless,  with  that  vagueness  peculiar 
to  words  of  colour  in  Grreek,  this  ?ame  word,  in  Homer  at  least, 
beyond  all  question  often  means  dark  blue,  so  dark  indeed  as  to  be 
practically  identical  with  /xeAas.  Of  this  the  dictionary  supplies 
ample  proof.  (.8.)  The  current  version  of  the  word  in  the  present 
passage,  by  which  it  is  made  to  signify  steel,  is  utterly  without 
foundation.  I  can  find  no  ancient  authority  for  this  notion;  the 
oldest  hint  of  it,  so  far  as  I  see,  being  in  the  index  to  Eustathius, 
quoted  by  Millin  and  Gladstone,  where  the  words  {xeraXXov  n 
li(.XavL(ov,  by  the  index-maker,  are  not  sanctioned  by  the  text  of 
the  commentator  in  the  passages  (828.  19,  and  1570.  28)  to  which 
they  refer.  But.  even  if  Eustathius  had  distinctly  said  that  Kuavos 
was  a  metal,  his  mere  assertion  would  have  had  little  weight  on 
such  a  point  against  the  authority  of  the  classical  Greek  writers, 
who  tell  us  distinctly  what  Kvavos  is.  (4.)  For  no  man  can  read 
what  Theophrastus — De  Lapidihus — says  on  this  subject  without 
seeing  plainly  that  Kvavos  is  either  a  blue  gem  or  a  blue  mineral, 
more  probably  both ;  and,  if  the  latter,  in  all  probability  an  ore  of 
copper,  or,  finally,  an  artificial  imitation  of  these  natural  products. 
I  shall  leave  to  chemists  and  mineralogists  to  settle  the  exact  spe- 
cies, but  for  poetical  purposes  I  have  chosen  "mineral  blue"  as  a 
suitable  designation.  The  traditional  idea  that  it  must  be  a  metal, 
which  the  Germans,  curiously  enough,  from  Passow  down  to  Fried- 
rich  and  Ameis,  retail,  is  supported  by  no  argument  that  I  can  find, 
except  that  the  other  bars  or  stripes  on  the  shield  are  of  metal,  and 
therefore  this  must  be  so  too.  But  this  is  a  sort  of  argument 
which  a  child  in  a  toy-shop  might  easily  be  taught  to  refute.  Of 
our  recent  translators,  Wr.  has  ^' dusky  steel,''  and  Drb.  ^' dusky 
bronze,"  which  are  certainly  no  improvements  on  the  older  versions. 
On  this  subject  Gladstone  (iii.  497)  has  an  excellent  note.  See 
also  Lenz,  Mineralogie  der  Griechen  ;  Linton,  Ancient  and  Modern 
Colours,    1852;    and   Moore,    Ancient   Mineralogy,    1859,    p.    85. 


2  70  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

Millin'.s  notion  (Mineralogie  Homer.,  p.  154)  that  Ki'avos  means  lead 
is  unworthy  of  serious  discussion. 

Ver.  54. — A  hhiodij  (Icm. 

Bloody  rain-drops  are  mentioned  again,  xvi.  459  ;  and  it  is  not 
unlikely,  as  Koep.  observes,  that  certain  natural  phenomena  may 
have  afforded  the  germ  out  of  which  this  portent  grew.  The 
reader  of  Livy  may  perhaps  recollect  the  notice  that  in  one  re- 
markable year,  when  wars  were  being  carried  on  against  the 
Gauls,  "  it  rained  stones  in  Hadria,  drops  of  blood  were  seen  on 
the  Forum  and  the  Capitol,  and  in  the  district  of  Arimini  noble 
boys  were  born  without  eyes  or  nose."  Naturalists  are  of  opinion 
that  these  bloody  drops  come  from  certain  insects  of  the  butterfly 
species,  who  when  tliey  creep  out  of  their  vermicular  mask  emit 
drops  of  blood  on  the  green  leaves.  So  Eckerle,  in  his  Natur- 
Je.hre,  quoted  by  Bothe. 

Ver.  6S. — A  rich  man's  Jield. 

The  word  jiaKap  is  the  highest  term  that  the  Grreeks  have  to 
express  happiness,  being  in  its  most  characteristic  uses  as  superior 
to  evSatfiwu  as  our  blessed  is  to  happi/.  forfunate,  prosperous.  Never- 
theless this  word,  both  here  and  in  Od.  i.  217,  is  distinctly  used 
for  a  man  who  is  merely  rich  ;  a  usage  from  which,  as  ]Mr.  Glad- 
stone observes  (iii.  80),  we  may  plainly  conclude  that  the  popular 
opinion  in  Homer's  day  was  as  apt  to  place  the  essence  of  happi- 
ness in  the  abundance  of  the  things  which  a  man  possessed  as  does 
the  common  estimate  of  a  worldling  in  this  money-making  land. 
The  external,  in  fact,  in  all  shapes  and  attitudes,  will  always  domi- 
nate over  the  masses,  and  impress  its  stamp  on  their  conceptions 
and  their  language.  A  blessedness  like  that  of  the  rapt  saint,  the 
brooding  philosopher,  or  the  creative  poet,  altogether  independent 
of  external  circumstance,  will  ever  be  incomprehensible  to  the 
majority.  Even  the  self-annihilating  pantheistic  Hindus  say,  in 
their  book  of  proverbial  wisdom  (the  Hitopadesa,  Sloka.  0) : — 
"  Knowledge  gives  discretion.      Through  discretion  a  man  obtains 


BOOK  XI.  NOTRS  TO  THE  ILIAD.  271 

fitness  for  employment.  By  fitness  he  acquires  wealth.  Prom 
wealth  comes  religious  merit;  thence  proceeds  felicity."  Truly  a 
notable  moral  gamut ! 

Ver.  189. — So  lomj  let  Hector  stand  apart. 

"  The  comparative  feebleness  of  Hector's  military  character  is 
most  pointedly  shown  in  the  eleventh  book,  when  Jupiter  deter- 
mines to  give  effect  to  the  decision  that  honour  shall  be  done  to 
him"  (Grladstone,  iii.  560).  This  apparent  feebleness  of  Hector's 
character,  wherever  it  crops  out,  has  one  very  simple  explanation. 
Homer  never  conceived  Hector  as  in  any  sense  a  feeble  character ; 
but  he  was  too  good  a  Grreek  to  allow  that  the  best  of  the  Trojans 
could  stand  before  the  best  of  the  Greeks,  without  betraying  that 
sort  of  trepidation  which  an  orthodox  Englishman  conceives  every 
Frenchman  does  feel,  and  ought  to  feel,  at  the  incarnate  manifes- 
tation of  unconquorable  vigour  in  the  person  of  John  Bull.  The 
old  minstrel  was  a  generous-hearted  man  at  bottom,  no  doubt,  as 
all  true  poets  are ;  but  as  the  popular  singer  of  the  Glreeks,  he 
could  no  more  afford  always  to  give  fair  play  to  a  Trojan,  than  a 
mediaeval  romancer  could  do  to  a  Saracen,  or  a  modern  Scotsman 
listen  with  patience  to  the  praise  of  the  Virgin  Mary. 

Yer.  226. — He  (/are  this  daughter  to  he  his  irife. 

It  is  plain  from  this  that,  according  to  Homeric  ideas,  there 
was  nothing  wrong  in  a  man  marrying  his  aunt.  Theano  was  wife 
of  Antenor  (v.  70),  and  her  son  Araphidamas  married  his  mother's 
sister.  Eustathius  notes  this ;  and  also  the  Schol.  Ven.  a,  who  re- 
marks that  Diomede  also  married  his  mother's  sister. 

Ver.  270. — The  pang-hearing  Eileithyice. 

The  goddesses  of  childbirth,  Eileithyice,  are  plural  in  this  pas- 
sage, but  in  XVI.  187  and  xix.  103  there  is  only  one,  from  which 
diversity  of  usage  certain  Germans,  with  their  peculiar  logic,  would 
eagerly  rush  to  strange  conclusions  with  regard  to  the  authorship 
of  these   books.     But  in   fact  the    earliest   stage   of  mythology  is 


272  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

always  characterized  by  a  peculiar  vagueness  in  reference  to  the 
number  of  certain  divine  powers,  which  is  more  accurately  de- 
fined afterwards,  as  the  per.sonification  becomes  more  distinct, 
and  the  forms  of  art  limit  the  action  of  the  popular  imagination. 
See  above  on  the  Muses,  ii.  484;  the  Fates,  vi.  489;  and  the  Furies, 
IX.  464.  Afterwards  the  singular  number  predominated,  but  the 
plural  was  retained  at  Megara  (Paus.  i.  44.  3).  With  regard  to 
the  significance  of  these  goddesses,  there  seems  to  be  little  or  no 
doubt  that  they  are  only  the  throes  of  labour  personified,  a  cir- 
cumstance which  will  account  for  their  number — as  the  'EpCwve's 
were  plural  from  dpai, — and  which  agrees  both  with  the  supposed 
etymology  of  their  name  (from  eXevOw,  the  coming  pangs,  the 
ancients  generally,  and  Welcker ;  Preller  brings  in  e/'Aeoj,  eiXvw) 
and  with  their  genealogy.  For  they  were  originally  no  more  inde- 
pendent powers  than  the  Motpat,  and  were  sent  from"H,oa,  just  as 
these  came  from  Jupiter.  Here,  indeed,  as  the  great  celestial 
mother  and  matron  and  the  patron  goddess  of  marriage,  is  the 
natural  centre  round  which  all  that  belongs  to  childbirth  revolves ; 
and  it  is  only  what  we  might  have  expected,  when  we  find  in 
Hesychius  that  EiAet^uta  was  one  of  the  well-known  names  of 
the  Argive  Juno  (Hesy.  dXddvia).  And  the  Romans  accordingly 
called  EtAe6^uia  Juno  Lucina  (Dionys.  Arch.  iv.  15).  As  such, 
EtA-et^via,  no  doubt,  existed  in  the  most  ancient  theology  long  be- 
fore she  was  individualized  as  the  daughter  of  Jove  and  Juno 
(Hesiod,  Tlieog.  921).  Olen,  one  of  the  oldest  sacred  priests  of 
the  Apollo  worship,  identified  her  with  HeTrptajxkvq,  and  called  her 
older  than  Kronos  (Paus.  viii.  21.  2);  as  indeed  she  has  a  natural 
affinity  with  the  Fates,  and  is  often  mentioned  along  with  them 
(Anton.  Lib.  29  ;  Pindar,  01.  vi.  70).  With  Artemis  it  is  quite 
certain  that  she  had  originally  nothing  to  do,  any  more  than  with 
Minerva ;  but  the  general  recognition  of  the  sister  of  Apollo  as  the 
Moon,  seems  to  have  led  the  Athenians  afterwards  to  hand  over  to 
this  goddess  the  presidency  of  childbirth,  which  properly  belonged 
to  Juno  (Eurip.  HlppoJ.  106;  AniJiol.  Pal.  vi.  273;  Ilgen,  ScoJ.  iii.) 
The  statues  of  Eilcitluiia  were  generally  represented  more  or  less 


BOOK  XI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  273 

veiled.  That  at  ^5*]giuni,  described  by  Pausanias  (vir.  23.  5). 
was  altogether  covered  by  a  fine  drapery,  except  the  face,  the 
points  of  the  fingers,  and  the  toes;  that  at  Athens  (Paus.  i.  18.  5) 
was  completely  covered.  The  best  account  of  ElXeidvia^  and  all 
that  relates  to  childbirth  among  the  ancients,  will  be  found  in 
Welcker's  tract  on  Enthindung  in  his  Kleine  Schriften,  and  re- 
printed in  his  Alferthumer  der  Heilkunde  (Bonn,  1850),  an  author 
to  whom,  in  this,  as  in  all  matters  connected  with  ancient  mytho- 
logy, I  gratefully  acknowledge  my  obligations.  Consult  also  the 
monogram  of  Pindar,  Be  lUthyia,  Berlin,  1860. 

Veb.  306. — Thick  vapours  hy  v:li'de  Nofiis  bred. 

That  winds  should  sometimes  get  their  names  from  the  appear- 
ance of  the  sky  with  which  they  are  accompanied,  or  from  the  kind 
of  weather  which  they  bring  with  them,  seems  quite  natural ;  and  in 
this  way  such  an  epithet  as  dp-yeo-rv/s  may  easily  pass  into  a  proper 
name.  The  dpyecrrao  Noroto  of  the  poet  in  this  passage  is  mani- 
festly the  aJbus  Notus  of  Horace  (i.  7.  15);  but  though  the  epithet 
is  the  same,  there  is  a  great  difference  in  the  idea  which  the  word 
is  meant  to  convey.  The  Eoman  lyrist  talks  of  the  tvliite  or  dear 
south  wind  driving  the  dark  clouds  before  it,  Homer  of  the  strong 
fresh  zephyr,  sweeping  aivay  the  clouds  of  the  white  soutJi.  What 
our  minstrel  means  we  may  have  seen  in  our  own  climate,  where  a 
south  wind  will  often  accumulate  a  white  haze  in  the  sky,  which  a 
stiff"  breeze  from  the  north  or  north-west  will  disperse.  The  word 
upyea-rrjs  appears  in  Hesiod  plainly,  I  cannot  help  thinking  with 
Goettling  (Theog.  379),  as  a  proper  name  for  the  east  wind,  which 
agrees  well  enough  with  its  Homeric  use,  as  Noto?  may  be  used 
loosely  for  the  south-east ;  and  to  a  person  living  on  the  west  coast 
of  Asia  Minor,  these  two  winds  at  certain  seasons  of  the  year 
might  bring  with  them  a  similar  white  cloudiness  of  the  sky. 
Afterwards,  when  used  by  Greeks  in  a  diff'erent  quarter  of  the 
world,  the  word  dpyk(nii<i  took  a  jump  into  the  immediate  vicinity 
of  its  Homeric  adversary  the  Zecfivpos,  and  appears  on  the  card 
as    N.w.    by   w.      See    the    table   of  winds   in    Goettling;    hence 

VOL.  IV.  S 


274  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

^^  frigidvs  Argestes''  in  Ovid,  Fasf.  v.  161.  The  'Apyco-Tijs  in 
Apoll.  Rhod.  ir.  OGo  is  also  manifestly  a  west  wind,  as  indeed 
the  scholiast  remarks,  for  this  is  what  the  Argonauts  required  at 
that  part  of  their  voyage. 

Ver.  385. — Brave  arcJicr,  Irilliant  hmuman. 

I  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  the  meaning  of  "  curls" 
given  to  fcepas  in  this  passage,  by  a  great  many  of  the  ancients,  and 
from  thence  adopted  into  some  translations  even  of  recent  date,  is 
a  pure  invention  of  that  host  of  minute  pedants  who,  in  the  decad- 
ence of  Greek  literature,  began  to  occupy  their  small  wits  with  a 
thousand  and  one  supersubtle  questions  about  every  jot  and  tittle 
of  the  Homeric  Bible.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  these  men 
lived  at  least  600  years  after  the  latest  date  assigned  to  Homer, 
and  that  where  a  certain  living  tradition  failed,  they  had  no  better 
materials  for  forming  a  judgment  than  we  have,  and  even  when 
they  had  materials,  they  seem  to  have  been  entirely  destitute  of 
fixed  principles  of  criticism  by  which  they  might  apply  them. 
No  hermeneutical  maxim  is  now  more  generally  allowed  than 
that  every  author  is  the  best  commentator  on  himself;  and  as 
Homer,  though  speaking  of  hair  in  a  hundred  places,  nowhere  uses 
Kepas  in  that  sense,  while  he  tells  us  distinctly  (iv.  109)  that  bows 
were  made  of  horn,  all  room  for  further  conjecture  on  the  subject 
is  shut  out.  Aristarchus,  as  we  see  in  Apollonius,  saw  this  clearly  ; 
but  the  jX(»(Tcroypa(f>oL  were  arrant  triflers,  and  having  taken  a 
fancy  into  their  head  that  Homer  having  already  called  Paris  a 
To^oTT^?,  must  mean  something  difiFerent  by  K^pa  dyAae,  and  know- 
ing that  the  locks  of  Paris  were  famous  (iii.  55),  they  fell  upon  the 
notion  that  a  certain  kind  of  arrangement  of  the  curls  might  justly 
be  called  a  "horn,''  and  so  gratified  their  petty  ingenuity  at  the 
expense  of  the  Greek  language  and  of  common  sense  ;  for  who  ever 
heard  of  "  locks"  being  called  "  a  horn  ?"  The  things  are  in  their 
nature  different  and  contrary ;  the  horn  stands  up,  the  locks  fall 
down.  Let  us  hope,  therefore,  that  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  this 
nonsense.  The  taunt  implied  in  ro^orrys  has  been  already  explained 
under  iv.  242. 


BOOK  XT.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  275 

Ver.  430. — 0  wise  Ulysses,  much  hepraised. 

There  is  nothing  contrary  to  Homeric  usage  in  the  laudatory 
epithet  here  applied  to  Ulysses  by  the  Trojans.  The  attempt  of 
Buttmann  in  the  LexiL  to  devise  a  special  meaning  for  TroA.i'airo'? 
according  to  the  strict  acceptation  of  aTvo?,  an  allerjory  or  parahlc^ 
is  ingenious,  but  neither  necessary  nor  safe.  Learned  men  seem 
sometimes  to  be  governed  by  a  feeling  against  obvious  meanings  ; 
but  I  suspect,  in  a  popular  minstrel  at  least,  the  most  obvioiis 
meaning  is  the  most  likely  to  be  true. 

Ver.  474. — Tawny  jacliaJs. 

The  8a<j>otvol  S-coes,  like  most  objects  of  natural  history  not  alto- 
gether common,  has  puzzled  the  translators.  The  versions  are, 
"  red  wild  dogs,"  N. ;  "  lynxes  in  the  hills,"  C. ;  "  bloody  Lucerns," 
Ch.  ;  "wild  mountain-wolves,"  P.;  ^^  rothgelbe  Schakal,"  V.  ; 
'•  hungry  jackals,"  Drb.  I  follow  Lenz,  Zoologie  der  Griechen,  p. 
117.  Gesenius  understands  jackals  in  the  history  of  Samson 
(Judges  XV.  4),  where  the  Hebrew  has  ^s'i^- 

Ver.  514. 
A  cunning  leech  in  stress  of  fight  a  hundred  men  outweighs. 

This  sentiment  is  expressed  again  in  Od.  iv.  231,  which  passage, 
I  entirely  agree  with  Welcker  (Alt.  Heilk.  p.  49),  is  like  the  present 
quite  general,  and  has  no  special  reference  to  the  Egyptians.  Tlu- 
compliment  paid  by  the  poet  to  the  medical  profession  in  this  verse 
is  the  more  generous,  that  in  all  ages  of  society,  men  who  distinguish 
themselves  on  the  battle-field  and  in  the  forum,  in  public  life  and 
in  literature,  achieve  greater  celebrity  than  those  who  work  in  the 
quiet  and  unobtrusive  sphere  of  the  physician.  For  this  reason  it  is 
celebrated  by  Virgil  as  a  great  act  of  self-denial  in  a  certain  hero  that 

"  Scire  potestates  herbarum  usumque  medeiuli 
Mahiit,  et  mutas  agitare  inglorins  aktes.  " 

.En.  XII.  397. 


276  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

The  Hitopadesa  says,  ''  A  niaii  should  not  reside  iu  a  place  where 
these  five  things  are  not  to  be  found,  luealtlnj  inhabitants^  Brahmins 
learned  in  the  Vedas,  a  Rajali^  a  river^  and  a  physician  (Book  i. 
Sloka.  109).  And  in  the  Wisdom  of  Sirach  we  read  (xxxviii.  1,  2), 
"  Honour  a  physician  for  your  own  need  ;  for  the  Lord  created  him 
also  :  for  from  the  Most  High  coraeth  healing,  and  he  shall  receive  a 
gift  from  the  king."  The  world,  however,  always  will  have  its  sneer 
at  the  privileged  orders  ;  so  in  Eustathius  we  find  recorded  a  very 
different  saying,  "  \i pliysicians  did  not  exist^  there  woidd  he  nothing 
on  earth  'more  silly  than  the  grammarians.^'  Line  515  was  ejected 
by  Zenodotus,  Sia  t^v  /xetojo-tv;  it  is  bracketed  by  Spitzner  ;  and 
as  it  certainly  weakens  rather  than  strengthens  the  effect  of  the 
previous  line,  I  think  I  do  the  poet  a  service  by  following  the 
Ephesian. 

Ver.  543. 
The  line 

Zei)s  "yap  ol  w/tecra^',  6t^  cl/j-clvovi.  (purl  jxa-xoiro' 

was  first  inserted  into  the  test  by  Wolf,  from  Ar.  lihet.  ii.  9,  and 
other  passages  of  the  ancients.  The  line  may  be  genuine  ;  but, 
as  it  only  seems  to  weaken  the  passage  by  expressing  a  reason  far 
better  left  to  the  imagination,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  omitting  it. 
Barnes  inserted  it  at  xvii.  100,  where  it  seems  superfluous. 

Ver.  609. 

The  valiant  Greeks  clasping  my  knees  I  soon  shall  see. 

"  Ha^c  loquentem  qui  fecit  Achillem,  is  profecto  legationem 
hesterno  die  repudiatam  ignoravit  "  (Kochly,  Diss.  Iliad,  iii.  p.  9). 
This  remark  is  certainly  just,  and  is  in  favour  of  my  theory  (vol. 
i.  p.  25G),  that  Book  ix.  w^as  an  afterthought  of  the  poet,  in  order 
to  intensify  the  importance  of  his  hero.  With  regard  to  such  small 
contradictions  or  oversights  in  the  concatenation  of  the  parts  of 
the  poem,  my  wonder  always  is  that  there  are  not  more  of  them. 


BOOK  XL  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  L'77 

Ver.  624. — A  minyltd  draught  fair  Hecamede  prepared. 

The  KUKcwi',  says  Apollonius,  "  is  a  draught  of  water  and  wine 
mingled  with  honey  and  barley,"  as,  indeed,  it  is  described  here, 
and  in  Od.  x.  235,  290,  316.  The  kvk(.(ov  is  not  a  medicine,  but 
only  a  refreshing  di'aught ;  this  appears  plainly  from  the  context 
(ver.  641-2),  and  from  the  Odyssey,  where  Circe  puts  the  ^ap/xaKov 
into  it,  as  an  addition  altogether  distinct  and  separate.  Hecamede 
is  no  leech,  only  Agamede  (ver.  740),  though  those  who  have 
quoted  from  this  book  often  confound  the  two.  The  kvk^wv  was 
not  always  composed  of  the  same  materials,  but  some  kind  of  herbs 
seems  to  have  been  essential  to  the  potion.  In  Ar.  Pac.  712  and 
1159,  thyme  and  pennyroyal  are  mentioned. 

Ver.  630. — Flavorous  garlic  for  the  wine. 

The  word  oxl^ov,  in  Greek,  properly  signifies  anything  that  gives 
a  relish,  generally  to  a  piece  of  dry  bread,  but  in  this  passage  it 
means  a  provocative  to  wine.  Hesy chins  says  that  onions,  k/oo/x/zvo, 
are  taken  in  the  morning  along  with  a  glass  of  wine,  as  ipedLartKov 
rod  o'ivQv.  Afterwards  oipov  was  more  specially  applied  to  certain 
kinds  of  fish,  such  as  anchovies  and  sardines ;  from  this  use  its 
diminutive  o^dptov  came  to  be  used,  as  in  the  New  Testament 
generally,  for  fish,  which,  in  modern  Greek,  shorn  of  the  initial 
unaccented  syllable,  becomes  i/'a/si,  ajish. 

Veu.  639. — The  Frafiinian  ivine. 

The  Pramnian  wine  is  mentioned  often  in  ancient  writers,  and 
was  held  in  very  great  estimation,  as  the  scholiast  on  Ar.  Equit. 
107  remarks.  It  was  a  dark  strong  wine,  dry  and  harsh,  and  was 
believed  to  have  medicinal  qualities  (Athen.  i.  10  b,  29  a,  30  c). 
This  notion  of  its  medicinal  virtue  may  either  have  been  founded  on 
experience,  or  have  arisen  out  of  the  medical  interpretation  of  this 
very  passage,  for  the  ancients  dealt  with  Homer  as  we  deal  with 
the  Bible,  and  always  used  him  to  prove  a  thousand  things  of 
wliich  he  never  dreamt.      As  to  the  locality  of  the  Pramnian  wine, 


2i6  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

the  most  distinct  testimony  is  borne  to  its  having  been  grown  in  the 
island  of  Icarus,  off  Samos,  where  a  rock  was  called  the  ITpa/xvtos 
ir'iTpa  (Athen.  i.  30  c) ;  but  the  same  name  seems  to  have  been 
given  to  wine  of  a  similar  quality  grown  in  other  places  (Athen.  i. 
31  D ;  Plin.  N.  H.  XIV.  4).  See  Nitzsch,  Od.  x.  234 ;  Welcker, 
AUe  Heilkunde,  Kleine  Schriften,  iii.  p.  55. 

Ver.  655. — To  wliom  the  old  Gerenian  lioi'seman  annwered. 

"Poor  Patroclus,"  says  Gladstone,  "  is  hei*e  button-held  by 
Nestor — 152  lines  absolutely  and  entirely  irrelevant!"  Not  so. 
"  Irrelevant"  is  a  logical  word;  and  Mr.  Gladstone  is  not  the  only 
critic  who  has  forgotten  that  poetry  has  a  logic  of  its  own  which 
the  schools  are  apt  to  ignore.  Patroclus  is  eager  to  return  and 
bring  back  word  to  Achilles ;  Nestor  is  eager  to  detain  him.  Of 
course  he  must  say  something ;  and  he  says  something  very  much 
to  the  purpose,  of  which  the  substance  is  this  :  "  Tour  friend  is  a 
very  unreasonable  man ;  he  refuses  to  help  his  own  friends  in  their 
extreme  need.  When  I  was  young  I  was  eager  to  rush  into  the 
fray,  oven  when  forbidden.  If  I  was  now  as  fresh  and  vigorous  as 
Achilles,  I  would  not  be  skulking  at  the  ships,  but  I  would  go  forth 
and  handle  the  Trojans  as  I  handled  the  Epeans  when  a  young 
man,  on  a  certain  famous  occasion  which  I  will  tell  you."  Is  this 
irrelevant  ?  The  breadth  of  the  narrative  is  partly  Homeric, 
partly  Nestorian,  but  it  is  also  politic  and  pertinent ;  for  the  recital 
of  such  heroic  actions  was  calculated  to  work  on  Patroclus's  mind, 
and  make  him  ashamed  of  his  own  conduct  and  that  of  his  hot 
friend.  I  do  not  think  there  is  a  more  natural,  or  a  more  appro- 
priate speech  in  the  whole  Iliad.  With  regard  to  Nestor  generally, 
this  were  the  place  to  enlarge  on  him  if  we  had  anything  to  say 
beyond  what  the  pictures  of  the  Iliad  exhibit.  But  what  little 
we  know  is  hardly  worth  mentioning.  Like  all  the  thanes  of  the 
Peloponnesus  he  is  directly  traced  to  Thessaly,  the  cradle  of  the 
Greeks.  His  father  Neleus  is  genealogically  connected  with 
^olus,  the  son  of  Hellen — that  is,  the  Greeks  of 'KAAas  in  Thessaly, 
— through  his  father  Cretheiis,  and  his  mother  Tyro,  the  daughter 


BOOK  XI.  NUTKti  TO  THE  ILIAD.  2/9 

of  the  haughty  god-defying  Sahuoueus  (ApoU.  i.  7.  8  ;  Virg.  uEn. 
VI.  685).  This  Tyro,  no  doubt  as  the  grandmother  of  Nestor,  so 
famous  in  the  great  legendary  cycle  of  the  TpojtKa,  receives  a  pro- 
minent place  among  the  illustrious  women  who  appear  to  Ulysses 
in  his  visit  to  Hades  (Od.  xi.  235).  From  the  banks  of  the 
Enipeus,  owing  to  one  of  those  family  quarrels  so  common  in 
ancient  Greece,  Neleus,  the  father  of  Nestor,  left  his  native 
country,  and  established  himself  in  Pylos,  on  the  south-west  coast 
of  the  Peloponnesus.  As  Nestor  in  a  green  old  age  survived 
every  other  body,  so  he  was  bound,  by  legendary  propriety,  to 
survive  the  Trojan  war  ;  and  accordingly  he  appears  in  the  Odyssey 
(ill.  165,  IV.  209)  unscathed  and  uncurtailed,  w^th  all  the  dignity 
that  belongs  to  a  venerable  paterfamilias^  the  hero  of  a  hundred 
fights,  and  the  survivor  of  thi'ee  generations.  By  the  irruption  of 
the  Heracleidae,  the  Neleides  were  dispossessed  of  their  possessions 
in  the  peninsula,  and  migrated  to  Attica  (Paus.  ii.  18.  7).  We 
should  add  that  the  surname  "  Gerenian,"  with  which  he  generally 
appears  in  the  Iliad,  is  from  a  Messenian  town,  where  Nestor  is  said 
to  have  resided  for  some  time,  and  which  some  ancient  antiquarians 
identified  with  the  'Evottvj  of  ix.  150  (see  Paus.  in.  26.  6). 

Yer.  662. — fSefSX-qrai  8e  Kal  EupiJ-uAos  Kara  jir^pov  oicttw. 

"  Hunc  version,  quod  ahest  a  Ven.  Lips.  Vind.  uno  et  JEustathio, 
neque  Nestor  Eurypylum  vulneratum  esse  scire  potuit,  in  diibitati- 
onem  vocant  Ernestius,  Heijnius^  WoJfius  ;  et  vix  ahesse  poterit  sus- 
picio  quin  in  alienum  locum  irruerit  ille  versus  e  lihro  xvi.  27  " 
(Spitzncr).     I  eject,  with  Bckkcr. 

Ver.  699. — Four  prize-hearing  steeds,  etc. 

The  reader  will  notice  here  the  germ  of  the  Olympic  games, 
which,  however,  were  not  formally  instituted,  or  at  least  did  not 
assume  a  historical  significance,  till  the  year  776  B.C.,  when  Iphitus 
was  king  of  Elis.  The  Augeas  mentioned  in  ver.  701  is  evidently 
the  same   person   whose   ill-kept   stables   furnished  Hercules  with 


280  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XI. 

ouc  of  his  famous  labours,  which  agaiu  has  furnished  the  moderu 
world  with  one  of  its  most  current  proverbs. 

A^ER.  709. 

The  twin  doughty  champions  here  mentioned  under  the  name  of 
MoAiove,  are  described  in  mythological  history  as  sons  of  Actor 
(xxiii.  638) — brother  of  Augeas  — and  Molione.  Their  names  were 
Eurytos  and  Cteatus  (ii.  621).  How  they  came  to  be  named 
from  their  mother  has  puzzled  curious  inquirers  ;  but,  as  Horace 
says,  no7i  scire  fas  est  omnia.  They  were  strong  men  and  mighty 
warriors,  and  supposed,  maugre  their  apparent  fatherhood,  no  doubt 
on  account  of  their  strength,  to  have  been  really  the  sons  of  Posei- 
don. They  acted  so  constantly  in  concert  that  people  exaggerated 
them  into  a  sort  of  Siamese  twins  (a-vfKJivels).  They  opposed 
Hercules  with  success ;  but  the  invincible  son  of  Jove  afterwards 
slew  them  near  Cleonse  (Pindar,  01.  x.  32).  Welcker  (Kl.  Schr.) 
interprets  this  legend  of  the  two  millstones,  in  the  act  of  grinding 
indispensable  to  each  other,  most  ingeniously,  and  in  a  manner 
which  explains  without  force  all  the  names  of  all  the  parties  in  the 
myth.  If  the  Germans  would  learn  to  confine  their  symbolical 
explanations  within  such  rational  bounds  as  Welcker  generally 
observes,  they  would  command  that  respect  from  the  whole  world 
of  scholars  which  they  now  receive  chiefly  from  those  largely  in- 
fected with  their  own  madness. 

Ver.  728. — A  luJJ  vt'  to  the  river  sleto. 

Bulls  were  sacrificed  to  Rivers  for  the  same  reason  as  to  Nep- 
tune (xx.  404),  on  account  of  their  strength  and  fierceness.  For 
the  same  reason,  on  coins,  rivers  are  constantly  represented  either 
as  bulls  with  human  heads,  or  as  men  with  bulls'  heads,  or  at  least 
with  hoi-iis.  To  this  Horace  alludes  in  his  "  Sic  tauriformis  vol- 
vitur  Aufiflus,'"  and  Virgil  in  his  Illieirus  Incnrnis ;  for  I  should 
not  believe,  without  special  proof,  that  the  Mantuan  meant  by 
this  phrase  the  division  of  the  Rhine  into  two  great  branches  be- 
fore it  enters  the  sea. 


book  xi.  notes  to  the  iliad.  281 

Ver.  740. 

A  leech  was  she,  and  well  she  knew  all  herhs  on  (jroimd  that  (jrow. 
That  women  are  admirable  nurses  every  one  knows  ;  that  they 
are  inclined  also  to  dabble  in  drugs,  and  to  patronize  every  new 
medical  heresy,  is  equally  evident ;  and  that  they  have  a  natural 
vocation  for  exercising  certain  branches  of  the  medical  profession 
with  dexterity  and  tact,  seems  undeniable.  I  have  known  not  a 
few  cases  in  which  sensible  women  have  interfered  triumphantly 
to  fan  the  vital  spark,  which  injudicious  doctors  were  assiduously 
smothering  with  drugs.  It  is  gratifying  therefore  to  find  that  a  field 
of  activity  which  has  been  recently  claimed  for  the  sex  by  English 
aspiration,  and  by  American  example,  finds  a  precedent  in  the 
venerable  pages  of  the  Iliad.  The  name  of  Agamcde  stands  here 
prophetic  of  Florence  Nightingale,  and  other  courageous  devoted 
women,  who  moved  like  beneficent  angels  among  the  crowds  of 
bleeding  sufferers  in  the  late  Crimean  war.  A  commentator  of 
a  late  age  identifies  her  with  the  Perimede  of  Theocritus  (Schol. 
Theoc.  II.  16).  As  Kgypt  was  the  most  famous  of  ancient  countries 
for  physicians,  we  are  not  surprised,  to  meet  in  the  Odyssey  (iv. 
227)  an  Egyptian  female  leech,  with  the  well-omened  name  oi Poly- 
damna,  which,  being  interpreted,  means  subduer  of  many  diseases. 
In  fact,  nothing  was  more  common  in  ancient  times  than  medical 
skill  possessed  by  females.  So  (Enone,  the  Trojan  shepherdess,  is 
(fiapixuKovpyos  (Lycoph.  01).     So  a  good  nurse  must  know  drugs 

[Hymn.  Cer.  228).      See   Medea,    oder  die  Krduterkunde   hei  den 

Fraxien  ;  Welcker,   Kl.   Sch.  iii.    21.      From   these  sources,   and 

I  have  no  doubt  also  from  the  practice  of  the  middle  ages,  our 

modern  poets  derived  the  idea  of  introducing  women  as  skilled  in 

surgery.     So  Erminia,  in  Tasso  (vi.  67)  ;  so  Angelica,  in  Ariosto 

(xix.  21).     And  to  the  same  effect,  in  the  old  romance  of  Sir  Isum- 

hras  (Thornton  Komances,  Camden  Society,  Lond.  1S44,  p.  108), 

we  read — 

"  Tlie  iioiines  of  him  they  were  full  fa^ne, 
F(jr  that  ho  luiJ  the  Saracenes  .slayiie 
And  those  haythene  houndes  ; 


282  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  .\1. 

And  of  his  paynnes  sare  giinne  them  rewe. 
like  a  clay  they  made  salves  new, 
And  laid  them  till  his  wondes. 
They  gafe  him  metis  and  dryiikis  lythe, 
And  heled  the  knyghte  wunder  swythe." 

And  in  Sir  Bevis  of  Hamptoun,  Josyan,  the  daughter  of  Ermyn, 
a  Saracen  king,  plays  the  same  part.  From  all  which,  the  practical 
conclusion  in  my  mind  is,  that  provision  should  be  made  for  the 
systematic  instruction  of  women  in  certain  departments  of  the 
medical  art  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  is  at  present  the  case. 

Vkr.  807. — The  public  open  space  ivhere  all  the  people  met. 

This  passage,  showing  at  a  glance  the  headquarters  of  parlia- 
mentary, judicial,  and  religious  authority  in  a  Greek  camp,  should 
be  noted  carefully  in  connexion  with  what  we  said  of  the  dyopd 
above  (ii.  51). 

Ver.  8o2. — Chiron,  the  yreutesl  of  the  Centaur  crew. 
The  prominent  mention  of  Chiron  here  in  connexion  with  the 
practice  of  medicine  in  the  camp  of  Agamemnon,  leads  us  to  make 
a  few  remarks  on  the  origin  and  history  of  that  useful  art,  as  it 
appears  in  the  earliest  traditions  of  Greece.  Jilsculapius,  as  we 
have  ali-eady  mentioned  (iv.  194),  was,  in  Homer's  time,  a  man, 
and  not  a  god.  Superior  to  him  in  time,  as  in  personal  dignity, 
was  Chiron,  the  Centaur  of  Mount  Pelion  in  Thessaly,  to  whom, 
indeed,  the  direct  medical  instruction  of  the  future  god  is  ascribed 
in  a  notable  passage  of  Pindar  (Pytli.  iii.  79).  The  name  of  Chiron 
(from  x^'p)  is  significant  of  that  manual  dexterity  which  the  prac- 
tice of  surgery  (chirurgery)  requires.  And  his  parentage  is  equally 
significant;  for  his  father  is  Kpoi'os,  or  Time,  and  his  mother  is 
PuiLYRA  (Apoll.  I.  2,  4),  which  word  Welcker  seems  right  in 
deriving  from  </>i>AA.i',  the  two  slender  vowels  v  and  i,  according 
to  the  genuine  Greek  pronunciation,  being  cognate,  and  easily 
confounded.  His  mother,  therefore,  was  an  ''  herb-woman  ;"  and 
this  entirely  agrees  with  all  that  we  know  of  the  early  history  of 


BOOK  XI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  283 

drugs,  which  were  originally  either  expressed  juices  or  infusions  of 
plants.  '■^  Antiquior  aulem  inediclna  herhis  tantum  et  succis  erat" 
(Isidor.  Orig.  iv.  9.) 

The  Centaur  chai*acter  of  the  father  of  medicine  is  worthy  of 
notice.  I  agree  with  Welcker  in  regarding  it  as  a  pretty  plain  proof 
that  these  mountain  monsters  were  not  mere  poetical  impersona- 
tions of  physical  phenomena,  but  exaggerated  accounts  of  a  tribe  of 
energetic  and  rough-ridiug  mountaineers  who  lived  in  the  glens  of 
the  mountains  that  slope  down  into  the  Thessalian  plains.  For 
the  invention  of  medicine  would  not  be  attributed  to  a  mere  sym- 
bol ;  and,  if  the  Centaurs  did  really  represent  the  wild  forms  of 
mountain  flood  and  cataract  only,  on  what  principle  does  Chiron 
form  an  exception  to  their  general  character  ?  On  the  other  hand, 
if  we  suppose  the  Centaurs  to  have  been  actual  men,  the  whole 
thing  is  plain.  Among  the  wild  inhabitants  of  the  glens  of  Pelion, 
some  one  might  be  found  who,  in  the  loneliness  of  those  mountain 
solitudes,  might  be  led  by  natural  genius  to  observe  the  virtues  of 
the  rare  plants  which  are  wont  to  grow  in  such  remote  regions,  of 
which  the  inhabitants  of  the  plains,  occupied  with  tlieir  plough  and 
harrow,  not  favourable  to  botany,  woi;ld  be  ignorant.  The  fame 
of  any  one  possessed  of  such  valuable  knowledge,  especially  if 
accompanied  with  general  sagacity  and  manual  dexterity,  would 
spread  rapidly  into  the  plains ;  and  so  the  Centaur  Chiron  would 
become  the  instructor  of  gods  and  princes,  and  the  cave  where  he 
was  wont  to  shelter  himself  from  the  mountain  blast  would  become 
a  shrine  of  sacred  memory  to  all  ages  (Dicaearchus,  avaypa^r)  tov 
Ih^Xiov  opovs,  Fuhr.  p.  401).  I  have  no  doubt  that  in  other 
countries  parallels  will  be  found  to  the  essential  fact  indicated 
in  the  Centaur  character  of  Chiron,  viz.,  that  mountaineers  have 
peculiar  opjjortunities  of  discovering  herhs  of  rare  virtue,  and  that 
the  ijeople  of  the  plains  are  inclined  to  yield  to  tliem  luith  an  admir- 
ing faifJi  any  superiority  tvhich  tliey  may  claim  as  medical  herhalists. 
I  observe,  as  a  remarkable  confirmation  of  this  view,  that  the  ViJas 
or  Oreads  of  the  Servian  popular  poetry  are  particularly  noted  for 
thoir  skill  in  drugs,  though,  unfortunately,  from  their  perverse  dis- 


284  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XL 

position,  they  use  that  skill  (like  certain  heroic  drug- dispensers  in 
England)  oftener  to  kill  mortal  men  than  to  cure  them  (Meredith, 
Servian  Ballads.     London,  1861,  pp.  71,  74). 

With  regard  to  the  extent  of  medical  knowledge  and  the  method 
of  medical  treatment  in  those  early  times,  some  statements  have 
been  made  by  scholars  which  are  quite  unwarranted.     It  has  been 
asserted,  for  instance,  that  the  medical  practice  of  the  Homeric  age 
was  purely  surgical,  and  that  no  other  branch  of  the  therapeutic 
art  then  existed.     Now  this  is  quite  contrary  to  all  the  presump- 
tions of  the  case,  and  would  require  the  most  indubitable  testimony 
to  support  it.     For  as  men  arc  liable  to  diseases  at  all  times,  not 
only  to  wounds  and  bruises  in  time  of  war,  and  as  the  desire  to 
get  rid  of  these  diseases  is  natural  and  imperative,  to  suppose  that 
no  branch  of  the  medical  art  but  surgery  existed  in  the  first  ages, 
is  to  suppose  that  soldiers  were  the  only  class  of  men  who  were 
gifted  with  the  common  instincts  of  suffering  humanity.     All  that 
can  be  said  in  favour  of  this  narrow  view  is,  that  cutting  out  an 
arrow-head  or  binding  a  bleeding  wound  is  a  much  more  obvious 
and  simple  operation   than  curing   an   ague  by   drinking  quinine 
or  other  potion,  and  that  therefore  the  more  easy  part  of  the  art 
was  naturally  invented  first.     So  much  may  be  granted.     But  that 
not  merely  these  simple  surgical  operations,  but  drugs  of  various 
kinds  were  known  in  the  heroic  nges,  is  quite  certain  from  the  epi- 
thet TroXv(f)df.fjiaKOL  applied  to  physicians  (xvi.  28),  and  from  ver. 
846  of  this  book,  where  Patroclus  rubs  a  bitter  root  with  his  hand 
and  applies  it  to  the  wound  as  an  anodyne.     These  considerations 
are,  in  my  opinion,  quite  sufficient  to  settle  the  point ;  but  Welcker 
has  made  assurance  doubly  sure  by  directing  special  attention  to 
Od.  XVII.  384,  where  the  IrjTr^p  KaKwv  is  mentioned  as  one  of  the 
regularly  recognised  professions  of  the  heroic  age,  a  passage  in  which 
there  cannot  be  the  slightest  reason  for  confining  the  word  kciko.  to 
external  wounds  and  lesions ;   on  the  contrary,  KaKOTrjs  is  mani- 
festly used,  like  fiaXaKia  in  the  New  Testament,  of  sickness,  debi- 
lity, and  disease  {Od.  v.  397).     As  to  the  authority  of  Plato  in  this 
matter  (i?ep.  iii.  405-9),  which  has  been  often  abused,  any  person 


BOOK  XI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  285 

who  reads  the  chapter  caroifully  will  see  that  it  is  directed  only 
against  the  ivearisome  vexation  of  sichly  bodies  ivith  a  protracted 
course  of  drugging,  and  does  not  in  anywise  deny  the  existence 
and  use  of  <f)dpfiaKa  as  a  branch  of  therapeutics  in  the  earliest 
stages  of  the  healing  art.  The  philosopher  is  there  arguing  not 
against  drugs  absolutely,  but  against  the  use  of  drugs  to  keep 
certain  valetudinarians  uncomfortably  alive,  who,  according  to  his 
estimate  of  the  value  of  life,  would  be  much  more  comfortable  in 
thieir  graves. 

Another  point  to  be  noted  with  reference  to  this  matter  is,  that 
though  the  Grreek  army  had  its  own  body  of  surgeons,  alluded  to 
generally  in  xiii.  213  and  xvi.  28, ^  yet  the  division  of  labour  had 
certainly  not  yet  advanced  so  far  as  to  confine  the  practice  of  sur- 
gical operations  to  a  particular  class.  On  the  contrary,  Machaon, 
the  wounded  physician,  is  a  7roi/ii)v  Aawv  (ver.  651)  and  a  warrior 
as  well  as  Agamemnon  ;  and  Patroclus  in  this  passage  extracts  the 
arrow  from  Eurypylus'  thigh  and  applies  the  anodyne  just  as  natu- 
rally as  if  he  had  been  Podalirius.  The  poet  also  tells  us  in  the 
present  passage  expressly  that  Achilles  had  received  instruction  in 
the  medical  art,  as  in  music,  from  Chiron.  This  instruction  was  a 
favourite  subject  with  the  ancient  painters ;  and  the  skill  with 
which  they  unified  the  human  and  the  equine  character  in  the  god- 
like mountaineer  was  much  celebrated  by  connoisseurs  (Philost. 
Imag.  ii.  2).  So,  in  the  catalogue  of  Egyptian  kings  by  Manetho 
(first  dynasty),  we  find  that  Athothis,  the  son  of  Menes,  was  a  phy- 
sician, and  wrote  books  on  anatomy.  In  ancient  Rome,  we  know 
from  Pliny  (N.  H.  xxix.  1)  that  there  was  no  physician  seen  till  the 
arrival  of  a  Greek  from  the  Peloponnesus  in  the  year  of  the  city 
535.  In  Glreece  at  an  early  period  the  priests  of  ^sculapius  at 
Epidaurus,  Cos,  and  elsewhere,  exercised  all  the  functions  of  medi- 
cal men,  mingling  their  ablutions  and  potions,  no  doubt,  with  a 
very  considerable  amount  of  superstition,  which,  however,  did  no 

'  See  in  connexion  with  this  subject  an  interestinsi:  tract,  Wan  the  Bornan 
Army  provided  with  Mediccd  Officers?  By  Sir  James  Y.  Simpson,  M.D. 
Edinburgh,  1856. 


286  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XL 

harm.  That  the  separation  of  surgeon  from  physician  took  place 
at  a  very  early  period  is  certain  from  the  fact  that  Arctinus,  one 
of  the  early  Cyclic  poets,  in  his  'IA,toi>  ;reptrts  describes  Machaon 
as  pre-eminent  in  surgery,  while  Podalirius  had  the  profounder 
skill  in  diagnosis  and  therapeutics.  The  passage  is  preserved 
by  the  scholiast  on  ver.  515  supra,  and  may  be  Englished  an 
follows  :  — 

"  He,  the  father,  to  both  his  sons  the  cunning  of  leechcraft 
Bonntiful  gave  ;  but  one  more  glory  obtained  than  the  other. 
Hands  more  nimble  to  this  he  gave  for  cutting,  and  quickly 
Drawing  the  barb  from  the  flesh,  and  healing  each  wound  of  the  soldier ; 
That  in  his  breast  more  knowledge  received  and  curious  wisdom, 
Things  deep-hidden  to  scan,  and  cure  incurable  evils. 
He  first  wisely  discovered  the  wrath  that  rankled  in  Ajax, 
Read  the  wild  gleam  in  his  eye,  and  the  weighty  thought  that  oppressed 
him." 

With  regard  to  the  personal  history  of  Machaon  and  Podalirius, 
some  facts  are  mentioned  by  the  ancients  (Paus.  iii.  26.  7) ;  but 
they  are  of  no  significance,  and  the  reader  will  wisely  content  him- 
self with  what  Homer  says  here  and  in  ii.  732  and  iv.  194. 

In  writing  this  note  I  had  through  my  hands  (1.)  The  History 
of  Physic,  by  Leclerc,  London,  1699 ;  (2.)  History  of  Medicine, 
by  Meryon,  London,  1861 ;  (3.)  Hindoo  System  of  Medicine,  by 
Wise,  Calcutta,  1845 ;  but  profited  most  la'rgely  from  W^elcker's 
papers  on  ancient  inedicine,  in  his  Kleine  Schriften,  iii.  1-226.  I 
have  also  glanced  at  La  Medecine  dans  Homere,  par  Daremberg, 
Paris,  1865,  where  the  student  will  find  a  comprehensive  digest  of 
anatomical,  medical,  and  surgical  matters  connected  with  Homer,  on 
which  the  limits  of  these  notes  do  not  allow  me  to  enlarge. 


ROOK  XII.  NOTKS  TO  THK  ILIAU.  287 


BOOK   XII. 

Vek.  19. 

Ei'en  all  tlie  streams  that  seek  the  sea  from  Idas  sacred  Jteujht. 

The  country  to  the  north  of  Mount  Ida  has  been  very  little  ex- 
plored by  travellers.  Nevertheless,  from  the  account  of  Strabo, 
and  the  topographical  researches  of  TchihatchelF  (Asie  llineure, 
Paris,  1853),  and  Texier  (Asie  Minenre,  Paris,  1862),  it  is  easy  to 
recognise  the  accuracy  of  the  ix.ain  points  of  the  hydrography 
alluded  to  in  these  lines.  That  the  poet  should  describe  a  dyke  on 
the  plain  of  Troy  as  washed  away  by  a  downflow  of  water,  not  only 
from  the  streams  that  water  that  region,  but  from  those  also  that 
flow  from  the  other  side  of  Ida,  north  into  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  is 
a  license  which  we  may  allow  without  being  curious,  especially  as 
the  whole  affair  was  miraculous. 

According  to  the  account  of  the  native  topographer  Demetrius 
of  Scepsis  (Str.  xiii.  43),  "  Mount  Ida  richly  deserves  the  Homeric 
epithet  of  '  many-fountained,'  because  it  sends  forth  so  many  rivers 
in  all  directions.  And,  in  particular,  from  one  of  the  heights  of 
Ida,  called  Cotylus,  there  flow  three  rivers,  the  Scamander,  the 
Granicus,  and  the  j9^]sepus,  of  which  the  two  last,  from  several 
springs,  flow  to  the  north,  the  first,  from  one  source,  westward ; 
they  approach  to  one  another  in  their  origin  within  a  distance  of 
twenty  stadia,  and  that  which  has  the  longest  course  from  its  origin 
to  the  sea,  is  the  tEsepus,  being  about  five  hundred  stadia."  And 
in  another  place  (xii.  565),  he  tells  us  that  "  the  ^sepus  is  the 
boundary  between  the  Troad  and  Mysia,  according  to  the  poet." 
In  Ptolemy  the  mouths  of  the  ^sepus  are  the  first  point  after 
Cyzicus,  going  westward.  These  data  have  seemed  sufficient  to 
enable  TchihatcheflF,  who  traversed  the  whole  of  the  coast,  to  iden- 
tify this  river  with  the  modern  Atkayassi  sou.  Not  so  large  as 
the  jEsepus,  but  fer  surpassing  it  in  historical  celebrity,  is  the 
GrRANrcus,  which  is  described  by  Strabo  (xiii.  587)  as  flowing  be- 


288  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XII. 

tween  the  yEsepus  and  the  town  of  Priapus,  through  the  plain  of 
Adrasteia,  into  the  sea.  This  account,  agreeing  as  it  does  accur- 
ately with  the  description  in  Arrian's  account  of  Alexander's  march 
(i.  12,  13),  is  precise  enough  to  have  enabled  the  distinguished 
Russian  traveller  already  named  to  pitch  on  the  modern  Kodjachai 
as  the  ancient  Granicus ;  but  as  there  are  three  branches  of  this 
streanij^  the  exact  current  so  famous  in  history  must  ever  remain  to 
a  certain  extent  indeterminate.  The  next  marked  point  in  the 
enumeration  is  theRuoDius,at  the  extreme  west  of  the  district  within 
which  these  rivers  flow.  It  is  described  by  Strabo  (xiii.  595)  as 
between  Abydos  and  the  city  of  Dardanus,  opposite  Cynossema,  in 
the  Chersonesus,  where  the  tomb  of  Hecuba  was  shown.  It  is 
easily  identified  both  by  this  description  and  by  its  modern  name 
Bodos-tcliai.  Of  the  other  rivers  in  this  group,  the  Caresus  was 
a  tributary  of  the  ^sepus  (Str.  xiii.  603),  the  Rhesus  {Id.  603), 
but  only  conjecturally,  of  the  Granicus,  while  the  Heptaporus, 
though  known  to  Demetrius  {Id.  I.  c.)  seems  too  vaguely  described 
to  admit  of  modern  identification.  It  appears,  somewhat  conjectur- 
ally I  suppose,  in  Kiepert.  The  vexed  identities  of  the  Simois  and 
ScAMANDER  will  be  discussed  more  fitly  afterwards. 

Ver.  87. — And  in  fire  hands  the)/ follow  to  the  fray. 

The  fivefold  division  here  mentioned  corresponds,  as  Heyne 
observed,  to  the  five  great  divisions  of  the  proper  subjects  of  Priam 
mentioned  in  the  catalogue  (ii.  816-839),  before  the  enumeration 
of  the  others,  viz.,  Trojans  proper,  Dardans,  Trojans  of  Zeleia,  the 
people  of  Adrasteia,  and  the  people  in  the  region  of  Abydos,  Percote, 
and  Arisbe  (see  Gladstone,  iii.  226). 

Ver.  94. — Godlike  De'ipliohus. 

This  is  the  first  passage  in  which  Deiphobus  is  mentioned  in  the 
Iliad.  In  Homer  he  performs  no  very  prominent  part;  but  in  the 
general  cycle  of  Trojan  story  he  is  by  no  means  insignificant.  He 
occurs  again  (xiii.  402,  517,  and  in  xxii.  227),  where  Athene 
assumes  his  likeness  in  order  to  deceive  Hector.     When  Troy  was 


BOOK  XTI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  289 

taken,  his  house  was  an  object  of  eager  revenge  to  the  captors 
[Od.  vni.  517;  Virgil,  jEn.  ir.  310),  because,  after  the  death  of 
Paris,  Deiphobus  had  married  the  many-husbanded  Spartan  beauty 
(Eurip.  Troad.  960).  His  unhappy  end  is  well  known  to  every 
schoolboy  from  ^n.  vi.  495. 

Ver.  116. — T/ie  ill-dhnninri  Fate. 

Motpa  in  this  and  a  few  similar  passages  seems  distinctly  imper- 
sonated, and  appears  in  the  singular  number,  like  Wi\e.Wvia  and 
'Kptvvs.  But  originally  there  were  many  /xoTpai,  all  sent  from 
Jove.     See  on  Fate,  and  the  Fates  generally,  vi.  489. 

The  line  which  separates  a  thought  from  a  person  in  mythology 
is  often  as  vague  and  indeterminate  as  that  which  separates  a  plant 
from  an  animal  in  organic  nature. 

Veb.  167. —  Yellow-ringed  wasps. 

The  description  cr</)->jK€s  jxecrov  aloXoL  is  one  that  has  puzzled  me 
very  much.  There  is  a  diversity  in  the  translations,  as  will  be 
seen: — "Yellow  wasps,"  Ch.  ;  '' ring-straked,"  C.  ;  •' yellow - 
banded,"  Drb. ;  "slim  wasps  quivering  bright,"  Wor. ;  "  wasjis 
with  flexible  slender  waists,"  Wr.  ;  "  wasps  streaked  in  the  middle," 
Drt. ;  '^Wesjjen  mit  regsamen  Leih,"  V. ;  "  regsarn,"  J). ;  but  there 
is  only  one  point  of  I'eal  difference,  viz.,  whether  the  variability 
implied  in  aioAos  refers  to  space  or  to  time — that  is,  whether  the 
wasps  receive  this  epithet,  because  their  bodies  are  parti-coloured, 
or  because  of  their  agile  and  fluttering  motion.  Now,  in  endea- 
vouring to  decide  which  of  these  meanings  applies  to  the  present, 
and  to  other  Homeric  passages,  after  the  full  discussion  this  sub- 
ject has  received  from  Buttmanu,  we  may  content  ourselves  with 
laying  down  the  following  fixed  points  : — 

(1.)  It  is  quite  certain  that  in  the  days  of  the  full  blossom  of 
Greek  literature,  the  meaning  of  aioAos  was  spotted^  variegated, 
parti- coloured^  or  studded,  like  the  German  hunt,  without  any  idea 
of  motion.  Thus  in  Soph.  Tracli.  11,  in  the  words  atoAos  SpaKwv 
cAtKTo?,  while  the  second  epithet  describes  the  spherical  motion  of 

VOL.  IV.  T 


290  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XII. 

the  serpent's  folds,  the  first  describes  the  varioiis  colours  of  its  skin, 
corresponding  to  the  ttolkiXos  8pdK0)v  of  Pind.  {Pyth.  8.  65).  The 
aloXa  crap^  of  the  same  poet  [Pliiloct.  1157),  caro  maculis  inter- 
stincta  is  even  more  decisive. 

(2.)  It  is  equally  certain,  and  admitted  by  Buttmann,  that  this 
signification  of  aioAos,  spotted,  hunt,  may  be  traced  back  to  the  very 
verge  of  the  Homeric  age,  as  in  aioAov  ocrrpaKov  of  the  yellow- 
spotted  shell  of  the  common  land-tortoise  (Hym.  3Ierc.  33). 

(3.)  Not  less  certain,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  fact  that  in  Homer 
this  word  and  its  cognates  do  on  certain  occasions  partake  of  the 
idea  of  motion,  and  that  so  thoroughly  sometimes  as  altogether  to 
exclude  the  idea  of  mere  variety  in  space.  Buttmann  quotes  Od. 
XX.  27  as  an  indubitable  proof  of  this. 

(4.)  It  is  certain  also  that  this  idea  of  motion,  or  variability  in 
respect  of  time,  was  acknowledged  by  the  Greeks  even  to  the  later 
epoch  of  the  classical  period,  as  the  use  of  atoAat  ijfjLepcu  of  uncer- 
tain or  changeable  weather  in  Aristotle  {Prohl.  xxvi.  13)  plainly 
shows. 

(5.)  These  facts  warrant  the  conclusion  that  the  oldest  and 
original  concejjtion  of  the  word  implied  the  idea  of  motion.  Inde- 
pendently, however,  of  the  history  of  the  word,  it  is  much  more 
obvious  to  deduce  the  idea  of  variety  in  colour  from  an  irregular 
unsteady  motion  than  the  contrary.  The  trembling  appearance  of 
hundreds  of  miniature  suns,  for  instance,  on  the  surface  of  a  shim- 
mering sea,  makes  the  nearest  approach  to  the  notion  of  spotted. 
The  sea,  in  fact,  in  this  case  is  spotted  or  studded  with  countless 
moving  points  of  the  same  colour,  the  transition  from  which  to  fixed 
points  of  a  different  colour  is  extremely  easy. 

(6.)  From  these  premises,  the  principles  of  a  scientific  philology 
lead  us  to  interpret  atoAos  in  Homer  generally  of  an  irregular 
unsteady  wavering  motion,  whenever  we  can  do  so  without  force. 
The  familiar  epithet  of  Hector  is  rightly  rendered  "  Hector  of 
the  waving  plume,"  "crest-shaking,"  or  something  to  that  effect. 
In  the  same  way,  TroSa?  atoAos  'Vttos  in  xix.  404  means  flicTcering- 
footefJ."  or  "  twinkling-footed,"  not  simply  swift,  exactly  as  in  the 


BOOK  XII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  291 

fiapnapvyal  7ro(?wi',  tlie  twinkling  of  the  feet  of  dancers  whicli 
Ulysses  saw  with  admiration  {Od.  \ni.  265).  It  is  this  unsteadi/ 
shifting  repetition,  indeed,  which  belongs  to  aloXXco,  aloXos,  and 
other  words  of  the  same  family,  as  the  differential  characteristic 
distinguishing  it  from  other  kinds  of  motion. 

(7.)  In  this  differential  element  we  find  the  key  to  the  Homeric 
designations,  atoAoi'  o-aKos  (vii.  222),  aloXoOwpi]^,  and  other  such, 
where  the  word  ato'Aos  is  applied  to  armour.  The  epithet  in  this 
place  refers  to  the  flickering,  shifting  motion  of  the  points  of  light 
reflected  from  the  moving  brass,  and  will  be  more  appropriate  if 
the  armour  be  of  various  materials  and  colours,  as  we  saw  in  the 
case  of  Agamemnon  (xi.  25,  supra).  Here,  therefore,  is  a  case  in 
which  the  meaning  of  flickering  passes  easily  into  variegated  ;  and 
in  regard  to  this  application  of  the  word,  I  consider  that  Buttraann 
has  altogether  missed  the  point  when  he  interprets  aloXos  by 
flexible  or  supple,  or  ligldhj  moved.  The  word  flexible  never  could 
apply  to  a  copper  coat  of  mail,  and  when  Homer  wished  to  apply 
the  epithet  evKLvrjTov  to  a  shield,  he  talked  of  the  Xaicrijia  Trrepoevra 
(xii.  426),  not  of  the  massive  buckler.  I  do  not  believe  that 
aioAo?  ever  was  equivalent  to  t'ypos,  or,  as  Pollux  has  it, 
AvytcrrtKos. 

(8.)  The  two  most  difficult  points  remain.  What  shall  we  make 
of  a-cf)7]Ke<s  jxecrov  atoAoi  of  the  pi'esent  jDassage,  and  of  the  atoAov 
6(f)cv  in  ver.  208  below  ?  Now,  if  the  poet  had  merely  talked  of 
o-cji'i]^  aloXos  as  he  has  of  otcrrpos  aloXos  in  Od.  xxii.  300,  accord- 
ing to  analogy,  there  could  be  little  doubt  about  the  matter.  The 
unsteady,  fluttering  motion  of  the  pestilential  insect  would  at  once 
present  itself  as  the  main  point  of  the  description.  But  how  can 
it  be  said  that  a  wasp  is  fluttering  or  quivering  merely  about  the 
middle  ?  A  wasp  is  slender  or  slim  about  the  middle.  But  this 
is  not  the  meaning  of  atoAos.  Not  seeing  my  way  out  of  this  diffi- 
culty, I  prefer  to  translate  the  word  in  this  case  by  that  which  is 
an  obvious  and  striking  characteristic  of  the  insect — the  yellow 
bands  or  stripes  about  its  body,  and  suppose  [xicrov  to  be  used 
loosely  for  the  trunk  of  the  animal  generally   as   opposed  to  its 


292  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XII. 

head  and  legs.  With  regard  to  the  snake  in  ver.  208  I  have  less 
difficulty.  Homer  tallcs  of  crimson,  that  must  be  crimson-banded 
or  crimson-spotted  snakes  in  more  places  than  one — cjioivqets  in 
202  below,  and  8a(f>oiv6s  in  ii.  308.  I  consider  it  therefore  most 
natural  to  refer  the  al6\o<s  of  ver.  208  to  the  same  characteristic. 
For  besides  that  the  wriggling  motion  of  an  animal  in  pain  is  not 
that  which  is  naturally  expressed  by  aioAAw,  the  poet  here  describes 
what  the  Trojans  saw,  and  that  was  no  doubt  rather  the  crim- 
son spots  of  the  animal  as  it  lay  on  the  ground,  than  the  tortuous 
motion  of  its  folds.  If  it  had  moved  so  as  to  attract  attention, 
the  poet  could  easily  have  said  so  in  some  way  less  equivocal  than 
by  coupling  such  an  amphibious  word  as  aioAov  with  such  a  verb 
as  Ke'ijJivov ;  observe  also  that  in  the  monuments  spotted  snakes 
frequently  occur.  See  Overbeck,  Bildwerke  Theh.  Tro.  PJ.  vii.  2. 
The  atoAoi  euAat  in  xxii.  509 — worms  feeding  on  a  dead  body 
— may  admit  of  either  explanation.  For  there  arc  earthworms  of 
various  colours,  and  the  confused  wambling  motion  of  a  heap  of 
ants  on  a  hill,  or  a  mass  of  mites  in  a  cheese,  or  a  colony  of  worms 
in  a  dead  body,  might  seem  certainly  a  more  fit  application  of  the 
kind  of  motion  originally  signified  by  atoAAw  than  the  wriggling  of 
a  wounded  snake. 

Ver.  175-181. — -"AAAoi  .  .  .  Sy^i'oTTjTa. 

If  there  be  any  verses  in  the  Iliad  justly  suspected  of  interpo- 
lation, these  are  of  them.  The  whole  thing  has  the  look  of  a 
patch.  What  damns  the  passage  beyond  redemption,  in  my  eyes, 
is  that  it  is  not  yet  time  to  talk  of  the  ^eo-7riSaes  irvp  at  all ;  for  I 
cannot  agree  with  Sp.  that  this  well-known  phrase  (ver.  441)  can 
possibly  be  understood,  "  de  pugnantium  vi  et  'impetu."  Other 
sufficient  reasons  for  the  almost  universal  condemnation  of  these 
lines  will  be  found  in  Sp.     The  ejected  lines  may  be  translated  as 

follows : — 

"  From  gate  to  gate  the  battle  spread,  and  raged  the  hot  pell-mell ; 
A  god  here  needed,  not  a  mar,  the  deadly  strife  to  tell. 
The  strength  of  fierce-consuming  fire  was  stirred  from  end  to  end 
Of  the  strong  stone-bnilt  dykes  :  the  Argives  snrely  jiressed  defend 


T?()OK  XII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  293 

Tho  sliips  Iroiii  fire;  ami  all  tlic  gods  wIki  love  the  Aclifean  uatiuii 
To  see  tlieiii  jeopardized  were  prieked  with  secret  sore  vexation. 
iSucli  deeds  of  mighty  prowess  tlid  the  warlike  Lapithae." 

Ver.  200. — A  liigh-floion  eagle  on  tite  left,  etc. 

An  omen  of  this  kind — eagle  with  wriggling  snake — is  frequently 
alluded  to  by  the  ancients,  and  often  presented  on  ancient  coins 
and  gems.  It  was  one  of  those  happy  omens  that  could  readily  be 
applied  to  opposite  situations  :  if  the  eagle  prevailed  the  strong 
party  would  feel  assured  of  victory ;  if  the  snake,  the  weak  party 
might  see  an  emblem  of  deliverance.  Virgil  has  imitated  the  pas- 
sage (xi.  751)  at  considerable  length. 

Ver.  243. — One  bird  is  best,  or  east  or  ivest,  to  fight  for  J'aUieiiund. 

This  famous   sentence,  used   in  his    own   language   by  a  great 

Roman  (Cic.  Sen.  4),  himself  an  augur,  is  a  remarkable  instance 

of  the  freedom  with  which  the  Greek  mind  asserted  itself  against 

the  influence  of  priests  and  augurs.     No  doubt,  on  these  occasions, 

everything  depended  on  the  character  of  the  man ;  a  Nicias  would 

have  lost  his  peace  of  mind,  if  he  had  acted  contrary  to  the  advice 

of  his  soothsayer ;  but  when  a  man  like  Hector  boldly  asserted  his 

independence  in  such  matters  at  a  ftivourable  moment,  he  might 

reckon  on  a  great  amount  of  public  sympathy.     In  the  art  of  the 

diviners  there  were  weak  points  enough  continually  courting  public 

criticism,  which  a  man  of  courage  and  tact  would  know  how  to  take 

advantage  of.     See  Hermann,  Rel.  Alt.  37.  15,  16;  and  Eui'ip. 

TpJiig.  Aid.  620  and  956,  where  he  says  : — 

"  Who  is  a  seer?  (lie  man  whom  fools  think  wise 
For  telling  one  truth,  and  a  hundred  lies, 
As  chance  may  rule  his  tongue." 

With  regard  to  the  sig-nificance  of  right  and  left  in  the  art  of 
augury,  that  birds  on  the  right  were  of  good  omen,  and  on  the  left 
of  bad,  is  certain ;  and  the  natural  inference  seems  to  be  that  the 
augurs  must  have  made  their  observations  witli  their  face  to  the 
north,  which  position  alone  could  make  east  and  right  hand 
identical,  though  I  do  not  find  any  trustworthy  ancient  testimony 


294  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XII. 

fur  this  explanation.     See  Nitzscli,   ()(/.  i.   p.  9'2  ;   Hermann,  Rel. 
Alt.  38.  10;   Schoemann,  Gr.  All.  ii.  252. 

Ver.  27o. — Wla-n  ye  hear  your  captain  s  call. 

I  cannot  think  Hejnc  is  right  in  interpreting  oixokXi]ti]p  of  the 
party  who  urges  to  flight.  Faesi's  reference  to  the  use  of  u/xokAtj 
in  ver.  413  appears  to  me  to  catch  the  true  idea  of  this  Homeric 
■^vord.  Tlie  meaning  is,  let  every  man  Jiear  Jiis  leader  n  war-o'y, 
and  not  tli'ink  of  fleeing  to  the  ships.  ofjLOKXrj  is  not  a— etA-;;,  though 
ApoUonius  loosely  so  gives  it :  the  one,  as  the  etymology  indicates, 
is  to  call  togetlicr,  to  encourage,  to  rally,  to  bring  up  to  tJie  charge  ; 
the  othe*r  to  drive  off.  In  the  present  case,  as  Faesi  remarks, 
each  Ajax  is  a  o/j.oKkrjTi'jp. 

Ver.  292. — Sai-pedon,  king  divine. 

"  Sarpedon,"  says  Gladstone  (iii.  382),  "  is  really  a  better  man 
at  war  than  Hector,  though  much  less  pretentious."  If  this  be 
true,  I  think  it  arises  from  the  patriotism  of  Homer  getting  the 
better  of  his  poetry.  In  the  popular  tradition,  unquestionably 
Hector  was  the  great  hero  of  the  Trojan  side,  and  accordingly  the 
poet  always  brings  him  forward  against  his  first-class  heroes,  with 
somewhat  of  a  boastful  air  no  doubt — as  Ajax  also,  and  even 
Diomede,  have  a  touch  of  the  braggadocio  (vi.  127), — but  with 
the  distinct  purpose  of  showing  that  no  Trojan,  not  even  the 
bravest,  may  stand  against  a  Greek  (see  above,  xi.  186).  Sarpedon, 
next  to  Hector,  is  certainly  the  most  effective  man  in  the  camp  of 
Priam,  as  the  part  he  plays  in  this  critical  twelfth  book  sufficiently 
shows.  He  was  originally  of  Cretan  extraction ;  for  the  ancestor 
of  the  family,  the  son  of  Jupiter  and  Europe,  was  a  Cretan,  the 
brother  of  Minos  and  Rhadamanthus  (Apoll.  iii.  1.  1;  Pans. 
VII.  8,  4 ;  Str.  XII.  573),  whom  Euripides  (in  the  Ehesns,  29) 
identifies  or  confounds  with  our  Homeric  hero ;  but  a  Lycian  born, 
and  son  of  Zeus  and  Laodamia,  as  we  have  already  seen  (vi. 
199).  In  Eook  V.  471-698.  we  have  seen  him  perform  a  distin- 
guished part.      In  Book  xvi.  480,  ho  is  wounded   by  Patroclus, 


BOOK  XII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  295 

aud  dies,  aud  his  body  is  transported  to  his  native  country  for 
honourable  burial.  At  Xanthus  he  was  afterwards  honoured  with 
a  sanctuary  called  the  ^apTrrjSoveLov  (unless  perhaps  this  was  a 
shrine  of  the  elder  Sarpedon),  of  which  mention  is  made  by 
Appian  (B.  G.  iv.  78),  in  the  account  which  he  gives  of  the  taldng 
of  that  town  by  Brutus. 

Ver.  297. — A  fruvic  of  y olden  rods. 

These  pd/SSot  must  either  have  been  meant  for  giving  firmness  to 
the  whole  fabric,  like  the  frame  of  a  picture,  or  perhaps  might  have 
served  for  the  attachment  of  the  TropTraKes,  loops  round  the  edge, 
by  which  the  shield  was  sometimes  wielded  (see  the  second  figure 
in  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  Art.  Glipeus). 

Ver.  313. — Why  more  than  others  count  ive  roods? 

The  Lycian  here  shows  his  consciousness  that  whether  the  re/ze- 
fos  {Od.  XI.  185)  to  which  he  alludes  was  a  direct  gift  of  the  people, 
like  our  civil  list,  or  a  territorial  inheritance,  in  either  case  he  held 
it  for  the  public  good,  and  was  bound  to  public  service  accordingly. 
He  felt,  what  our  landed  aristocracy  in  Scotland,  I  fear,  have  not 
always  kept  in  view,  that  the  lordship  of  land  has  its  duties  as  well 
as  its  rights,  and  that  the  first  duty  of  a  great  proprietor  is  not  to 
gather  rents  easily  by  a  factor,  but  to  live  and  die  for  the  prosperity 
of  the  people  from  whom  he  gathers  the  rents.  On  the  sources  of 
public  revenue  of  the  old  Hellenic  kings,  see  Miiller,  Dor.  ii.  p.  109. 

Ver.  322-328. — Dear  comrade  mine,  etc. 

By  these  words  there  hangs  a  tale,  which  strongly  illustrates  the 
remarkable  living  connexion  that  has  long  subsisted  in  England 
between  the  business  of  public  life  and  the  recreations  of  classical 
literature.  The  extract  will  tell  its  own  story  : — "  Being  directed 
to  wait  upon  the  Earl  of  Granville,  a  few  days  before  he  died, 
with  the  preliminary  articles  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris  (1763),  I  found 
him  to  languid  that  I  proposed  postponing  my  business  for  another 
time  ;  but  he  insisted  that  I  should  stay,  saying  it  could  not  prolong 


296  NOTES  TO  THE  lEIAD.  BOOK  XTI. 

his  life  to  neglect  his  duty,  and  repeating  the  passage  out  of  Sar- 
pedon's  speech  beginning  with  w  Trkirov,  and  ending  with  to/xei/,  he 
dwelt  with  particular  emphasis  on  the  third  line — 

oiire  Ktv  avTOS  ivi  irpihTOLai  ixaxo'ip-t^v, 

which  recalled  tu  his  mind  the  distinguished  part  he  had  taken  in 
public  affairs.  His  Lordship  repeated  the  last  word,  to/Aev,  several 
times,  with  a  calm  and  determined  resignation  ;  and,  after  a  serious 
pause  of  some  minutes,  be  desired  to  hear  the  Treaty  read,  to  which 
he  listened  with  great  attention ;  and  recovered  spirits  enough  to 
declare  the  approbation  of  a  dying  statesman  (I  use  his  own  words) 
on  the  most  glorious  war  and  honourable  peace  this  nation  ever 
saw." — Robert  Wood,  in  Essay  on  Genius  of  Homer  (London, 
1775),  p.  vii. 

Ver.  331. — 3Ienestheus,  son  of  Peteus. 

There  is  no  stronger  argument  of  the  comparative  purity  with 
which  the  Homeric  text  has  been  handed  down  to  us  than  the  fact 
that  both  here  and  in  iv.  327,  and  in  the  catalogue  (ii.  553),  an 
inferior  local  chief,  and  not  the  great  Attic  hero,  Theseus,  is  put  at 
the  head  of  the  Athenian  troops.  Had  Pisistratus  and  his  literary 
assistants  done  anything  else  than  collect  and  edit  previously  exist- 
ing documents,  they  would  not  have  failed  to  introduce  Theseus  in 
those  few  parts  of  the  poem  where  some  of  his  countrymen  appear. 
According  to  Attic  tradition  Menestheus  belonged  to  a  rival  fac- 
tion, who  opposed  Theseus  (Plut.  Tlies.  32).  The  ships  which  he 
led  to  Troy  sailed  from  the  old  harbour  of  the  Phalerum  (Pans.  i. 
1,2). 

Ver.  450. — T(5v  ot  lAa^pov  WyjKe  Kpovov  irals  dyKyXofxi^Teu). 

I  have  omitted  this  line,  not  for  the  reasons  given  by  the  Alex- 
andrians, which  only  show  how  little  philosophy  they  sometimes 
had  in  their  philology,  but  simply  because  it  is  cumbrous,  or  at 
least  superfluous,  and  was  omitted,  to  the  manifest  advantage  of  the 
passage,  by  Zenodotus. 


P.OOK  XIIT.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  2U7 


BOOK  XIII. 

Ver.  6. — TJie  close-fiyht/ng  Mysians^  etc. 

For  the  Mysians,  both  the  Asiatics  aud  their  European  con- 
geners here  mentioned,  see  above,  ii.  858.  As  to  the  other 
tribes  mentioned  in  this  passage,  there  has  been  no  small  contro- 
versy raised  whether  Homer  meant  a  distinct  people  by  the  "A/Siol, 
or  uses  the  word  only  as  another  epithet  of  the  Hippomolgi. 
Strabo  plainly  takes  the  word  for  an  epithet ;  but  Aristarchus 
understood  it  as  the  name  of  a  nation  (Apoll.  Lex.  Horn.),  and 
as  such  it  has  found  a  place  in  Stephanus,  and  occurs  also  with  a 
distinct  historical  reference  in  Arrian  {Anal.  iv.  1),  and  with  the 
prefixed  guttural  VajBlovs  in  ^schylus  {fr.  206,  Hermann).  The 
weight  of  authority,  therefore,  is  in  favour  of  the  proper  name. 
With  regard  to  the  people  so  described,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
certain  tribes  of  Touts  or  Sarmatians,  who  peopled  the  banks  of  the 
Danube,  or  the  adjoining  region  of  Germany,  Poland,  and  Russia, 
are  here  alluded  to.  These  nomadic  races  lived  quite  near  enough 
the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  to  be  known  by  report  to  the  more 
civilized  Greeks  of  the  Homeric  age,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
were  far  enough  removed  to  admit  the  currency  of  all  sorts  of  vague 
imaginations  and  exaggerations  as  to  their  mode  of  life.  What 
that  mode  of  life  was  our  acquaintance  with  nomad  tribes  is  quite 
sufficient  to  enable  us  to  understand ;  and  the  contrast  which 
Strabo  draws  between  the  regular  living  agricultural  tribes  of  the 
Tauric  Chersonese  and  the  wandering  nomads  of  the  same  district 
is  quite  in  accordance  with  nature  and  fact.  The  nomads,  he  says 
(vii.  311),  who  feed  on  flesh,  and  specially  on  horse  flesh,  as  also 
mare's  milk  (Martial,  Spec,  iii.)  and  cheese  of  mare's  milk,  and 
sour  curdled  milk,  are  not  given  to  plundering,  but  make  war  only 
for  just  causes ;  but  the  more  civilized  farmers,  being  money- 
makers, and  eager  for  gain,  practise  piracy  and  other  lawless  crafts. 
This  is  an  instance  of  a  fact  well  known  to  statists  that  an  increase 


298  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIII. 

in  civilisation  does  not  always  bring  advance  in  moral  character ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  march  of  wealth  and  luxury  often  fosters  vices 
which  stand  in  glaring  contrast  to  the  simple  virtues  of  uncultivated 
tribes.  It  is  a  fact  well  known  to  modern  missionaries — as  indeed 
it  was  observed  by  Strabo  (BOl) — that  barbarous  tribes,  so  far 
from  being  improved  by  contact  with  a  civilized  people,  are  often 
hopelessly  corrupted.  It  is  this  contrast,  no  doubt,  which  is  pointed 
out  by  the  poet  when  he  calls  the  Abii  the  justest  of  men ;  as  the 
strong  points  of  a  similar  contrast  afterwards  gave  birth  to  the 
beautiful  book  of  Tacitus,  De  Morihus  Germanoritm.  Plere,  there- 
fore, again,  we  find  that  Homer,  even  in  things  that  look  like  fiction, 
is  dealing  with  substantial  facts  ;  the  objections  of  Eratosthenes 
(Str.  298)  fall  to  the  ground  ;  and  poetry,  as  in  many  other  cases, 
is  proved  to  have  seen  deeper  than  the  sharp-eyed  science  that 
would  confute  her. 

Ver.  10. — TJie  strong  ear/Ji-shaking  god. 

As  the  thirteenth  is  the  book  of  the  Iliad  in  which  Poseidon  first 
takes  a  prominent  part  in  the  strife,  we  shall  set  down  here  the 
little  that  requires  to  be  said  with  regard  to  this  god.  His  person, 
attributes,  appurtenances,  and  retinue  are  so  familiar  to  the  general 
reader,  from  Virgil  and  the  classic  poets  generally,  that  there  is  no 
necessity  for  making  any  detailed  description  of  them.  He  is  of 
all  the  gods  of  the  Jovian  dynasty  the  most  unmistakably  human- 
ized impersonation  of  the  element  over  which  he  exercises  control. 
He  takes  the  place  of  the  old  elemental  'IlKeavos  just  as  Jupiter 
does  of  the  original  Ovpavos.  All  his  attributes,  functions,  and 
actions  point  him  out  as  such  most  characteristically.  He  is  broad- 
breasted  (evpva-Tepvos)  or  widely-prevailing  (^evpvcrOevi^'i)  because  the 
ocean  is  broad  and  wide  ;  he  is  earth-embracing  (yaiiqoxos)  because 
the  land  everywhere  is  surrounded  by  and  appears  to  rest  on  or  be 
contained  by  the  water ;  he  carries  a  three-pronged  mace,  and 
shakes  the  earth,  as  an  emblem  of  the  irresistible  force  of  the  ocean 
in  a  storm.  His  favourite  animal  is  the  horse,  and  he  gives  skill  in 
horsemanship  as  Athene  in  carpentry  (xxiii.   307).  a  conception 


BOOK  XIIT.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  299 

which  any  one  may  understand  who  looks  on  a  huge  wave  as  it 
swells  and  rolls  and  curves  its  blue  neck,  and  tosses  its  foamy 
mane,  and  seems  to  paw  with  its  snowy  feet  as  it  grows  along  the 
breadth  of  the  ti-oubled  brine.  His  position  in  reference  to  Jove 
may  seem  a  little  equivocal  in  some  places.  In  one  passage  {Od. 
XIII.  142)  the  Thunderer  even  calls  him  Trpecrfivrarov  koI  apia-rov, 
which  in  the  natural  sense  of  the  word  TrpecrfivTarov  certainly  im- 
plies that  he  was  Jove's  elder  brother,  and  so  Welcker  (g.  I.  i. 
624)  understands  the  passage ;  but  however  this  be,  in  the  Iliad 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Jove  is  the  elder  brother  (ver.  355 
infra,  and  xv.  166),  and  that  as  such  he  claims  undisputed  supre- 
macy over  the  lord  of  the  sea  (viii.  210)  as  much  as  over  any 
other  god.  This  will  appear  most  distinctly  in  Book  xv.  The 
triple  partition  of  the  world  to  which  the  sea-king  refers  (xv.  187) 
was  a  mere  affair  of  regions,  in  which  the  three  sons  of  Kronos 
were  specially  to  operate, — Jove  in  the  sky,  Poseidon  in  the  water, 
and  Pluto  in  the  dark  earth  ;  but  did  not  at  all  imply  that  each  god 
was  to  enjoy  in  all  respects  equal  power ;  for  the  conservation  and 
regulation  of  the  whole  demanded  that  supreme  authority  should 
reside  somewhere,  and  that  somewhere  could  only  be  on  tbe  throne 
of  the  thunder-wielding  king.  As  to  the  "  tradition  of  a  trinity  in 
the  godhead,"  which  Gladstone  and  others  have  been  forward  to 
find  in  these  Kronid  brothers,  the  triad  which  they  make  in  this 
place  is  no  more  a  trinity,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term,  than 
Jove,  Apollo,  and  Athene  are  a  trinity.  Given  the  natural  division 
of  the  visible  world  into  earth,  sky,  sea,  a  division  the  most  obvious 
and  patent,  the  three  gods,  Jove,  Poseidon,  and  Hades,  in  a  poly- 
theistic conception  of  theology,  follow  as  a  matter  of  course.  Pau- 
sanias,  as  we  have  already  seen  {Dissertations,  i.  p.  21),  saw  in  his 
three -eyed  Jove  a  proof  of  monotheism  behind  a  mask  of  tritheism  ; 
but  of  a  proper  trinity  in  the  theological  sense — that  is,  a  union  of 
three  persons  or  beings  in  one  person  or  being — neither  Pausanias 
nor  any  Greek  that  I  know  of  ever  dreamt. 


aOO  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  Xlil. 

Ver.  12. — SanKjthracc. 

The  island  of  Samothrace  (Acts  xvi.  11)  lies  right  out  from 
the  Troad,  looking  north-west  towards  Thrace,  but  considerably 
nearer  to  the  European  coast,  with  the  island  of  Imbros  inter- 
vening. It  was  principally  famous  in  antiquity  for  its  mystic 
worship  of  Demeter  and  Cora,  and  the  Cabiri  (Str.  iv.  198,  x.  472). 
The  propriety  of  the  point  of  view  here  assigned  by  the  poet  to 
Neptune,  has  been  noticed,  in  his  excellent  way,  by  the  accom- 
plished author  of  Eothen,  c.  4.  Maclaren,  in  his  Plain  of  Troy 
(p.  220),  writes  to  a  similar  effect  as  follows : — "  There  is  a  nice 
approximation  in  this  locality,  affording  another  proof  of  the  poet's 
accurate  knowledge  of  the  topography.  He  could  have  placed 
Neptune  on  Imbros,  one  half  nearer  to  the  plain,  and  high  enough 
to  command  a  view  of  the  field  of  battle.  Yet  he  preferred  Samo- 
thrace, and  for  reasons  readily  suggesting  themselves  to  one  who 
has  seen  the  two  islands  projected  on  the  horizon,  one  behind  the 
other,  from  Sigeum.  Imbros  is  broad  and  flat  in  shape,  though  it 
has  hills  rising  to  the  height  of  1959  feet  above  the  sea ;  but 
Samothrace,  with  a  much  bolder  form,  is  seen  towering  over 
Imbros  to  an  elevation  of  5298  feet.  Its  superior  grandeur  ren- 
dered it  a  more  befitting  station  for  the  god.  And,  what  shows  a 
curious  felicity  in  the  selection  of  the  place,  it  is  exactly  on  the 
opposite  side  of  Troy  from  Gargarus,  Jupiter's  station,  nearly  of 
the  same  height,  and  nearly  at  the  same  distance.  The  two  deities 
were  thus  placed  on  opposite  sides  of  the  field  of  battle,  behind  the 
parties  they  respectively  favoured,  and  with  a  strict  regard  to  their 
characters,  the  one  on  the  continent,  and  the  other  on  an  island. 
The  position  and  appearance  of  Imbros  and  Samothrace,  as  seen 
from  the  plain,  is  shown  in  Sir  William  Gell's  Plates,  Nos.  30 
and  36,  and  in  the  large  engraving  of  Mr.  Acland." 

Ver.  21. — His  fool  touched  jEgce. 

There  were  various  places — towns  and  islands — called  ^gaj. 
Which  does  Homer  mean  ?     He  means  of  course  that  one  which 


BOOK  XIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  -'^Ol 

was  most  famous  for  the  worship  of  Neptune ;  and  if  two  were 
equally  famous,  then  we  must  either  leave  the  matter  doubtful,  or 
find  some  ground  in  the  text  of  the  poet  for  the  preference  of  one 
above  the  other.  Now  the  two  most  famou.s  unquestionably  were 
that  in  Achrea,  one  of  the  twelve  Ionian  cities  (Herod,  i.  145),  and 
that  in  Euboea,  about  120  stadia  from  the  harbour  of  Anthedon 
on  the  opposite  coast  of  Boeotia  (Str.  viii.  386 ;  ix.  405 ;  Pans. 
VII.  25.  7).  The  only  passage  where  Homer  gives  any  clear  in- 
dication of  the  locality  of  the  Neptunian  ^gae  is  in  viii.  202, 
where  it  is  mentioned  along  with  the  neighbouring  city  of  Helice, 
on  the  Achasan  coast,  and  where  no  person  ever  imagined  that  the 
Euboean  ^-Egae  was  meant.  Nevertheless  a  strong  feeling  seems 
to  have  prevailed,  both  among  ancient  and  modern  critics  of 
eminence,  that  the  Euboean  JEgte  must  be  here  intended.  So 
Strabo ;  so  Heyne.  But  for  what  reason  ?  Because,  says  the 
former,  "  eKe?  rw  riocretSaji't  rj  TTpayfiareia  TmrotrjTai  r]  Trepl  tuv 
TpwLKov  TrdAe/xov."  But  the  Trojan  expedition  and  the  armament 
at  Aulis  have  really  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter.  Heyne,  on 
the  other  hand,  seems  anxious  to  consult  the  convenience  of  the 
god  in  his  four-strided  journey,  and  will  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  Achaean  city,  because  "  ne  parum  commode  iter  Neptuni 
supra  continentes  fiat."  Similar  considerations  of  convenience  and 
propriety  seem  to  have  influenced  Voss,  who  is  followed  by  Nitzsch 
and  Faesi  (on  Ocl.  v.  380),  in  bringing  forward  another  .^gse  as 
the  true  claimant  for  the  honour  of  forming  the  submarine  palace 
of  the  sea-god,  viz.,  a  barren  island  or  rather  rock,  half-way  be- 
tween Tenos  and  Chios,  mentioned  by  Pliny  (iv.  12.)  But  what- 
ever poetical  propriety  or  convenience  there  may  seem  to  us 
moderns  in  planting  the  palace  of  the  sea-god  in  the  exact  middle 
of  the  jEgfean  Sea,  it  is  evident  that  Homer  does  not  affix  his 
epithets  from  any  such  very  proper  considerations ;  and  the  island 
mentioned  most  certainly  cannot  enter  into  our  calculations  here, 
from  the  simple  fact  that  there  is  not  a  vestige  of  proof  of  any 
famous  worship  of  Neptune  having  been  connected  with  that  rock. 
Then    as    to    the    choice    between    the    Euboean    ^gfe    and    the 


302  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIII. 

Achajan,  when  a  Greek  god  strides  across  a  whole  sea  with 
three  paces,  after  the  fashion  of  Vishnu  in  his  dwarf- Avatar,  it  is 
not  wise  to  be  over-ciirious  about  geographical  conveniences  or 
topographical  proprieties.  We  must  therefore  take  Homer's  own 
hint  in  viii.  202.  On  this  point  I  am  happy  to  find  that  I  am 
supported  by  Welcker  {(j.  1.  i.  635),  and  Ameis  on  Od.  v.  881. 

Ver.  33. — Iinhros. 

This  isUmd  (xiv.  281,  xxiv.  78),  lying  between  Samothrace  and 
the  Troad,  has  the  same  celebrity  as  Samothrace  and  Lemnos  for 
its  mystic  worship  of  the  Cabiri  (Str.  x.  473),  and  for  being  one 
of  the  principal  seats  of  the  most  ancient  and  widely  scattered 
Hellenic  tribe  whom  we  call  Pelasgi  {Id.  v.  221  ;  Herod,  v.  20). 
Tn  historical  times,  along  with  Lemnos  and  Tmbros,  it  was  regarded 
as  peculiarly  under  Athenian  superiority  (Xen.  Hell.  v.  1.  31). 

Ver.  72. — A  faithful  eye  discerns  the  gods  through  every  mask. 

Barnes  quotes  here  a  passage  from  Heliodorus  {/Ethiop.  iii.  13), 
where  the  author  says  that  "  the  gods,  when  they  assume  the  shape 
of  men,  may  escape  the  notice  of  the  profane,  but  the  wise  easily 
recognise  them  by  their  look  and  by  their  gait."  There  is  a  great 
truth  in  this.  Every  day  we  see  that  the  common  mind  cannot 
understand  the  uncommon, — that  the  world  is  inclined  to  hold  no 
persons  more  cheap  than  those  who  are  a  great  deal  too  good  for 
it ;  and  that  a  god  in  disguise  is  understood  only  by  those  who 
cherish  what  is  most  godlike  with  the  most  sacred  reverence  in 
their  own  souls. 

Ver.  99. — Truly  a  wofal  wonder  nou)  I  see  ! 

It  is  remarked  by  Nitzsch  (Sagenpoesie,  143),  what  I  think  is 
correct,  that  the  exclamation  w  tto-oi.  in  Honier  always  commences 
a  speech.  If  so,  we  have  an  instance  here  of  what  is  naturally  to 
be  looked  fur  in  the  text  of  Homer,  a  double  form  of  the  same 
speech,  or  part  of  a  speech,  with  which  the  early  editors  dealt 
cautiously,  by  retaining  both  forms,  that  nothing  Homeric  might 


BOOK  XIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  303 

be  lost.  I  have  no  doubt  that  a  curious  eye  might  detect  not  a 
few  .such  superfluities  in  the  Iliad,  the  excision  of  which  would  do 
no  harm ;  but  the  difficulty  of  attaining  scientific  certainty  in  such 
cases  will  generally  lead  a  wise  editor  to  restrain  his  hand.  The 
possibility  of  such  double  forms,  however,  should  always  be  kept 
in  view  by  those  who,  on  assthetical  grounds,  criticise  the  text. 

Ver.  240. — Then  to  his  tent  the  Cretan  loent. 

Idomeneus,  whose  dpLareta  forms  the  prominent  point  in  this 
book,  was  one  of  the  great  local  heroes  of  the  Cretans,  from  whom, 
after  death,  he  received  divine  honours  (Diod.  v.  79).  In  the  Iliad 
he  receives  marked  distinction  as  one  of  the  nine  chief  captains 
who  rose  up  to  plant  themselves  against  the  migl\t  of  the  godlike 
Hector  (vii.  161).  His  pedigree  was  royal,  and  at  a  short  remove 
from  the  gods.  His  father  was  Deucalion,  his  grandfather  Minos, 
his  grandmother  Pasiphae,  a  descent  which  connects  him  directly 
with  Jove  on  the  father's  side,  and  with  Helios  on  the  mother's ; 
for  Minos  was  the  son  of  Jupiter  and  Pasiphae,  as  her  name  indi- 
cates,— 7raa-i(^a7js,  shining  on  all,  the  daughter  of  the  Sun  (Diod.  v. 
79,  and  ver.  449  infra).  On  his  shield  at  Olympia  he  showed  a 
cock,  that  animal  being  sacred  to  the  sun  (Pans.  v.  25.  6).  He 
is  mentioned  by  Hyginus  (81 )  as  one  of  the  six-and-thirty  suitors 
of  Helen.  According  to  Homer  {Od.  iii.  191),  he  returned  to  his 
native  country  after  the  Trojan  war  in  safety ;  but  later  traditions 
add  that  he  was  expelled  from  Crete,  and  settled  in  the  country  of 
the  Sallentini,  in  the  extreme  south-east  corner  of  Italy,  near  the 
modern  Otranto  (Virgil,  ^n.  iii.  400).  Strabo  (vi.  281)  does  not 
mention  his  name,  but  says  that  the  Sallentini  were  colonists  from 
Crete. 

His  attendant  or  gentleman  squire,  MEraoNES,  was  also  a  grand- 
son of  Minos,  by  another  son,  Pholus.  He  was  therefore  Idome- 
neus' cousin.  He  received  divine  honours  in  Cnossus  equally  with 
his  principal  (Diod.  v.  79).  In  the  Iliad  he  is  frequently  and  pi-o- 
minently  mentioned. 


301  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIII. 

Ver.  298. — The  man-destroy ing  Mars. 

Mars,  or  iVres  as  the  Greeks  call  him,  is  a  god  that  in  a  warlike 
epos  like  the  Iliad  should  naturally  play  a  prominent  part ;  never- 
theless there  is  no  mythological  personage  in  the  Greek  pantheon 
who  presents  less  of  a  definite  outline  to  the  imagination  of  the 
reader.  He  seems  in  Homer  little  more  than  the  allegorical  per- 
sonages Fear,  Terror,  Strife,  with  whom  he  is  accompanied, — 
a  mere  personification  of  the  tempest  of  hostile  passion,  of  the  fierce, 
intolerant,  destructive,  bloody,  murderous  tiger-element  in  man, 
which  fully  to  understand,  as  an  intelligent  old  soldier  once  said 
to  me,  a  man  must  first  have  been  in  a  battle.  But,  though  this 
be  his  general  appeai'ance  in  the  Iliad,  he  is  not  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion, but,  like  all  other  perfectly  formed  anthropomorphic  divinities, 
has  "  a  local  habitation  and  a  name."  This  habitation,  however, 
so  far  as  appears  from  the  poet,  is  not  Greek ;  it  is  Thracian  (ver. 
301 ;  Od.  VIII.  361) ;  nor  is  there  anything  in  the  history  of  the 
god,  as  known  from  other  sources,  which  should  lead  us  to  look 
upon  him  as  originally  of  Hellenic  birth.  The  Greeks,  in  fact,  did 
not  require  him,  as  Athene  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  their 
war-goddess,  and  they  had  a  pride  in  thinking  that  botli  in  drink- 
ing and  in  fighting  they  exercised  a  certain  wisdom  and  moderation 
of  which  the  patron  gods  of  the  barbarous  Thracians  and  Scythians 
were  incapable.  For  the  Scythians  also  woi'shipped  Mars  as  their 
principal  divinity,  sacrificing  men  to  him  under  the  very  obvious 
symbol  of  a  sword  (Herod,  iv.  59.  62).  In  Greece  proper  his 
worship  was  never  very  general,  and  in  those  places  where  his 
influence  was  greatest,  there  are  distinct  historical  traces  of  Thra- 
cian settlements.  The  only  Hellenic  district  where  he  asserts  a 
very  prominent  position  in  the  local  legends  and  worship  is  Thebes, 
which  for  this  reason  is  called  ret^os  "Apeiov  (iv.  407).  From 
Thebes  his  worship  penetrated  into  Athens  (Paus.  i.  8.  5),  but  the 
superior  influence  of  the  flashing-eyed  daughter  of  Jove  kept  him 
there  always  in  a  very  subordinate  position.  In  Sparta  ho  was 
worshipped  with  a  chain  about  his  image,  with  the  same  significance 


ROOK  XIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  305 

that  at  Athens  the  Victory  ou  the  Acropolis  had  no  wings  (Paus. 
HI.  15.  5),  and  in  the  same  place,  human  sacrifices  were  sometimes 
offered  to  him  (Porphyr.  Absf.  ii.  55). 

His  relation  to  Aphrodite,  which  forms  the  subject  of  a  humoi-- 
ous  episode  in  the  Odyssey  (viii.  264),  is  in  the  Iliad  scarcely 
indicated  (v.  363,  xxi.  416)  ;  while  iu  the  Theogony  (933)  he 
is  recognised  as  the  legitimate  yokefellow  of  the  goddess  of 
beauty. 

As  for  the  peoples  mentioned  in  connexion  with  this  Thracian 
god,  the  Phlegy^  were  originally  a  Thessalian  tribe,  whose  chief 
seat  was  Gyrtone  (ii.  738;  Steph.  liyz.  in  voce  Gyrton ;  Str. 
IX.  442).  Their  name  signifies  llazers^  a  very  appropriate  name 
for  wild  mountain  warriors  ;  and  their  exploits  afterwards  in  the 
Boeotian  Orchomenus  and  the  north  of  Phocis,  where  they  made 
sacrilegious  war  -on  the  Delphian  shrine,  procured  for  the  reputed 
father  of  their  race  an  eternal  seat  in  deepest  Tartarus,  a  warning 
to  all  god-despisers  (Pans.  ix.  36  ;  Virg.  jE)i..  vi.  618).  On  the 
Phlegyse  as  a  great  division  of  the  Minyans  so  prominent  in  the 
early  history  of  Greece,  Miiller  enlarges  in  Orchom.  (p.  187). 
Compare  also  Gerhard,  MythoJ.  609,  and  Preller,  Myth.  i.  p.  203. 
As  to  the  Ephyri,  iu  the  present  connexion,  the  most  natural  sup- 
position certainly  is  that  the  people  here  meant  are  the  inhabitants 
of  the  ancient  town  of  Crannon,  situated  about  a  hundred  stadia 
to  the  south  of  Gyrton  (Str.  vii.  fr.  14),  of  which  the  ancient  name 
was  Ephyra.  Pausanias  (ix.  362),  who  places  these  Ephyri  in 
Thesprotia,  does  not  seem  sufficiently  to  have  regarded  the  geo- 
graphical congruities  of  the  Homeric  context. 

Ver.  366. — The  fairest  dauglder  of  the  l<:in(j^  Cassandra. 

Cassandra  is  another  of  those  personages  famous  in  Greek  legend 
who  come  to  us  stamped  with  a  pregnant  significance  of  which  no 
trace  is  to  be  found  in  "the  poet."  In  the  Iliad  she  is  mentioned 
only  here  and  in  xxiv.  699  ;  and  on  both  occasions  only  as  a  great 
beauty,  "  like  to  golden  Aphrodite."  But  of  her  prophetic  powers, 
and  of  the  curse  inflicted  on  her  by  the  wrathful  god  of  prophecy, 

VOL.  IV.  U 


30G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIII. 

Homer  knows  nothing.     Her  tragical  end,  so  glorified  by  ^schy- 
lus  in  tlic  Agamemnon,  is  alluded  to  in  Od.  xi.  422. 

Ver.  389. — A  lofiu  po;plar. 

The  dxepiots,  commonly  called  XevK-q,  or  the  ivhite  (schol.)  is 
unquestionably  the  silver  poplar,  the  popnlvs  alba  of  Linnaeus 
(Lenz,  p.  439).     It  was  the  favourite  tree  of  Hercules — 

"  Populus  Alcidce.  gratissima,  vitis  InccJio." 

Vii-g.  Eclug.  VII.  61. 

(Pans.  V.  13.  2.) 

Ver.  460. — Evermore  his  heart  was  sore  displeased  unth.  Priam. 

The  bad  understanding  between  Priam  and  ^neas,  here  inci- 
dentally mentioned,  is  connected  by  the  scholiasts  with  the  future 
history  of  ^neas,  indicated  in  xx.  307  in  a  natural  enough  way  by 
saying  that  the  old  king  was  jealous  of  the  man  whom  prophecy 
and  popular  estimation  had  pointed  out  as  his  successor.  Com- 
pare Str.  XIII.  607,  and  Heyne,  Exc.  i.  Mn.  ix. 

Ver.  517. — For  still  the  Trojan's  breast  to  him  with  hate  ivas  fired. 

The  enmity  of  Deiphobus  to  Idomeneus  arose,  according  to  the 
account  of  the  matter  given  by  Simonides  and  Ibycus,  from  the 
fact  that  they  were  both  suitors  of  Helen.  So  Eustathius.  This 
and  the  previous  note  contain  examples  of  that  incidental  allusion 
to  things  supposed  to  be  generally  known  which  is  one  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  all  ballad  poetry.  The  word  aid  seems  to  me  im- 
peratively to  call  for  some  explanation  extrinsic  of  the  poem. 

Ver.  547. — The  mighty  vein  that  rims  aloyig  the  back. 

The  poet's  accurate  knowledge  of  the  structure  of  the  human 
frame  has  been  often  noticed  by  modern  writers  with  no  measured 
admiration ;  but  the  admiration,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case  with 
this  emotion,  has  in  this  case  somewhat  transcended  the  bounds  of 
reason.  The  fact  is,  Homer,  like  every  true  poet  and  painter,  used 
his  eyes  diligently  ;   and  he  used  them  on  what  was  before  him. 


BOOK  XIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  .'j07 

In  those  days  of  violence  and  lawlessness,  battles,  bruises,  and 
wounds  of  all  kinds  were  constantly  to  be  seen  ;  and  as  the  old 
minstrel  had  a  strong  stomach,  and  was  not  in  anywise  apt  to  be 
sentimentally  affected  at  the  sight  of  blood,  he  could  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  describing  accurately  what  he  constantly  beheld.  Besides, 
the  practice  of  sacrifice,  and  of  public  anatomy  of  animals  for  the 
auspices,  enabled  any  man  in  his  time  to  give  a  general  view  of 
the  structure  of  the  body  of  those  animals  which  are  most  analo- 
gous to  man.  On  the  present  passage  one  of  the  best  modern 
authorities  on  such  points  writes  as  follows  : — "  Ce  qui  doit  parti- 
culierement  fixer  I'attention  de  I'historien,  c'est  que  ce  passage  est 
en  conformite  parfaite  avec  una  partie  de  la  description  des  vais- 
seaux,  telle  que  nous  la  trouvons  dans  un  fragment  de  Syennesis 
de  Chypre  (Arist.  Hist.  Anim.  iii.  3),  dans  un  autre  de  Diogene 
d'ApoUonie  (Fragm.  7,  ed.  Panzerbieter),  enfin  dans  le  paragraphe 
11  du  traite  De  la  Nature  de  V Homme  {(Euvres  d'Hipp.  ed.  Littre. 
t.  VI.  p.  58).  En  rapprochant  ces  divers  testes,  surtout  les  deux 
deruiers,  de  celui  de  I'Homere,  on  voit  que  le  poete,  lorsqu'il  dit 
que  le  vaisseau  remonte  du  dos  au  cou,  a  entendu  non  pas  la  partie 
anterieure  de  la  colonne  vertebrale  dans  la  cavite  thoracique,  mais 
la  partie  jiosterieure  et  exterieure ;  de  sorte  qu'il  fait  allusion  a  la 
veine  jugidaire  externe,'^  laquelle  est  une  portion  de  la  premiere 
paire  des  gros  vaisseaux  decrits,  en  partie  d'imagination,  par  I'auteur 
hippocratique.  C'est,  du  reste,  le  vaisseau  le  plus  apparent  du 
cou.  II  n'y  a  pas  lieu  de  donner  ici  toutes  les  explications  qui 
peuvent  servir  a  comprendre  comment  ont  pris  naissance  ces  notions 
primitives  et  si  grossieres  d'angciologie ;  mais  on  ne  pent  mecon- 
naitre  I'interet  qui  s'attache  a  la  decouverte  des  origines  les  plus 
lointaines  de  cette  partie  de  I'anatomie  j  usque  dans  les  poe  nes 
homeriques.  Au  temps  ou  chantait  Homere,  sinon  au  temps  ou 
se  passaient  les  evenements  qu'il  a  chantes,  nous  trouvons  dans  des 

1  Iv'ouverture  de  ce  vaisseau  suffirait  difficileraent  a  donner  la  mort,  mais 
sans  doute  I'epee  etait  allee  plus  loin  que  ne  pouvaient  la  suivre  les  connais- 
sances  anatomiques  d'Homere,  et  elle  avait  atteint  la  jugulaire  interne  et  la 
carotide. 


308  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIJI. 

observations  precises,  ou  dans  des  connaissances  populaires,  les 
premiers  rudiments  d'une  science  dont  nous  pouvons  suivre  les 
developpements  jusqu'a  Hippocrate." — {La  M(klecine  dans  Ilomh-e, 
pc\r  Daremberg,  Paris,  18G5,  pp.  49,  50). 

Ver.  576. — A  hwje  Thracian  sivord. 

The  scholiast  remarks  that  the  Thracians  used  particularly  huge 
swords.  These  were  called  pofjL<^aLa  (Hesych.  in  voce)^  a  word 
which  is  frequently  found  in  the  Septuagint  and  New  Testament, 
and  was  probably  brought  into  Egypt  by  the  Macedonians. 

Ver.  goo. — A  ^veU-twinted  vjoollen  hand  torn  from  a  slimj. 

This,  and  ver.  718  below,  are  the  only  passages  in  the  Iliad  in 
which  the  sling  (o-^ei^Sov);)  is  mentioned  by  Homer  (see  Smith's 
Diet.  Ant.,  Art.  Funda).  Chapman  will  not  hear  of  slings  in  tliis 
place  ;   but  modern  criticism  has  learned  to  be  less  dogmatical. 

Ver.  625. — Hospitahh  Jove. 

The  supreme  Greek  god,  as  moral  governor  of  the  world,  re- 
ceived the  title  ^ei'ios,  as  protector  of  the  stranger,  and  special 
avenger  of  all  sins  committed  in  violation  of  the  sacred  bond  tliat 
bound  together  host  and  guest. 

Ver.  636. — That  soothsayer  7vise,  PoJyidus. 

This  Polyidus  is  a  man  of  some  note  in  the  history  of  Greek 
civilisation,  as  being  descended  from  the  famous  Melampus,  whose 
name  is  so  prominent  in  the  Dionysiac  worship  of  early  Greece 
(Pans.  I.  43.  5;  Gerhard,  Myil, .  622.  10).  He  is  said  to  have 
performed  miracles,  and,  among  otliers,  restored  to  life  the  son  of 
Minos,  king  of  Crete,  who  liad  fallen  into  a  cask  of  honey  and 
been  drowned  (Apoll.  m.  3). 

Ver.  685. — The  Ionian  men  long-stnJed. 
The   loNiANS,   mentioned   here   only,   were   the   Athenians ;  for 


BOOK  XIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  309 

from  the  earliest  times  Attica  and  the  north  coast  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesus, and  the  country  of  the  Cynurii  in  the  south  of  Argolis,  are 
mentioned  as  the  principal  seats  of  the  lonians  (Herod,  vir.  92, 
VIII.  73).  The  migration  which  they  made  into  Asia,  soon  after 
the  conquest  of  Peloponnesus  by  the  Dorians  (Pans.  vii.  2.  1),  the 
colonies  which  they  founded  on  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  the  fertile 
crop  of  poets  and  philosophers  whom  they  produced,  and  the 
struggles  which  they  maintained  against  the  despotism  of  the  Per- 
sians, form  a  brilliant  page  in  the  early  history  of  the  world  More 
detailed  notices  will  be  found  in  Clinton  (i.  55)  and  Hermann 
(StaatsaU.  96).  The  long  tunics  of  the  ancient  Athenians  are 
mentioned  by  Pollux,  vii.  71,  Thucyd.  i.  6,  and  Pans.  i.  19.  1. 
Bekker,  Char  ides,  Sc.  xi.  Uxc.  1. 

Ver.  692. — Meges  led  t/ie  brave  Eptan  hand. 

The  hero  brought  forward  here  as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
Epeans,  occurs  in  the  catalogue  as  captain  of  the  Dulichians  (ii. 
625).  This  inconsistency  has  its  origin  in  the  fact  that  Meges 
was  of  Epean  descent,  and  lived  among  the  Dulichians  only  as 
one  of  those  homicidal  exiles  so  common  in  Homer.  His  Epean 
pedigree  is  given  by  Eustathius  on  ii.  615.  Meges  appears  several 
times  in  the  Iliad  (v.  69,  xv.  520,  xix.  239).  His  prominence  in 
their  great  national  poem  procured  for  this  hero  a  place  in  the 
great  national  shrine  of  the  Greeks  at  Delphi.  He  was  one  of  the 
figures  in  the  great  picture  of  Polygnotus,  so  minutely  described  by 
Pausanias  (x.  25.  3). 

Vkr.  713. 

In  close  Jiyht  from  Locrian  men  the  ivarUke  heart  departed. 

Heyne  remarks  that  the  Locrians,  in  Hesiod  (Scut.  25)  seem  to 
have  changed  their  character,  being  called  ayxe/^a^ot.  Pausanias 
also  alludes  to  this  change  of  weapon,  in  the  passage  (i.  23.  4), 
where  he  says  that  none  of  the  Greek  tribes  used  the  bow  except 
the  Cretans.     Compare  ii.  527,  and  iv.  242,  notes. 


310  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIII. 

Ver.  731. 
The  liue, 

&X\if  5'  6pxv<^'''vv,  eTepifi  Kidapiv  /cat  doLdrjV 

is  manifestly  impertinent  here,  where  the  contrast  is  only  between 
war  and  counsel.  The  line  was  generally  rejected  by  the  ancients, 
and  among  the  moderns  by  Wolf,  Heyne,  Spitzner,  Faesi,  and 
Bekker. 

Vek.  749. — AvTLKa  S'  e^  d;(ewv  a-hv  Tev^eo•^v  aXro  ^aua^e. 

He  leaps  from  his  horse  in  this  passage  ;  and  yet,  in  xii.  76,  it 
is  distinctly  said  that  the  horses  had  been  left  behind.  "  Quare, 
ut  poetam  ohlivionis  crimine  UberemuSj  versum  ex  xii.  81,  hue  esse 
transfusum  erit  statuenduni,"  (Spitzner).     I  omit  the  line. 

Vek.  754.  —  Mpfxi^Or]  ope'i  vi(f)0€vrt  eotKws, 

literall}^,  he  rushed  like  tu  a  snowy  mountain,  which  in  English 
sounds  very  much  like  nonsense,  and  would  not  escape  the  scourge 
of  the  critics,  if  it  were  to  occur  in  any  modern  jwem.  Newman 
supposes  an  error  in  the  text.  My  version  puts  the  meaning  into 
the  passage  which  ought  to  have  shone  spontaneously  from  it,  if  it 
had  been  well  expressed.  Had  Lord  Byron  used  such  a  simile,  he 
would  probably  have  talked  of  an  avalanche ;  and  perhaps  this  is 
what  the  old  minstrel  meant,  but  he  expressed  it,  after  his  usual 
fashion,  with  an  epithet  which  has  no  propriety  in  the  passage. 
The  minstrel  who  called  a  shield  a  tower  might  call  a  man  a  moun- 
tain without  giving  any  offence  to  an  audience  never  disposed  to  be 
critical. 

Vek.  824. — Ajax\  huj  hraijyart. 

On  the  character  of  Ajax,  see  Mure,  i.  336,  and  contrast  that 
of  Menelaus  (m.  215).  x\s  to  /Sovydie,  it  quite  plainly  has  a 
reference  to  the  big  body  of  the  Telamonian,  as  well  as  to  his  big 
talking ;  and  this  is  a  dramatic  trait  which  should  not  be  omitted 
in  translation. 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  311 


BOOK   XIV. 

Ver.  5. 

But  be  thou  still,  ami  qxuiff  at  case  the  rich  wine' s  ^ntrple  sjiring. 

"  Vix  ha;c  prohabunt  Hygienes  filii  vulnencm  curandorum  periti'^ 
(Heyne).  Perhaps  not ;  but  if  they  do  not  approve  to-day,  they 
may  to-morrow  ;  for  no  fashions  change  more  quickly  than  the 
methods  of  medical  treatment. 

Ver.  36. — Tlie  strand  betiveen  the  headlands  tway  ; 

that  is,  the  Ehoetean  and  Sigean  promontories,  on  the  coast  of 
the  Dardanelles,  bounding  the  great  bay  of  Troy,  the  landing- 
place  of  the  Greek  ships,  the  one  on  the  east,  the  other  on  the 
west,  which  will  be  found  in  every  map. 

Ver.  183. — Three-beaded  lucent. 

Of  the  meaning  of  rptyXi/va  there  can  be  no  doubt.  y\-i]viq  is 
anything  small,  round,  and  bright,  like  the  pupil  of  the  eye  (Lucas, 
Obs.  Lex.  p.  15).  As  to  fiopoeis.  we  have  merely  conjectures,  but 
no  certainty.     I  let  it  drop. 

Ver.  201. — Ocean  and  Mother  Tethys,  etc. 

This  remarkable  verse  is  evidently  a  fragment  of  some  very  old 
physico-theology,  of  which  Virgil  also  preserves  the  memory  in 
the  line,  "  Oceanum  p)ntrem  rerum"  {G.  iv.  382);  the  diifcrence 
between  the  two  styles  of  expression  being  not  so  great  as  it  would 
at  first  sight  appear;  "things,"  that  is,  the  "universe,"  and 
"gods"  in  the  polytheistic  form  of  thought  being  often  mixed  up 
in  a  manner  of  which  strict  monotheists  have  no  conception.  The 
prominence  given  to  Jove  in  the  settled  dynasty  of  the  gods,  under 
which  Homer  lived,  and  his  title  as  "  father  of  gods  and  men,"  is 
apt  to  make  us  forget  that  there  ever  was  a  more  ancient  theology 
familiar  to  the  Greek  mind ;  but  a  line  like  the  present  coming 


312  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAT).  BOOK  XIV. 

accidentally  in,  like  some  small  knob  of  granite  rock  projecting  for 
a  moment  in  a  sandstone  country,  reminds  us  that  as  there  were 
reformers  in  the  Christian  Church  before  the  Reformation,  so  there 
were  gods  in  Grreece,  or  at  least  a  philosophy  of  gods,  long  before 
those  whom  Herodotus  gives  Homer  the  credit  of  creating.  In 
reference  to  this,  Grlad.  well  observes,  that  "  the  theo-mythology 
of  Homer  stands  before  us  like  one  of  our  old  churches,  having 
different  parts  of  the  fabric  in  different  styles  of  architecture,"  an 
observation  which  would  be  more  true  if  extended  beyond  the 
bounds  of  the  Homeric  epos,  and  made  to  include  the  whole  com- 
plex tissue  of  Greek  mythology  as  it  appears  in  the  various  local 
religious  preserved  by  Pausanias.  This  passage  in  Homer,  of 
course,  could  not  escape  the  notice  of  those  subtle  thinkers  in  later 
Greece,  who  speculated  on  the  nature  of  things  ;  and  accordingly  we 
find  that  Plato  in  the  Cmti/Im,  402  A,  and  TJieai.  Ib'l  D,  quotes 
the  poet  as  teaching  in  this  verse  a  doctrine  substantially  identical 
with  the  philosophy  of  Heraclitus,  who  taught  that  the  whole  of 
nature  is  in  a  state  of  perpetual  flux,  and  that  there  is  nothing 
stable  in  the  universe.  In  the  same  passage  he  quotes  Orpheus  as 
teaching  a  similar  doctrine  ;  and  in  fact  the  so-called  Orphic  Hymns, 
now  extant,  contain  an  address  to  Ocean,  beginning 

'Q,Keavov  KaXeu},  narep'  dtpdiTov^  alkv  eovra,  k.t.X. 

The  ancients  connected  this  doctrine  with  the  most  obvious  etymo- 
logy of  Rhea,  from  peui,  to  flow,  as  may  be  seen  under  the  word 
'Pla  in  the  E.  M.  Aristotle  also,  in  his  Metaphysics  (i.  3),  dis- 
coursing on  the  various  theories  of  the  «px■'^  o^  ^^^^  principle,  gives 
a  prominent  place  to  that  which  makes  water  the  original  element 
from  which  all  things  were  produced. 

The  Assyrians,  according  to  Berosus  (Richter,  p.  49,  from  Syn- 
cellus),  taught  that  the  beginning  of  all  things  was  "  darkness  and 
water,"  out  of  which  animals  were  produced,  and  this  generative 
power  of  water  was  no  doubt  tlie  origin  of  the  fish-gods,  so  pro- 
minent in  the  mythology  of  the  Semitic  races.  The  Egyptians,  as 
we  learn  from  Plutarch  (7s.  Os.  34)  and  Piodorus  (i.  12),  taught  a 


P.OOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  313 

similar  doctrine,  sayiug  that  the  Homeric  Ocean  meant  Osiris,  while 
Tethys  was  Isis.  In  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  Creation,  it  is 
remarkable  both  that  the  D'h^k  ran,  properly  hrmth  of  God,  moves 
at  the  beginning  upon  the  "waters,"  and  that  when  living  crea- 
tures first  appear  (ver.  20),  it  is  the  "waters"  which  "bring 
forth  abundantly  the  moving  creature  which  hath  life,"  etc.  The 
immense  fecundity  of  the  sea,  and  its  production  of  living  bodies 
of  portentous  size,  was  noted  by  the  ancients  as  evidently  proceed- 
ing from  the  necessity  of  moisture  to  all  animal  life,  "  Causa  evi- 
dens  humor  is  Jiuuria"  (Plin.  N.  H.  ix.  2).  See  Tuch's  Com- 
mentary on  Genesis  (p.  9),  who  remarks  that  the  Hindus  have  the 
same  idea,  for  according  to  them  water  is  the  first  thought  of 
Brahma  in  the  creation,  which  is  the  significance  of  the  divine 
name  Narayana,  identical  with  Nereus,  and  the  modern  Greek 
vepd,  water.  In  the  Prem-sagar  (ch.  41),  water  is  called  the 
seed  or  semen  of  Krishnu.  See  also  the  Institutes  of  llenu 
(Sir  W.  Jones,  i.  6).  It  appears  therefore  that  this  line  of  Homer 
expresses  a  very  ancient,  and,  in  every  view,  perfectly  well  founded 
opinion ;  and  no  thinking  man,  certainly,  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
Hindus  that  water  is  the  first  thought  of  Brahma,  can  fail  to  recog- 
nise a-  philosophy  infinitely  more  satisfactory  than  the  meagre  con- 
clusion of  some  British  thinkers  of  the  present  day,  who,  at  the 
bottom  of  this  bright  panorama  of  beauty  and  power  of  which  we 
are  a  part,  can  find  only  a  dark  abyss  of  the  unknown  and  the 
unknowable. 

Ver.  214. — I'lie  curious-figured  zone. 

The  "cest"  or  magic  girdle  of  Venus  has  become  a  sort  of 
English  word,  having  the  authority  of  Collins  in  his  ode  on  the 
poetical  character,  who  no  doubt  took  it  from  the  Latin  poets 
(Mart.  Ep.  vi.  13).  But  the  word  cestos,  which  Martial  there  uses, 
is  in  Homer  only  a  descriptive  adjective,  signifying  einhroidcred, 
pretty  much  the  same  as  vrotKiAos  (see  iii.  371).  On  a  misunder- 
standing of  Winckelmann.  relative  to  the  cestus  of  Venus,  Heyne 
has  a  short  (excursus  worth  reading. 


31 4  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

Ver.  226. 

And  o'er  Pieria  fletu,  cmd  o'er  Emathia's  lovely  plain. 

Familiar  as  these  two  geograpliical  designations  are  to  the  lan- 
guage of  modern  poetry,  this  is  the  only  passage  of  the  Iliad  in 
which  they  occur.  The  progress  of  the  goddess  sufficiently  marks 
Pieria  as  the  region  immediately  north  of  Olympus,  and  Emathia 
as  the  district  beyond  it,  that  is,  between  the  Haliacmon  and  the 
Axius.  The  first  of  these  regions  is  immortalized  as  the  cradle  of 
Greek  poetry ;  the  second  as  the  nursery  of  the  Macedonian  con- 
querors of  the  East,  and  one  of  the  most  flourishing  settlements  of 
early  Christianity  (Strabo,  vii.  //•.  11  ;  Ptol.  iii.  13.  39 ;  Acts 
xvii.  10,  11).  Mount  Athos  (ver.  229),  famous  for  the  exploit  of 
Persian  despotism,  and  venerable  as  the  citadel  of  Byzantine 
piety,  is  too  well  known  to  English  tourists  and  general  readers 
to  require  exposition  here. 

Ver.  231. — Sleep,  the  brother  of  death. 

Here  we  have  a  beautiful  polytheistic  simile,  which,  through 
the  great  Roman  (Virg.  JEn.  vi.  278),  has  passed  largely  into  the 
general  language  of  poetry — 

"  How  beautiful  is  Death, 
Deatli  and  his  brother  Sleep ! " 

Shelley. 

As  to  originality,  however,  Homer  had  in  all  likelihood  as  little 
pretension  to  it  as  Shelley.  The  idea  lies  very  naturally  in  the 
polytheistic  conception  of  things.  In  Hesiod  these  two  are  the 
ofi"spring  of  Night  [Theog.  212,  758).  Plutarch  quotes  the  Homeric 
passage  in  his  Consolatio,  p.  107  e  Xyl.,  and  immediately  there- 
after the  beautiful  saying  of  some  one  who  called  tov  vttvov 
fxiKpa  Tou  S^ai'aToi'  jxva-Trjpia.^  "  Sleep  is  the  lesser  mysteries  of 
Death."  The  ancients  showed  great  good  taste  in  regard  to  this 
matter,  and  their  sepulchral  monuments  carried  out  the  Homeric 
idea  of  Death  with  a  consistency  which  we  Christians  who  use  a 
similar  phraseology  (1  Cor.  xv.  20)  would  have  done  well  to  imitcte. 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  315 

See  Lessing,  Wie  die  Alien  den  Tod  gebildet,  and  my  book  On 
Beauty,  p.  93.  Hypnos  or  Sleep  is  not  a  fully  developed  personal 
god  in  the  Greek  mythology,  and  we  seem  ju.stified  with  Welcker 
{g.  I.  21)  in  looking  upon  the  whole  of  this  appeal  to  him  as  purely 
allegorical.  Why  this  allegorical  god  is  placed  in  Lemnos  I  do 
not  know. 

With  regard  to  the  wonderful  power  assigned  by  the  poet  to 
Sleep,  that,  like  Love,  it  is  lord  both  of  gods  and  men,  there  is  a 
deep  truth  involved  in  this.  Absolutely,  indeed,  the  Supreme 
Being  cannot  sleep ;  that  is,  he  always  wakes  in  some  capacity, 
otherwise  the  blind  forces  of  which  modern  sensationalist  philo- 
sophasters  prate  so  much  would  soon  prove  their  worthlessness ; 
but  that  Nature  has  periods  of  necessary  rest — that  is,  in  other 
words,  that  the  productive  plastic  power  of  God  in  Nature  is  not 
always  active — is  a  fact  plainly  to  be  seen.  The  same  thing  is 
indicated  in  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation,  by  the  institution 
of  the  Sabbath.  On  the  seventh  day  God  rested  from  his  works. 
And  in  the  Hindu  mythology,  the  sleep  of  Hari  on  the  great 
waters,  as  the  interval  between  successive  kalpas  or  creative  periods, 
plays  a  very  prominent  part. 

Vek.  255. — The  iveU-peophd  Cos. 

On  Cos,  see  ii.  677.  With  regard  to  Hercules  in  this  con- 
nexion, the  scholiast  remarks  from  Pherecydes,  that  when  the 
Greek  Samson  was  returning  from  the  sacking  of  Troy,  he  was 
overtaken  by  a  storm  sent  by  Juno,  which  drove  him  on  the  island 
of  Cos.  His  landing,  however,  was  opposed  by  Eurypylus,  the 
king  of  the  island ;  whereupon  Hercules  slew  him  and  his  sons, 
and  begat  from  one  of  his  daughters  the  eponymous  hero  of  the 
Thessalians,  Thessalus  (ii.  G79.)  In  allusion  to  this  event,  the 
coins  of  Cos  (sec  Smith,  Did.  Geog.)  exhibit  a  head  of  Hercules. 
The  epithet  eui/ato/ievr/,  here  rendered  "  well-peopled,"  is  more 
correctly  translated  "  pleasantly  or  favourably  situated,"  as  indeed 
I  have  done  in  other  places. 


316  NOTES  TO  THE  ILl.U).  BOOK  XIV. 

Ver.  259. — Old  Ni(jJtf,  ivlio  swai/s  both  gods  and  men. 

I  think  this  is  the  only  passage  in  the  Iliad  where  Night 
assumes  a  distinct  personality,  as  in  Hesiod's  Theogony  and  in 
the  Furies  of  ^schylus.  According  to  the  simple  notion  of  the 
Boeotian  theologer,  Night  is  the  mother  of  Light,  just  because  in 
our  cycle  of  experience  light  is  always  preceded  by  darkness, 
and  is,  so  to  speak,  struck  out  of  it.  This  is  fundamentally  the 
same  superficial  sensuous  way  of  looking  at  things  which  led 
Locke  to  deny  innate  ideas,  and  to  confuse  a  constant  accompani- 
ment of  a  phenomenon  with  its  cause.  Certain  modern  thinkers, 
lamentably  enough,  have  lost  the  idea  of  cause  altogether,  and  so 
would  find  no  difficulty  in  believing  literally  that  night  is  the 
mother  of  light,  that  reason  is  born  of  unreason,  and  that  some- 
thing proceeds  from  nothing. 

Ver.  291. 

A  bird  by  gods  named  Chains,  but  by  men  (Jiimindis  liight. 

On  this  bird  Aristotle  {Hist.  An.  xiii.  3)  says — "  The  Kty/ti'Sts 
is  rarely  seen,  for  its  haunts  are  in  the  mountains ;  it  is  of  a  dark 
colour,  and  about  the  size  of  the  species  of  hawk  called  <^ao-o-)/^o- 
vos ;  its  body  is  long  and  slender.  It  does  not  appear  in  the  day, 
but  hunts  for  its  prey  during  the  night.  It  will  fight  with  eagles, 
and  with  such  violence  that  the  shepherds  often  find  both  combat- 
ants lying  dead  together.  It  lays  two  eggs,  and  builds  its  nest  in 
rocks  and  caves."  Pliny  (iV.  H.  x.  8)  has  copied  this.  Lenz 
(Zool.  Gr.  p.  285)  is  of  opinion  that  the  bird  meant  is  the  Strix 
uralensis,  one  of  the  largest  species  of  owls,  and  very  like  a  hawk 
in  appearance.     On  the  double  name,  see  ii.  811. 

Ver.  317-327. 

These  eleven  lines  are  pretty  generally  looked  on  as  an  interpo- 
lation, both  by  ancient  and  modern  critics.  Certainly  they  look 
very  like  an  expansion  of  the  thought  of  the  two  previous  lines, 
made  by  some  gramuiarian  for  the  sake  of  exhibiting  his  learning ; 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD  317 

nor  is  it  at  all  according  to  tlie  propriety  of  discourse  used  by 
amorous  gentlemen  in  modern  times  to  make  such  a  curious  detail 
under  such  circumstances.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that,  according  to  ancient  ideas,  the  multiform  loves  of  Jove 
were  looked  on  as  the  natural  and  necessary  means  of  peopling 
tlie  world  with  heroes  and  demigods  ;  and  again,  that  the  Muse  of 
Homer  is  of  a  somewhat  gossiping  character,  and  cannot  always 
be  cleared  from  the  fault  of  dealing  in  superabundant  and  some- 
times even  impertinent  illustration.  On  the  whole,  the  translator 
must  retain  the  lines ;  but  the  critical  philologer,  whether  for 
historical  or  mythological  purposes,  will  quote  them  cum  nofd. 

The  persons  celebrated  in  these  eleven  lines  are  of  no  small  sig- 
nificance in  mythology  and  early  history,  and  claim  a  few  remarks. 
First,  as  to  Piritiious,  already  noticed  as  a  prince  of  the  Lapithae, 
he  derives  his  principal  importance  in  ancient  legend  from  his 
connexion  with  Theseus,  in  whose  divine  honours  at  Athens  he  had 
a  share  (Pans.  i.  30.  4).  The  next,  Pi-.rseus,  the  hero  of  one  of  the 
most  wild  and  beautiful  of  the  Hellenic  legends  (see  Kingsley's 
Anch'omedct),  is  one  of  those  enigmatical  characters  that  cause  the 
judgment  dubiously  to  sway  between  the  symbolical  theory  of  the 
Germans  and  the  historical  explanation  of  myths  not  purely  theo- 
logical to  which  our  matter  -  of  fact  British  intellect  generally 
inclines.  On  the  one  hand,  Perseus,  the  sixth  from  Danaus, 
appears  in  the  midst  of  a  long  list  of  kings,  of  what  was  universally 
believed  in  ancient  times  to  be  one  of  the  oldest  settlements  of  the 
Pelasgi  (Clinton,  i  p.  75).  If  he  is  only  a  mythological  symbol, 
the  whole  race  of  early  Argive  kings  must  go  into  that  limbo  along 
with  him,  and  the  memorial  table  of  the  ancient  minstrel  genealo- 
gists will  be  made  a  complete  blank  in  a  department  where  it  was 
likely  to  be  the  most  faithfid.  On  the  other  hand,  the  circum- 
stances connected  with  the  birth  and  life  of  this  hero,  of  the  gold- 
raining  Jove  and  the  sea-floating  Danae,  are  so  strange,  unearthly, 
and  miraculous  that  we  might  be  willingly  led  in  this  particular 
case  to  admit  at  least  the  confusion  of  a  real  historical  person,  as 
in  the  case  of  Semiramis  (Dissertations,  p.  40)  with  a  theological 


318  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

legend  concerning  the  strife  of  Light  and  Darkness,  and  the  final 
triumph  of  the  beneficent  luminary.  See,  for  the  detail  of  this 
view,  Preller,  Myth.  ii.  41,  with  whom  Gerhard,  Mytli.  798,  agrees. 
The  third  character  in  this  list  is  Minos.  The  mention  of  this 
great  sea-king  and  legislator  in  Homer  is  scanty.  Besides  the 
present  passage,  we  have  only  xiii.  450,  where  he  occurs  as  the 
first  human  ancestor  in  the  genealogy  of  Idomeneus,  the  divine 
father  of  the  family  being  Jove  ;  and  Od.  xix.  178,  where  he  is 
described  as  king  of  Gnossus,  a  great  city,  and  the  familiar  friend 
of  Jove  ;  and  Od.  xi.  321,  where  he  occurs  as  the  "  baneful- 
minded  father  of  the  beautiful  Ariadne,"  this  epithet,  dAod(/)pwv, 
in  the  connexion  referring,  doubtless,  to  the  cruel  tribute  which 
Attic  legend  represents  him  as  having  laid  on  the  Athenians.  In 
the  same  book  (568)  he  is  called  "  the  glorious  son  of  Jove,"  and 
acts  as  a  judge  among  the  dead — for  the  Shades  also,  it  appears, 
have  their  quarrels.  In  the  present  passage  the  parentage  of 
Minos,  as  son  of  Jove,  by  Europe,  the  daughter  of  Phoenix,  points 
plainly  to  a  Phoenician  origin,  and  must  be  taken  as  good  evidence 
that  Homer  knew  nothing  of  the  fictitious  genealogy  from  Dorus, 
the  son  of  Hellen,  given  by  Diodorus  (iv.  60),  and  evidently  manu- 
factured afterwards  in  order  to  stamp  an  original  Greek  character 
on  the  mixed  population  of  Crete  as  it  existed  even  in  Homer's 
time  {Od.  xix.  175).  As  little  does  the  poet  know  anything  of  a 
Minos  I.  and  Minos  ii.,  a  duplicity  in  all  probability  invented  by 
mythographers  in  order  to  harmonize  conflicting  traditions.  We 
have  therefore  here,  as  in  other  cases,  a  few  simple  unpretending 
facts,  which  are  afterwards  magnified  into  all  sorts  of  fabulous 
extravagance.  I  say  facts,  because  there  is  nothing  either  in  the 
scanty  Homeric  notices,  or  in  the  basis  of  the  more  expanded 
tradition,  as  we  find  it  in  later  authors,  in  the  slightest  degree  im- 
probable ;  nothing  which  does  not  rather  seem  to  grow  out  of  the 
given  circumstances  in  the  most  natural  way  possible.  The  very 
geographical  situation  of  Crete,  as  Aristotle  remarked  {Pol.  it.  10) 
seems  to  mark  out  this  island  as  the  seat  of  such  a  marine  sway  as 
Minos  is  reported  to  have  exercised.      We  are  not  to  be  surprised, 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  31 'J 

therefore,  if  we  find  the  most  recent  German  authorities  (Curtius, 
Gr.  Gesch.)  taking  their  stand  as  decidedly  on  the  historical  reality 
of  Minos  as  the  most  credulous  of  the  ancients.  So  also  Hoeckh,  in 
his  valuable  work  on  Crete  ;  and  among  the  English,  Thirlwalh 
Grotc  only  out- Germans  the  most  extreme  Germans  in  his  whole- 
sale style  of  handling  all  tradition  previous  to  the  age  of  exact 
chronology ;  but  an  eye  well  exercised  in  this  region  of  shifting 
lights  and  shades  will  learn  to  separate  the  historical  from  the 
allegorical  element,  as  cei'tainly  in  many  cases  as  an  experienced 
mariner  can  distinguish  dry  land  from  a  cloud.  How  Mr.  Grote 
should  have  delighted  to  mingle  up  in  one  confused  heap  things  so 
obviously  distinct,  is  only  to  be  explained  by  his  peculiar  attitude  as 
an  exact  historian,  and  his  aversion  to  deal  in  any  shape  with 
materials  which  would  not  submit  to  be  handled  after  the  rigorous 
scientific  method  of  which  he  felt  himself  master.  But  we  must 
not  conclude  that  the  mists  envelope  no  mountains  because  we 
cannot  see  their  summits  with  our  telescopes,  or  take  their  elevation 
with  our  theodolites. 

RiiADAMANTHUS,  the  brother  of  Minos,  is  mentioned  twice  again 
by  our  poet,  both  times  in  the  Odyssey.  In  vii.  323,  he  is  the 
"  yellow  Rhadamantlius,"  who  receives  a  convoy  from  the  Phaea- 
cians  to  Euboea  to  visit  Tityus,  the  son  of  Gee  ;  while  in  iv. 
564  he  is  mentioned  as  being  among  the  blessed  heroic  souls  who 
dwell  in  Elysium,  at  the  ends  of  the  earth,  free  from  the  toils  and 
troubles  that  belong  to  common  mortals.  The  dignified  position 
which  he  occupies  in  Pindar  as  judge  of  the  dead  and  successor  of 
Kronos  {01.  ii.  137),  is  unknown  to  Homer.  I  entirely  agree  with 
Hoeckh  (ii.  197)  that  all  the  traditions  about  Rhadamanthus  point 
to  a  historical  reality,  and  not  to  a  mere  "  Luftgebild." 

The  only  two  remaining  names  in  this  passage  are  Dionysus  and 
Herculks.  On  the  former  we  have  already  spoken  (vi.  130).  The 
latter  is  a  personage  than  whom  no  character  in  the  Greek 
mythology,  in  the  class  of  demigods,  possesses  more  breadth  and 
significance.  In  reference  to  Homer,  three  points  are  peculiarly 
interesting  : — (1.)   the  Homeric  conception  of  Hercules,  as  con- 


320  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

trasted  with  the  mythology  of  a  later  growth  ;  (2.)  the  significance 
and  interpretation  of  the  legendary  tradition  ;  (8.)  the  connexion  of 
the  ideal  presented  in  Hercules  with  Greek  life  and  culture.  With 
regard  to  the  first  point,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Hercules 
of  Homer  is  a  purely  Greek  man,  born  in  Greece,  and  performing 
his  wonderful  feats  of  strength  and  heroism  on  a  Greek  stage.  He 
is  by  descent  from  Perseus,  an  Argive,  but  born  a  Theban,  and, 
like  other  great  heroes,  directly  the  son  of  Jove.  He  was  from  his 
eai'liest  years  exposed  to  severe  persecution  at  the  hands  of  the 
Argive  goddess,  who  makes  him  subject  to  an  inferior  man,  at 
whose  arbitrary  will  he  must  submit,  with  heroic  fortitude,  to  go 
through  unheard-of  trials  (xix.  98).  He  was  the  greatest  archer 
and  most  lion-hearted  man  of  his  age  [Od.  viii.  224,  and  xi.  266). 
The  exploits  which  by  his  own  strength  and  the  aid  of  Athene  he 
performed,  are,  like  those  of  Orlando  and  Rinaldo,  in  the  Carolingian 
romances,  quite  incredible.  He  went  down  to  Hades  and  brought 
up  the  infernal  dog  Cerberus  (viii.  367).  His  most  famous  expe- 
dition was  against  Troy,  where  he  saved  Hesione,  the  daughter  of 
the  king  Laomedon,  from  a  sea  monster  (xx.  145),  but  afterwards 
took  and  sacked  the  town  to  punish  the  perfidy  of  the  avaricious 
monarch  (v.  640).  His  strength  is  so  great  that  he  even  inflicts 
wounds  on  the  immortal  gods  (v.  392).  His  appearance,  on  the 
whole,  is  a  grand  example  of  indomitable  fortitude,  enterprise,  and 
perseverance  ;  but  his  encounter  with  Neleus  (xi.  690),  and  his 
conduct  to  Iphitus  (Od.  xxi.  25),  indicate  an  untamed  fountain  of 
ferocity  and  savagery  in  his  character,  an  element  which  the  reader 
of  the  Iliad  need  scarcely  be  told  is  as  essentially  Greek  as  the 
better  qualities  of  his  nature.  After  going  successfully  through 
unexampled  toils,  he  yields  to  Fate  like  other  men  (xviii.  117), 
but  while  his  Shade  wanders  in  Hades,  ''himself"  (according  to 
Homer's  strange  method  of  expression)  ascended  up  into  heaven, 
where  he  enjoys  immortal  youth  with  the  gods,  as  the  husband  of 
the  beautiful-anklod  Hebe  (Od.  xr.  601). 

The  intelligent  reader  will  at  once  perceive  how  meagre  an  affair 
we  have  here,  compared  with  the  vast  dimensions   to  which  the 


BOOK  XIV.  XOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  321 

legend  of  Hercules  afterwards  grew.  The  complete  cycle  of  the 
twelve  labours  [Thenc.  xxiv.  80)  is  here  seen  only  in  its  germ. 
Hercules  is  not  here  transported  to  any  distant  country,  such  as  Africa 
or  Spain,  where  Greek  civilisation  was  in  those  early  days  unknown, 
and,  when  he  has  completed  his  career  of  toil,  there  is  no  word  of 
his  glorified  fire-death  on  Mount  (Eta,  but  he  leaves  the  scene  of 
so  many  brilliant  exploits,  snuffed  out  in  the  usual  stupid  way,  so 
humiliating  to  human  pride.  The  extensive  and  splendid  additions 
which  we  afterwards  find  made  to  this  strange  tale  may  be  explained 
partly,  no  doubt,  on  the  supposition  that  Homer  did  not  require  to 
mention  all  that  he  knew  about  the  Theban  hero ;  but  it  seems 
much  more  certain  that  we  have  here  a  case  perfectly  analogous  to 
that  of  Bellerophon  (p.  189,  supra),  where  the  growth  of  the  fable 
in  the  course  of  ages  was  distinctly  traced.  It  is  not  true,  there- 
fore, universally,  what  Mr.  Grote  states  (i.  p.  576),  that  "  the  far- 
ther we  travel  back  into  the  past,  the  more  do  we  recede  from  the 
clear  day  of  positive  history,  and  the  deeper  do  we  plunge  into  the 
unsteady  twilight,  and  the  gorgeous  clouds  of  fancy  and  feeling."' 
In  the  development  of  such  myths  as  those  of  Bellerophon  and 
Hercules,  the  oldest  form  looks  most  like  history,  while  the  more 
modern  is  evidently  the  production  of  decorative  fancy.  But  be- 
sides the  lapse  of  time  and  the  restless  fertilitj-  of  Greek  fancy, 
there  was  another  cause,  which  led  necessarily  to  the  monstrous 
enlargement  of  the  Herculean  tradition.  Other  nations  had  a  hero, 
a  demigod,  or  a  great  god,  of  whom  similar  exploits  were  narrated  by 
their  worshippers.  Of  these  Cicero  enumerates  six  {N.  D.  iii.  19). 
To  identify  these  kindred  foreign  gods  with  their  native  hero,  was, 
as  their  whole  history  teaches,  a  devout  necessity  to  the  religious 
mind  of  Greece.  Hence  we  find  Hercules  in  the  extreme  west  of 
Spain,  fighting  with  Spanish  giants,  not  because  the  Greek  Hercules 
ever  was  there,  but  because  Melcarth,  the  Phoenician  Hercules,  had 
voyaged  west  with  his  enterprising  Sidonian  traders  in  search  of 
silver  and  gold.  The  close  connexion  between  Greece  and  Egypt 
which  ai'ose  after  the  time  of  Psammetichus  and  Amasis.  led,  in 
the  same  way.  to  a  transplantation  of  the  Theban  son  of  Jove 
VOL.  IV.  X 


322  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

into  Africa  (Paus.  x.  17.  2),  where  he  fought  with  Antaeus,  a  son 
of  Neptune,  and  handled  him  passing  cleverly,  as  Greeks  of  course 
always  did  handle  barbarians. 

In  reference  to  the  second  question,  I  have  to  say  that,  taking 
Hercules  as  we  find  him  in  Homer,  I  believe  him  to  be  a  historical 
character,  just  as  much  as  the  Samson  of  the  ITel^rews  and  the  Sir 
William  Wallace  of  Scottish  history.  The  general  reasons  in 
favour  of  the  historical  reality  of  the  leading  figures  of  popular 
tradition  having  been  largely  set  forth  in  Dissertation  i.  of  the  first 
volume  of  this  work,  need  not  be  repeated  here.  The  special 
internal  evidence  with  regard  to  the  person  of  Hercules  leads  to 
the  conclusion  that  he  is  a  man — allowance  of  course  being  always 
made  for  the  exaggerations  which  attach  themselves  to  the  exploits 
of  a  great  popular  hero, — just  as  much  as  Diomede  and  Achilles  are 
men.  At  what  time  the  original  tradition  of  a  deified  human  hero 
in  Greece  may  have  been  mixed  up  with  Oriental  legends  of  a  sun- 
god.  I  am  not  here  concerned  to  inquire.  Certain  it  is  that  histori- 
cal occasions  for  such  a  commingling  of  eastern  and  western  legend 
were  not  wanting,  as  the  fruits  plainly  appear  in  the  Orphic  hymn  to 
Hercules  (xii.),  where  his  twelve  labours  are  distinctly  identified 
with  the  course  of  the  sun  through  the  twelve  signs  of  the  zodiac. 

On  the  third  point  there  can  be  no  hesitation.  The  moral  signi- 
ficance of  Hercules  in  reference  to  Greek  character  and  culture  is 
sufficiently  obvious.  He  is  the  grand  representative  of  the  Hellenic 
idea  of  human  excellence  in  the  earliest  times,  and  in  fact  was  to 
the  Greeks  of  all  times  a  type  of  the  most  glorious  humanity.  He 
is  a  true  hero,  who  by  divine  assistance  fights  a  triumphant  and 
life-long  battle  against  fate  and  circumstance.  He  is  exuberant  in 
energy,  indomitable  in  will,  steadfivst  in  trial,  persevering  in  pur- 
pose, victorious  in  action,  glorious  in  death.  Not  Prometheus,  as 
some  have  imagined,  but  Hercules,  was  the  true  Christ  and  model 
god-man,  to  the  religious  young  Greek  ;  and  the  contrast  between 
Hellenic  heathenism  and  Christianity  appears  in  nothing  more 
strongly  than  in  this  contrast  of  their  ideal  god-man.  The  wor- 
shipper  of  Hercules   looks  upon  it   as  his   highest  religion  U>  he 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  323 

strong  and  valiant ;  the  worshipper  of  Christ  readily  sacrifices 
every  advantage  of  mere  physical  strength  and  dominant  energy 
for  the  sake  of  moral  purity,  goodness,  and  love.  The  religion  of 
Hercules  may  be  compared  to  a  stout  tree,  from  which  clubs  and 
quarter-staffs  may  be  made,  very  serviceable  in  a  fray ;  the  religion 
of  Christ  is  a  beautiful  flower,  rich  with  medicinal  virtue,  and 
fraught  with  healing  for  every  wound. 

Ver.  346. —  The  Father  spahe,  and  seized  his  large-eyed  spouse. 

The  marriage  of  Juno  to  Jove  was  one  of  the  most  prominent 
points  in  the  sacred  tradition  and  ceremonial  of  that  goddess  where- 
ever  it  was  established.  In  the  Gnossian  district  of  Crete,  for 
instance,  there  was  an  annual  dramatic  representation  of  this  divine 
marriage,  exactly  analogous  to  the  sacred  dramas  which,  in  some 
Catholic  countries,  are  still  enacted  at  Easter,  Christmas,  and 
other  great  Christian  festivals  (Diod.  Sic.  v.  72).  Of  the  signifi- 
cancy  of  this  marriage  as  an  anthropomorphic  representation  of  a 
great  fact  in  the  original  elemental  theology  of  the  Greeks,  there 
cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt.  The  description  of  the  genial  action 
of  the  heavens  upon  the  earth  in  the  time  of  the  vernal  rains,  is 
far  too  plain  to  have  escaped  the  notice  even  of  the  ancients,  who 
were  somewhat  misled  in  this  matter  by  a  notion  very  generally 
entertained  that  Juno  meant  the  lower  atmosphere.  But  if  there 
were  no  other  proof  that  this  goddess  means  the  Earth,  the  present 
beautiful  and  significant  simile  would  be  sufiicient  to  warrant  that 
interpretation  to  a  mind  gifted  with  the  slightest  poetical  intuition  ; 
a  mental  quality  without  which  mythology  can  no  more  be  under- 
stood than  Christianity  without  practical  piety  and  purity  of  heart. 
Accordingly  we  find  that  the  ancient  poets,  both  Latin  and  Greek, 
interpret  the  generative  process  here  described  as  taking  place,  not 
between  Jove  and  Juno,  but  between  Jove  and  Earth.  So  Euri- 
pides, in  the  fragment  of  Chrysippus  quoted  by  Sextus  Empiricus 
(^Adv.  Math.  VI.  ;  Vaia  fieyicTTr],  k.t.A..,  Matthias's  Eurip.  ix.  p.  121). 
So  Virgil,  in  the  well-known  passage  of  the  Georgics  (ii.  325).  and 
Lucretius   (ii.   292)  ;  from   whence   Spenser  {F.   Q.  i.   1,  6)  and 


324  NO'JES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

Milton  (P.  L.  IV.  500)  drew.  In  this  passage  of  Milton  we  see  the 
influence  of  the  false  idea,  that  the  clouds,  not  the  earth,  were  the 
elemental  origin  of  Juno.  It  is  the  clouds  rather  that  act  the  part 
of  the  husband,  and  are  the  proper  Jupiter,  as  we  see  also  in  the 
poetry  of  the  Hindus.  So  in  the  Prem-sagar  (ch.  i.  21)  : — "  Then 
the  clouds  pouring  forth  rain  like  a  Jiushand,"  etc.  With  this  very 
obvious  significance  of  the  lepbs  ydiuK;,  or  prima  facie  view  of  the 
case,  as  the  lawyers  would  say,  all  the  recorded  facts  with  regard 
to  the  worship  of  Juno,  as  it  was  practised  in  Argos,  Samos,  and 
other  places,  wonderfully  harmonize.  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
passages  relating  to  this  subject  is  handed  down  to  us  on  the 
authority  of  Aristotle  in  the  scholiast  to  Theocritus  (xv.  64) — 

■jrdvTa  yvvacKes  laavTL  koI  Ccs  Zei)s  ayd-ytd'  'Upav 

Women  know  all  things,  even  how  great  Jove 
First  won  the  large-eyed  Here  for  his  love, 

which  runs  thus  : — ''  Jove  formed  a  plot  how  he  might  enjoy 
amorous  intercourse  with  Juno,  at  a  time  when  she  should  be 
apart  from  the  other  gods.  Wishing  to  escape  observation,  he 
changed  himself  into  the  likeness  of  a  cuckoo,  and  sat  down  upon 
the  mountain  which  is  called  Thornax,  near  Hermione.  Then  he 
raised  a  terrible  storm  on  the  hill.  Meanwhile,  Juno  had  been 
walking  alone  on  the  mountain,  and  sat  down  at  the  place  where 
the  temple  of  the  consummating  Juno  ("Hpa  reAeta)  is  situated. 
Then  the  cuckoo,  frightened  by  the  storm,  came  all  shivering,  and 
alighted  on  the  knees  of  the  goddess.  Jiino  immediately  pitying 
the  poor  bird,  put  it  into  her  bosom,  under  the  folds  of  her  vest- 
ment. The  god  forthwith  assumed  his  natural  shape,  and  laid 
hold  of  the  maid,  who,  however,  refused  to  allow  sexual  intercourse, 
from  fear  of  her  mother  ;  but  Jupiter  at  once  removed  this  objec- 
tion by  promising  to  make  her  his  wife.  The  chief  people  of  the 
Argives  adore  this  goddess ;  and  in  her  temple  at  Argos  she  is 
represented  sitting  on  a  throne  with  a  sceptre  in  her  hand,  and  on 
the  sceptre  a  cuckoo"  (compare  Pans.  ii.  17.  4).  The  cuckoo  in 
this  curious  passage  evidently  indicates  the  spring  ;  and  the  whole 
myth  is  only  a  simple  human  representation  of  the  genial  influence 


BOOK  XIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  325 

of  the  vernal  raius  on  the  teeming  earth  at  that  season.  Not  with- 
out interest  in  this  passage  also  is  the  trace  of  ancient  customs 
preserved  in  that  part  of  the  narrative  which  recites  that  the  sexual 
intei'course  took  place  secretly,  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
mother,  nnd  only  on  promise  of  future  marriage.  Homer  alludes 
expressly  to  this  point  in  ver.  296  of  this  book  ;  and  it  is  just  what 
takes  place  not  at  all  uncommonly  among  the  Scottish  peasants ; 
and  Welcker  [g.  I.  i.  366)  testifies  that  in  the  Berner  Oberland 
the  old  practice  was  to  allow  this  ante-matrimonial  intercourse 
regularly  for  some  time,  in  order  to  test  the  inclination  of  the 
parties.  Another  circumstance  which  removes  all  doubt  from  the 
interpretation  of  this  myth,  is  that  this  maiTiage  is  sometimes 
represented  as  not  taking  place,  like  other  marriages,  once  for  all, 
but  as  recurrent,  the  virginity  of  the  wife  being  in  some  wonderful 
way  renewed,  so  as  to  render  a  new  marriage  necessary.  This  is 
distinctly  stated  with  regard  to  the  local  legend  in  Temenium,  near 
Nauplia,  by  Pausanias  (ii.  38.  3)  ;  and  the  frequent  occurrence  of 
the  epithet  Trap 06 v6a  in  conjunction  with  Here  (Pindar,  01.  vr.  150  ; 
Apoll.  Rhod.  I.  187,  schol. ;  Pans.  viii.  22.  2)  proves  the  same 
thing.  The  "widowed  Here"  in  this  last  passage,  evidently  re- 
lates to  the  interruption  of  the  genial  intercourse  between  heaven 
and  earth  in  the  winter  season.  In  Pausanias,  also  (ii.  22.  1)» 
we  find  the  intcrestiiig  notice  that  in  Argos  there  was  a  temple 
of  Here,  under  the  title  of  civdeca,  or  the  floiverij  Juno,  which  plainly 
points  to  the  fine  vegetative  influence  described  by  Homer. 

Ver.  376-7. 

These  two  verses,  I  agree  with  Sp.,  are  quite  superfluous  and 
out  of  place.  The  exhortation  of  Poseidon  ends  most  eff"ectively 
with  /xaAa  vrep  /xe/xawra.  There  is  nothing  said  in  ver.  377  which 
does  not  already  lie  in  ver.  371. 

Ver.  491. — Whom  Hermes  loved. 

With  regard  to  Hermes,  two  things  lie  on  the  surface,  and  may 
be  taken  as  certain — (1.)  In  his  oldest  form,  as  worshipped  by  the 


;32G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIV. 

Pelasgi  (Herod,  ii.  51),  aud  symbolized  by  the  pliallus.  or  male 
generative  organ,  he  plainly  represents  the  procreant  force  of 
nature.  (2.)  In  the  Iliad,  aud  in  Arcadia,  where  his  birthplace 
was,  he  is  a  pastoral  god,  the  author  of  that  wealth  in  sheep  and 
oxen  which  belongs  to  the  great  patriarchal  ancestors  of  the  human 
race.  These  two  characters  are  in  their  source  obviously  one. 
For  the  wealth  of  pastoral  men,  which  consists  in  the  multiplication 
of  their  flocks  and  herds,  depends  of  course  on  the  productive 
power  of  nature,  as  manifested  in  the  breeding  of  animals.  As 
society  advanced,  wealth  changed  its  character,  pecus  became  pecu- 
nia  (vi.  23-4),  and  the  merchant  took  rank  as  a  producer  of  wealth 
before  the  shepherd  aud  the  farmer  ;  hence  Hermes  became  the 
patron  of  merchants ;  and  money  found  in  the  ground  or  on  the 
road  accidentally  was  called  epfiaiov,  a  <jift  of  Hermes. 

In  Homer  the  Pelasgic  Hermes  does  not  appear  at  all.  As  in 
the  case  of  the  other  gods,  the  divine  force  that  originally  gave  him 
significance  is  suijk  in  the  human  representation  of  the  result. 
The  Hermes  of  the  present  passage  is  evidently  merely  the  protec- 
tor of  sheep  and  the  author  of  wealth,  as  in  the  Theogony  (444). 
Hence  in  the  Odyssey  (viii.  3:! 5)  he  is  SwTwp  tacov,  the  giver  of 
good  things.  His  originally  pastoral  character  is  indicated  by  the 
epithets  v6[j.io<5  (Ar.  Thesm.  977)  and  e7ri/x7jAtos  (Paus.  ix.  34. 
2).  His  kindly  and  beneficent  nature  as  the  giver  of  wealth  is 
alluded  to  in  Homer  several  times  by  the  epithets  ipcovvT]?  and 
uKdKrjTa  (xvi.  185,  XX.  34,  72,  XXIV.  360;  Paus.  viii.  36.  6). 
So  far  all  is  clear.  But  when  we  go  beyond  this,  and  endeavour 
to  derive  from  one  original  idea  all  the  other  functions  familiarly 
ascribed  to  this  god,  we  find  ourselves  sailing  on  a  wide  dim  sea, 
where,  instead  of  the  steady  sun  of  certainty,  only  a  changeful 
flicker  of  beautiful  conjecture  entertains  us.  The  epithet  Siokto/dos, 
message-speeding,  so  frequent  in  Homer,  brings  before  us  at  once 
that  element  of  nimbleness,  dexterity,  craft,  and  cunning,  so  essen- 
tially interwoven  with  the  earliest  legends  about  this  god  (see  the 
Homeric  Hymn),  and  yet  so  remote  from  the  natural  idea  of  a  pasto- 
ral god.     But  that  shepherds  could  be  cunning  enough  at  times,  at 


BOOK  XV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  327 

least  in  the  matter  of  sheep-breeding,  the  example  of  the  patriarch 
Jacob  (Gen.  xxx.  37)  sufficiently  shows.  Where  oj)erations  of 
great  secrecy  and  cxpertness  are  required,  Hermes  appears  on 
several  occasions  in  the  Iliad  (v.  391,  xxiv.  24) ;  and  as  great 
sharpness  of  vision  is  required  for  such  business,  he  gets  the  epithet 
iva-KOTTos,  as  in  the  passage  last  referred  to.  To  reconcile  this  dis- 
crepancy, Welcker  ingeniously  supposes  that  the  name  of  the  god, 
connected  with  opfjiTJ  and  other  words  of  that  family,  signifies 
impulse  or  force^  and  that  he  is  not  merely  in  animals  the  genera- 
tive force,  but  more  generally  "  he  signifies  the  circular  movement 
of  the  sky,  the  cycle  of  day  and  night,  of  waking  and  sleeping,  of 
living  and  dying  ;  in  one  word,  vital  motion,  cosmical  and  organic 
impulse" — '■' die  lehendige  Beioegung,  der  Umschwung."  This  of 
course  is  problematic  ;  but  that  the  thoroughly  anthropomorphized 
rei:)resentation  of  this  god  which  generally  meets  us  in  Hellenic 
legend  must  find  its  explanation  in  some  theo-cosmical  ideas  of  the 
religion  of  the  oldest  Pelasgi  seems  to  me  quite  certain. 


BOOK   XV. 


Ver.  56-77. 

Some  of  the  ancients,  and  with  them  Bekker,  have  applied  their 
favourite  critical  process  of  excision  to  this  whole  passage ;  Zeno- 
dotus  only  from  ver.  64  ;  Heyne  from  ver.  63.  The  greater  num- 
ber of  the  special  objections  made  by  the  Alexandrians  are  minute 
and  puerile,  and  give  no  satisfaction  even  to  Heyne.  As  to  the 
general  scope  of  the  passage,  I  think  Granville  Penn  (p.  336)  has 
stated  the  case  most  triumphantly  in  favour  of  the  received  text, 
which  Spitzner,  though  he  shakes  his  head  a  little,  does  not  dare 
to  bracket.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Germans  should  be  so 
anxious  to  expunge  this  speech,  as  it  supplies  one  of  the  strongest 
arguments  in  favour  of  the  unity  of  that  great  poem,  which  it  has 


328  KOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XV. 

loug  beeu  oue  of  their  special  national  delights  to  tear  in  pieces. 
Those  who  believe  in  that  unity  will  not  be  apt  to  quarrel  with 
Jove  or  with  the  poet  for  revealing  his  plans  in  a  confidential 
communication  to  his  wife.  To  me  a  consideration  of  the  context 
makes  it  quite  plain,  as  Penn  well  remarks,  that  the  whole  speech 
is  most  appropriate,  and  should  be  retained  intact.  Jupiter  is 
evidently  in  a  good  humour — the  efiect  of  the  amatory  cestos  still 
remaining, — and  while,  on  discovering  the  female  deceit  that  had 
been  practised  on  him,  he  asserts  strongly  his  determination  to 
fulfil  his  promise  to  Thetis,  and  do  honour  to  Achilles,  he  at  the 
same  time  soothes  his  offended  consort  by  the  prophetic  intimation 
that  in  the  long  run  Troy  shall  certainly  fall,  and  the  cause  of 
the  Greeks  be  triumphant.  Those  rhapsodists,  whose  patchwork 
Heyne  is  constantly  detecting — having  a  peculiar  eye  of  his  own 
with  which  he  can  see  in  the  dark,  — must  certainly  have  been  very 
clever  fellows,  since  it  so  often  appears  that,  if  Homer  did  not 
write  what  they  put  into  his  mouth,  he,  on  almost  every  occasion, 
mujlit  have  done  it  with  propriety,  and  on  some  occasions — as  in 
the  present  passage — plainly  should  have  done  it. 

Ver.  87. — Fair  Themis  lovely-cheeked. 

Themis — from  Tl9rjfj.i,  to  lay  dottm,  as  in  German  Gesetz,  from 
setzen — is  a  goddess  who  makes  no  very  prominent  figure  in 
Homer,  or  in  the  Greek  mythology ;  as,  indeed,  she  is  quite  super- 
fluous, her  functions,  as  the  representative  of  right  and  law,  being 
exercised  by  Jove.  In  xx.  4,  she  is  commissioned  by  Jove  to  call 
the  gods  to  council ;  and  in  Od.  ii.  68  she  is  said  to  preside  over 
all  human  assemblies  and  parliaments.  There  is  a  grand  truth  in 
this  idea,  that  no  human  society  can  exist  without  Eight,  and  that 
Justice  is  practically  identical  with  God.  The  Thebans  (Pans.  ix. 
25.  4)  associated  in  worship  Themis,  the  Jove  of  public  assemblies 
(Zevs  dyopatos),  and  the  Fates,  which  is  a  triad  of  fine  significance. 
The  author  of  the  Theogony  (135)  saw  not  less  profoundly  into  the 
constitution  of  social  beings,  when  he  makes  her  one  of  the 
primeval  Titanesses,  daughter  of  Hea^■cn  and  Earth,  and  older  than 


BOOK  XV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  329 

Jove,  to  whom  she  was  afterwards  married,  aud  produced  a  fair 
progeny  (Theog.  901).  Not  less  beautiful  is  the  Delphic  tradition 
(Paus.  X.  5.  3 ;  ^sch.  Eumen.  2)  that  Themis  preceded  Apollo  as 
the  speaker  of  prophecy  from  the  oracular  navel-stone  ;  it  being 
hereby  plainly  signified  that  the  course  of  human  events  can  best 
be  predicated  by  those  who,  like  the  Hebrew  prophets,  have  a  pro- 
found perception  of  the  great  law  of  Right,  which  rules  the  moral 
world,  as  certainly  as  the  law  of  gravitation  does  the  motions  of 
the  spheres. 

Veil  lUl. — 21ie  spouse  of  Jove  did  force  her  lips  into  a  smile. 

The  scholiast  notes  here  tliat  this  is  what  is  called  a  sardonic 
laugh,  a  phrase  used  by  Homer  himself  in  Od.  xx.  302.  Concern- 
ing this  laugh,  Pausanias,  in  a  well  known  passage  (x.  17.  7),  says 
that  it  received  its  name  from  a  poisonous  plant  growing  in  Sar- 
dinia, which  has  the  peculiar  property  of  causing  persons  to  die 
by  falling  into  horrid  laughing  convulsions.  Suidas,  in  2apSavios 
-yeAws,  derives  it  from  o-aipav  tois  dSoLicri,  aud  says  that  it  means 
Trpou-Trot-qTos — a  forced  laugh. 

Ver.  113. — Mars  smote  his  strong  sinewy  thigh. 

This  gesture  is  well  known  in  Greek  history  as  having  been 
used  by  Cleon  the  demagogue,  whose  violent  manner  was  so 
strongly  contrasted  with  the  calm  weight  of  Olympian  Pericles 
(Plut.  Nic.  8).  Caius  Gracchus  used  the  same  violent  action 
(Plut.  Tib.  Gracch.  2).  Mars  is  no  model ;  but  this  peculiar  method 
of  rhetorical  emphasis  was  not  peculiar  to  him  (ver.  397,  and  xvi. 
125).  Nature  is  never  tame  ;  violent  gestures  are  always  better 
than  no  gestures  at  all ;  and  even  the  vulgarest  energy  in  speak- 
ing is  superior  to  that  innocent  ineffective  propriety  in  which 
the  tradition  of  the  English  pulpit  so  strangely  delights. 

Ver.  171. — WJien  sliy-horn  Boreas  flaps  his  vans. 

The  analogy  of  Atoyei'^s  and  other  such  words  teaches  plainly 
that  the  compound  aldpriyn'qs  must  be  taken  in  a  passive  sense. 


330  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XV. 

Both  Koppen  and  Heyne  saw  this.  The  reasons  given  for  apply- 
ing this  epithet  to  the  north  wind  are  futile,  for  ApoUonius 
Khodius  (IV.  765)  applies  it  generally  to  all  the  winds.  The 
right  translation  is  that  of  D.,  "  (efhergeboren,"  or  as  N.  in  his 
quaint  way  has  it — 

"  The  gust  of  Boreas,  whom  sky  serene  doth  gender.'" 

Ver.  206. — Furies,  guard  the  rights  of  the  elder-horn. 

That  the  eldest  born  son  had  a  certain  preference  is  plain  from 
this  passage ;  but  that  equal  division  of  a  father's  property,  on 
his  death,  was  the  law  of  the  Homeric  times,  is  quite  plain  from 
what  Neptune  says  (ver.  209),  with  which  the  future  history  of 
Attic  law  entirely  agrees.  The  right  of  the  firstborn  may  have 
consisted  in  a  preference  of  choice,  in  which  case  of  course  he 
would  choose  the  best  of  a  certain  number  of  equal  portions,  as 
no  absolute  e(iuality  except  in  money  is  possible.  According  to 
our  notions,  the  mansion-house,  and  the  right  to  represent  the 
family  in  the  House  of  Lords,  or  otherwise,  would  fall  to  the  eldest 
son ;  in  other  respects  the  succession,  both  landed  and  moveable, 
would  be  equally  divided.  See  Hermann,  Gr.  Alt.  iii.  63,  and 
C.  R.  Kennedy  in  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  Art.  Hoeres. 

Ver.  287. — Sivf\  as  a  sousing  hawk  he  fleio. 

Apollo  here  takes  the  shape  of  a  hawk,  and  in  Od.  xv.  525  one 
of  these  birds  is  said  to  be  his  "swift  messenger"  (compare 
MiiUer's  Dur.  i.  p.  826,  Engl.)  The  ancients  seem  to  have  con- 
sidered that  the  sharp-sightedncss  of  hawks,  and  other  qualities  real 
and  imaginary,  entitled  them  to  be  considered  in  a  peculiar  way 
symbolical  of  the  sun-god.  On  this  ^lian  enlarges  (iV.  A.  x.  14). 
The  Egyptians,  it  is  well  known,  with  whose  Hor  the  Glreeks  at 
an  early  period  identified  their  Apollo  (Herod,  ii.  144),  designated 
that  god,  and  sometimes  a  god  generally,  by  a  hawk.  See  Pbit. 
Is.  Os.  82,  with  Parthey's  admirable  Commentary ;  and  Bunsen, 
Egypt's  Place,  i.  p.  434. 


r.OOK  XV.  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  331 


Ver.  oG5. — So  thou,  Apollo. 

The  ancients  evidently  did  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  epithet 
yj'ie  used  in  this  line,  and  began  to  etymologize  about  it  in  their  usual 
blind  way.  The  results  of  that  random  work  appear  in  our  Dic- 
tionaries. Heyne,  after  mentioning  their  vain  conjectures,  adds : 
"  Mihi  htcc  coinmemoranda  erant,  quoniam  ad  grammatieorura 
curas  in  Homerum  spectabant ;  caeteroquin  enim  bene  teneo,  anti- 
quissimorum  horum  nominum  imprimis  religiosi  generis  origines  et 
notiones  vix  unquam  tuto  constitui  posse,  et  doctam  quidem,  parum 
tamen  utilem  operam  in  iis  exquirendis  poni." 

This  is  just  the  right  thing.  Men  will  never  be  wise  till  they 
cease  to  waste  their  time  in  pretending  to  know  what  is  not  know- 
able.  As  a  translator,  I  could  have  no  scruple  in  omitting  the 
epithet  altogether. 

Ver.  432. — Who  from  divine  Cythera  came. 

The  island  of  Cythera,  projecting  as  it  does  far  out  into  the  sea, 
towards  Crete,  from  the  extreme  south  point  of  the  Peloponnesus, 
naturally  stood  in  the  way  of  the  Phoenicians  in  their  progress 
westward,  and  it  was  here  doubtless  that  the  worship  of  their 
Syrian  goddess  of  fecundity  was  first  introduced.  The  connexion 
with  Phoenicia  is  plainly  indicated  in  the  genealogy  of  Cythera, 
from  Phoenix,  given  by  Steph.  Byz.  72,  and  Eustathius  (Schul.  Dion. 
Per.  498).  Scaudia,  a  town  on  this  island,  is  mentioned  above 
(x.  268).  In  the  Peloponnesian  war  it  was  occupied  by  the  Athe- 
nians under  Nicias  (Thucyd.  iv.  54).  On  its  modern  state,  see 
Leake,  N.  G.  iii.  69,  and  Geikie's  Life  of  Forhes,  p.  291. 

Ver.  518. — A  stuut  Gyllenian,  Otus. 

The  Cyllene,  from  which  this  Otus  receives  his  name,  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  Cyllenian  mount  on  the  north-east  corner  of  Arcadia, 
where  Hermes  was  born  (ii.  603),  but  is  a  village  on  the  coast  of 
Elis,  opposite  Zante  (Str.  viii.  337,  and  ii.  615,  supra). 


332  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XV. 

Ver.  522. 

AjjoUo  to  the  spearman's  might  denied  the  life  of  Panthus'  son. 

Pauthus  was  a  priest  of  Apollo  (Virg.  vEn.  ii.  429),  and  lieuce 
his  family  is  particularly  under  the  protection  of  the  god  (see 
Miiller,  Dor.  vol.  i.  p.  250. 

Ver.  bZl.—Ephi/re. 

We  have  already  encountered  this  word  as  the  old  name  of 
Corinth  (vi.  152).  It  was  a  name  common  to  several  Hellenic 
towns.  The  one  alluded  to  here  in  connexion  with  the  river 
Selleis,  from  the  whole  connexion  of  the  passage  seems  to  be  that 
in  Elis  (Str.  viii.  338),  to  which  the  geographer  likewise  refers  the 
Ephyre  in  Ji.  059,  on  which  see  Heyne's  note  There  was  another 
Ephyre  in  Thesprotia,  to  which  Nitzsch  refers  (OcZ.  i.  259). 

Ver.  561. — Let  nolle  shame  usurp  your  hearts  ! 

Donaldson  {N.  C.  325)  is  quite  right  in  saying  that  the  aiSws  of 
Homer  in  this  and  similar  passages  (v.  529  and  xiii.  121)  is  pre- 
cisely equivalent  to  our  "sense  of  honour,"  a  feeling  which  the 
English  have  preserved  from  the  chivalrous  inheritance  of  the 
middle  ages,  more  completely,  perhaps,  than  any  other  people,  but 
which  belongs  to  man  as  man,  and  grows  everywhere  with  the 
growth  of  his  moral  nature. 

Ver.  629. — So  every  Argive  quailed  with  fear. 

Heyne  objects  to  this  line,  because,  he  says,  the  point  of  the  pre- 
vious comparison  evidently  lies  in  the  impetuousness  of  Hector, 
not  in  the  fears  of  the  Greeks.  But  the  poet,  in  expanding  his 
comparison,  was  led  to  find  that  it  had  a  double  application ;  and 
this  evidently  produced  the  line  to  which  Heyne  objects,  and  which 
certainly  stands  in  most  unhappy  proximity  to  the  fievov  efxireSov 
01)8'  ecjief^ovTo  of  ver.  622.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  also  that 
though  the  Greeks  stood  firm,  their  liearts  might  still  be  quaking 
beneath  their  corslets. 


BOOK  XV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  333 

Ver.  653. — Now  they  fell  hack  ivitldn  the  foremost  line. 

That  eiVwTrot  refers  to  the  Greeks  the  previous  context  inclines 
us  to  believe,  and  the  nature  of  the  case  plainly  shows.  The 
Trojans  were  da-wTtoi  vewv  necessarily  during  their  whole  advance  ; 
but  it  is  said  of  the  Greeks  appropriately  now  that  they  turned 
behind  the  ships,  and  left  the  first  line  exposed.  The  suspicions 
thrown  on  ver.  655-674  by  Heyne,  are,  as  usual,  extremely  slight. 

Ver.  668-673. 

Some  ancients  considered  these  six  lines  as  interpolated,  prin- 
cipally because  there  was  no  previous  mention  of  a  vec^os  which 
Athene  had  to  disperse.  But  it  seems  only  a  poetical  way  of  say- 
ing that  they  now  on  a  sudden  clearly  saw  the  critical  position  in 
which  they  were  placed. 

Ver.  679. — An  ivhen  a  man  ivell  skilled  to  ride. 

This,  and  Od.  v.  371,  are  the  only  two  passages  in  which  Homer 
mentions  the  practice  of  riding  on  horseback  without  chariots. 
The  word  KeXrjTi^w  which  he  uses  is  evidently  connected  with 
KeAXw,  KeXevuij  percello,  celer,  celeres,  etc.,  and  means  to  spur  or 
drive.  It  is  applied  to  the  horse,  not  to  the  rider.  Pausanias 
(x.  7.  3)  mentions  the  horse-race  as  one  of  recent  introduction 
in  the  Pythian  games.  On  the  skill  which  the  ancients  delighted 
to  exhibit  in  managing  more  horses  than  one,  see  the  article 
Destdtor  in  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  and  aixnnroc  in  Harpocration. 

Ver.  690. — An  eagle  fiery -souled. 

This  is  one  of  the  passages  where  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  say 
whether  aWwv  refers  to  the  mere  outward  appearance  or  to  inward 
qualities.  Plato  (Rep.  viii.  559  d)  talks  of  aWoio-t  ^rjpcrl  i<al  Scu'oTs, 
evidently  j'?e7-ce,  impetuous,  fiery,  which,  as  the  colour  of  the  eagle 
is  not  strictly  aWcov,  seems  the  safer  meaning  here. 


334  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 


BOOK  XVI. 

Veh.  97-100. 

at  yiip,  Ztv  re  irdrep  koI  ^ AOtjvai'y]  Kat '  AttoAAoi/, 
[xr]T€  Tt9  ovv  Tpwcjv  '^avarov  <f)vyotj  bcrcroi  kacriv, 
fxijTe  Tts 'Apyetwi/,  vaitV  8   €K8v/j.ev  oXeOpoVj 
ocfip'  OLOL  TpotT^s  lepa  Kprj^efiva  Xvwjiev. 

These  verses  were  objected  to  on  various  grounds  by  the  ancients. 
Their  reasons,  as  usual,  seem  more  curious  than  sound ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  can  be  no  denying  that  the  passage  ends 
much  more  appropriately  without  them.  As  to  the  fitness  of  such 
language  generally  to  a  person  previously  excited  by  passion  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  But  the  real  question  is,  whether  in  this  speech 
specially  Achilles  is  in  such  a  towering  rage  as  to  render  this  wild 
and  savage  sentiment  natural  and  suitable.  I  rather  think  not ; 
and  further,  I  am  inclined  to  agree  with  Sp.  in  thinking  that  the 
invocation  to  Apollo,  immediately  after  he  had  been  mentioned  as 
the  special  friend  of  the  Trojans,  is  peculiarly  inappropriate.  I 
therefore  eject  the  lines. 

Ver.  143. — llie  lance  of  Pelian  ash. 

On  the  iiiXiy]  or  ashen  spear-shaft  here  the  scholiast  remarks  : — 
"  At  the  marriage  of  Peleus  and  Thetis  the  gods  gave  gifts  to  the 
bridegroom ;  and  Chiron,  cutting  down  a  stout  ash-tree,  made  it 
into  a  spear-shaft,  and  presented  it  to  Peleus.  This  spear  was 
polished  by  Pallas,  and  the  head  of  it  pointed  by  Vulcan.  These 
facts  are  mentioned  in  the  Cyprian  poems."  The  hardness  of  the 
ash-tree  made  it  a  fit  emblem  of  that  hard-working  persevering 
race  of  mortals  who  now  inhabit  the  earth  (Hes.  Op.  145). 

Veh.  150. — Them,  to  strong  Zephyr  the  Harpy  hare. 

Nothing  is  more  certain  in  the  whole  doctrine  of  Greek  mytho- 
logy than  that  the  itarpies  are  the  impersonation  of  sudden  and 


BOOK  XYI.  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  335 

violent  gusts  of  wind  (ave/xot  upTraKTiKot,  .scliol.  0<l.  i.  240).  This 
conviction  would  force  itself  on  a  thinking  mind  from  the  mere  sig- 
nificance of  their  names,  and  the  connexion  in  which  they  are 
mentioned  by  Hesiod  (Theog.  265)  : — 

"  Tliaumas  married  Electra,  the  daughter  of  deep-flowing  Ocean, 
She  to  Iris  gave  birth,  the  swift,  and  eke  to  the  Har^iies 
Beautiful-haired,  Aello  yclept,  and  Ocypete,  maidens 
Swiftly  winged  to  follow  the  path  of  the  bird,  or  the  breeze  that 
Skirs  the  welkin." 

But  the  identity  becomes  manifest  when  we  compare  the  account 
of  the  daughters  of  Pandarus,  in  Od.  xx.,  who  are  said  in  one  line 
(06)  to  have  been  carried  away  by  the  ^i^eAAai,  or  dorms ;  and  in 
another  line  of  the  same  passage  (77)  to  have  been  snatched  oif  by 
the  Harpies.  A  more  instructive  confronting  of  the  original  physi- 
cal element  with  its  anthropomorphic  impersonation  could  not  have 
been  wished  for.  On  the  Harpies  generally  see  Heyne,  Exc.  vii.  •, 
^n.  III.  From  this  fact  that  the  Harpies  represent  sudden  and 
violent  winds,  their  significance  in  the  present  passage  and  in  some 
other  places  of  Homer  becomes  apparent.  To  them  specially  in 
Homer  is  attributed  the  sudden  disappearance  of  any  person  of 
whom  no  account  can  be  given ;  as  of  Ulysses  (Of?,  i.  241 ;  com- 
pare Job  xxvii.  21,  and  Helen's  wish,  vi.  346).  This  is  pre- 
cisely analogous  to  the  ascription  of  sudden  and  painless  deaths  to 
Apollo  and  Diana  (p.  180,  sujjra).  In  the  present  passage  the  Harpy 
appears  merely,  like  any  other  wind,  to  be  a  mother  to  the  wind- 
footed  steeds  of  Achilles,  of  which  the  strong  and  masterful  Zephyr 
was  the  sire.  That  these  steeds  of  godlike  brood  have  the  distant 
"stream  of  ocean"  for  their  birthplace,  is  only  because  Zephyr 
and  Ocean  are  both  in  the  far  west,  and  because  in  that  region 
the  Greek  imagination  wandered  free  in  the  creation  of  all  sorts 
of  fair  and  fierce  wonders. 

Another  thing  to  be  noted  hero  is  the  prosaic  simplicity  with 
which  the  credulous  Greeks  and  Romans  of  after  times  turned  this 
fine  poetical  myth  of  swift  steeds  fathered  by  the  west  wind  into  a 
plain  historical  "  conskd"  (this  is  Pliny's  word),  that  in  some  parts 


33G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 

of  the  world  mares  actually  became  impregnated  by  the  west  wind 

without  copulation — 

"111*, 
Ore  orunes  versae  in  Zephyrum,  stant  rupibus  altis, 
Exceptantque  leves  auras  :  et  stepe  sine  villis 
Coiijiigiis  vento  gravidse,  mirabile  cHetu, 
Saxa  per  et  scopulos  et  depressas  convalles 
Diffugiunt;"! 

where  Heyne's  note  contains  references  to  passages  of  the  same 
import  in  Aristotle,  H.  A.  vi.  17  ;  Plin.  N.  H.  viii.  42 ;  and  ^1. 
N.A.w.  6. 

Ver.  183. — Dian,  golden-shafted  queen. 

Artemis  is  not  a  goddess  who  performs  any  prominent  part  in 
the  Iliad.  As  the  sister  of  Apollo,  her  elemental  significance  is  at 
once  determined  for  all  to  whom  the  idea  of  Apollo  has  acquired 
clearness.  If  Apollo  be  the  sun,  there  cannot  be  a  shadow  of  a 
doubt  that  Artemis  is  the  moon.  To  Homer,  however,  she  is  only 
the  celestial  huntress,  the  Trori'ta  S^yypwv  (xxi.  470),  a  function 
which  naturally  belongs  to  her  as  the  guardian  of  wild  beasts  who 
prowl  in  the  moonlight  (^sch.  Agam.  138,  and  //.  ix.  539),  and 
the  patron-goddess  of  hunters  who  are  engaged  in  the  capture  of 
such  animals  (v.  51).  It  is  in  this  capacity  that  the  epithet  KcXa- 
8eivq,  used  here  and  in  xxi.  511,  belongs  to  her.  In  the  ^eofxaxla 
she  appears  on  the  side  of  the  Trojans,  either  as  the  sister  of 
Apollo,  or  because  the  worship  of  Diana  in  various  shapes  (see 
Amazons,  p.  188,  supra)  was  widely  spread  in  Asia.  We  have  seen 
how,  as  the  female  eKaros  or  far-darting  power,  though  Homer 
never  calls  her  by  that  name,  she  was  looked  on  by  the  Greeks  as 
the  cause  of  all  sudden  and  inexplicable  deaths  (p.  189,  supra).  Of 
her  personal  appearance  there  is  no  description  in  the  Iliad  ;  but 
in  the  Odyssey  she  is  the  ideal  of  a  stately  and  well-knit  queenly 
woman ;  hence  the  fine  comparison  of  Nausicaa  in  that  poem  (vi. 
102-109)  to  the  heavenly  huntress  on  Erymauthus  or  Taygetus, 
chasing  the  flying  deer  with  the  rural  nymplis  in  her  train,  above 

'  Virgil,  Georg.  in.  272. 


BOOK  XVI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  337 

whom,  towering  with  face  and  forehead,  the  goddess  peers  majestic. 
The  details  of  dress  and  accoutrement  belonging  to  Artemis  will 
be  found  supplied  in  every  European  museum  or  collection  of 
Greek  casts,  where  Diana,  with  hunting-boots  and  succinct  tunic, 
is  one  of  the  most  familiar  figures. 

With  regard  to  the  epithet  xpi'o'^'^a'^ciTos,  it  is  applied  to  vari- 
ous goddesses  by  Pindar  {01.  vi.  177 ;  Nem.  v.  65,  vi.  02),  in 
which  passages  its  meaning  may  be  doubtfixl ;  but  surely  with 
regard  to  Artemis  we  cannot  be  wrong  in  considering  it  equivalent 
to  rj  ■)(^pvctS.  jSeXr]  ixovora,  as  the  scholiast  has  it.  A  spindle  (■^Aa- 
KOLTTf])  and  an  arrow  are  like  enough  in  every  respect,  except  in  use, 
to  have  been  expressed  by  the  same  word. 

Ver.  228. —  With  the  virtue  of  sulphur  cJeatised  it. 

So,  in  Od.  XXII.  481,  Ulysses  fumigates  the  hall  of  his  house  with 
sulphur  after  the  murder  of  the  suitors. 

Ver.  234. — Dodona,  tvhere  ivintry  temp)ests  war. 

Dodona  was  unquestionably  the  oldest  and  most  famous  seat 
of  the  Pelasgi,  or  most  ancient  Hellenes  (Herod,  ii.  52)  ;  was,  in 
fact,  as  sacred  a  centre  of  Pelasgic  faith  as  Delphi  became  after- 
wards, or  as  Rome  now  is  to  the  Romish  Church.  In  the  moral 
machinery  of  the  Iliad,  its  importance,  implied  in  this  single  pass- 
sage,  is  not  secondary  ;  for  the  Jove  of  Dodona  was  evidently  the 
highest  celestial  Power  whom  Achilles  could  invoke  in  one  of  the  most 
critical  moments  of  his  life  ;  and  this  hero  represents  the  Thessalian 
element  in  the  Trojan  war,  the  rupture  between  which  and  the 
Argive  element  represented  by  Agamemnon,  creates  the  action  of 
the  poem.  It  is  therefore  of  no  small  interest  to  endeavour  to  fix 
its  site,  at  least  approximately ;  and  this  has  happily  been  done  in 
such  a  masterly  manner  by  Colonel  Leake  (iv.  p.  151),  that  a  very 
succinct  statement  will  here  suffice  to  make  the  nature  and  value 
of  the  evidence  intelligible  to  any  person  of  sound  understanding. 
The  following  are  the  salient  points  of  the  induction  : — (1.)  Dodona 

VOL.  IV.  Y 


338  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 

was  certainly  in  the  country  of  the   Thesprotians  or  Molossians, 
or  on  a  certain  border  land  common  to  both  (^sch.  Prom.  850  ; 
Eustath.  in  Iliad,  ii.  750).     (2.)  The   geographical  sequence   of 
the    subdivisions    of   Epirus    is    clear  from    Scylax,   who.    sailing 
southward  from  the  Illyrians,  comes  first  to   the  Oricians,  behind 
the  Acroceraunian  promontory,  and  then  in  order  to  the  Chaones, 
the  Thesprotians,    in   whose    country    is   the    river    Acheron,  the 
Cassopi,  and  the  Molossi.     These  last  he  describes  as  at  the  ex- 
treme south  of  the  country,  running  along  the  north  coast  of  the 
Ambracian  Gulf,  and  then  stretching   inland.     Now,  if  they  did 
stretch  inland,  and  must  border  on  the  Thesprotians,  with  whom 
they  were  often  confounded,  they  must  have  run  up  on  the  west 
side  of  the  Arachthus,   towards   Joannina,  for  there  is   no  other 
place  for  them.     (3.)  Aristotle  says  {Meteor,  xiv.  1)  that  the  most 
ancient  Hellas  was  in  the  region  of  Dodona   and  the   Achelous. 
The   Achelous    is    mentioned    in  the   same   connexion  by  Strabo 
(i.  29).     (4.)  It  is  expressly  stated  by  Pindar  {Nem.  iv.  86)  that 
Dodona  was  far  inland,  in  the  extreme  east,  or  highest  mountain 
region  of  Epirus,  where  it  borders  on  Thessaly ;  and  this  is  con- 
firmed by  Polybius,  who,  in  describing  a  raid  of  the  ^tolians  into 
Dodona,   during  the  second  Punic  war,  says   that  their   general, 
Dorimachus,  led  them  up  (ei's  tous  avw  toVovs  x'ijs  'Hirdpov)  into 
the  highlands  of  Epirus,  and  there  plundered  and  razed  to   the 
ground  the  famous  temple  of  the  Dodonean  Jove.     To  this  high- 
land situation  the  epithet  Suo-xet/^epov  {wintry)  in  Homer  alludes. 
(5.)  More  minutely  still,  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  {A.  R.  i.  51), 
in  his  prose  account  of  the  voyage  of  ^neas,  which  Virgil  gives 
poetically    in    ^Eneid    in.,    with    an    exactness    of    topographical 
detail    evidently   meant  to   show  his    knowledge    of   the    ground, 
distinctly  states  that  the  noble  Trojan  refugee  travelled  up   the 
country   from   Arta    in    two   days  to    Dodona,    and   from    thence 
in    four    days  to    Buthrotiun,    opposite    the    north-east    corner  of 
Corfu.     (6.)  Again,  we  are  informed  by  Hesiod  (//■.  149,  Goet- 
tling  80)  that  Dodona  was  situated  in  a  rich  district  full  of  fine 
pastures : — 


BOOK  XVI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  339 

"Rich  in  meadowy  plains  the  Hellopian  country  extendeth  ; 
Rich  in  pasture  for  sheep,  and  horned  kine  heavy-gaited  ; 
Here  the  tribes  of  men  have  pitched  their  dwellings  uncounted  ; 
Here  they  number  their  flocks,  and  rejoice  in  the  wealth  of  their  cattle  ; 
Here  Dodona  stands  at  the  utmost  end  of  the  country, 
Shrine  beloved  of  Jove,  where  deep  from  the  bole  of  the  oak-tree 
Cometh,  revered  by  men,  the  oracular  voice  of  Kronion." 

(7.)  Strabo  (vii.  328)  expressly  mentions  that  there  were  marshes 
beside  the  temple,  and  that  it  was  situated  below  a  mountain  called 
Tomarus,  or  Tmarus.  The  name  of  this  mountain,  Leake  testi- 
fies, is  still  preserved  in  certain  villages  in  the  vicinity  ;  and  from 
beneath  the  mountain  the  same  cold  fountains  still  flow,  of  which 
Theopompus  wrote  (Pliny,  N.  H.  iv.  praef.)  Now,  whosoever  will 
carefully  consider  all  these  indications  of  the  site  of  Dodona,  will 
find  that  they  converge  upon  the  vale  of  Joannina,  so  famous  in 
recent  history  by  the  despotism  of  that  intellectual  tiger,  Ali  Pasha, 
as  certainly  as  the  well-concerted  movements  of  the  forces  of  a 
great  strategist  do  upon  the  point  where  a  great  battle  is  to  be 
fought.  The  traveller  going  inland  due  east  from  Corfu,  with  his 
eye  on  Mount  Pindus,  the  Ben  Muicdhui  of  the  Thessalian  Alps, 
will  come  right  upon  this  beautiful  valley,  extending  from  north  to 
south  in  length  about  twenty  miles,  and  in  breadth  about  seven 
at  its  broadest  part.  In  the  middle  of  this  valley  there  is  a  large 
lake,  or  rather  two  lakes,  in  the  rainy  season  flowing  into  one ;  and 
right  above  it  hangs  the  high  mountain  of  Mitzikeli,  2500  feet  above 
the  lake — one  of  the  grand  satellites  of  the  snow-capt  Pindus,  which 
is  seen  glittering  in  the  far  east.  And  not  only  the  situation,  but 
the  climatal  phenomena  of  this  district  answer  the  conditions  of 
the  classical  authorities  ;  for  the  pastures  of  the  meadow-land  are 
even  now  worthy  of  the  praises  of  the  old  Boeotian  theologer,  and 
the  frequent  thunder-storms,  caused  by  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
lofty  mountain,  make  it  evident  why  the  lofty-pealing  spouse  of 
Here  received  from  the  devout  Pelasgi  a  peculiarly  awful  reve- 
rence in  this  place. 

These  proofs,  it  will  be  observed,  relate  only  to  the  Dodonean 
district,  not  to   the  exact  site  of  the  temple,  which  must  remain 


340  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 

unknown  till  chance  or  scientific  invasion  shall  bring  to  light  that 
witness  of  ancient  stones  which  is  now  altogether  wanting.  In  the 
main  result,  three  independent  investigators,  who  have  personally 
surveyed  the  ground,  substantially  agree  ;  besides  Leake,  Pouque- 
ville  [Voi/cKje  dans  la  Grece,  deuxieme  edit.,  Paris,  1826,  vol.  i.), 
who  visited  this  country  on  an  embassy  to  Ali  Pasha  from  Napoleon 
the  Great,  and  Von  Hahn  [Albanesische  Studien,  Jena,  1854).  This 
last  author,  who  has  done  more  for  opening  up  Albania  than  any 
modern  writer  that  I  know,  says  that  Joannina  is  the  social  centre 
of  gravity  of  Epirus,  and  its  natural  metropolis ;  and  the  numerous 
tribes  of  Pelasgi,  who  at  one  period  peopled  this  now  desolate 
country,  could  not  fail  to  appreciate  the  importance  of  such  a  situ- 
ation. The  only  link  wanting  in  the  chain  of  evidence  here  given 
is  the  lake,  which  was  certainly  as  well  worthy  of  mention  as  the 
marshes  ;  but  the  absence  of  this  point  proves  nothing,  when  we 
consider  that  all  the  notices  of  Dodona  in  ancient  writers  are 
general  and  incidental,  and  nothing  like  a  detailed  description  is 
anywhere  attempted.  Of  the  present  condition  of  Joannina,  with 
its  white  houses,  and  tapering  minarets  embedded  in  the  rich 
greenery  of  grass  and  garden  and  cypress  tree,  a  pleasant  picture 
is  given  in  The  Eastern  Shores  of  the  Adriatic  in  1863,  from  the 
lively  and  spirited  pen  of  the  Viscountess  Strangford. 

After  all  this  array  of  testimony  with  respect  to  the  earliest  seat 
of  Pelasgic  worship — the  cradle,  so  to  speak,  of  the  future  Olympian 
Zeus, — the  reader  will  no  doubt  be  surprised  to  hear  that,  according 
to  Homer  himself  in  the  catalogue  (ii.  750),  Dodona  was  not  in 
Thesprotia,  to  the  west,  but  somewhere  in  Thessaly,  to  the  east  of 
Pindus.  Now,  the  most  obvious  and  natural  way  to  meet  this  diffi- 
culty appears  to  me  just  simply  to  suppose  that  the  Ionian  minstrel, 
who  put  the  statistics  of  the  catalogue  into  verse,  being  ignorant 
of  the  wild  country  beyond  the  Pindus,  had  slumped  the  west  of 
Thessaly  and  the  east  of  Epirus  into  one  wintry  mountain  district, 
and  fixed  the  world-famous  Dodona  there.  For  Dodona,  in  those 
days,  we  must  bear  in  mind,  was  just  as  famous  as  Delphi  became 
afterwards ;  and  an  Ionian  minstrel  could  not  be  ignorant  of  its 


BOOK  XVI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  341 

general  whereabouts,  though  he  might  well  be  exonerated  from 
exhibiting  any  great  accuracy  of  topographical  knowledge.  And  a 
strong  confirmation  of  this  view  is  derived  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
just  in  this  region  of  the  extreme  west  of  Greece — in  the  districts  of 
Pylos  and  Ithaca — that  a  vagueness  in  Homer's  topographical  ideas 
has  been  detected,  which,  by  way  of  a  foil  to  his  general  accuracy, 
his  greatest  admirers  might,  with  a  reasonable  grace,  be  willing  to 
admit.  But  if  any  one's  strong  reverence  for  the  poet  should 
prevent  him  from  taking  this  view,  he  may  say,  with  perfect  plausi- 
bility, that  the  Pelasgi,  in  their  progress  westward,  had  first  settled 
in  Thessaly,  had  an  oracle  of  Dodona  there,  and,  when  driven  be- 
yond Pindus,  carried  both  the  name  and  the  worship  along  with 
them ;  for  which  view  Welcker  stoutly  contends  (g.  I.  i.  199),  and 
Gladstone  (i.  106).  As  to  the  Selli,  who  officiated  in  this  moun- 
tain region  as  priests  and  diviners,  the  less  that  is  said  of  them  the 
better;  for  we  know  nothing  certainly  about  them  beyond  what  these 
lines  indicate.  Those  who  feel  themselves  safe  to  speculate  on  such 
points,  may  follow  Creuzer  [Symbol,  iv.  280).  On  the  vocal  oaks 
(Soph.  Track.  1166),  and  the  fateful-sounding  caldrons  {Suid.  in 
AwSwvatov  ^aAK€tov),  and  the  sacred  lots  (Cic.  Div.  i.  34),  we  need 
not  enlarge.  On  the  religion  of  the  oldest  Pelasgi,  see  Gerhard, 
Myth.  131,  supra,  p.  119,  and  Welcker,  g.  I.  i.  p.  199.  If,  as  our 
authorities  plainly  indicate,  Jove  and  Earth,  and  the  phallic  Hermes, 
were  the  most  prominent  objects  of  Pelasgic  worship,  these  three 
gods,  representing,  as  they  did,  the  vital  Energies  and  influences 
of  Sky  and  Earth,  and  the  miraculous  working  of  the  all-plastic 
creative  power  in  generation,  were  certainly  the  most  suitable  for 
a  primitive  agricultural  people,  cultivating  fertile  jilains. 

Ver.  328. — Amisodarus,  loho  nursed  the  dire  Chimera^ 

"  En  particulam  mythi  de  chimaera  quam  aliunde  ignorabamus, 
nee  ipse  Homero  suo  loco  (vi.  179)  memoravit.  Apparct  itaque  et 
hoc  exemplo  mythum  jam  ab  aliis  disertis  pertractatum  fuisse,  ut 
ille  inde  quae  opus  essent  peteret  et  obiter  attingeret"  (Heyne). 
This  is  an  important  observation,  and  goes  deep  into  the  true  prin- 


342  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 

ciples  of  Homeric  criticism.  The  additional  circumstance  here 
mentioned  does  not  prove  indeed  absolutely  that  there  ever  was 
such  a  creature  as  the  Chimera  ;  but  it  proves  that  the  traditions 
about  it  were  floating  elements  of  popular  belief,  and  in  that  belief 
accompanied  with  such  circumstances  of  place  and  person  as  are 
wont  to  attach  to  real  events.  I  have  already  shown  (p.  187, 
supra)  on  what  foundation  of  physical  fact  the  legend  of  the  Chimera 
seems  to  have  been  based ;  and,  if  we  wiU  be  curious  in  regard  to 
the  present  passage,  we  shall  say  that  the  fountain  of  fire  in  Lycia 
must  have  shown  peculiar  activity  in  the  reign  of  the  monarch  here 
named. 

Ver.  407. — A  sacred  fish. 

Why  the  fish  is  called  "  sacred,"  as  the  ancients  did  not  know,  I 
do  not  see  that  we  have  any  means  of  deciding.  On  the  whole,  I 
am  inclined  to  think  with  Heyne  that  it  is  only  a  general  epithet 
of  admiration,  like  S^eiov  (comp.  xvii.  464,  and  xxiv.  681),  a  fine 
fish,  a  large  fish,  a  glorious  fellow,  a  thumper,  a?  Stoddart,  our 
poetical  angler,  sings ;  but  in  a  doubtful  matter,  and  also  for  the 
sake  of  the  characteristic,  I  translate  literally. 

Ver.  438-438. 

It  gives  us  a  very  poor  notion  of  the  ancient  Homeric  critics  to 
find,  from  the  scholiast,  that  Zenodotus  rejected  this  coUoquy  be- 
tween Jove  and  Juno  for  the  reason  that  the  queen  of  heaven  is 
here  represented  as  being  in  Ida  at  a  time  when  a  clever  lawyer, 
arguing  from  xv.  79,  might  easily  have  proved  an  aJihi.  This 
sort  of  criticism  is  contemptible.  Such  critics  would  scan  a  pan- 
orama with  microscopes,  and  take  a  plain  old  minstrel's  honest  words 
to  task  as  a  special  pleader  dissects  the  evidence  of  an  unfavour- 
able witness.  Of  course  Heyne,  with  his  transcendental  Grermau 
acuteness,  sees  an  '•  adsutus  jMnnus"  here  as  in  a  thousand  other 
places.  The  ancient  Greeks  themselves,  who  had  the  happiness  to 
live  in  an  age  before  grammarians  began  to  stuff  the  libraries  with 
erudite  impertinence,  saw  no  patch  in  the  passage ;  for  Plato,  in  a 


BOOK  XVI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  3-i3 

well-knowu  place  {Rep.  in.  888  b),  quotes  it,  and  lauieuts,  iu  his 
usual  somewhat  pedantic  fashion,  that  the  Homeric  Jupiter  does 
not  here  talk  sufficiently  like  an  Academic  philosopher.  He  might 
have  made  the  same  criticism  in  a  thousand  and  one  utterances  of 
the  Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament  and  been  equally  in  the  wrong. 
Cicero,  also,  when  he  quotes  this  passage  {Divin.  ii.  10)  is  evidently 
nodding;  for  Jove  does  not  here  ''  lament"  that  he  is  not  able  to 
save  Sarpedon  '■^contra  fatum"  but  he  only  doubts  whether  he 
shall  do  it.  The  passage  plainly  implies  that  it  was  in  the  Thun- 
derer's power,  had  he  pleased,  to  make  /xoipa  subservient  to  his 
will. 

Ver.  481.  —  Tlie  tough  and  musculous  heart. 

What  dSivov  means,  as  an  epithet  of  Kyp,  I  think  can  admit  of 
no  doubt.  The  word  is  fully  discussed  by  Heyne  on  ii.  87,  and  by 
L.  and  S.  Most  of  the  translators,  however,  seem  to  shy  the  word. 
Chapman,  who  has  more  courage  than  the  most  of  our  English 
translators,  gives — 

"  Where  life's  strings  close  about  the  solid  heart." 
But  this  is  most  unfortunate  ;  for  the  heart  can  no  more  be  called 
solid  than  a  bottle  when  full  of  port  wine.  I  have  ventured  on  the 
revival  of  the  good  old  English  word,  "musculous,"  which  I  hope 
will  meet  the  approval  of  the  judicious.  Hayman  (Od.  i.  App.  a) 
translates  aStvov  Krjp  "  restlessly  heating ;"  but  for  this  I  confess  I 
cannot  see  the  slightest  warrant. 

Ver.  488. — A  fienj-souled  stout-hearted  ball. 

Whatever  might  be  thought  of  the  word  aWwv  in  xv.  690,  I 
think  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  present  passage,  followed 
by  fieyddvixo?,  this  epithet  must  be  understood  in  the  sense  in  which 
Plato  evidently  uses  the  word  in  the  passage  of  the  RepuUic,  viii. 
559  D.  So  both  Yoss  and  Donner,  "  fem-ig  vnd  stolz."  Those 
who  will  have  it  that  colour  is  meant — though  I  think  Plato  knew 
better — should  avoid  Chapman's  "yellow  bull"  as  much  as  Niw- 


Si-i  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVI. 

man's  "  flame-hued,"  and  be  content  with  the  red-brown  of  the 
well-known  Devonshire  cattle. 

Ver.  491. — Dijinrj  spoke  with  eager  breath. 

With  regard  to  fieveacvw,  Passow  was  certainly  right  in  taking 
Heyne's  hint,  who  translates,  '^  indignante  ariima  gemehat."  The 
word  expresses  intense  mental  action,  and  not  merely  hodihj  gasp- 
ing, as  L.  and  S.  give  it,  or  eAeiTro^/'vxet,  according  to  the  stupid 
gloss  of  some  of  the  ancient  grammarians.  Voss  has  "  muthigen 
Geist  aitsathmend  ;"  Donner,  more  strongly,  "  zornschnauhend." 

Ver.  567. — Now  no  more  they  felt  their  master's  rein. 
I  prefer  the  reading  of  Aristarchus,   AtVei/  (i.e.,  i\eL(f)dt](rav — 
kpi][xw6q(Tav),  because  the  previous  verses  contain  no  mention  of 
the  breaking  loose  of  the  horses  from  the  traces. 

Ver.  372. — Budeum's  pileasant  town. 

This  town  is  not  mentioned  in  the  catalogue,  but  Steph.  Byz., 
who  spells  it  Budea,  says  it  was  in  Magnesia. 

Ver.  614-15. 
These  two  verses  do  not  appear  in  many  of  the  mss,,  may  have 
been  taken  from  xiii.  504,  and  are  at  all  events  useless  here.     I 
omit. 

Ver.  689-690. 
These  two  lines  occur  again  in  xvii.  177,  where  they  are  neces- 
sary and  natural.     Here  they  are  superfluous,  and  not  particularly 
suitable.     I  eject. 

Ver.  747. — A  feast  of  oysters. 
The  mention  of  oysters  in  this  one  place  of  Homer,  furnished  to 
the  microscopic  ancients  an  occasion  of  debating  curiously  on  the 
diet  of  the  Homeric  heroes,  who  commonly  eat  nothing  but  roasted 


BOOK  XVI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  345 

flesh.  It  was  also  argued  by  the  x^p'''C'^^'''^'^j  o"*  those  who  attri- 
buted the  authorship  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  to  separate  poets, 
that  in  the  Hiad  only  flesh  is  eaten  by  the  heroes,  but  in  the 
Odyssey  also  fish  (xii.  3.  30).  But  as  Heyne  says,  "  tota  haec 
disputatio^"  however  interesting  to  idle  grammarians,  "  vana  et 
inanis  est;"  for  the  poet  was  not  bound  to  mention  all  the  things 
that  the  heroes  ate  ;  and  neither  the  accidental  mention  nor  the 
accidental  omission  of  certain  tilings  in  his  verses  authorizes  the 
conclusions  which  were  often  so  hastily  drawn  from  his  text.  If 
certain  of  our  modern  theologians  would  apply  a  wisdom  of  this 
kind  to  the  Christian  Scriptures,  they  would  save  themselves  some 
idle  disputation. 

Ver.  765. —  Slender  cornel. 

Tavv4>\oios  is  a  word  that  has  puzzled  me  not  a  little.  After 
much  consideration,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  ravvc^Aotos  is 
just  a  poetical  sounding  word  for  ravads.  The  cornel  has  long 
straight  slender  branches  shooting  up  spear-like ;  and  a  long- 
branched  tree  is  necessarily  also  long-barked,  the  one  being  the 
outside  of  the  other.  If  a  man  has  long  legs  he  must  also  have 
long  trousers ;  and  a  long-trousered  loon  will  be  a  long-legged 
loon. 

Ver.  776. — kcito  fieyas  jueyaXwcrrt,  XeXaa-fievos  iTnTOcrvvdoiv. 

The  eff"ect  of  this  line  repeated  in  xviii.  26,  and  Od.  xxiv.  40, 
depends  on  four  things — (1.)  the  dactylic  movement,  though  it 
must  be  confessed  a  spondaic  verse,  in  the  circumstances  might 
have  been  made  even  more  efi'ective  ;  (2.)  on  the  alliteration  of 
the  second  and  third  words ;  (3.)  on  the  repetition  of  the  same 
root,  /^eya,  in  juxtaposition  ;  (4.)  on  the  fine  sound  of  the  long  vowel 
to ;  (5.)  on  the  fine  musical  close  awv — so  common  in  Homer — of 
the  last  word.  Of  course,  such  a  combination  of  efi'ective  rhythmi- 
cal elements  can  scarcely  be  looked  for  in  a  translator.  I  gave 
myself  some  trouble,  and  have  done  my  best. 


3-4G  NOTES  TU  TllK  ILIA1>.  BOOK  XVI. 

Vrk.  808. — Evjj/iorhus,  Fa7it/ioiis'  mn. 

This  is  the  well-known  person  whoso  fleshly  hull  Pytliagoras  said 
that  he  wore  at  Troy,  before  he  afterwards  was  born  in  Sanios 
as  a  philosopher  (Philost.  Her.  p.  317  ;  Kaiser).  He  dies  in  the 
next  book,  slain  by  Menelaus  (xvii.  1-60),  who  afterwards  sus- 
pended his  shield  as  a  votive  oifering  to  Hero  in  her  famous  temple 
near  Mycena?  (Pans.  ii.  17.  3). 

Ver.  856-7. — In  lifers  hisiy  prime  he  joined  the  pithless  dead. 

This  passage  along  with  others  is  quoted  by  Plato  in  the  open- 
ing chapter  of  the  third  book  of  the  JiepuhJic,  where  he  protests 
against  the  extremely  uninviting  aspect  of  aflairs  in  Hades,  as  set 
forth  by  the  great  national  poet.  In  that  quotation,  or  in  the 
great  majority  of  Mss.  and  editions,  dvSporrJTa  is  the  reading, 
which,  along  with  Wolf  and  Spitzner,  I  should  not  have  a  moment's 
hesitation  in  ejecting  for  aSpoTijra.  Bekker  has  inserted  dperrjTa 
for  aperr^v.  Irving  in  his  Life  of  Moor  tells  a  curious  story,  how 
that  elegant  scholar  meant  to  have  made  this  change  in  the  cele- 
brated Foulis  edition  of  Homer  which  he  superintended,  but  his 
intentions  were  frustrated. 


BOOK  XVII. 


Ver.  1. — llcnelaus,  dear  to  Mars. 

The  ballads  of  the  Trojan  cycle  would  justly  have  been  felt  to 
want  completeness,  if  there  had  been  no  canto  dedicated  to  the 
special  glory  of  the  brother  of  Agamemnon,  the  man  to  avenge  the 
violated  sanctities  of  whose  family  the  thousand-masted  fleet  had 
hoisted  sail.  Menelaus  accordingly  receives  his  aptcneta  in  this 
book ;  and  no  more  noble  work  arising  out  of  the  wrath  of  Achilles 
could  have  been  assigned  to  him,  than  fighting  for  tlio  dead  body 


BOOK  XVII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  347 

of  that  hero's  dearly-beloved  friend.  The  character  of  the  king 
of  Sparta  in  the  Iliad  is  well  marked.  In  the  graphic  passage 
III.  213  he  is  described  as  a  direct,  blunt  soldier,  speaking  to  the 
point,  but  incapable  of  eloquence.  In  contrast  with  his  brother 
(vi.  55j,  he  appears  particularly  merciful  and  gentle-hearted.  His 
forwardness  to  accept  the  challenge  (ni.  97),  and  his  modesty  in 
yielding  the  prize  (xxni.  602),  speak  equally  in  his  favour.  We 
feel  that  the  man  who  so  behaves  is  a  perfect  gentleman.  Of  his 
fortunes  after  the  action  of  the  Iliad  closes,  a  full  account  is  given 
in  the  third  and  fourth  books  of  the  Odyssey.  He  was  one  of  the 
heroes  who  shared  in  the  danger  and  the  glory  of  the  novel 
stratagem  of  the  wooden  horse.  He  left  Troy  early,  carrying  back 
Helen  as  the  prize  of  victory,  but  was  driven  by  a  storm,  when 
rounding  the  Malean  promontory,  right  upon  the  coast  of  Egypt ; 
and,  after  wandering  about  in  various  parts  of  the  Mediterranean, 
found  his  way  to  the  hoUow  vale  of  the  Eurotas,  in  the  eighth  year. 
Here  he  lived  in  splendour  and  blessedness  till  his  death,  if  indeed 
he  died  at  aU,  and  was  not  rather  translated  to  Elysium,  as  old 
Proteus,  the  sea-god,  prophesied.  At  all  events,  he  received  divine 
honours  at  Therapnae,  along  with  Helen  (Paus.  iii.  19.  9). 

Ver.  4. — And  o'er  the  dead  sore-grieving  stood. 

These  combats  for  the  dead  body  of  a  fallen  champion  are  amongst 
the  most  characteristic  elements  of  a  Homeric  battle.  They  are 
often  represented  on  the  monuments,  and  on  the  ^gina  marbles 
form  a  fit  subject  for  the  decoration  of  one  of  the  pediments  (Over- 
beck,  Bildwerke,  Plate  xxiii. ;  Miiller,  Denkmdhler,  vi.  vii.  viii.) 

Ver.  31-60. 

These  beautiful  verses,  relating  to  the  sad  fate  of  his  previous 
Trojan  self,  Pythagoras  used  frequently  to  sing  to  the  lyre 
(Porphyr.  Vit.  Pythag.  26).     Chapman  is  excellent  here. 

Ver.  168. — And  toe  that  Icing  should  bravely  bring,  etc. 
(rlaucus  is  evidently  ignorant  that  the  body  nf  Sarpedon  had 


348  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVII. 

been  conveyed  away  by  divine  interposition  ;  but  there  is  nothing 
in  this  ignorance,  under  the  circumstances,  to  make  men  put  on 
spectacles,  and  ask  curious  questions.  As  to  this  Lycian  hero  gene- 
rally, there  is  little  to  say  of  him  beyond  what  the  verses  of  the 
Iliad  contain.  He  survives  the  action  of  the  poem,  and  has  the 
honour  of  being  slain  by  Ajax  (Q.  Smyrn.  iii.  278.)  In  a  very 
rude  and  singular  Vulcian  vase,  he  appears  as  one  of  the  most 
eager  combatants  round  the  dead  body  of  Achilles  (Overbeck, 
BildwerJce,  Plate  xxiii.  1). 

Ver.  295. — The  immortal  mail  ivhich  gods  erst  gave  to  Peleus. 

This  was  one  of  the  presents  given  by  the  gods  to  Peleus  at  his 
famous  marriage  with  Thetis  (xviii.  82-5). 

Ver.  250. — Kings  ivho  eat  the  j^uhlic  bread. 

On  the  revenues  appropriated  to  the  ancient  Greek  kings,  sec 
Miiller,  Bar.  ii.  p.  110. 

Ver.  265. — rj'ioves  fSoowo-Lv  ipevyofJL€vrj<s  aAos  e^w. 

"  There  is  no  word  in  our  language  expressive  of  loud  sound,  at 
all  comparable  in  effect  to  the  Greek  (Soooio-cv."  So  Cowper,  re- 
ferring to  the  celebrity  of  this  line  among  the  ancients  (Aristot. 
Poet.  xxii. ;  Dion.  Hal.  De  Compos.  Verb,  xv.),  who  tell  a  story  (see 
Eustathius  and  the  scholiast)  how  Solon,  or  Plato,  or  both,  struck 
with  admiration  at  the  wonderful  imitative  effect  of  this  line,  threw 
away  their  own  poetical  attempts  in  despair,  and  betook  them- 
selves to  legislation  and  philosophy  !  Now,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  /3ottw  is  an  excellent  onomatopoetic  word,  and  the  particular 
form  of  it  that  occurs  in  this  line  even  better ;  but  I  am  much 
inclined  to  doubt  whether,  in  respect  of  imitative  power,  there  are 
not  many  more  effective  verses  in  the  Iliad  ;  as  I  think  it  also 
quite  certain  that  the  English  language  generally,  with  its  batteries 
of  masculine  monosyllables,  is  nmch  more  dramatic  in  respect  of 
sound  than  the  Greek,  and  other  terniinational  languages,  where 


BOOK  XVII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  340 

the  pictorial  significance  of  the  root  is  for  the  most  part  generally 
lost  in  the  broad  roll  of  the  accentuated  termination. 

Ver.  279. — Ajax  the  stoutest  soldier. 

Does  not  this  characteristic  of  so  well-known  a  character  as  Ajax 
now  is  to  us,  who  have  read  through  sixteen  books  of  a  long  epos, 
seem  to  indicate  that  the  fight  for  the  body  of  Patroclus  belonged 
originally  to  an  independent  ballad  ?  My  theory,  as  the  reader 
knows  from  the  Dissertations,  is,  that  the  difi"erent  parts  of  the  Iliad 
were  composed  in  the  first  place  for  independent  use,  and  there- 
fore are  not  subject  to  the  laws  of  that  criticism  which  generalizes 
the  rules  of  composition  followed  by  a  Virgil  and  a  Milton. 

Ver.  306. — Schedius,  best  of  Phocians. 

Schedius,  the  leader  of  the  Phocians,  was  honoured  highly  in 
his  native  country,  Polygnotus,  the  Raphael  of  Greek  art,  having 
given  him  a  place  in  his  grand  picture  of  Hades  in  the  Lesche  at 
Delphi.  Along  with  his  brother  also,  he  had  a  public  monument 
in  Anticyre  (Paus.  x.  30.  4.  and  36.  4). 

Ver.  446. — -for  tndi/  man  in  sorrows  doth  abound. 

Maxims  of  this  kind  demand  a  couplet,  which  Cowper  and 
Sotheby  give,  but  Chapman,  neither  here  nor  on  any  occasion. 
Pope  amplifies,  where  condensation  would  have  been  more  than 
usually  appropriate.  As  to  the  sentiment  (which  is  repeated  in 
Od.  XVIII.  130),  a  great  deal  too  much  has  been  made  of  it  by 
various  commentators.  Gladstone  (ii.  393)  sees  in  it  a  proof  of 
the  hopeless  view  of  human  destiny  which  is  characteristic  of  all 
heathenism  ;  but  occasional  remarks  of  this  kind  about  the  miseries 
which  flesh  is  heir  to  will  be  found  in  Christian  writers  everywhere 
as  well  as  in  heathen.  Pliny's  well-known  "  Nihil  neque  sdper- 
Bius  NEQUE  miserius  homine"'  is  as  true  at  the  present  day  as  it 
ever  was.  Man  is,  in  truth,  a  very  proud,  and  also  a  very  paltry 
creature  ;  but  his  pride  and  his  paltriness,  when  consecrated  to  the 
service  of  God,  and  willingly  subordinated  to  the  system  of  which 


350  NOTES  TO  THE  ILLID.  BOOK  XVII. 

each  individual  is  a  part,  are  capable  of  being  transmuted,  and  are 
constantly  being  transmuted,  into  the  noblest  heroism.  In  fact,  all 
strong  maxims  of  this  kind  are  only  one  aspect  of  the  truth,  and 
will  never  be  taken  for  the  whole,  except  by  men  who  are  labour- 
ing under  some  oppressive  morbid  sentiment  to  which  the  maxim 
applies,  or  who  are  eager  to  use  it  as  a  text  to  authorize  some 
favourite  theological  or  philosophical  theory.  It  is  amusing  to  see 
how  Mr.  Buckle  (Hist.  Civ.  ii.  392)  holds  up  his  hands  in  grave 
protestation  at  certain  Scottish  divines  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
for  having  slandered  human  nature  by  speaking  of  it  in  precisely 
the  same  terms  as  those  which  are  here  used  by  the  sunny-souled 
old  minstrel  of  Asiatic  Greece.  Was  Homer  a  Calvinist  ?  or  were 
the  Calvinists,  after  all,  not  such  grim  monsters  as  we  are  some- 
times led  to  imagine,  but  men  who  had  in  their  hands  no  doubt  a 
sword,  and  for  good  reasons,  but  blood  also  in  their  veins,  and  God's 
sunshine  in  their  souls,  and  who  loved  a  laugh  and  a  glass  of  good 
wine  as  well  as  any  Aristophanes  or  Socrates  that  ever  lived  ? 

Ver.  464. — The  sacred  chariot's  sill. 
"  Either  because  it  was  the  chariot  of  Achilles,  or  because  of  the 
horses  of  divine  brood  by  which  it  was  drawn"  {Schol.)     Compare 
above,  xvi.  407. 

Ver.  514. — Hoiv  it  fares,  lies  on  the  hiees  of  the  gods. 

The  phrase,  ^ewv  ei-  yovvaaL  Ktirai,  for  everything  depends  on 
the  divine  ivill,  evidently  arose  from  the  practice  of  suppliants 
clasping  the  knees  of  those  whose  protection  they  sought.  I  think 
it  better  to  retain  so  characteristic  a  phi-ase,  not  being  satisfied, 
even  with  Voss's, — 

"  Das  ruliet  im  Schoss  dcr  seligen  Gutter." 
Newman  has  "the  lap  of  destiny" — not  bad;   Cowper  "Heaven 
orders," — which  is  a  style  of  translation  utterly  to  be  reprobated, 
being  neither  Hellenic  nor  poetical. 

Ver.  547. — The  fair  jiurpureal  how. 
Both  here   and   in    552  I  have  thought   it  right  to  follow   the 


BOOK  XVII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  351 

Germans  in  retaining  the  vague  word  7ro/)</)t'peos.  Pope  changes 
the  word  in  the  second  line,  and  gives  "  livid,"  which  is  very 
questionable.  Cowper  takes  the  opposite  pole  of  the  significance 
of  that  singular  word,  and  gives  "  bright"  in  the  first  line, 
and  "  radiant"  in  the  second.  But  there  is  no  proof  that  Homer 
ever  uses  the  word  Trop^t'peos  in  the  same  way  in  which  it  was 
afterwards  used  by  Anacreon,  when  he  talks  of  the  "  purple  Aphro- 
dite." Besides,  as  Heyne  says,  "  ut  visum  excludant  dii,  non  Can- 
dida ac  pellucida  sed  nigricante  nube  uti  solent."  Shakspeare's 
"blue  bow"  (Tev^pest,  iv.  1),  has  been  quoted  as  an  analogy  to 
the  present  passage ;  a  passage,  by  the  way,  in  which  the  same 
celestial  arc  is  called  "  many-coloured,"  affording  a  fine  practi- 
cal lesson  to  minute,  spectacled  critics  of  a  certain  class,  how  little 
is  to  be  got  by  the  curious  logical  dissection  of  poetical  epithets  in 
all  cases. 

Ver.  671. — Full  mild  ivas  he,  I  luis,  and  hind. 

The  poet  has  followed  a  fine  instinct  of  nature,  as  well  as  the 
marked  indication  of  popular  tradition,  in  making  Patroclus  exactly 
the  reverse  of  Achilles  in  his  natural  character.  A  stronger  word 
than  iM€LXiyo<;  he  could  scarcely  have  used.  "Without  the  stimu- 
lating element  of  contrast,  love  is  apt  to  become  monotonous  and 
stupid.  In  regard  to  this  gentle  and  yet  valiant  hero  generally, 
there  is  little  to  teU  beyond  what  appears  on  the  face  of  the  Iliad. 
He  was  bound  to  Achilles  by  the  ties  of  blood  as  well  as  of  love 
(Schol.  Pind.  01.  ix.  107);  for,  though  an  Opuntian  by  birth,  he 
traced  his  lineage  by  two  links  to  ^gina,  the  mother  of  JEacus. 
He  assisted  Achilles  in  his  expedition  against  Telephus,  before  the 
descent  on  the  Troad  (Pind.  01.  ix.  105),  and  was  counted  a 
Myrmidon  (xviii.  10),  like  many  Germans  now-a-days,  who  live 
and  die  in  Russian  service,  and  pass  for  Russians.  In  the  memory 
of  the  Greek  people,  he  shared  the  honour  of  his  friend  Achilles 
(Paus.  III.  19.  11,  x.  30.  1).  At  Sigeum  he  was  worshipped  as  a 
hero  {kvay la- fj-aTo)  along  with  Achilles  and  Antilochus  (Str.  xiii. 
596). 


352  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVIII. 

Ver.  694. — Antilochus. 

The  intimate  relationship  into  which  the  son  of  Nestor,  here  and 
XVIII.  32,  is  brought  to  the  hero  of  the  poem,  at  the  moment  when 
the  turning-point  of  the  catastrophe  arrives,  gave  him  a  prominent 
place  in  all  the  traditions  about  the  Trojan  war.  We  have  him 
again  in  xxiii.  556,  specially  celebrated  as  the  beloved  companion 
of  Achilles.  He  died  at  Troy  by  the  hands  of  Memnon,  the  son  of 
Aurora  (Od.  iv.  186),  and  was  represented  by  Polygnotus,  in  his 
picture  of  Hades  at  Delphi,  in  a  scornful  attitude,  with  his  head 
and  face  buried  in  his  hands  (Pans.  x.  30.  1).  He  received  heroic 
honours  from  the  people  of  Ilium  (Str.  xiii.  596). 


BOOK   XVIII. 


Ver.  18-21. —  0  son  of  Pehus,  etc. 

These  lines,  whose  pathetic  brevity  has  been  celebrated  by 
Quinctilian  (x.  1),  are  admirably  criticised  by  Wilson  (Essays,  iv. 
p.  183).  To  him  I  am  indebted  for  the  important  remark,  that  in 
this  passage  the  name  of  Hector  must  stand  at  the  end  of  the  line. 
I  have  observed  that  the  collocation  of  words  is  one  of  the  points 
in  which  even  the  best  translators  are  apt  to  err.  A  man  who 
writes  from  free  unfettered  passion,  or  speaks  without  writing,  like 
Spurgeon,  under  the  direct  action  of  the  creative  imagination, 
never  puts  a  word  in  a  wrong  place.  A  translator  is  like  a  man 
who  reads  a  speech  written  by  another,  and  may,  without  careful 
study,  occasionally  misplace  the  emphasis,  or  forget  it  altogether. 

Ver.  34. — And  much  he  feared  lest  ivitli  sharp  steel  his  dear  throat 

he  might  sever. 

Professor   Greddes,   in   his   masterly  edition   of  Plato's  Phcedo, 


BOOK  XYIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  35 


o 


(p.  202),  remarks  that  no  case  of  suicide  occurs  either  in  Homer 
or  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that  the  hatred  of 
life  is  an  abnormal  feelino;  arisino;  as  a  reaction  from  excessive 
bodily  or  mental  stimulation,  not  likely  to  occur  frequently  in  the 
early  and  less  complex  ages  of  society. 

Ver.  39-49. 

The  Venetian  scholiast  a  tells  us  that  these  eleven  verses  were 
rejected  by  Zenodotus  as  being  more  in  the  manner  of  Hesiod 
{Tlieog.  240)  than  of  Homer,  who  mentions  his  Muses,  Eilithyife, 
Furies,  etc.  in  the  gross,  and  has  not  yet  achieved  the  complete- 
ness of  a  formal  catalogue.  I  have  a  very  strong  suspicion  that 
the  Ephesian  was  right ;  nevertheless  "  ut  in  re  lubrica  manum 
cohibendam  duxi,"  to  use  Spitzner's  judicious  language.  One 
does  not  like  to  cut  large  slices  out  of  an  ancient  poem,  where 
they  have  stood  as  integral  parts  of  a  traditional  whole  for  more 
than  two  thousand  years. 

The  names  of  the  sisters  of  Thetis  here  given  are  all  significant, 
and  maybe  translated  as  follows  : — (1.)  The  sea-green^  or  sea-hright ; 
(2.)  the  hloommg ;  (3.)  the  wave-receiver;  (4.)  the  Nereid  of  the 
isle  ;  (5.)  the  Nereid  of  the  cave  ;  (6.)  the  runner  ;  (7.)  the  briny  ; 
(8.)  the  ivave-racer ;  (9.)  the  Nereid  of  the  rocky  shore;  (10.) 
of  the  salt  marshes;  (11.)  the  honeyed  ;  (12.)  the  shouter?  (13.) 
running  on  both  sides;  (14.)  glorious,  s'plendid  ;  (15.)  the  giver? 
(16.)  the  first  ;  (17.)  the  bringer  ;  (18.)  the  2'>owerfid  one  ;  (19.) 
the  receiver  ;  (20.)  the  surrounder  ;  (21.)  of  the  beautiful  husband  ; 
(22.)  the  giver ;  (23.)  all  voice  ;  (24.)  the  milk-^vhite ;  (25.)  the 
infallible  ;  (26.)  the  truthfid  ;  (27.)  queen  of  beauty ;  (28.)  the 
famous;  (29.)  wedded  to  voice;  (30.)  queen  of  voice?  (31.)  the 
shiner?  (S2.)  mountain-rusher  ?  (33.)  the  .srt?if?y. 

Of  these  names,  Nos.  25  and  26  refer  to  the  prophetic  power 
supposed  to  reside  in  Nereus,  Proteus,  and  other  sea-gods. 

Ver.  109,  110. — Wrath  that  like  honey  stoeetly  slides,  etc. 
I  do  not  think  that  the    mixture    of  metaphors   is  particularly 
VOL.  IV.  Z 


354  NOTES  TO  THK  ILIAD.  BuoK  Will. 

happy,  whereby  houey  ends  in  smoke  ;  but  the  reader  must  blame 
the  poet,  not  me. 

Ver.  141. 

Your  lioanj  sire,  who  dwells  in  the  hroacl  deep-hosomed  tide. 

Nereus,  the  father  of  Thetis,  is  rarely  mentioned  in  Homer,  and 
always  under  the  familiar  designation  of  the  Old  Man  of  the  Sea 
(i.  358 ;  Od.  XXIV.  58).  This  was  his  general  title,  for  we  find  it 
not  only  in  Hesiod  (TJieog.  233), 

"Then  to  Pontus  was  born  liis  elilest  son,  the  prophetic, 
Truth-declaring  old  man  ;  for  so  they  delight  to  call  him. 
Nereus,  the  truthful  and  mild  ;   for  never  in  heart  he  forgetteth 
Judgment,  and  righteous  doom  with  gentle  word  he  declaretii," 

and  among  the  people  of  Gythium  in  Sparta  (Paus.  iii.  21.  8), 
but  the  exact  same  words  are  applied  to  Proteus  in  Od.  iv.  384. 
See  also  the  image  of  Nereus  with  hoary  hair  and  long-pointed 
beard  in  a  Vulcian  vase,  Brit.  Mtiseum,  No.  671.  One  easily 
conceives  why  the  ocean,  like  the  mountains,  should  be  spoken  of 
as  ancient,  as  indeed,  no  doubt,  both  water  and  earth  are  much 
older  than  ephemeral  man  ;  but  why  the  sea-gods  should  be  thought 
prophetic,  unless  it  be  that  old  age  and  long  experience  bring 
insight,  is  not  so  clear.  The  word  Nereus  (E.  M.  vapov)  means 
water,  vepo  now  in  the  common  usage  of  the  spoken  language  for 

Ver.  219. — A  shriJJ-fongued  trumjjet. 

This  is  the  only  passage  in  the  Iliad  where  crdXiny^  occurs. 
The  corresponding  verb  is  used  in  a  poetical  simile  (xxi.  387). 
From  this  the  careful  scholiasts  take  occasion  to  observe,  that 
though  Homer  knew  the  trumpet  as  an  instrument,  he  knew  also 
that  it  was  not  generally  used  by  the  heroes  in  the  Trojan  war. 
The  ancients  attributed  its  invention  to  the  Etruscans  (see  Smith's 
Diet.  Avf.  Art.  Tuba;  Midler,  Etrusker,  i.  397). 

Yei!.  249. — Tlien  rose  Polydamas,  Panthoas'  son. 
Polydamas,  the  son  of  Panthous,  and  the  brother  of  Euphorbus. 


HOOK  XVIIT.  NOTES  TO  THK  IMAD.  355 

appears  pvoniinently  here  and  elsewhere  in  the  Iliad  (xi.  57,  xii. 
60,  210,  xiir,  7'25,  xiv.  449),  as  the  prudent  adviser  of  Hector, 
who,  however,  often  follows  his  own  impetuous  courses,  and  is 
forced  to  lament  his  heroic  imprudence  when  it  is  too  late  (xxii. 
10),  I  do  not  think  that  the  words  in  ver.  250  imply  that  he  was 
a  professional  frnvris,  but  only  a  man  of  uncommon  sagacity. 
Helenus  is  the  Trojan  soothsayer. 

Vbr.  251. — In  one  flight  both  greeted  mortal  light. 

Some  of  the  ancients  quoted  this  verse  to  prove  that  Homer  knew 
astrology  !  These  men  found  everything  in  Homer,  as  Hebrew 
scholars  of  a  certain  school  used  to  find  the  whole  philosophy  of 
Newton  in  the  fii'st  chapter  of  Genesis.  There  is  no  nonsense  like 
learned  nonsense — 

"  And  many  a  stupid  boy  at  school 
Might  langli  at  his  master,  the  learned  t'onl  !  " 

Ver.  382. — Fair  Charis  of  the  shining  snood. 

No  deities  are  more  characteristically  Greek  than  the  Graces, 
and  accordingly  we  find  their  worship  prominent  in  the  oldest  seats 
of  Hellenic  civilisation,  specially  in  Orchomenus  (Pans.  ix.  38.  1 ; 
Find.  01.  XIV.  4;  Mliller,  Orchom.  viii).  They  naturally  appear 
as  the  attendants  of  Venus — for  what  is  grace,  properly  defined,  but 
beauty  in  motion  ? — but  are  mentioned  in  Homer  only  incidentally, 
though  in  such  a  manner  as  to  indicate  their  already  thoroughly 
established  position  in  the  court  of  Olympus.  The  passages  where 
they  occur  in  the  Iliad  are  v.  338,  xiv.  267,  and  xviii.  51.  In 
the  Od.  (viii.  364),  they  bathe  and  anoint  the  queen  of  beauty  in 
her  odorous  Paphian  temple,  and  they  bestow  beauty  and  every 
personal  charm  on  whom  they  will  {Od.  vi.  18).  With  regard  to 
their  parentage  and  their  number,  there  was  great  uncertainty 
among  the  most  ancient  Greeks  (Pans.  ix.  35),  but  the  number 
three,  so  familiar  to  us,  is  found  in  Hesiod  (Theog.  907),  and  this, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Furies,  came  universally  to  prevail.  As  to 
their  relation  to  Hephtestus,  the  inconsistency  was  of  course  noticed 


35 G  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVIII. 

by  the  ancients,  with  which  Homer  gives  the  celestial  smith  Aphro- 
dite  to  wife  in  the  Od.  (viii.  267),  and  one  of  the  Graces   in   the 
present  passage  ;  and  those  who  attributed  the  two  poems  to  differ- 
ent authors,  of  course  found  an  argument  here  in  favour  of  their 
doctrine.     But  they  forgot  that  Homer  was  no  doctor  of  theology, 
and  had  no  vocation  to  bring  consistency  into  the  sacred  legends 
of  his  countrymen.     The  significance  of  the  myth  was  the  same 
accordino;  to   both  versions.     Works   of   art,   of  which  Vulcan  is 
master,  require  beauty  and    grace    for  their  acceptance    amongst 
men,  that  is,  Vulcan  must  be  wedded  to  Venus  or  to  the  Glraces. 
As  to  the  Olympian  forger  himself,  who  performs  such  a  prominent 
part  in  this  book,  there  is  no  trace  in  the  Greek  mythology,  as  we 
now  have  it,  of  the  worship  of  pure  elemental  fire — the  agni  (Lat. 
ignis)  of  the  Rig- Veda.     Hephaestus,  no  doubt,  as  "  the  dear  son 
of  Here"  (xiv.  166),  may  well  be  considered  as  originally  a  per- 
sonification of  the  fire  which  is  generated  in  the  earth,  and  shows 
its  presence  by  volcanoes,  hot  springs,  and  the  like  (Welcker,  g.  L 
i.  109) ;  but  in  Homer,  and  in  the  actual  faith  of  the  Greek  people, 
we  find  no  traces  of  the  worship  of  fire  except  either  as  the  fire  of  the 
domestic  hearth  (lo-rta,  or  Vesta),  or  as  the  fire  which  makes  iron 
and  other  intractable  materials  yield  to  the  plastic  faculty  in  man 
in  the  creation  of  the  most  useful  arts.     The  Homeric  Hephaestus 
is  essentially  only  a  transcendental  worker  in  brass  and  iron,  and 
in  this  capacity  he  claims  brotherhood  with  the  wise  Athene,  the 
goddess  of  practical  wisdom,  and  with  her  exercises  a  fostering  care 
over   artisans   and   elegant    artists  of  every  class  (Plato,  Leg.  xi. 
920  d).     In  Homer,  every  great  work  of  mechanical  art  is  attri- 
buted to  his  cunning  craft  (i.  607,  ii.  101,  viii.  195,  xv.  310). 
The  prominence  of  his  name  in  the  early  legends  and  in  the  wor- 
ship  of   Athens,   is    naturally   connected   with    tlie  extraordinary 
activity    and    plastic   inventiveness   of  that   subtle    and  practical 
people. 

Ver.  397. — Had  not  Eurgno'nie  and  Thetis  hid  me. 
Here  we  have  what  seems  to  be  a  version  of  tlic  lame  smith's 


BOOK  XVIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  357 

precipitation  from  heaven  different  from  that  presented  in  i.  590. 
The  most  significant  thing  in  this  passage  is  the  reception  of  the 
god  of  fire  into  the  watery  element,  which  may  either  have  the 
general  significance,  as  we  have  already  seen  (vi.  130),  that  the 
depths  of  ocean  formed  a  safe  place  of  refuge  for  other  gods,  or  may 
indicate  that  special  connexion  between  the  presence  of  water  and 
fiery  action  which  ancient  cosmical  theory  (Justin.  Hht.  iv.  1)  and 
modern  chemical  experiment  agree  in  recognising  as  one  of  the 
grand  facts  of  the  material  universe.  Eurynome,  who  is  named 
here,  was  one  of  the  Oceanides,  or  daughters  of  ocean.  She  had  a 
shrine  on  the  banks  of  the  Neda,  in  Arcadia,  and  was  w^orshipped 
with  great  honours  by  the  Phigalians.  Her  image  indicated  a 
very  early  period  of  G-reek  art,  being  in  the  mermaid  type,  half 
fish,  half  woman  (Pans.  viii.  41.  4). 

Ver.  497. — A  market-place,  rvhere  rose  an  angry  strife. 

This  picture  of  a  law-suit  in  the  heroic  age  is  interesting  in 
various  ways.  In  the  first  place,  we  see  here  the  thorough  Greek 
and  English  fashion  of  doing  everything  before  the  people — in  open 
court,  as  we  say, — no  written  pleadings  with  shut  doors,  as  in  Prussia, 
Russia,  and  other  despotic  countries.  Again,  the  judges  are  the 
elders,  the  old  men,  yepovres,  the  same  grave  and  weighty  class  of 
wliom  the  Senate  was  composed,  that  from  the  famous  seven  hills 
of  Rome  founded  an  empire  as  wide  as  the  world.  Then  the  sub- 
ject— a  dispute  about  blood-money — is  suflicicntly  characteristic  of 
the  violent  character  of  the  times,  which  we  are  so  apt  to  paint  in 
rose  colour,  by  help  of  the  fine  phrases  "  patriarchal"  and  "  heroic." 
There  is  a  great  difficulty,  however,  in  the  last  line,  toj  Sojxev,  k.t.A., 
where  the  phrase  8lk-i]i/  Wvvrara  eiiroi,  seems,  according  to  the  plain 
use  of  language,  to  refer  to  the  judges ;  and  yet,  if  it  does  so,  the 
dignity  of  these  yepovres  seems  altogether  annihilated,  and  the  people 
take  the  law  into  their  own  hands.  This  appears  to  me  to  be  any- 
thing but  consistent  with  the  position  of  StKao-TroAot  avSpes  (r.  238) 
in  these  early  times ;  neither  does  it  seem  to  me  at  all  probable 
tliat  court-dues  or  deposit-money — like  the  Athenian  ■nrpvra.vela,  to 


358  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVIII. 

fall  to  the  judge — is  a  thing  that  naturally  belongs  to  the  state  of 
society  which  Homer  depicts.  If  it  were  possible,  therefore,  I 
should  feel  much  inclined  to  consider  the  talents  as  only  another 
name  for  the  ttolvi]  or  blood-money  in  ver.  498,  and  to  translate 
the  last  line,  with  N., — 

"  To  give  to  him  wliose  argument  more  rightly  might  be  proven." 

But  the  meaning  of  the  words  is  against  this,  and  the  weight  of 
authority  both  ancient  and  modern.  Glad.  (iii.  60)  assumes  "  fees 
upon  the  administration  of  justice"  as  distinctly  proved  by  this 
passage. 

Ver.  570. — A  pleasing  plaintive  luy  he  sang. 

The  word  Xivov  in  this  passage  has  caused  great  controversies 
among  the  learned.  I  have  carefully  read  both  the  ancient  and 
the  modern  comments  on  the  subject,  and  have  formed  a  very 
decided  opinion.  First,  with  regard  to  the  meaning  of  the  word 
AiVos,  and  the  grammatical  construction  of  the  passage,  I  dismiss 
as  a  frigid  conceit  of  the  grammarians  the  idea  that  A6vov  signified 
the  string  of  the  lyre,  originally  made  of  flax.  Of  this  stupid  asser- 
tion there  is  not  a  shadow  of  a  proof.  Neither  was  there  the 
slightest  occasion  for  resorting  to  so  strange  a  conjecture.  For  the 
natural  and  obvious  meaning  of  the  verse  is,  that  the  boy  played  on 
the  lyre,  and  with  his  clear  tenor  voice  sung  the  AtVos  to  it ;  and  that 
this  so  plain  explanation  is  accurately  in  accordance  with  the  usage 
of  the  language,  8p.  in  his  short  and  sensible  Excursus  (xxix.)  has 
distinctly  shown.  This  grammatical  difficulty  being  settled,  we 
have  only  to  ask.  What  was  the  AtVos  which  the  peasants  here  sang? 
On  this  subject  we  have  the  fullest  information  in  various  passages 
of  the  ancient  writers  (Pans.  ix.  29.  3;  Herod,  ii.  79;  Poll.  iv. 
55 ;  Athen.  xiv.  619 ;  I.  Hesiod  apiud  Eustath.  in  Innic  locvni),  in 
all  which  passages  a  nationalsong  of  a  plaintive  tone  is  described 
of  the  same  character  as  the  Greek  Ati  os ;  and  this  Xfros  is 
characterized  as  a  plaintive  ditty  which  Greek  peasants  sang  at  the 
time  of  the  hottest  weather,  when  the  sun  began  to  decline  south- 


BOOK  XVIll.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  359 

ward  ;  and  it  was  conceived  as  sung  in  honour  of  one  Linus,  who 
met  with  a  violent  death ;  though  in  reality  the  death  which  this 
ditty  celebrated  seems,  according  to  a  very  generally  recognised 
mythological  interpretation,  to  have  been  that  of  nature,  in  the 
period  of  exhaustion  which  follows  the  activity  of  summer  and  pre- 
cedes the  torpor  of  winter.  This  whole  matter  has  been  lucidly 
set  forth  by  Welcker  in  a  special  essay  (Kleine  Scliriften,  i.  8-55), 
full  of  that  accurate  learning,  fine  taste,  and  sound  judgment  which 
are  so  characteristic  of  this  veteran  philologer.  The  only  point 
that  may  stagger  some  thoughtful  reader  is,  how  this  Aivos  can 
have  been  a  plaintive  song,  sung  as  it  was  on  such  a  festive  occa- 
sion, and  accompanied  with  dancing.  To  this  objection  Professor 
Welcker  has  given  a  reply  founded  on  a  philosophical  consideration 
of  the  character  of  all  popular  songs.  That  they  are  in  fact  often 
plaintive,  and  those  which  are  most  popular  the  most  so,  is  a  fact 
which  any  man  with  his  ears  open  may  study  in  Scotland,  in  Italy, 
in  Germany,  in  Servia,  or  in  Spain  ;  but,  though  plaintive,  they  are 
not  unpleasant,  it  being  the  peculiarity  of  music  as  an  art  that  even 
the  most  sad  feelings  become  agreeable  when  invested  with  its  pecu- 
liar charms.  But  further,  I  would  say,  judging  a  priori,  that  the 
popular  songs  of  peasants  engaged  in  severe  harvest  or  vintage 
work  at  the  hottest  season  of  the  year  must  be  slow  ;  that  certainly 
is  not  the  time  or  the  season  for  dancing  reels ;  and  though  the 
Greek  can  be  as  merry  as  a  Frenchman  or  an  Irishman  when  the 
humour  comes,  a  Greek  peasant  is  like  other  peasants,  apt  to 
accompany  his  slow  work  with  slow  feelings  and  slow  music,  and  a 
slow,  not  at  all  boisterous  sort  of  dancing,  as  I  myself  observed 
with  surprise  when  I  first  saw  the  RomaiJca  danced  at  a  popular 
festival  among  the  hills  near  Athens.  I  therefore  think  myself 
fully  justified  in  preserving  a  quiet  tone  in  the  three  last  lines  of 
this  rustic  description  ;  for  unless  this  be  done,  we  shall  be  bound 
to  suppose,  contrary  to  the  whole  weight  of  ancient  testimony,  that 
the  AtVos  was  a  song  without  any  particular  character,  and  as  much 
of  a  jig  as  of  an  elegy ;  or,  if  not  this,  then  that  old  Homer  has 
been  caught   nodding,   and,   being  unskilful  in  nmsic.  has  set  a 


360  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVIII. 

merry  dance  to  a  sad  tune.  But  this  I  will  not  believe.  Homer 
might  err  in  minute  points  of  distant  topography,  but  in  whatever 
concerns  popidar  music  and  dancing  he  may  be  regarded  as  infal- 
lible. 

Ver.  590. — A  dancing  plot  the  god  then  made. 

We  have  here  a  most  curious  and  interesting  passage  illustrative 
of  the  influence  of  Crete  on  early  Greek  musical  and  orchestric 
art.  For  it  is  impossible  to  read  these  lines  without  feeling  that 
we  have  before  us  a  peculiar  exhibition  of  that  sort  which  the 
Greeks  called  viv6p-)^riiia^  that  is,  music  accompanied  with  a  mimetic 
or  dramatic  dance  (Proclus,  Chrest.  apud  Phof.  crkO' ;  Gaisford, 
Hephoest.  Lips.  1832,  p.  421 ;  and  Athen.  i.  p.  15),  whore  the 
author  quotes  the  account  of  a  curious  dramatic  dance  performed 
by  the  Thracians  in  the  presence  of  Xenophon  and  the  Greeks 
(^Anah.  VI.  1.  5-11).  Now  we  know  that  these  inropxqiJiaTa  were  of 
Cretan  origin  (Sosibius,  apud  Schol.  Pind.  ryth.  ii.  127) ;  and 
Plutarch,  in  his  Ensay  on  Music  (p.  1134  Xyl.)  informs  us  that 
Thaletas,  a  Cretan  of  Gortyn  (665  b.c,  Clinton)  was  the  principal 
actor  in  the  second  important  stage  of  development  through  which 
the  national  music  of  Sparta  went,  Terpander  being  the  great  name 
connected  with  the  first  stage.  The  same  writer  tells  us  in  the 
same  passage  that  the  improvements  made  by  Thaletas  consisted 
principally  in  the  introduction  of  the  Paeonian  or  Cretic  measure, 
which  are  one  (Arist.  Quinct.:  Meibom.,  lib.  i.  p.  55).  Here,  there- 
fore, we  have  Homer  testifying  to  the  existence  of  a  species  of 
dance  at  an  early  period  in  Crete,  which  afterwards,  transported  to 
Sparta,  and  thence  to  Delphi,  had  an  important  influence  in  modi- 
fying Hellenic  worship  and  culture.  For  that  the  vTropx'?/^"  was 
originally  a  religious  dance,  and  intimately  connected  with  the 
7r/3i'At5,  or  sacred  dance,  which  the  Cretan  Curetes  performed  in 
honour  of  Jove  (Callim.  Jov.  52  ihique^  Spanheim),  is  not  to  be 
doubted.  "Music  and  dancing  indeed,"  as  Strabo  sagely  dis- 
courses (x.  467  c),  "  have  something  in  them  that  naturally  lead  us 
to  God  ;  and,  if  it  has  been  well  said  that  men  are  then  most  like  to 


BOOK  XVIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  3G1 

the  gods  when  they  are  doing  good,  it  may  be  said,  perhaps,  with 
more  truth,  that  they  are  nearest  to  God  when  they  feel  most 
happy,"  that  is,  when  they  are  inclined  to  dance  and  sing  (comp. 
Psalm  Ixviii.  25).  Closely  connected  with  the  sacred  dances  of 
the  Curetes  and  the  vTropxJ/J-a-rc^,  were  the  well-known  Pyrrhic 
dance,  and  the  ctlklvviSj  which  had  more  of  a  comic  character 
(Athen.  XIV.  030  b).  That  there  was  something  of  the  Pyrrhic 
character,  or  the  imitation  of  a  war-dance  in  the  Cretan  dance  of 
the  Homeric  shield,  seems  indicated  by  the  strange  circumstance  of 
the  "knives,"  which  could  only  be  used  in  a  sort  of  mock  fight, 
like  that  described  by  Xenophon. 

I  have  only  to  remark  further,  that  the  Cretan  or  Pasonic  foot 

/•••  ••••\.        I'll/-.  / 

(^1      1^    [     or    y    y    \y    |  )   111  whicli  tho  Cretan   vTropx'>]fJ'O.Ta    were 

composed,  is  full  of  vigour  and  vivacity,  being  characterized  at 
once  by  the  frequent  recurrence  of  the  accent,  and  by  the  predom- 
inance of  short  syllables.  Of  this  the  vTropxT^fia  of  Pratinas,  pre- 
served in  Atheuffius  (xiv.  617  c)  is  sufficient  evidence.  Generally 
lively  and  joyful  dances  were  called  Gnossian  (Soph.  Ajax,  700). 
The  vivacity  of  the  Cretan  dancers  naturally  led  also  to  their 
characteristic  habit  of  diversifying  the  trip  of  feet  with  the  exercise 
of  tumbling — rois  yap  Kprja-l  ■>}  re  6px'i]cns  eTrt^^wpios  xal  to  KvfSia-- 
Tuv.  It  has  been  generally  supposed  that  the  taunt  of  ^neas  to 
Merion  in  xvi.  017  had  a  reference  to  the  well-known  dexterity  of 
the  Cretans  in  the  use  of  their  legs.  Those  who  wish  to  examine 
this  matter  further,  will  find  it  discussed  with  great  learning,  sense, 
and  sobriety,  in  Hoeckh's  Greta  (vols.  i.  and  iii.),  a  book  to  which 
I  have  been  chiefly  indebted  for  the  materials  of  this  note. 

So  much  for  the  dance.  As  for  the  artist  to  whose  cunning 
workmanship  this  production  of  divine  skill  is  compared,  the  first 
question  of  course  is,  whether  he  was  a  man  at  all,  or,  to  use  the 
fashicmable  German  phraseology,  only  the  "  mythical  ancestor  of  the 
race  of  Daedalidae  in  Athens."  As  I  do  not  believe  in  the  system 
of  turning  all  legendary  names  into  symbols,  it  seems  to  me  the 
most  natural  thing  to  say  that  D^dalus  was  a  real  Cretan  carver 


362  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  DOOK  XVllI. 

of  sacred  images  in  wood  at  the  time  when  Minos  exercised  sove- 
reignty in  the  Mediterranean,  and  when  the  relations  of  various 
kinds  between  Attica  and  Crete,  if  not  always  very  agreeable,  were 
at  least  very  intimate.  The  fact  that  the  word  SacSaAov  is  signifi- 
cant, and  means  skilful,  or  anything  skilfully  done  (v.  60 ;  Pans. 
IX.  3),  does  not  in  the  least  militate  against  this  view  ;  for  all  names 
were  originally  significant,  and  are  still,  when  nature  gets  free  play. 
I  call  Dsedalus  a  Cretan  rather  than  an  Athenian,  because  I  believe, 
with  Curtius  [Gr.  Ges.  i.  61),  that  a  notable  Cretan  civilisation  in 
the  Mediterranean  preceded  by  several  centuries  the  boasted  culture 
of  the  Athenians,  because  Homer,  our  oldest  authority,  distinctly 
mentions  Daedalus  in  connexion  with  Cretan  art,  and  because  the 
Athenians,  who  were  the  most  brilliant  of  all  liars,  were  constantly 
inventing  fables,  by  which  they  transferred  to  their  own  soil  the 
inventions  and  the  benefits  which  they,  in  common  with  all  Europe, 
had  received  from  the  East.  Hence  they  gravely  tell  us  that 
Dsedalus  was  of  the  race  of  the  Erechtheids,  and  of  the  Athenian 
blood-royal  (Diod.  Sic.  iv.  76);  but  the  monuments  of  the  art  of 
Daedalus,  which  Pausanias  knew  (ix.  40.  2)  were  all  either  in  Crete 
or  in  Bocotia,  and  none  in  Attica.  With  regard  to  the  stylo  of 
these  works,  that  they  were  simple  and  rude  enough,  compared 
with  the  finished  grace  of  the  later  art  in  Greece,  is  certain.  Diod. 
(i.  97)  says  that  they  are  in  the  stiff,  formal  Egyptian  stylo,  now 
so  familiar  to  the  modern  eye  in  our  famous  museums ;  and  Pans, 
(ii.  4.  5)  says  they  were  aroTrwrepa  Tr]v  oi/'ti',  and  yet  had  some- 
thing evdeov  in  their  expression.  The  admirers  of  Cimabue  and 
the  pre  Ptaphaelite  style  of  sacred  art  in  mediaeval  Europe,  will 
easily  understand  this  apparent  contradiction  between  the  awkward 
and  the  sublime  co-existent  in  the  same  work.  The  xopos 'AptaSvr/s 
here  described  by  Homer,  or  something  which  was  accepted  for  it, 
seems  to  have  been  a  bas-relief  on  white  marble,  according  to  the 
account  of  Pausanias  (ix.  40.  2).  On  Da?dalus  see  Hoeckh,  Creta, 
iii.  p.  381 ;   Smith's  Did.  ;  and  Midler,  Archceol.  70. 

So  much  for  the  special  points  in  this  beautiful  episode — for  so 
it  may  be  called — of  the  shield,  that  seemed  to  demand  notice. 


BOOK  XVIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  3G3 

But  from  the  "  shield  of  Achilles"  generally,  many  grave  ques- 
tions have  started,  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times,  which  shall 
now  be  shortly  considered. 

(1.)  The  fancy  of  Heyne  that  the  whole  passage,  or  the  greater 
part  of  it,  is  an  interpolation,  is  utterly  absurd.  If  Thetis,  a  god- 
dess, was  to  procure  from  Hephsestus,  the  great  Olympian  artist,  a 
shield  for  her  godlike  son,  and  if  she  goes  with  pomp  and  circum- 
stance to  receive  it,  surely  tiie  thing  itself  ought  to  be  no  common 
thing,  and  demands  a  full  and  expanded  description.  .  When 
trumpets  blow  on  the  stage,  we  don't  expect  an  unvalued  person  to 
appear,  but  a  king  and  all  his  retinue. 

(2.)  That  the  art  of  working  not  only  in  wood,  but  in  brass, 
iron,  and  other  metals,  had  attained  to  some  considerable  degree 
of  proficiency  in  Homer's  time,  is  evident  both  from  the  frequent 
allusions  to  such  matters  in  his  works,  and  from  the  degree  of  pro- 
gress known  to  have  been  early  attained  in  those  arts  by  other 
nations,  with  whom  the  Asiatic  Greeks  were  in  constant  and 
familiar  intercourse.  Whatever  was  known  to  the  Phoenicians  in 
the  time  of  Solomon  was  in  all  probability  known  also  to  the 
Grreeks  of  Asia  Minor  in  the  time  of  Homer. 

(3.)  But  we  have  no  warrant  to  assert  that  whatever  works  of 
art  are  described  in  Homer's  Iliad — assuming  the  poet  to  have  in 
every  supposed  case  described  what  he  actually  had  seen, — the 
same  are  to  be  held  as  having  actually  existed  in  Asia  at  the  time 
of  the  Trojan  war.  The  poet's  general  harmony  with  the  times 
which  he  describes  may  be  conceded ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
he  is  curiously  and  scrupulously  to  exclude  everything  that  be- 
longed to  a  later  age  than  that  which  he  is  describing.  Enough 
for  him  that  there  was  no  poetical  incongruity  in  attributing  to 
the  times  of  the  Trojan  war  certain  inventions  which  might  have 
been  a  century  or  two  later  than  that  event.  Poets  are  not  to  be 
cross-questioned  by  curious  critics  and  learned  professors  on  the 
history  of  scientific  discovery. 

(4.)  We  are  not  entitled  to  assert  that  the  poet  ever  saw  any 
ornamented  shield  at  all  approaching  to  the  rich  and  curious  work- 


364  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XVIII. 

mansliip  of  this  shield  of  Achilles.  This  is  altogether  a  miraculous 
shield ;  it  is  meant  to  be  superhuman,  and  is  no  more  to  be  taken 
for  a  prose  reality  than  the  enchanted  castle  of  steel  in  Ariosto. 

(5.)  Nevertheless,  it  is  conceived  and  described  by  the  poet — 
as  every  real  poet  must  conceive  and  describe — under  the  laws  of 
probability.  It  is  a  shield  which  a  very  skilful  artist  could  make  ; 
and  the  designs  on  it  are  such  as  could  gracefully  be  disposed 
upon  the  surface  of  such  a  shield  as  Greeks  were  accustomed  to 
wield.  The  stupid  objection  to  this  place  of  Homer  that  it  de- 
scribes what  could  not  possibly  have  been  designed,  is  best 
answered  by  the  fact  that  Flaxmau  actually  has  designed  it  within 
the  required  limits. 

(6.)  The  subject  designed  by  the  celestial  artist  on  this  orbi- 
cular surface  is  plain  enough,  and  possesses  a  grand  unity  and 
completeness.  It  is  a  picture  of  the  round  world,  both  physical 
and  moral.  The  stars  and  -the  sky  and  the  ocean  mark  the 
boundaries  of  the  physical  system  ;  the  town  and  the  country,  the 
grand  moments  of  rural  and  city  life,  marriage,  law,  peace,  war, 
ploughing,  harvest,  etc.,  give  the  most  striking  features  of  the  world 
of  human  society. 

(7.)  The  propriety  of  this  subject  for  the  shield  of  Achilles,  and 
indeed  for  any  shield  at  all,  has  been  disputed  by  critics  more 
anxious  to  appear  wise  above  the  poet  than  regardful  of  the  most 
obvious  principles  of  the  poetic  art.  It  is  impertinent  to  seek  for 
a  special  congruity  in  the  designs  of  the  shield,  either  with  the 
Iliad  as  a  warlike  poem,  or  with  Achilles  as  its  hero.  What  the 
minstrel  wanted  was  to  entertain  and  delight  his  hearers ;  and  this 
was  to  be  done,  not  by  a  pedantic  adherence  to  the  one  law  of 
congruity,  but  by  a  free  use  of  the  great  principles  of  variety  and 
contrast,  of  which  the  Supreme  Wisdom  everywhere  makes  such 
effective  use  in  the  constitution  of  the  universe.^ 


^  Criticiil  impertinence  and  poetical  conceit  certainly  never  went  further  than 
when  Dc  la  Motte,  in  the  ninth  book  of  his  remodelled  Iliad,  actually  draws  a 
sponge  over  the  whole  Homeric  piotures  of  the  sl.ield,  and  introduces  more 
appropriate  ones  of  liis  own  invention. 


BOOK  XVIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  3G5 

(8.)  The  allegorical  interpretations  put  upon  certain  parts  of  this 
shield  by  Demo  and  others  (Eustath.  in  v.  481),  are  forced,  far- 
fetched, and  contrary  to  the  genius  of  Homer. 

(9.)  The  structure  of  the  shield,  and  the  disposition  of  the  various 
subjects  on  its  disk,  have  been  well  described  by  Mr.  W.  W. 
Lloyd  (The  Homeric  Design  of  the  Shield  of  Achilles,  Lond.  1854). 
In  that  work  Mr.  Lloyd  represents  the  plates  of  the  shield  as  so 
super-imposed  that  the  rims  of  the  several  metals  become  visible  in 
a  set  of  circular  zones  or  belts  successively  diminishing  towards  the 
centre,  so  that  the  whole  thickness  of  the  plates  would  only  exist 
at  the  central  boss.^  In  this  central  space  he  places  the  earth,  the 
sea,  and  the  constellations.  In  the  outmost  rim,  or  avrv^,  he 
places  the  ocean- current,  as  an  edge  or  border  to  the  whole.  Then 
in  the  concentric  belts,  between  that  and  the  central  space,  he 
disposes  of  the  various  scenes  of  the  description  in  such  a  way  that 
the  separate  subjects  are  kept  in  separate  zones  ;  and  those  subjects 
which,  for  artistic  exhibition,  demand  the  largest  space,  are  placed 
in  the  largest  zones ;  that  is,  in  those  nearest  the  rim.  This 
necessity  of  art  leads  to  a  departure  from  the  exact  order  of  the 
Homeric  description  ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that 
Homer  tied  himself  down  to  the  exact  order  of  super-position. 
Accordingly,  Mr.  Lloyd  places  the  Cretan  dance  in  the  first  zone 
nearest  the  centre ;  in  the  next  belt  come  the  herdsmen,  the 
sheep,  the  lions,  and  the  bull — two  scenes  (573-589).  In  the 
third  space  from  the  centre  come  the  ploughing  scene,  the  reaping- 
scene,  and  the  vintage  ;  and  lastly,  in  the  large  broad  belt  next  the 
border,  he  places  the  scenes  in  the  two  cities  (490-540).  The 
various  groups  into  which  the  picture  falls  are  sufficiently  indicated 
by  the  poet,  who  always  commences  a  new  great  division  with  the 
words,  €V  Se  Trotrjcre,  Iv  8'  iridei,  or,  Iv  Se  Trot/ctAAe.  Those  who 
wish  to  realize  the  details  of  the  shield  more  fully  may  consult  Mr. 
Lloyd's  book,  and  Flaxman's  model  in  the  British  Museum. 

■  This  tlieory,  lie  tliinl<s,  oxplains  sati.sfactorily  the  line  xx.  275. 


3GG  NOTES  TU  THE  ILl.VU.  BOOK  XIX. 


BOOK  XIX. 

This  being  the  book  in  which  Achilles  rises  in  his  might  gloriously 
to  assert  his  pre-eminence  as  a  warrior,  and  to  achieve  the  cata- 
strophe of  the  poem,  we  shall  set  down  here  briefly  the  few  notices 
with  regard  to  him  that  lie  before  and  beyond  the  action  of  the 
Iliad.  His  birth  and  boyhood  in  Thessaly  are  marked  by  those 
traits  with  which  legend  delights  to  signalize  the  man  who  is  des- 
tined to  achieve  great  results  for  his  people  by  the  early  sacrifice 
of  his  own  life.  His  ocean-mother,  aware  that  he  had  to  fight  his 
way  through  mortal  perils,  endeavoured  to  secure  his  immortality 
by  burning  out  his  mortal  part  in  purgatorial  fire  during  the  night, 
and  every  day  anointing  him  with  ambrosia.  But  this  process  was 
checked  in  the  bud  by  his  father  Peleus,  who,  like  other  mortal 
parents,  lacked  faith  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  allow  the  means  by 
which  alone  the  superhuman  result  could  be  achieved.  The  young 
hero  was  then  committed  to  the  care  of  the  wise  Centaur  Chiron, 
trained  up  in  all  warlike  arts,  and  in  the  gentle  use  of  music,  and 
"  fed,  '  as  became  so  fierce  a  champion,'  on  the  hearts  of  lions  and 
the  marrow  of  wild-boars  and  bears"  (ApoU.)  When  he  was  only 
nine  years  old,  Calchas  gave  forth  a  prophecy  that  Troy  could  not 
be  taken  without  Achilles;  whereupon  his  mother,  anxious  to  de- 
ceive the  Fates,  conveyed  her  son  to  the  island  of  Scyros,  where 
those  events  happened  which  were  before  narrated  (ix.  668). 
His  exploits  on  the  field  of  Troy  till  the  death  of  Hector  are  con- 
tained in  the  Iliad.  After  the  death  of  their  champion  the  Trojan 
fortunes  began  visibly  to  wane ;  but  the  death  of  one  bulwark  of 
Asiatic  despotism  was  not  sufficient  for  the  glorification  of  the  great 
type  of  eai'ly  Hellenic  chivalry ;  so  Penthesilea,  the  fair  queen  of 
the  Amazons,  and  Memnon,  the  swart-faced  offspring  of  Aurora,  arc 
brought  into  the  field  successively,  to  signalize  his  prowess  and  bow 
before  his  might.  Both  these  events  are  recorded  at  length  in  the 
post-Homeric  epos  of  Quintus  Smyrnacus  (Books  i.  and  ii.),  formed 


i;(t(iK  XIX.  XOTK.S  To  THK  ll.lAli.  3' 


)  I 


the  principal  subject-matter  of  the  xEthiopiad,  one  of  the  subdivi- 
sions of  the  great  Trojan  cycle  of  legendary  lore,  and  presented  a 
rich  material  to  the  decorators  of  vases  and  other  articles  of  Hel- 
lenic art  (Overbeck,  Bildwerke,  plates  xsi.  and  xxii.)  Victorious 
in  these  two  encounters,  the  young  Thessalian  demigod  must  now 
yield  to  fate ;  he  fell  ignobly,  as  it  seemed,  by  the  hand  of  Paris, 
but  really  by  the  secret  machinations  of  Apollo,  a  god  whom  no 
mortal  could  resist  (xxi.  278,  xxii.  359  ;  Hygin.  107).  His  death 
stands  pictured  to  modern  eyes  in  one  of  the  most  valuable  of  all 
ancient  monuments,  the  pediment  of  the  ^ginetan  temple  (Over- 
beck,  Bildivcrke,  p.  544).  After  his  funeral  rites  were  performed 
the  possession  of  his  god-forg-^d  armour  was  the  subject  of  the 
notable  strife  between  Ajax  and  Ulysses  ;  Polyxena,  a  daughter  of 
Priam,  of  whom  he  was  enamoured,  was  sacrificed  to  his  Manes 
(Hygin.  110);  and  a  monument  was  erected  to  him  on  a  far-seen 
promontory  of  the  Troad  at  Sigeum,  on  the  coast  of  the  broad 
Hellespont  (Od.  xxiv.  80 ;  Str.  xiii.  596).  But  notwithstanding 
his  death,  he  enjoyed  a  sort  of  immortality  upon  earth ;  for  he  was 
found,  somehow,  upon  the  island  of  Leuce,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Danube  or  the  Dnieper,  in  blissful  intercourse,  like  Dr.  Faust,  with 
the  many-husbanded  Spartan  beauty  (Pans.  in.  19.  11 ;  Schol. 
Pind.  Nem.  iv.  79;  Eur.  fyhig.  Taur.  430).  The  Thessalians 
offered  sacrifice  to  him  annually  as  to  a  god  (Philost.  Her.  xix.) 
His  character  in  the  Iliad  speaks  for  itself.  His  faults  were  those 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  of  his  time  of  life,  of  his  race,  and  his 
temperament ;  he  erred  by  the  excess  of  a  just  self-esteem,  not  by 
the  encroachments  of  an  unbridled  selfishness  ;  while  his  virtues 
are  such  as  belong  only  to  good  men,  and  of  which  only  the  best 
men  are  capable  in  such  intensity. 

Ver.  77. — Not  in  the  midst,  but  standmg  near  his  seat. 

This  line  is  bracketed  as  doubtful  both  by  Wolf  and  Baiimleiu, 
but  not  by  Spitzner,  The  variations  in  the  text  which  the  scho- 
liasts note  seem  to  me  to  have  arisen  from  the  stupidity  of  certain 
commentators,  who  could  not  see  what  reason  the  context  contains 


368  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIX. 

for  any  peculiarity  in  the  manner  in  which  the  king  addressed  the 
people.  But  it  is  plain  that  there  was  an  unusual  throng  of  both 
soldiers  and  sailors,  especially  of  the  adherents  of  Achilles,  whose 
obstreperous  sympathy  seems  somewhat  to  have  discomposed  the 
king  of  men.  He  therefore  does  not  come  boldly  out  into  the 
middle  of  the  encircling  assembly,  as  was  his  wont — in  all  likeli- 
hood he  could  not  do  so  for  the  crowd, — but  he  stands  up,  and 
remains  close  by  his  own  chair,  as  men  do  in  our  public  meetings 
and  in  Parliament,  whereas  in  France  the  speaker  goes  to  the  tri- 
bune, which  corresponds  to  the  Iv  ixecra-oLcn  of  the  present  passage. 
As  to  the  notion  which  Chapman  has  unfortunately  taken  up  from 
some  dreaming  scholiast,  that  the  king  remained  sitting  on  account 
of  his  wound,  this  is  nonsense  ;  for  Agamemnon's  wound  was  in  the 
hand  (si.  2^2),  not  in  the  leg,  and  he  speaks  of  himself  (79)  as 
standing,  not  sitting.  Nothing  indeed  short  of  absolute  inability  to 
stand  would  have  led  an  old  Homeric  king  to  perpetrate  the  gross 
impropriety  of  addressing  the  army  sitting,  like  a  Grerman  professor 
drawing  slowly  from  deep  wells  of  ponderous  erudition. 

Ver.  197. — And  let  Talthyhius  a  hoar  prejoare  for  sacrifice. 

On  the  KUTrpos  Heyne  quotes  that  in  later  times  a  boar  was 
solemnly  sacrificed  to  Zevs  o/dkios  at  Olympia  beside  a  statue  of 
Jove  in  the  Council-hall,  which  bore  a  thunderbolt  in  each  hand 
(Pans.  V.  24.  2).  On  the  form  of  solemn  oaths,  see  above,  iii.  275 
and  292. 

Ver.  209. — Doum  my  ovm  throat  no  drop  shall  pass. 

Here  we  have  the  true  philosophy  of  fasting.  It  is  natural  for 
the  body  to  suffer  along  with  the  soul.  So  David  in  the  Old 
Testament  (2  Sam.  xii.  16),  so  the  precept  of  our  Saviour  in  the 
New  (Matt.  ix.  15).  Compulsory  fasting,  imposed  by  sacerdotal 
ordinance  as  in  the  Greek  and  Roman  Churches,  may  possibly 
have  its  hygienic  uses ;  but  in  a  religious  point  of  view  it  seems  to 
be  as  absurd  to  fast  as  to  get  dnnilc  tor  the  glnry  of  God. 


BOOK  XIX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  3G9 

Ver.  212. — Ills  feet  toivanh  the  door. 

The  scholiasts  remark  the  symbolical  character  of  this  position  : 
the  dead  person  is  going  to  leave  his  house  and  his  earthly  homo 
for  ever ;  therefore  his  feet  are  towards  the  door. 

Ver.  326. — My  dear-loved  son  wJio  now  in  Scyros  dwells. 

As  the  son  of  the  hero  of  the  Iliad,  Neoptolemus,  or  Pyrrhus  as 
he  was  originally  called,  naturally  plays  no  mean  part  in  the 
legends  that  grew  out  of  the  great  Trojan  expedition.  Pyrrhus 
was  born  at  Scyros  under  the  circumstances  mentioned  above,  rx. 
668.  In  this  distant  island  he  remained  till  near  the  very  close  of 
the  last  year  of  the  war,  when  Ulysses,  the  artful  negotiator,  was 
despatched  to  bring  both  him  and  Philoctetes  to  the  battle-field, 
where  their  presence  was  necessary  to  fulfil  the  decrees  of  Jove. 
It  is  in  this  part  of .  his  career  that  he  performs  the  characteristic 
part — so  like  his  father — in  the  Philoctetes  of  Sophocles.  At  the 
taking  of  Troy  he  exhibited  all  the  tact,  valour,  and  fierceness  of 
Achilles ;  and  the  recital  of  his  brave  deeds  by  Ulysses  causes  the 
shade  of  his  father  in  Hades  to  stride  through  the  pale  fields  of 
asphodel  with  a  benign  satisfaction  {Od.  xi.  504).  According  to 
one  tradition,  made  familiar  by  Virgil,  he  dragged  the  feeble  old 
discrowned  monarch  ruthlessly  from  the  altar  of  the  family  Zeus 
(Paus.  IV.  17.  3).  In  the  famous  picture  of  the  departure  from 
Troy  by  Polygnotus,  Pyrrhus  is  the  only  Greek  who  is  represented 
as  stiU  pursuing  the  work  of  slaughter  when  the  others  are  think- 
ing of  their  return  (Paus.  x.  26.  1).  After  the  capture  of  Troy, 
Homer  represents  him  as  living  quietly  at  Phthia,  and  receiving 
Hermione,  the  daughter  of  Menelaus,  in  marriage  (Od.  iii.  189 ; 
IV.  5).  How  he  afterwards  came  from  his  native  country  to 
Epirus  is  variously  narrated ;  but  certain  it  is  that  he  did  settle 
there,  and  was  the  reputed  ancestor  of  the  famous  race  of  Epirotic 
princes  that  bore  his  name  and  performed  a  famous  part  in  history 
(Paus.  I.  11).  In  that  country  he  was  believed  to  have  married 
Andromache  (Virgil,  ^v.  in.)     His  career  was  ended  at  Delphi, 

VOL.  IV.  2  A 


370  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XIX. 

in  a  way  which  the  pious  Pausanias  notices  as  an  instance  of  divine 
retribution  ;  for,  as  he  had  slain  Priam  by  the  altar  of  Zeus,  so 
himself  was  slain  beside  the  altar  of  Apollo,  whether  by  Orestes 
or  by  some  other  hand  the  legend  knows  not  certainly.  But  what- 
ever was  the  cause  of  his  violent  death,  he  had  the  honour  of  being 
canonized,  was  worshipped  as  a  hero  by  the  Dclphians,  and  ap- 
peared with  other  miraculous  champions  to  defend  the  sacred  rock 
of  Apollo  from  the  attacks  of  Brennus  and  his  rude  Celtic  in- 
vaders (Paus.  I.  4,  and  x.  23.  3).  Altogether  Neoptolemus,  the 
son  of  Achilles,  so  lived  and  died  as  the  son  of  such  a  father  ought 
to  have  lived  and  died.  Legend  is  always  true  to  the  great  natu- 
ral congruities  of  blood  and  family.  ■■ 

With  regard  to  the  test  in  this  place,  some  of  the  old  scholiasts, 
and  the  principal  modern  critics,  are  most  certainly  right  in  bracket- 
.ing  line  327,  which  is  not  only  needless,  but  contradictory  to  the 
context  which  immediately  follows.  For,  as  Spitzner  remarks, 
"  Achillem  de  filii  morte  minus  fuisse  sollicitum  proxima  docent 
aperte."  The  other  reasons  of  rejection  given  by  the  scholiast 
are  worthless.  It  is  seldom  indeed  that  that  class  of  men  know  to 
distinguish  an  iron  sword  from  a  wooden  one.  They  are  innocent 
enough  to  think  that  both  cut. 

Ver.  365-368. 

ddeTovvTaL  o-Tt'xes  recrcra/aes,  schol.  A.  "  Est  enim  ridiculum 
Achillem  dentibus  frendere"  (Heyne).  Right.  I  have  not  the 
slightest  hesitation  in  ejecting  these  foiu-  lines.  The  poet  might 
have  written  them,  but  they  do  not  belong  to  this  place. 

Yer.  407. 
White-armed  Here  to  the  dumb  brute  gave  articulate  speech. 
Why  Juno  rather  than  Pallas  lends  to  the  lips  of  these  noble 
animals  the  speech  of  reasoning  men  has  been  asked,  but  cannot  be 
answered.  If  a  man  has  many  friends  one  or  the  other  may  be  at 
hand  to  help  him  in  a  difficulty;  perhaps  this  is  all.  Why  the 
Furies  should  restrain  the  miraculously-opened   mouth  when   the 


BOOK  XX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  371 

message  was  once  delivered,  is  more  easy  to  say ;  for  the  Furies, 
like  Jupiter  and  the  Fates,  represent  the  eternal  order  of  things, 
against  which  nothing  can  be  done  with  impunity,  and  which  is 
sensibly  distui-bed  by  such  a  phenomenon  as  these  voicoful  steeds 
of  the  great  Phthian  captain,  or  the  bos  locutus  of  Livy.  The 
high  functions  of  the  Furies  as  the  fjLarpoKacriyvrjrat  of  the  Fates, 
are  most  distinctly  seen  in  the  concluding  chorus  of  ^schylus 
{Eumen.  920). 


BOOK   XX. 


Ver.  7. — The  Rivers  came,  save  only  Ocean  s  flood. 

I  can  imagine  no  cause  for  the  non-appearance  of  Ocean  here, 
except  that  the  writer  of  these  lines  regarded  him  as  one  of  the 
hoary  and  primeval,  but  now  practically  superseded  gods.  As  an 
antediluvian  primeval  power  only  does  Ocean  appear  in  the  Pro- 
metheus of  j^schylus,  the  action  of  which  tragedy  belongs  to  a  time 
when  the  sovereignty  of  Jove  was  not  yet  firmly  established.  The 
position  of  these  superseded  gods  may  be  compared  to  that  of 
retired  exiled  monarchs,  who,  in  times  of  revolution,  live  indeed, 
and  receive  courtesies,  but  do  not  reign,  and  have  no  subjects. 
This  seems  also  to  be  substantially  Gladstone's  view  (ii.  273). 
The  only  other  way  of  dealing  with  the  matter  would  be,  with 
Hermann  and  Bothe,  to  reject  the  three  lines  (7-9)  as  a  stupid 
interpolation  ;  but  this  is  an  extreme  measure,  which,  considering 
the  fragmentary  and  not  seldom  contradictory  nature  of  our  mytho- 
logical materials,  seems  in  nowise  warranted. 


O' 


Ver.  72. — Ilcrmcs^  sure  prop  of  siriJn'ng  irifjhl. 

The  word  o-wkos  occurs  only  here.     There  is  no  dispute  about 
the  meaning  of  it,  for  the  cognate  verb  occurs  in  /Esch.  Eumen. 


372  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XX. 

36,  and  in  Soph.  Elect.  119.  Apollouius  {Lex)  says  that  when 
applied  to  Hermes,  it  may  be  considered  as  equivalent  to  the  Kparvs 
which  qualifies  'A/^yet^ovxTys  in  x\i.  181.  Hermes,  as  the  general 
helper,  requires  of  course  to  be  always  strong,  sure,  steady,  and 
in  every  way  trustworthy ;  this  is  the  meaning  of  o-wkos,  which  my 
version,  I  hope,  fully  expresses. 

Ver.  127. — Even  as  the  Fate  his  thread  did  weave. 

I  quite  agree  with  Glad.  (ii.  287),  that  "there  is  only  the 
minutest  savour  of  the  proper  idea  of  Fate  in  the  word  ato-a." 
Nevertheless,  if  we  compare  the  phraseology  of  this  passage  with 
that  of  Od.  VII.  197,  we  shall  see  that  we  have  here  the  germ  of 
those  three  celestial  spinners,  now  familiar  to  every  schoolboy,  who 
twine  the  thread  of  human  fortunes,  and  cut  it  at  their  pleasure. 
I  quite  agree,  however,  with  Nitzsch,  in  his  commentary  on  this 
passage,  that  not  even  here  are  we  to  imagine  that  Homer  had  the 
three  Fates  of  a  later  period  already  present  to  his  mind  under  the 
word  KaraKAto^es.  These  three  Fates  are  to  be  referred  to  the 
same  period  of  systematization  of  the  Greek  mythology  which  pro- 
duced the  three  Furies ;  very  near  Homer,  no  doubt,  as  we  see  in 
Hesiod,  but  not  therefore  Homeric. 

Ver.  131. 

'Tin  hard  for  mortal  men  to  look  immortals  in  the  face. 

The  sentiment  here  expressed  reminds  us  of  the  striking  verse 
in  Exodus  xxxiii.  20.  Pausanias  proves  the  truth  of  Homer's 
observation,  by  relating  two  stories  of  persons  who  had  penetrated 
into  the  inner  sanctuary  of  the  temple  of  Isis,  and  had  seen  won- 
derful visions  of  gods ;  but  when  they  came  out  into  the  profane 
light,  they  forthwith  died,  a  just  reward  for  their  TroXv-n-pay/xoa-vvr] 
and  ToA/xr;  (x.  32.  10).  In  modern  times,  however,  the  American 
spiritualists  see  the  gods  face  to  face,  and  fetch  no  harm,  as  witness 
the  curious  circumstances  in  the  life  of  Jackson  Davis,  prefixed  to 
his  remarkable  work,  the  "  Great  Harmoria.'" 


BOOK  XX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILEAD.  ."J  7  3 

Ver.  135. — rj/Jieas,  K.r.X. 

This  is  a  stupid  line,  is  bracketed  by  Spitzner,  and  well  deserves 
to  be  thrown  out.  It  may  have  been  lugged  in  here  by  some  un- 
skilful reciter  from  viii.  211,  where  it  is  convenient  and  necessary. 

Ver.  145. — The  lofty  mound  of  Hercules. 
See  below  of  Laomedon,  ver.  215. 

Ver.  215-241. 

We  have  here  a  remarkable  passage  of  popular  Trojan  genealogy, 
with  regard  to  which  Gladstone  (i.  p.  2G)  says  that  "Homer  has 
not  scrupled  to  make  some  sacrifices  of  poetical  beauty  and  pro- 
priety to  his  historic  aims."  I  don't  believe  that  the  minstrel  ever 
had  any  "  historic  aims"  as  distinct  from  the  general  exercise  of  his 
calling  as  a  popular  singer,  which  bound  him  to  sing  the  traditions 
of  his  country,  of  which  genealogy,  founded,  no  doubt,  on  fact,  but 
not  curiously  accurate,  was  an  essential  part.  These  genealogies 
are  introduced  here  and  in  many  other  places  (as  in  Book  vi.) 
because  the  poet's  audience  liked  to  hear  them,  and  because,  among 
all  healthy-minded  peoples,  untainted  by  the  democratic  spirit  of 
irreverence,  no  associations  are  more  powerful  than  those  connected 
with  family  and  pedigree.  The  genealogical  tree  of  the  Trojan 
royal  family  given  here  runs  thus  : — 

Dakdanus. 

Ericht  lonius. 
Tros. 


Ilus.  Assaracus.                                        (fanvniedu. 

I  ! 

Laomedon.  Capys. 

I  r 

Prijiii,  ctf.  xVnuliises. 

Iloc-tor.  .dCiicas. 


371  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XX. 

On  the  character  and  connexions  of  the  Trojan  people,  as  they  may 
be  supposed  to  be  represented  in  the  history  of  their  earliest  kings, 
I  am  not  prepared  to  enter  into  any  speculations ;  but  if  they  were, 
as  what  evidence  we  have  leads  us  to  assume,  a  mixed  people,  in 
which  the  G-reek  element  was  dominant  (RUckert,  Troja,  i.  1.  2  ; 
Diouys.  Hal.  Arch.  i.  61 ;  Str.  x.  472),  this  will  fully  explain  the 
fact  that  in  Homer  they  do  not  appear,  in  religion,  or  in  any  other 
striking  feature,  to  differ  much  from  the  Greeks,  the  original 
Bebrycian  or  barbarian  element  in  their  population,  with  its  char- 
acteristic Asiatic  idolatries,  having  been  pushed  into  the  back- 
ground. As  to  the  several  royal  persons  in  this  list,  there  is  little 
to  be  noted.  Tradition  brought  Dardauus  either  from  Arcadia 
(Dionys.  Hal.  i.  60),  or  Italy  (Serv.  JEn.  ix.  10),  or  from  Crete 
(Str.  I.  c.)  ;  and  in  favour  of  this  last  origin  the  geographer  felt,  as 
we  must  all  do  now  with  more  decision,  that  the  element  of  com- 
parative philology  manifested  in  the  topographical  nomenclature  of 
both  countries  pleaded  very  strongly.  On  the  transference  of  the 
original  Dardanus,  the  capital  of  the  Trojan  empire,  to  Ilium, 
Plato  {Latvs,  681  e)  has  an  interesting  remark.  The  next  name, 
EuiCHTHONiDS,  as  the  geographer  justly  observes  (xiii.  604),  indi- 
cates some  connexion  with  Attica,  or  at  least  with  the  language  of 
Attica.  On  his  three  thousand  mares,  Maclaren,  in  his  masterly 
work  on  the  Plain  of  Troy  (p.  126)  has  some  interesting  calcula- 
tions, strikingly  confirmative  of  the  habitual  realism  of  the  poet's 
fancy.  Tros,  the  third  king,  gave  up  his  beautiful  son  Ganymede 
to  Jove,  to  serve  as  cupbearer  in  heaven,  in  return  for  which  the 
Thunderer  bestowed  on  him  a  famous  brood  of  celestial  horses 
(Pans.  V.  24).  Ilus  is  celebrated  as  the  founder  of  Ilium,  to  which 
he  gave  his  name  (ApoU.  iir.  12.  3).  His  sepulchral  mound  is 
frequently  alluded  to  in  the  Iliad  (x.  415,  xi.  372,  xxiv.  349). 
Laomedon  occupies  a  more  prominent  place  on  this  family  canvas, 
more,  however,  as  often  happens  with  political  celebrities,  by  his 
vices  than  by  his  virtues.  For,  though  he  had  the  happiness  to 
make  the  hands  of  the  immortal  gods  contribute  to  his  grandeur,  in 
raising  the  walls  of  his  famous  city,  their  undeserved  grace,  instead 


BOOK  XX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  375 

of  fostering  his  piety,  only  roused  his  insolence.  lie  refused  to 
pay  Apollo  and  Poseidon  the  bargained  wage  of  their  labour,  and 
by  this  sin  made  liimseK  the  victim  of  their  righteous  wrath  (vi.  23, 
VII.  452,  XXI.  442 ;  ApoU.  ii.  5,  9).  His  country  was  ravaged  by 
a  sea-monster,  against  which  only  the  might  of  Hercules  could 
prevail  (ver.  145,  supra).  But  Laomedon  proved  no  less  false  to 
the  demigod  than  he  had  previously  proved  to  the  gods,  Hercules 
also  was  denied  his  fee,  the  famous  horses  of  Laomedon  (xxiii. 
348) ;  and  the  sack  of  Troy  was  the  consequence  (v.  640).  The 
false  Laomedon  begat  the  good  but  unfortunate  Piiiam.  He  had 
fifty  sons  (xxiv.  495),  twenty  less  than  Gideon  (Judges  viii.  30) ; 
but  they  seem  to  have  been  born  only  to  increase  his  misery  and 
top  his  overthrow.  In  the  Iliad  he  appears  rarely,  but  always 
clad  with  the  mellowness  of  old  age,  the  fragrance  of  a  kindly  dis- 
position, and  the  majesty  of  sorrow.  In  the  post-Homeric  story, 
his  grey  hairs,  which  had  so  deeply  moved  Achilles,  do  not  save 
him  from  the  ferocious  wrath  of  the  son  of  that  hero,  newly  come  to 
the  wars.  He  is  slain  by  Pyrrhus  at  the  altar  of  the  family  Jove, 
in  the  courtyard  of  his  own  palace  (Eurip.  Troad  17).  Returning 
to  Tros,  we  have  only  to  say  of  Assaracus  that  he  begat  Capys, 
and  of  Capys  that  he  begat  Anchises.  The  story  of  the  father  of 
^neas  is  known  to  every  schoolboy.  His  beauty  was  such  that  he 
smote  the  queen  of  beauty  with  desire,  who  easily  gained  him  to 
her  embrace  {Hymn.  Ven.  53;  Hes.  Jlieog.  1008).  The  Germans, 
of  course,  will  not  allow  him  to  be  a  man,  but  etymologize  him 
easily  {ava^eoi)  into  a  god  of  fountains  (Riickert,  Troja,  103). 


Ver.  233. —  Young  Ganymede  divine. 

Ganymede  is  one  of  those  legendary  names  which,  more  than  any 
other,  mark  the  peculiar  character  of  the  race  to  which  he  belonged. 
The  Trojans,  whatever  they  were,  are  made  to  feel  and  imagine 
here  in  the  most  Greek  way  that  any  Greek  could  do.  In  the  Old 
Testament  narrative  we  read  (Gen.  v.  24)  that  Enoch  was  trans- 
lated from  earth  to  heaven  because  of  his  remarkable  piety ;  but 


376  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XX. 

this  Trojan  prince  achieves  the  same  honour  because  of  his  beauty. 
This  is  very  Hellenic  (ii.  671).  As  Ganymede  is  introduced  in 
the  middle  of  a  long  list  of  kings,  concerning  whose  historical 
character  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt,  the  natural  tendency 
is  to  look  on  him  as  a  king's  son  with  the  rest,  and  to  con- 
sider his  translation  to  Olympus  as  the  poetic  embellishment  of  an 
actual  fact.  K  the  race  of  Dardan  princes  were  celebrated  for 
their  beauty,  as  an  ancient  poet  sings  {Hymn.  Ven.  200),  and  if 
Ganymede  was  the  most  beautiful  of  that  handsome  race ;  and  if 
we  suppose  further  that  this  godlike  auburn-locked  princely  boy 
was  wandering  among  the  high  cliffs  of  Ida,  and  somehow  or  other 
disappeared,  as  Cockney  tourists  do  every  now  and  then  among  the 
Highland  hills,  in  such  circimistances  the  Greeks  generally  would 
have  said  that  he  had  been  snatched  away  by  the  Harpies,  but  in 
this  particular  case,  Jove  being  at  once  the  god  of  the  mountain, 
and  the  ancestor  of  the  family,  nothing  was  more  obvious  than  to 
say  that  he  had  been  taken  up  to  heaven  by  the  supreme  Father,  to 
serve  as  his  cupbearer.  But  the  Germans  (Gerhard  and  Preller), 
who  always  prefer  ideas  to  facts,  seem  inclined  to  the  opinion  that 
Ganymede  is  a  purely  mythological  creation,  a  sort  of  male  Hebe, 
— and  in  this  view  they  are  supported  by  the  double  fact  that  Gany- 
mede performs  in  heaven  exactly  the  same  function  as  Hebe,  and 
that  his  name  is  only  a  masculine  form  of  the  identical  name  under 
which  Hebe  was  worshipped  at  Phlius  (iv.  1).  Nevertheless,  I 
confess  myself  to  be  so  much  of  a  sober  practical  Scot  as  to  lean 
rather  to  the  historical  side  of  this  question.  The  subject  of  the 
translation  of  Ganymede  was  admirably  fitted  for  the  graphic  art, 
and  accordingly  exercised  the  pencils  and  chisels  of  many  great 
masters  in  ancient  times.  On  these  see  Jahn's  Ardmolog.  Bei- 
trdye,  p.  14.  One  of  the  most  famous  in  ancient  times,  and  the  best 
known  in  modern  times,  was  the  masterpiece  of  Leochares.  Sec 
Mliller's  Denkmdler,  xxxvi.  148. 


BOOK  XX.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  377 

Ver.  322. 
Then  the  sharp  lance  he  drexo  from  its  hold  in  the  Luckier  round. 

This  certainly  contradicts  ver.  279,  where  the  spear  goes  over 
the  shoulder  of  ^Eneas,  and  is  fixed  in  the  ground. 

Ver.  385. — 'Neath  snowy  Tmolus  in  the  vale  of  Hyde. 

Mount  Tmolus,  which  overhangs  Sardes,  and  the  valley  of  the 
Hermus  from  the  south,  was  famous  among  the  ancients  for  the 
golden-sanded  stream,  the  Pactolus,  which  had  its  wells  in  its 
northern  slope.  Strabo  speaks  with  admiration  of  the  splendid 
view  from  the  Persian  watch-tower  on  the  summit  of  this  moun- 
tain all  round,  but  specially  southward  across  the  plain  of  the 
Cayster  (xiir.  626),  in  which  he  is  confirmed  by  the  voice  of 
modern  travellers  (Texier,  p.  250).  Tmolus  was  celebrated  also 
for  its  wine  (Virg.  Georg.  ii.  97).  About  Hyde,  beyond  the 
generality  of  the  Homeric  text,  the  ancients  knew  nothing  (Str. 
XIII.  626).  The  Gygsean  lake  was  already  mentioned  (ii.  864). 
The  Hermus  (ver.  393),  now  the  Guedistchai,  has  its  source  in  the 
sacred  Mount  of  Dindymene,  the  central  seat  of  the  worship  of 
Cybele,  in  the  country  of  the  Mysians,  south  of  Mount  Olympus, 
and  flows  through  the  fertile  valley  of  Sardes  into  the  ^gean  sea 
(Str.  xiii.  626 ;  TchihatcheflF,  i.  p.  232).  The  Hyllus  is  a  tribu- 
tary of  the  great  Sardian  river,  not,  I  fear,  sufficiently  defined  for 
identification  (Herod,  i.  80 ;  Tchihatcheff,  i.  p.  238), 

Ver.  407. — The  godlike  Polydore,  the  son  of  Priam. 

Polydore,  the  youngest  son  of  Priam,  is  a  name  well  known  to 
most  readers  of  ancient  poetry,  from  Virgil  {2En.  iii.  49)  and 
Euripides  [Hecuba).  The  version  of  the  story  followed  by  the 
tragedian  and  the  Roman,  to  the  eff'ect  that  Polydore  perished  in 
Thrace  by  the  treachery  of  the  Thracian  king  Polymnestor,  to 
whom  he  had  been  intrusted,  is  inconsistent  with  the  account  here 
given ;  but  such  inconsistencies  are  the  rule,  not  the  exception,  in 
legendary  histoiT. 


378  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XX. 

Ver.  434. — Not  I  with  thee  in  fence  may  vie. 

Gladstone  (iii.  562)  is  surprised  to  find  the  otherwise  somewliat 
boastful  Hector  uttering  in  this  place  ''  words  of  more  genuine 
modesty  and  humility  than  are  to  be  found  in  the  speech  of  any 
other  chieftain  on  either  side."  Most  certainly  there  is  no  modesty 
or  humility  in  the  matter ;  but  Homer,  as  we  have  seen  through 
the  poem,  was  a  Greek,  and,  as  a  poet  ought  to  be,  a  thorough 
partisan,  and  so  he  cannot  refrain  from  putting  his  own  feelings 
into  Hector's  mouth,  where  they  are  not  at  all  in  their  right  place. 
Homer's  picture  of  Hector  was  not  drawn  so  much  from  his  own 
views  of  the  consistency  of  his  character,  as  from  the  tone  of  the 
popular  ballads  which  his  genius  raised  into  a  grand  organism, 
but  did  not  inspire  with  a  new  soul.  We  shall  never  judge  Homer 
rightly — his  plan,  his  characters,  and  what,  according  to  the 
highest  standard,  are  certainly  his  minor  blunders  and  impro- 
prieties— unless  we  keep  constantly  in  view  the  ballad  materials 
which  he  used,  the  minstrel  art  which  he  practised,  and  the  popu- 
lar audience  to  whose  entertainment  he  ministered. 

Ver.  403. — As  a  hull  ivhom  youths  to  Neptune's  altar  lead. 

Why  Neptune  is  called  Heliconian  puzzled  the  ancients,  and 
will  likely  be  asked  by  the  moderns.  The  difficulty  is  mainly  a 
philological  one.  For,  as  Aristarchus  remarked,  the  adjective 
from  Hclice  in  Achaea,  a  town  well  known  as  sacred  to  the  sea-god, 
should  be  'EAeK^ios,  not  'EAiKwvtos  (E.  M.  547.  18,  Gaisf.)  We 
shall,  however,  take  the  matter  broadly,  and  suppose  the  Achasan 
town  intended  (ii.  575),  leaving  the  philology  to  shift  for  itself. 

Ver.  498. — His  clattering  coursers  tread  on  corpses. 

Heyne,  always  keen  as  a  lawyer  for  a  flaw,  is  astonished  here  to 
find  that  Achilles  is  mounted  on  his  car,  while  previously  he  seems 
to  have  been  on  foot.  But  the  poet  was  so  accustomed  to  have 
his  heroes  mounted  when  they  gave  general  chase  through  the 
field,  that  he  did  not  require  to  mention  it  specially. 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  379 


BOOK  XXL 

As  this  is  the  book  in  which  a  prominent  part  is  played  by  the 
Scamander,  the  father  and  feeder  of  the  plain  of  Troy,  "  the  theatre 
of  those  so  renowned  bickerments  "  on  which  we  are  now  comment- 
ing, we  cannot  avoid  discussing  the  vexed  question  of  his  identity, 
along  with  that  of  his  "  dear  brother,"  the  Simois,  and  of  the  citadel 
of  Troy  itself,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  flows  almost  as  a  corollary 
from  the  right  identification  of  the  two  rivers.  Of  the  plain  of  Troy, 
Mr.  Maclaren,  a  Scottish  traveller  and  geologist  of  characteristic 
sagacity  and  shrewdness,  gives  the  following  picture  : — 

"  A  tract  of  meadow  land  of  pretty  uniform  aspect,  nine  miles  in 
length  and  nearly  three  in  breadth,  enclosed  within  a  girdle  of  low 
round-backed  hills,  and  prettily  garnished  by  many  lines  of  trees, 
which  skirt  the  water-courses.  In  spring  it  is  smiling  and  ver- 
dant ;  in  summer  it  must  be  of  a  russety  brown,  except  in  the 
marshy  parts.  The  mighty  mass  of  Ida,  rising  ridge  above  ridge 
to  Grargarus,  crowns  it  with  grandeur  on  the  south  and  east.  From 
the  low  hills  round  the  plain,  very  pleasant  landscapes  invite  the 
traveller's  eye  to  the  blue  -^gean  sea  on  the  west,  and  the  '  rush- 
ing Hellespont'  on  the  north.  The  latter,  a  mighty  salt  river, 
rich  in  historical  associations,  flows  in  a  deep  channel  with  steep 
sides,  as  if  scooped  out  by  itself,  and  bordered  by  high,  but  not 
mountainous  land.  The  '  bay'  at  its  mouth,  into  which  the  Sca- 
mander fell  in  Homer's  day  (xxi.  123),  and  still  falls,  is  nearly 
five  miles  in  width,  and  is  well  entitled  here  to  the  epithet  of 
'  broad,'  about  which  critics  have  cavilled.  If  the  traveller  takes 
his  stand  on  either  of  the  low  ridges  which  bound  the  plain  on  the 
west  and  north,  and  casts  his  eye  over  the  bright  ^gean,  he  finds 
it  dotted  with  islands  of  various  forms  and  sizes ;  Lemnos,  Vul- 
can's isle,  low  and  flat,  and  with  only  a  few  of  its  higher  parts 
visible  above  the  water ;  Imbros,  farther  north,  a  lofty  rocky 
ridge  ;  and  behind  it  the  still  more  lofty  and  rugged  Samothrace, 


380  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXI. 

the  ancient  seat  of  the  mysterious  Cabiri.  Far  beyond  these  on 
the  western  horizon,  if  the  day  is  clear,  the  eye  may  discern  the 
giant  peak  of  Athos,  where  '  dwells  the  godly  Eremite.'  South- 
ward from  Imbros,  and  only  four  miles  from  the  coast,  lies  Tenedos, 
with  its  cone-shaped  Mount  Elias,  and  rightly  described  by  Virgil 
as  'in  sight  of  Troy.'  " 

In  order  to  enter  into  the  details  of  this  description,  so  as  to 
make  topographical  deductions  without  confusion,  the  reader  will 
suppose  himself  to  have  sailed  down  to  the  mouth  of  the  Dardan- 
elles from  Constantinople,  and  then  landed  on  the  stretch  of  low 
shore  on  the  Asiatic  side  of  the  strait,  immediately  to  the  east  of 
the  Turkish  fort  of  Koum-hah.  This  stretch  of  shore,  about 
two  miles  in  length,  is  the  only  part  of  the  Trojan  plain  bordering 
on  the  Hellespont,  where  ships  could  be  drawn  up  in  the  manner 
described  by  Homer.  Here  therefore  was  the  camp  of  the  Greeks ; 
here  were  ranged  in  overlapping  rows,  the  long  lines  of  the  black 
ships  which  Hector  touched  with  his  victorious  firebrand,  but  could 
not  consume.  This  low  shore  is,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  the 
natural  mouth  of  the  valley,  through  which  the  Scamander  and  his 
tributaries  flow  from  the  glens  of  the  "many-folded  Ida"  to  the 
sea.  On  both  sides  a  rocky  coast  rises,  of  which  that  to  the  east 
— a  ridge  running  down  from  Ida  close  to  the  sea — ends  in  the 
Ehoetean  headland,  where  is  the  traditional  tomb  of  Ajax,  and  that 
to  the  west,  in  the  Sigean  headland,  near  which  is  the  tomb  of 
Achilles  (xxm.  125;  Od.  xxiv.  76-84;  Str.  xiii.  596).  The 
river  which  empties  itself  into  this  bay  at  our  supposed  landing- 
place  immediately  behind  Koum-kale,  is  now  called  the  Mendereli. 
A  single  glance  shows,  even  to  an  unpractised  eye,  that  this  is  the 
chief  river  of  the  district ;  in  fact,  that  there  is  no  other  stream  in 
the  plain  deserving  of  the  name.  The  others  are  mere  mountain- 
torrents,  brooks,  or  brooklets,  or  marsh-runnels,  or  what  Dr. 
Robertson,  in  his  excellent  Memoir  read  before  the  Royal  Society 
of  Edinburgh,  calls  "  ditch-like  puddles."'  There  is  no  Trora/xos 
but  the  Blcndereh.  Perched  upon  any  of  the  eminences,  on  the 
ridge  that  flanks  the  ^gean,  and  looking  south-eastward,  the  tra- 


BOOK  \'Xr.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIA1>.  381 

veller  may  see  how  this  I'iver  emerges  from  the  mountains  at  the 
head  of  the  plain,  about  nine  miles  from  the  sea ;  and  a  very  slight 
experience  of  topography  will  enable  him  to  follow  with  his  eye  the 
point  on  the  western  slopes  of  Glargarus,  whence  this  great  feeder 
of  the  plain  must  leap  into  being.^  Now  that  this  must  be  the 
Scaraandcr,  any  person  coming  to  the  ground  with  only  the  most 
superficial  impressions  from  the  reading  of  the  Iliad,  will  conclude 
at  the  first  glance  ;  and  the  verdict  of  this  fii'st  glance  will  be  con- 
firmed by  an  amount  of  evidence  than  which  nothing  stronger  can 
be  reasonably  demanded.  Local  tradition,  the  internal  evidence  of 
the  Homeric  poems,  and  the  external  witness  of  a  professional  topo- 
grapher, all  concur  in  proving  this  to  be  the  Scamander.  The 
local  tradition,  of  course,  asserts  itself  distinctly  in  the  mere  name. 
Subsidiary  brooks  and  brooklets  will,  in  the  course  of  centuries, 
often  be  forgotten  with  the  decay  or  prostration  of  the  people  who 
baptized  them  ;  but  the  great  stream  of  a  district,  such  as  the 
Pthine,  the  Danube,  the  Severn,  the  Tay,  the  Dee,  will  resist  a  new 
nomenclature  with  remarkable  sturdiness.  We  shall  therefore  say 
that  the  mere  name  Mendereh,  in  this  case,  establishes  at  least  a 
presumption  in  fovour  of  the  identity  for  which  we  plead.  The 
other  name  of  the  same  river,  the  Xanthus  (xx.  74),  is  even  more 
decisive ;  for  to  the  present  hour,  the  reddish  yellow  hue  (^ai/^o's) 
of  its  waters  from  which  this  designation  came,  marks  it  out  dis- 
tinctly amid  all  the  other  streams  of  the  district  (Robertson's 
Memoir).  But  further,  the  evidence  of  Homer  is  strong  to  the 
effect  that  the  Scamander  is  the  main  river  of  the  district,  and  the 
Simois  only  subsidiary.  He  only  is  called  Sios  (xii.  21) ;  he  only 
has  an  dpr]T7^p  (v.  77),  or  priest ;  he  only  has  the  immortal  Jove  for 
his  father  (xv.  2).  He  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  Troy  that  the 
Tay  does  to  beautiful  Perth,  or  the  Tweed  to  lovely  Kelso.  It  is 
the  Scamander  who  is  thought  worthy  to  crest  his  angry  floods 
against  the  wrath  of  Achilles  ;  and  in  the  heat  of  the  struggle 
(xxi.  308)  he  appeals  to  his  dear  brother  Simois  to  add  his  floods, 

'  I  have  used  tliis  phrase  purposely,  as  descriptive  of  tlie  actual  scene  at  the 
source  of  tlie  Mendereh  (Maclaren,  p.  19). 


382  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XX l. 

as  Austria  when  pressed  by  Prussia  naturally  seeks  the  alliance  of 
Bavaria.  This  evidence  of  itself  were  amply  sufficient  to  deter- 
mine the  point.  As  no  man  with  an  eye  in  his  head,  at  the  pic- 
turesque pastoral  landscape  of  Neidpath  Castle  on  Tweed,  could 
confound  this  stream  with  the  Manor,  so,  with  Homer's  description 
in  his  memory,  it  is  impossible  for  any  unbiassed  person  to  find 
the  Scamander  in  any  other  stream  of  the  Trojan  plain,  except  the 
Mendereh,  But  more  than  this  :  the  course  of  the  Scamander  is 
expressly  described  by  Demetrius  of  Scepsis,  a  local  topographer, 
contemporary  of  Aristarchus  (Str.  xiii.  609),  who  wrote,  as  we 
have  seen  (ii.  819),  a  special  work  on  the  TpwiKos  SiaKocrfios,  and 
who  could  no  more  be  deceived  in  reference  to  such  a  subject  than 
Provost  Chambers  in  his  description  of  Peeblesshire  could  fail  to 
know  that  the  Tweed  creeps  into  existence  from  a  bog  on  the  north 
side  of  the  high  hills  that  divide  that  county  from  Annandale. 
The  source  of  the  Scamander,  indeed,  in  Mount  Cotylus,  one  of  the 
peaks  of  Ida,  is  given  as  precisely  by  the  Scepsian  as  the  parish 
minister  of  Tweedsmuir  would  point  out  the  wells  of  Tweed  to  the 
inquisitive  pedestrian.  I  have  been  thus  particular  in  stating  this 
matter,  because  critics  of  the  highest  name  and  authority,  both  in 
this  country  and  abroad,  up  to  the  most  recent  period,  are  found 
maintaining  that  this  great  river  of  the  plain  of  Troy  is  actually 
the  Simois,  and  not  the  Scamander.  Such  blindness  to  the  plainest 
evidence  on  the  part  of  the  most  distinguished  men,  had  its  origin 
in  one  of  those  perplexing  misunderstandings  which  are  so  apt  to 
arise  from  the  hasty  interpretation  of  incidental  allusions  in  ancient 
authors.  In  Homer's  account  of  the  chase  of  Hector  by  Achilles, 
round  (or  rather  about  or  he/ore)  the  walls  of  Troy  (xxii.  145), 
there  occur  the  following  lines  (I  quote  from  Wright's  version)  :' — 

"  Beside  the  watch-tower  and  the  wind-beat  fig-tree 
On  rushed  the  twain  along  the  chariot  road, 
Beneath  the  rampart,  till  they  reached  the  .spot, 
Where  two  fair-flowing  fountains,  bubbling  up, 
Give  rise  to  eddying  Scaniander's  stream. 

^  The  reader  will  observe  that  "/ar-bubbling "  in  my  ver.sion  is  a  misprint 
for  "/a/rbubbling." 


r!i~»OK  xxr.  xoTF,!^  td  the  iliak.  383 

One  wiili  hot  current  flows,  whence  smoke  ascends, 
As  from  a  burning  fire  ;  the  other,  cold 
As  is  the  summer  hail  ;  or  like  to  ice 
Congealed  from  water ;  or  like  melting  snow. 
And  near  them,  marble  basins,  white  and  broad. 
Stood,  where  the  Trojan  dames  and  their  fair  daughters 
Were  wont  of  old  to  wash  their  shining  robes. 
In  days  of  peace,  ere  came  Achaia's  sons."* 

Now,  on  this  passage,  as  translated  here,  and,  indeed,  as  it  natu- 
rally strikes  the  ear  in  the  original,  the  Sotat  liKafxdvSpov  Tnjyal 
seem  plainly  to  be  nothing  but  the  sources  of  the  Scamandcr ;  and, 
on  the  faith  of  this  so  obvious  interpretation,  Le  Chevalier,  a 
French  traveller,  about  the  end  of  the  last  century,  concluded  that 
the  Scamander  was  not  the  great  river  described  by  Demetrius, 
rising  high  on  Mount  Ida,  but  another  stream,  rising  close  to  Troy, 
the  outcome  of  those  very  twin  fountains  of  which  we  are  now 
speaking.  What  that  streamlet  exactly  is  we  shall  presently  see  ; 
but  in  the  meantime,  Le  Chevalier's  supposed  discovery  of  the 
source  of  the  Scamander,  trumpeted  by  Professor  Dalzcl  in  Edin- 
burgh, surprised  not  only  the  great  body  of  the  French  scholars 
and  travellers  into  rapturous  assent,  but  even  confounded  the 
broad  masterly  glance  of  Colonel  Leake. 

After  this  explanation,  the  reader  will  be  so  kind  as  to  suppose 
himself  again  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mendereh,  on  its  eastern  bank ; 
and  proceeding  along  that  bank,  as  near  as  the  marshy  ground 
allows,  to  the  distance  of  about  three  miles  from  the  sea.  Looking 
then  eastward,  he  will  find  himself  opposite  the  mouth  of  a  valley 
which  runs  on  the  south  side  of  the  Rhoetean  ridge,  almost  parallel 
to  the  coast  of  the  Dardanelles,  and  through  which  a  stream  or  moun- 
tain-torrent flows  in  a  direction  almost  due  west  towards  the  plain 
of  the  Scamander.  This  is  the  DonibreJc,  the  largest  stream  in  the 
district  after  the  Scamander.  It  does  not  flow  into  it,  however, 
but  loses   itself  by   several  mouths   more   eastward   into  the  sea. 

*  The  strange  statements  with  regard  to  the  temperature  of  these  fountains 
have  been  the  subject  of  much  discussion  in  modern  times  ;  but  they  seem  to 
be  mere  matters  of  superficial  popular  impression  and  exaggeration,  which  in 
a  topographical  argument  ma}*  be  dropped. 


384  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXI. 

The  valley  of  this  river  is  bounded  on  the  south  by  a  ridge  of  hills, 
at  the  western  extremity  of  which,  where  it  falls  into  the  plain, 
there  is  a  plateau,  at  the  modern  Turkish  village  of  Hissarlik,  on 
which  an  ancient  town  stood.  This,  according  to  the  witness  of 
coins  found  on  the  spot,  and  the  minute  description  in  Strabo  and 
other  ancient  authorities,  was  unquestionably  the  site  of  Ilium 
Novum,  or  Neiv  Trot/,  a  town  which,  created  by  the  Lydian  kings 
(Str.  XIII.  601),  dignified  by  poetic  associations,  and  nursed  by 
Macedonian  pride  and  Roman  vanity,  continued  through  not  a  few 
centuries  in  ancient  times  to  reflect,  however  faintly,  the  glories  of 
the  old  metropolis  of  Priam.  Proceeding  up  the  Scamander  about 
five  miles,  the  traveller  will  find  himself  opposite  another  torrent, 
flowing  in  like  manner  from  the  mountains  on  his  left  hand  in  a 
south-westerly  direction,  and  emptying  itself  into  the  Mendereh 
about  two  miles  below  the  defile,  where  that  river  emerges  from  the 
mountains.  This  is  the  Kimair,  unquestionably  the  Thymbrius  of 
Strabo  and  Demetrius  {Str.  xiii.  598).  He  will  then  cross  the 
Mendereh,  and  proceeding  right  south  (his  previous  course  having 
been  south-east),  he  will  find  himself,  after  advancing  about  a  mile,  at 
the  Turkish  village  of  Bunarhashi.  To  the  east  of  this  village  about 
a  mile  and  a  half  flows  the  Mendereh ;  and  close  upon  it,  to  the 
south-west,  rise  those  "  wells  of  the  Scamander"  which  the  French- 
man discovered.  These,  though  they  afterwards  form  into  two 
runnels,  are  not  strictly  two  fountains,  but  a  great  number  of 
springs,  whence  their  Turkish  name,  Kirhe-joss,  signifying  forfij 
eyes.  They  gush  out  with  great  copiousness  from  the  north  slope 
of  the  ridge  of  hills  which  separates  the  plain  of  Troy  on  the  south 
from  the  great  bay  of  Adramyttium,  where  the  ^gean  runs  sud- 
denly eastward,  and  gradually  form  a  stream,  which  flows  at  first 
along  the  foot  of  the  hills  westward,  and  then  suddenly  turns  ofi"  in 
a  north-westerly  direction  parallel  to  the  Mendereh,  into  which  it 
discharges  itself,  about  two  miles  from  its  mouth,  about  a  mile 
south  of  Yeni-shehr,  the  ancient  Sigeum.  This  is  the  stream,  of 
course,  which,  as  already  said,  Le  Chevalier  baptized  into  the  Sca- 
mander.    And   having   thus   completed   the   circuit   of  the   plain. 


BOOK  XXL  XOTES  TO  THE  FLIAl).  385 

which  lies  pi'incipally  betwixt  this  Biinarbashi  river  and  the  open- 
ings of  the  Dombrek  and  Kimair  valleys  already  described,  we 
have  nothing  further  to  state  in  reference  to  our  present  argument, 
but  that  on  the  banks  of  the  Mendereh,  little  more  than  a  mile 
south-east  of  Bunarbashi,  there  is  a  notable  plateau,  well  fitted  for 
a  strong  place,  where  remains  of  ancient  walls  have  lately  been  ex- 
cavated, and  which  Le  Chevalier,  Welcker,  Von  Hahn,  and  the  con- 
tinental travellers  and  scholars  generally,  identify  with  the  Homeric 
Troy.  Here,  therefore,  is  our  problem  : — Have  we  any  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  Pergamus  of  Priam  was  actually  on  tbe  high  cliff 
that  overhangs  the  west  bank  of  the  Scamander  at  the  place  of  its 
great  bend  above  Bunarbashi ;  and  if  not,  on  what  other  strong 
point  commanding  the  Trojan  plain  can  the  fortress  of  ancient 
Ilium  be  placed?  The  answer  to  this  question  depends  on  the 
identification  of  the  Scamander  and  the  Simois.  The  one  we  have 
already  found  ;  the  other  we  have  now  to  seek  for.  But  first  let 
us  explain  the  origin  of  that  strange  misunderstanding  about  the 
Homeric  passage  above  quoted,  which  has  led  so  many  learned  men 
to  attempt  depriving  the  godlike  river  of  his  unquestionable  rights. 
The  ancients,  who  knew  tbeir  Scamander  as  indubitably  as  the 
Londoners  know  their  Thames,  never  dreamt  of  interpreting  that 
passage  in  a  manner  which  could  produce  any  such  astounding 
results  as  those  which  bave  proceeded  from  the  superficial  manipu- 
lation of  the  ingenious  Frenchman.  The  Greek  scholia,  as  we  have 
had  occasion  to  remark,  contain  a  fair  proportion  of  learned  non- 
sense ;  but  they  contain  enovigh  also  of  sound,  solid,  old  Hellenic 
tradition  and  popular  good  sense  to  make  that  modern  a  very 
unsafe  expounder  of  Homer  who  does  not  carefully  consult  them 
on  all  doubtful  points.  Now  here  they  tell  us  in  plain  words  that 
Homer  in  this  passage  certainly  does  not  and  can  not  mean  the  real 
sources  of  the  Scamander,  which  everybody  knew  were  far  up 
among  the  eastern  heights  ;  but  what  he  meant  to  say  was  that  near 
Troy  there  were  two  fountains,  which  from  their  copiousness  were 
supposed  to  have  their  origin  in  a  subterranean  vein  of  the  godlike 
river,  and  for  this  reason,  in  perfect  accordance  with  the  habit  of 
VOL.  IV.  2  B 


386  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXI. 

ancient  sentiment  in  reference  to  such  matters,  were  called  the 
fountains  o/",  or,  as  it  should  rather  be,  from  the  Scamander. 
This  explains  the  whole  difficulty ;  and  had  the  Venetian  scholia, 
where  this  explanation  is  given,  been  generally  known  and  pro- 
perly appreciated  at  the  time  when  Le  ChcYalier  made  his  modern 
rebaptism  of  the  Mendereh,  a  great  deal  of  literary  confusion 
might  have  been  spared.  Nobody  in  that  case  would  ever  have 
dreamt  of  calling  the  real  Scamander,  after  his  example,  the  Simois  ; 
and  this  river  might  at  once  have  been  found  in  the  Buuarbashi 
river,  in  perfect  consistency  with  Le  Chevalier's  site  of  Troy. 
For  let  us  see  how  the  Homeric  evidence  in  regard  to  the  Simois 
stands.  Of  this  river  we  learn  nothing  from  the  Iliad  except  that 
it  was  a  tributary  stream  of  the  Scamander  (v.  774),  and  flowed  in 
such  a  line  that,  when  the  Greeks  were  near  the  Trojan  gates,  the 
battle  could  then  be  said  to  rage  up  and  down 

ev6a  Kal  evda 
p-eacyriyvs  '^ifxoevros  iSe  'ZdvdoLO  podwv 

(vi.  4  and  80) 

between  the  Simois  and  the  Scamander.  If  so,  of  course  the 
site  of  Troy  is  to  be  sought  for  at  the  head  of  the  plain  which  is 
enclosed  between  these  two  rivers ;  and  this  is  exactly  the  site  of 
the  plateau  discevered  by  Le  Chevalier,  with  Scamander  on  the 
east,  and  the  Scamandrian  wells,  out  of  which  the  assumed  Simois 
flows,  on  the  west.  And  on  this  theory  we  have  also  the  outlook 
hill  of  Polites  (ii.  794)  most  appositely  in  the  conical  hill  of 
Udjek  /epe,  some  three  or  four  miles  to  the  west  (Welcker,  Ixxi.), 
and  the  mound  of  Batieia  lies  also  (ir.  811),  as  the  most  recent 
investigator  declares  (Von  Hahn,  p.  33),  right  in  front  of  the 
town,  looking  south.  Here  is  a  concurrence  of  very  strong  points 
of  evidence,  which,  along  with  the  general  commanding  situation 
of  the  ground  behind  Bunarbashi  here,  impressed  so  experienced 
and  so  judicious  an  archaeologist  as  Professor  Welcker  (p.  Ixxxi.), 
with  the  firm  conviction  that  the  site  of  the  Pergamus  of  Priam 
may  be  placed  here  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt.  But  our  sagacious 
townsman,  Mr.  Maclaren,  in  liis  recent  work  on  this  subject — a  work 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTKS  T(i  THE  lUAD.  .'^S7 

which  can  never  lose  its  vahic  as  a  masterly,  and  in  some  points 
incontrovertible  piece  of  pleading, — will  not  admit  this  conclu- 
sion, and  stands  with  unshaken  confidence  on  the  assertion  of  the 
good  people  of  New  Ilium,  that  their  Troy  was  the  real  Pergamus 
of  Homer,  and  that  only  a  curious  itch  of  innovation  could  ever 
have  led  Demetrius  of  Scepsis,  his  transcriber  Strabo,  and  after 
him  the  obedient  moderns,  on  the  authority  of  a  single  name,  to 
seek  for  it  anywhere  else.  Mr.  Maclaren's  arguments  in  favour 
of  New  Ilium  as  the  genuine  Troy  resolve  into  three  :  The  Dom- 
brek  is  the  Simois ;  the  general  belief  among  the  ancients  was 
that  the  new  city  stood  on  the  site  of  the  old ;  and  the  verses 
of  Homer  themselves  in  almost  every  book  describe  military 
and  other  movements  which  are  utterly  inconsistent  with  the 
idea  of  Troy  being  situated  at  so  great  a  distance  as  nine  miles 
from  the  sea  coast.  Let  us  examine  these  three  points  separately. 
That  Strabo,  or  rather  Demetrius,  whom  he  follows,  believed  the 
Dombrek  to  be  the  Homeric  Simois,  is  unquestionable ;  that  the 
same  stream  was  also  the  Simois  of  Ptolemy,  is  equally  certain 
(v.  2,  3) ;  but  as  the  Simois  is  a  small  subsidiary  stream,  which 
does  in  nowise  speak  so  decidedly  for  itself  as  the  dominant 
Scamander,  when  we  ask  for  proofs  on  which  that  witness  stood, 
we  are  not  only  left  altogether  without  reasons,  but  very  strong 
reasons  can  be  advanced  to  induce  the  suspicion  that  the  witness 
of  these  geographers,  however  respectable-looking,  is  at  bottom 
altogether  worthless.  For  the  identity  of  the  Dombrek  with  the 
Simois  was  a  point  which  the  citizens  of  New  Ilium  absolutely 
required  to  assume,  in  order  to  substantiate  their  claims  to  pass 
for  the  old  Trojans ;  and  if  these  claims  shall  appear  unfounded, 
those  of  the  Simois  cannot  be  above  suspicion.  If  New  Ilium  be 
the  real  Ilium,  it  stands  at  the  head  of  a  plain,  bounded  on  one 
side  by  the  Scamander,  and  on  the  other  by  the  Simois,  that  is,  by 
the  Dombrek,  for  there  is  no  other  river  here  that  can  fulfil  the 
conditions.  Now  as  to  the  claims  of  JSlew  Ilium  to  be  old  Ilium, 
we  know  of  no  ground  whatsoever  on  which  they  were  placed  ex- 
cept that  of  local  tradition  ;  and  local   tradition  in  such  cases  is 


888  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXI. 

often  the  mere  child  of  local  vanity  and  patriotic  conceit,  so  that 
there  is  really  no  trustworthy  foundation  for  the  identity  at  all. 
The  guide-books  which  our  tourists  use  are  full  of  assumed  iden- 
tities of  this  kind,  which  will  often  pass  undisturbed  for  centuries, 
so  long  as  statistical  sceptics,  with  spectacles  and  text-book,  make 
no  invasion  into  the  wide  realm  of  amiable  and  reverential  cre- 
dulity. Between  the  destruction  of  Troy,  and  the  age  of  inquiring 
criticism,  at  least  eight  hundred  years  had  elapsed;  and  if  at  the 
time  of  the  Lydian  kings,  when  new  Troy  began  to  creep  into 
existence,  a  very  natural  patriotic  vanity  on  the  part  of  its  inhabit- 
ants conspired  with  a  great  amount  of  general  ignorance  and  in- 
diiference,  to  make  the  new  city  successor,  not  only  to  the  name 
but  to  the  literal  sacred  site  of  the  old,  no  person  with  the  slightest 
knowledge  of  topographical  history  will  be  surprised  at  the  result. 
To  obliterate  the  name  of  a  great  ruling  river  such  as  the  Tweed 
from  the  district  to  which  it  gives  a  character  and  a  name,  will,  as 
we  have  said,  always  be  a  difficult  achievement,  and  is  in  nowise 
to  be  presumed  ;  but  to  pass  off  the  Manor  for  the  Eddleston  water, 
if  any  strong  local  vanity  demanded  the  rcbaptism  of  either  of 
these  small  tributaries,  would  be  one  of  the  easiest  of  topographi- 
cal transactions.  It  is  to  be  feared,  therefore,  that,  in  the  circiun- 
stances,  the  reputable  claims  of  Mr.  Maclaren's  Simois  are  really 
nothing  better  than  a  forged  certificate,  at  least  a  certificate  to 
which  strong  suspicions  of  forgery  are  attached.  Nor  will  it  mend 
the  matter  to  plead,  in  the  second  place,  that  Alexander  the  Great 
(Arr.  I.  11),  and  some  half-dozen  Macedonian  kings  and  Eoman 
Consuls  (Liv.  xxxv.  43;  xxxvii.  9  and  37),  actually  did  New 
Ilium  the  honour  to  visit  it,  and  sacrifice  to  Homeric  gods  and 
demigods  there,  upon  the  faith  of  the  historical  claims  which  its 
cidzens  put  forth.  Many  an  honest  traveller,  without  having  the 
political  motives  that  are  apt  to  taint  the  sincerity  of  princes 
and  statesmen,  may  have  done  the  same  thing  on  less  plausible 
grounds.  Any  kind-hearted  man  will  take  a  gilded  piece  of  copper 
for  true  gold,  if  the  taking  of  it  both  gives  pleasure  to  the  giver, 
and   adds   consideration  to   the   receiver.       Claims   such  as  those 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTES  To  THE  ILIAD.  381) 

which  the  citizeus  of  New  Ilium  advanced  iu  favour  of  their  own 
Homeric  descent,  and  that  of  their  local  stream  the  Dombrck,  will 
pass  current  more  ea.sily  than  they  were  invented,  so  long  as  it 
enters  into  no  man's  head  to  question  them.  But  the  claims  of 
New  Ilium  were  questioned  even  in  ancient  times,  and  that  so  soon 
as  men  arose  in  the  world  who  made  that  sort  of  questioning  a 
business.  Scarcely  had  Zenodotus  the  Ephcsian  begun  to  probe 
with  his  critical  finger  the  unsound  places  of  the  Homeric  text,  than 
a  local  topographer — that  Scepsian  whom  we  have  so  often  men- 
tioned,— arose,  who,  in  the  face  of  so  old  a  witness  as  Hellanicus 
(Str.  XIII.  G02),  gave  a  public  contradiction  to  the  claims  of  the 
Ilienses,  and  with  such  effect  as  to  have  his  denial  accepted  by  the 
greatest  geographer  of  the  ancient  world  ;  a  denial  which  we  may 
be  sure  would  have  been  blown  away  as  a  harmless  crotchet,  had 
there  been  anything  more  substantial  than  the  levity  of  local  con- 
ceit with  which  to  give  it  a  rebuif.  As  to  Maclaren's  third  point 
in  favour  of  the  site  of  New  Ilium,  that  it  agrees  better  with  the 
distances  of  the  various  movements  described  in  the  Homeric 
text,  though  this  argument  seems  to  have  had  so  much  weight  with 
Leake  as  to  induce  him  to  forge  a  fanciful  retrocession  of  the  sea 
in  order  to  meet  it,  I  do  not  feel  myself  under  any  obligation  to  re- 
fute it  in  detail,  because,  even  assuming  all  the  distances  noticed  in 
his  seventh  chapter  to  be  necessarily  as  short  as  he  insists,  it  seems 
contrary  to  all  just  principles  of  criticism  to  argue  from  the  text  of 
a  book  of  popular  ballads — for  we  have  to  do  liere  mainly  with  the 
materials  that  Homer  used,- — as  if  it  contained  a  set  of  measure- 
ments by  an  Admiralty  surveyor,  or  the  strategic  record  of  a 
military  historian  like  Polybius.  I  consider  rather  that,  as  on  the 
stage,  explanations  are  often  made,  and  catastrophes  brought 
about,  in  less  than  five  minutes,  which  would  require  at  least  five 
days  on  the  arena  of  actual  life,  or  perhaps  as  many  months,  so  the 
broad  and  rapid  glance  of  a  popular  epic  poet  cannot  be  expected 
to  take  a  curious  account  of  the  difterence  between  four  miles  and 
eight,  when  the  convenience  of  dramatic  efiect  interferes.  On  the 
whole,  therefore,  I  conclude  that  the  case  of  our  sagacious  towns- 


■idO  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAT).  BOOK  XXI. 

man,  triumphant  though  it  be  on  the  important  point  of  the  Scam- 
ander,  breaks  down  in  reference  to  the  Simois,  and  a  verdict  of  Not 
proven  against  New  Ilium  must  be  pronounced.  As  to  Bunarbashi, 
on  the  other  hand,  no  prudent  man,  I  conceive,  in  the  present  state 
of  the  evidence,  will  be  able  to  assert  more  than  that  it  has  high 
probabilities  in  its  favour ;  it  identifies  more  accessory  points  more 
happily,  that  is  all ;  but  these  points  are  not  of  such  a  nature  as  to 
impress  a  cautious  reasoner  with  the  weight  of  absolute  conviction. 

In  the  above  statement  I  have  taken  no  account  of  the  sites  of 
ancient  Troy  assigned  by  our  historical  geographer.  Major  Rennell, 
and  by  the  learned  German  traveller,  Ulrichs.  Scholars  owe  a  debt 
of  gi-atitude  to  Rennell  for  the  effective  manner  in  which  he  re-vindi- 
cated the  rights  of  the  Mendereh ;  but  as  to  his  theory  of  the  site 
of  Troy,  depending  as  it  does  upon  the  postulate  that  the  Kimair 
is  the  Simois,  I  can  only  say  that,  so  far  as  I  can  understand  from 
the  more  accurate  maps  which  we  now  possess,  it  seems  to  remove 
both  Troy  and  the  Simois  into  a  region  too  much  separated  from 
the  natural  plain  of  the  Scamander  to  answer  the  required  condi- 
tions. The  paper  of  Uh-ichs  I  only  know  from  the  answer  to  it  in 
Welcker,  but  from  that  account,  which  goes  into  great  detail,  I 
cannot  imagine  a  single  point  of  superiority  which  it  can  assert  as 
against  either  Maclaren  or  Welcker.  Like  Rennell,  Uh-ichs  seems 
to  me,  without  necessity,  to  go  out  of  the  way.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  the  site  of  Troy  imagined  by  Demetrius  the  Scepsian. 
three  miles  inland  from  New  Troy,  among  the  hills,  in  a  direct  line 
east,  away  from  the  plain  of  the  Scamander. 

I  subjoin  a  list  of  the  works  I  have  consulted  on  this  subject : — 

(1.)  Description  of  the  Plain  of  Troy;  by  Le  Chevalier.  Eng- 
lish by  Professor  Dalzel.     Edinburgh,  1791. 

(2.)  Dissertation  on  the  War  of  Troy;  by  Jacob  Bryant.  1797. 
[This  writer  was  certainly  born  on  this  side  the  Rhine  by  mistake. 
He  out- Germans  the  wildest  of  the  Germans  in  speculative  absurdity 
and  erudite  negation.] 

(3.)  Observations  on  the  Plain  of  Troy  ;  by  James  Rennell. 
London,  1814. 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIA  1 1.  31)1 

(4.)  Jourual  of  a  Tour  in  Asia  Minor;  by  W.  M.  Leake. 
London,  1824. 

(5.)  On  some  Disputed  Questions  of  Ancient  Geography;  by 
the  same.     London,  1857. 

(6.)  Denkwiirdigkeiten  aus  dem  Orient ;  vom  Hitter  Prokesch 
von  Osteu.     Stuttgart,  1836. 

(7.)  Ueber  das  Homerische  Ilion ;  von  F.  G.  Welcker  (Kleine 
Schriften.     Bonn,  1845). 

(8.)  Ueber  die  Ebene  von  Troja  ;  von  Dr.  Forchhammer.  Frank- 
fort, 1850. 

(9.)  Ueber  die  Lage  des  Homerischeu  Ilion  ;  von  Dr.  Ecken- 
brecher.  The  Rhenish  MuseL.m,  1841.  [He  agrees  with  Mac- 
laren.  ] 

(10.)  The  Plain  of  Troy  described ;  by  Charles  Maclaren, 
F.E.S.E.  Edinburgh,  1863.  (The  first  edition  of  this  work  was 
published  in  1822.) 

(11.)  Die  Ausgrabungen  auf  der  Homerischen  Pergamos ;  von 
T.  G.  V.  Hahn.     Leipzig,  1865. 

(12.)  Observations  on  the  Topography  of  the  Troad ;  by  Wm. 
Robertson,  M.D.  Edinburgh :  Read  before  the  Royal  Society, 
1857  (in  MS.) 

Of  the  works  in  the  above  list,  Nos.  7  and  10  are,  in  the  present 
state  of  the  question,  by  far  the  most  important,  and  may  be  said 
to  be  indispensable  to  every  Homeric  library. 

Ver.  12. — As  ivhen  afire  is  lit  to  scare  the  locusts. 

The  thick  drift  of  various  kinds  of  locusts — (jryJlus  migratorius 
— is  a  fact  well  known  to  every  one.  I  have  in  my  memory  a  hot 
walk  which  I  made  some  fifteen  years  ago  across  the  isthmus  of 
Corinth,  when  a  regular  snow-storm  of  the  most  beautiful  vermilion 
locusts  came  bumping  upon  me  at  mid  day.  To  get  riddance  of 
these  winged  pests,  of  course,  the  best  way  is  when  God  sends  a 
strong  wind ;  but,  if  this  docs  not  come  naturally,  resort  is  had 
to  the  artificial  disturbance  of  the  air  by  kindling  fires.  The  same 
remedy  is  useful  against  the  malaria.     Bothe  quotes  a  curious  pas- 


3D2  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXI. 

sage  from  Diod.  Sic.  iii.  29,  about  certain  Ethiopians,  who  kindled 
large  fires  in  a  valley  for  several  days,  which  not  only  confounded 
and  scattered,  but  actually  killed  the  locusts  in  immense  quantities, 
supplying  the  people  with  stores  of  highly  relished  food. 

Ver.  95. — Not  I  from  one  womb  vjith  Hector  came. 

This  marked  reference  to  uterine  consanguinity  occurs  several 
times  in  the  Iliad  (iii.  238,  xix.  293,  and  xxiv.  47).  There  is 
always  something  perhaps  more  moving  to  a  feeling  heart  in  the 
word  mother  than  in  that  of  father  ;  but  in  countries  where  poly- 
gamy is  practised,  there  is  the  additional  motive  for  mentioning 
the  mother,  that,  while  the  father  is  common  to  all  the  brethren,  the 
mother  supplies  the  special  bond  of  connexion  to  the  few.  To  what 
extent  the  thoughtful  reader  may  feel  warranted  to  acknowledge 
any  traces  here  of  that  special  dominance  of  the  female  in  calcu- 
lating kinship,  which  Herodotus  (i.  173)  and  Nicolaus  Damascenus 
mention  as  characteristic  of  the  Lycians,  will  depend  upon  how 
far  his  vision  in  this  direction  has  been  sharpened  by  the  learned 
and  ingenious  speculations  on  "  kinship  in  ancient  Greece,"  and 
generally  on  "  primitive  marriage,"  put  forth  in  the  Fortnightly 
Revieio  (1866),  and  in  a  special  work  by  Mr.  John  M'Lennan, 
advocate,  of  this  place.  A  striking  proof  of  the  closer  consan- 
guinity in  early  times  believed  to  spring  from  the  mother,  is 
afforded  by  the  peculiar  Attic  law  that  a  man  might  marry  his 
sister  by  the  same  father,  but  not  by  the  same  mother  (Demosth. 
Euhul.  1304 ;  Plut.  Them.  32 ;  Paus.  i.  7.  1  ;  and  Becker's 
Charicles,  p.  478.  The  Germans  have,  as  usual,  a  big  book  on 
this  subject  (Bachofen's  Mtdterrecht),  in  which  whosoever  has 
leisure  to  dig  deep  will  no  doubt  find  strange  things. 

Ver.  132. — Vainly  have  slain  so  many  lulls,  etc. 

The  sacrificing  of  bulls  to  the  great  Rivers  as  to  many  other  gods 
was  natural.  The  bull  signified  strength,  and  was  specially  symbolical 
of  rivers  (xi.  728,  and  ver.  237,  infra).  The  flinging  of  horses 
into  the  flood  in  honour  of  the  river-god  looks  rather  like  an  Asiatic 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  393 

touch.  But  horses  were  also  sometimes  sacrificed  by  the  Greeks 
in  Europe  (Paus.  iii.  20.  9).  The  same  writer  expressly  testifies 
that  the  Argives  in  ancient  times  used  to  fling  horses  into  the  sea 
as  a  sacrifice  to  Poseidon  (yiii.  7.2).  The  rushing  of  floods  and 
the  careering  of  waves  are,  of  course,  naturally  symbolized  by  the 
movements  of  such  a  noble  racing  animal  as  the  horse  (Herm. 
Bel.  Alt,  sec.  26.  9). 

Ver.  194. — Even  Aclielous,  when  he  rolJa  his  flood,  etc. 

The  Achelous  {aqua  f)  was  to  the  ancient  Greek  ear  what  the 
Rhine  is  to  the  modern  German  ;  not,  however,  in  virtue  of  patriotic 
associations,  but  only  in  respect  of  magnitude.  It  was  the  greatest 
body  of  running  water  that  the  Greeks  knew,  and  therefore  stands 
here  and  elsewhere  (Paus.  viii.  387;  ^sehyl.  Pers.  874)  as  the 
representative  of  river,  and  even  watery  power  generally.  It  rises 
behind  Mount  Pindus,  about  seventeen  miles  east  from  Joannina 
(Leake,  N.  G.  iv.  185),  and,  flowing  almost  due  south,  and  forming 
the  boundary  between  Acarnania  and  ^tolia,  empties  itself  into  the 
Ionian  sea  opposite  Cephalonia.  In  mythological  legend  the  combat 
of  this  river  with  Hercules — a  legend  of  which  the  agricultural  sig- 
nificance is  obvious — was  widely  celebrated  (Soph.  Trach.  9). 

Ver.  346. 
As  ivhen  in  yelloio  autumn  months  hlows  the  Borean  breeze. 

The  oTTwpa  of  the  Greeks  is  our  midsummer.  When  the  dog- 
star  rises  the  north  wind  begins  to  blow,  and  continues  for  forty 
days.  So  Pliny  :  "  Ardeutissimo  autem  agstatis  tempore  exoritur 
Caniculae  sidus,  sole  primam  partem  Leonis  ingrediente,  qui  dies 
XV.  ante  Augustas  Kaleudas  est.  Hujus  exortum  diebus  octo 
ferme  Aquilones  antecedunt  quos  Prodromes  adpellant.  Post 
biduum  autem  exortus  Aquilones  constantius  perflant  diebus  quad- 
raginta  quos  Etesias  vocant"  {N.  H.  ii.  47).  See,  on  these  summer 
monsoons  of  the  Archipelago,  Wachsmuth's  Antiquities,  vol  i.  App. 
Exc.  I.,  and  compare  Od.  v.  328.  The  rationale  of  these  gales 
is  no  doubt  the  same  as  that  of  our  equinoctial  blasts. 


3 'J 4  ]S()TE.S  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BUUK  XXL 

Ver.  385. 

Here  Heyiie  comes  stoutly  out  with  what  he  had  before  hinted, 
that  the  whole  battle  of  the  gods  is  an  "  otiosa  opera,"  with  whom 
Payne  Knight  and  Nitzsch  {Sagenpoesie,  p.  128)  agree  ;  but  it  is 
easier  to  feel  that  the  verge  which  separates  the  sublime  from  the 
ridiculous  has  here  been  touched,  than  to  prove  that  a  popular 
polytheistic  poet  might  not  very  naturally  and  quite  piously  perpe- 
trate such  an  offence. 

Ver.  442. — The  foul  tieaclierous  art  of  proud  Laomedon. 

The  story  of  the  servitude  of  Apollo  and  Neptune  to  the  Trojan 
king  Laomedon,  who  showed  himself  thankless  for  the  divine  bene- 
fits conferred,  here  detailed,  was  alluded  to  shortly  above  (vii. 
452).  What  the  real  significance  of  that  class  of  myths  is  which 
makes  the  immortal  gods  bondsmen  for  a  season  to  mortal  men,  it 
is  diificult  with  decision  to  declare.  The  most  famous  of  them  is 
the  servitude  of  Apollo  to  Admetus,  king  of  Pherae,  in  Thessaly. 
In  that  case,  as  here,  we  find  that  the  presence  of  the  god  is  con- 
nected with  the  herding  of  cattle  (Pans.  vii.  20.  2  ;  Welcker,  g.  I. 
i.  79).  Now,  as  Apollo  elementally  means  the  sun,  and  as  fine 
sunny  weather  is  favourable  to  the  increase  of  all  kinds  of  cattle, 
the  most  natural  interpretation  of  such  legends  seems  to  be,  that 
the  king,  who  had  been  peculiarly  fortunate  in  a  succession  of  sea- 
sons favourable  for  breeding  cattle,  was  said  to  have  this  good  for- 
tune because  Jove  for  some  reason  or  other  had  bound  the  sun-god 
to  his  service.  Under  polytheism  such  an  idea  would  as  spon- 
taneously spring  up  as  under  the  mediaeval  monotheism  the  ascrip- 
tion of  extraordinary  gifts  and  extraordinary  prosperity  to  some 
special  compact  with  the  devil,  in  all  which  compacts  the  condition 
was  that  the  evil  Spirit  should  serve  the  mortal  man  absolutely 
for  a  certain  number  of  years  for  the  wage  of  his  soul  at  the  expi- 
ration of  the  term.  This  is  my  opinion.  Diff"erent  views  of  Apollo's 
servitude  will  be  found  in  Midler's  Dor.  i.  339,  and  Gerhard's 
Mgth.  §  308.  4. 


BOOK  XXI.  NOTES  TO  THE  1L1AJ».  395 

Ver.  454. — For  a  branded  slave  wuidd  sell  thee. 

Heyne  remarks  that  we  have  here  one  of  the  oldest  examples  of 
the  practice  of  selling  human  beings  as  slaves  across  the  sea.  The 
Odyssey  in  several  places  gives  more  distinct  evidence  to  the  same 
effect.  The  origin  of  slavery  from  captivity  in  war  is  well  stated 
by  Dionys.  Hal.  {B.  A.  iv.  24).  But  I  fear  the  Phoenicians,  at 
least  in  ancient  times,  practised  kidnapping  with  that  utter  want  of 
conscience  exhibited  more  or  less  by  all  nations  who  devote  them- 
selves to  merchandise  and  money-making. 

Ver.  483. — A  Uuiiess,  to  kill  of  loomanhind  wJiom  thou,  shalt  please. 
On  Diana's  power  over  women,  see  above,  vi.  205  and  xi.  270. 

Ver.  570. — eiJ.fj.evai'  avjap  o6  KpoviSys  Zeus  kvSos  oira^ei. 

The  ancients  saw  that  this  was  a  stupid  and  impertinent  line,  and 
ought  to  be  ejected. 


BOOK   XXII. 


Ver.  30. — In  the  hot  sky  lie  liamjs  a  baleful  siyn. 

The  bad  health  which  is  induced  by  the  extreme  heat  of  summer, 
and  the  multiplication  of  noxious  exhalations  in  all  southern  cli- 
mates, is  well  known.  What  Homer  talks  of  here  is  evidently  the 
well-known  marsh  or  malaria  fever,  of  which  not  a  few  sallow  faces 
in  the  Pontine  Marshes,  and  elsewhere  in  the  lloman  Campagna, 
bear  familiar  witness.  This  is  the  reason  why  Apollo,  or  the  Sun, 
though  generally  a  beneficent  deity,  is  represented  in  Greek  mytho- 
logical legend  as  the  sender  of  pestilence  (Welck.  (j.  I.  i.  p.  459). 
The  KaKov  (Trjixa  of  this  passage  is  the  oi"Ato5  acrT;//»  of  xi.  62. 


390  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BUUK  XXII. 

Ver.  93. — ^s  tvheii  a  snake  tvhidi  feeds  on  venomous  food. 

The  commentators  quote  ^lian  hero  [Nat.  An.  vi.  4)  to  the 
effect  that  serpents  feed  on  poisonous  plants,  and  thereby  nourish 
their  virus.  The  fact  that  they  actually  do  eat  herbs  (Ar.  Hist. 
Anim.  VIII.  6.  1),  and  that  they  are  often  found  in  rank  and  lushy 
places,  where  poisonous  plants  love  to  grow,  was  foundation  enough, 
and  more  than  enough,  for  such  a  notion. 


Ver.  126. — Talk  about  oaks  and  rock 


s. 


The  phrase  here — aTro  8pvos  ov8'  aTru  Trsrpy]^  oapt^'e/xerat — naturally 
recalls  the  well-known  passages  in  Hesiod  (Theoij.  35),  and  in  the 
Od.  (xix.  163).  What  to  make  of  the  passage  of  Hesiod  I  have  not 
been  able  to  make  up  my  mind,  nor  do  I  think  that  Goettling  has 
thrown  any  light  upon  it  with  what  Stallbaum  (Plat.  Plimdr.  275  b) 
very  properly  calls  his  commentuni  ;  but  as  to  the  passage  of  the 
Odyssey,  there  can  be  as  little  doubt  of  the  meaning  of  the  prover- 
bial expression  there,  as  unfortunately  of  its  inapplicability  to  the 
present  passage.  Penelope  asks  Ulysses,  yet  in  disguise,  to  give 
some  account  of  himself,  of  what  descent,  and  from  what  place, 
"for  certainly  you  do  not  spring  from  an  antediluvian  oak,  or  from 
a  rock  ;"  that  is  evidently,  as  we  say,  "  yon,  did  7iot  droj)  from  the 
clouds."^  This  interpretation  applies  with  equal  clearness  and 
force  to  the  places  of  Plato  (Apol.  34  d,  and  Bep.  viii.  544  e). 
With  regard  to  the  present  passage,  however,  it  seems  to  stand 
quite  alone  in  the  use  of  the  preposition  diro  in  connexion  with 
oapi^eLv.  Had  it  been  Tre/ai,  then  we  might  perhaps  have  translated 
to  "  tallc  about  vague,  distant,  and  unascertainable  matters  ;"  but  as 
the  text  stands,  we  had  better  shake  ourselves  free  from  all  refer- 
ence to  the  other  places  quoted,  and  translate,  as  the  contest  sug- 
gests, ''  tJiis  is  not  the  time  to  talk  from  an  old  oak,  or  a  crag,  like 
a  young  man  and  a  maid  ivhispering  pleasant  things  of  a  summer 
eve''   (Heyne)  ;  and    after  repeated   consideration,  I  can  find  no- 

'  Ameis  (Od.)  cmnparcs  tlu^  CJcnnnii  proverbs:  "  Da  bis(  iiiclil  hiiticr  dcvi 
Zaune  gefundeii,"  uiid  "  I)u  hist  keiii  aufgelesencs  Zigeunerkiiid." 


l'.OOK  XXII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  397 

thing  more  suitable.  Tlie  only  other  possible  interpretation  is  to 
suppose  that  diru  Spvo's  was  understood  to  mean,  heginmng  unth 
that — si  art  ing  from  ;  in  which  case  it  would  be  equivalent  to  Trepi. 
So  Faesi.  Then  the  passage  would  mean,  talking  of  idle ^  old,  ante- 
diluvian stories — nothing  to  the  jjurpose.  So  much  for  the  meaning 
as  it  can  be  brought  out  from  the  syntax  ;  but  as  a  translator  I  have 
thought  it  preferable  to  deal  freely  with  the  passage,  wishing  to 
convey  a  true  impression,  rather  than  to  give  an  exact  version. 

Ver.  164. — Some  rich  man^ s  funeral  feast. 

Here  we  see  the  germ  of  those  gladiatorial  shows  so  famous 
among  the  Eomans,  which,  as  is  well  known,  were  first  exhibited 
at  Eome  by  Marcus  and  Decimus  Brutus,  b.c.  264,  at  their  father's 
funeral  (Val.  Max.  it.  4.  7;  compare  Plutarch,  Thcs.  16). 

Ver.  247. 

Thus  speaking  him  Atliene  led  to  death  with  guilefid  lips. 

The  conduct  of  Athene  here  is  certainly  anything  but  noble,  and 
turns  our  British  sympathies  altogether  to  the  side  of  the  defeated ; 
but  to  a  thorough  Greek,  like  Homer,  it  seemed  only  proper  that 
the  daughter  of  Jove,  being  once  for  all  on  the  side  of  the  Greeks, 
should  show  her  favour,  not  only  by  giving  wisdom  to  the  favoured 
side,  but  by  casting  a  glamour  over  the  adverse  party ;  that  is,  by 
cheating  them.  We  have  seen  above,  indeed  (ii.  6),  that  to  say  he 
had  been  cheated  or  deluded  by  a  god  was  the  favourite  phrase 
of  a  Greek,  when  he  had  been  disnppointed  in  his  expectations. 
This  is  my  answer  to  Hayman,  who,  in  a  vigorous  and  strongly- 
drawn  portrait  of  this  goddess,  in  Appendix  e  to  his  Odyssey. 
vol.  i.,  speaks  of  her  as  peculiarly  destitute  of  all  moral  sense,  and 
as  being,  in  fact,  taken  at  her  best,  only  the  "  noblest  form  of 
a  DEMON  ever  drawn."  I  see  nothing  in  the  KepSoavvi]  of  Pallas 
of  which  any  other  Greek  god,  under  the  influence  of  patriotic 
partialities,  might  not  be  equally  capable  ;  and  if  she  displays  none 
of  those  most  lovely  traits  of  character  which  we  delight  to  con- 
template  in   woman,   we  must  remember,  that  though  in  form  a 


3iJ8  NOTES  TU  TIIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXII. 

female,  she  in  no  sense  represents  the  sex.  She  is  born  of  her 
omnipotent  father's  brain,  without  the  intervention  of  a  mother ; 
she  represents  wise  and  energetic  action,  and  specially  warlike 
action.  Like  all  wisdom,  she  must  be  severe ;  like  all  military 
wisdom,  she  must  be  pitiless  ;  and,  like  all  Greek  wisdom,  she  will 
be  often  cunning,  sometimes  false.  No  Grreek  was  ever  ambitious 
of  showing  the  lion's  face  to  his  enemy,  when  it  seemed  more  ad- 
vantageous to  play  the  fox. 

Ver.  323. 

The  mail  which  from  Patroclus  slain  the  victor  hore. 

"  Hoc  illud  est  quod  miror  poetam  in  usus  suos  non  apertius  et 
significantius  vertisse ;  conspectu  armorum  Patrocli  Achillis  iram 
inflammari  nece.«se  erat"  (Heyne).  There  is  some  sense  in  this. 
0  si  sic  omnia  ! 

Ver.  H5b.—Hini  crest-flichering  Hector  dying  addressed. 

The  solemnity  of  the  last  scene  of  our  mortal  drama  has  always 
attached  no  common  significance,  and  even  a  certain  prophetic  in- 
sight to  the  last  words  of  the  dying.  Socrates  alludes  to  this  be- 
lief with  a  very  efi'ective  conviction  in  his  defence  before  his  judges, 
Kttt  yap  elfjit  -i'jSrj  evravOa  iv  w  /xaAifrr'  avOpioirot  ^^pr/o-yawSoucriv 
orav  jxkXXiiXTLv  diroOaveiaOaL  (Plat.  Apol.  39  c).  Compare  xvi. 
849,  supra^  with  Heyne's  note ;  also  Ewald,  Geschichte  des  IsraeJ- 
itischen  Volks,  i.  p.  82. 

Ver.  515. 

Thus  sjmhe  she  weeping^  and  with  her  /he  v:omcn  iveeji  and  ivaiJ. 

In  concluding  this  book  we  may  remark  that  the  death  of 
Hector  as  here  described,  is  one  of  the  parts  of  this  great  poem 
which  has  given  least  satisfaction,  even  to  those  who  are  the  most 
unqualified  admirers  of  the  minstrel.  De  la  Motte,  who  was  a 
clever  fellow  in  his  day,  considered  the  whole  affair  managed 
so  abominably  by  Homer,  that  in  his  improved  French  version  of 
the   story  he  considered  himself  bound  to  remodel   it   altogether 


BOOK  .\X[1.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  399 

(CEicvres,  ii.  133).  The  Abbe  Terracon,  another  French  critic 
(Dissertations,  London,  1722,  vol.  i.  p.  440),  says  generally  that 
"  the  character  of  Hector  affords  vis  an  illustrious  example  of  the 
absurdity  and  inequality  of  Homer's  characters;"  and  then  with 
special  reference  to  this  book,  he  goes  on  to  prove  that  "  Hector, 
considered  as  a  hero,  don't  show  sufficient  coui'age  either  in  his 
speech  or  in  his  actions."  Now  with  regard  to  this  matter  I  have 
only  to  say  that  from  our  modern  point  of  view  there  is  no  small 
amount  of  justice  in  the  charge ;  unquestionably  a  Tasso  did 
manage,  and  a  Tennyson,  if  his  genius  inclined  him  to  warlike 
themes,  would  manage  otherwise ;  but  I  see  here  at  the  same  time 
only  the  most  convincing  proof  uf  the  essential  difference  in  quality 
between  Homer  as  a  popular  minstrel,  and  Tasso  or  Tennyson  as 
cultivated  and  highly  reflective  literary  poets.  Homer  as  a  popu- 
lar minstrel  was  infected  with  the  patriotic  notion  that  a  Trojan 
could  in  no  proper  fashion  look  a  Greek  in  the  face,  much  less 
such  Greeks  as  Patroclus  and  Achilles.  Hence  the  contradiction 
that,  though  he  would  have  us  believe  that  Hector  was  a  very 
brave  fellow,  he  nevertheless  makes  him  behave  on  certain  pro- 
minent occasions  as  if  he  had  water  and  not  blood  in  his  veins. 
This  we  had  occasion  to  remark  before  (xi.  189),  but  let  it  stand 
here  also  for  more  distinctness.  Homer's  patriotism,  united  with 
his  habits  and  avocations  as  a  popular  minstrel,  did  occasionally 
lead  him  to  make  aesthetical  blunders,  from  which  many  a  small 
poet  in  ages  of  literary  reflection  would  have  kept  himself  free. 
As  to  Hector's  character,  after  laying  its  occasional  incongruities 
to  the  account  partly  of  the  poet's  patriotism,  partly  of  the  pro- 
clivities of  his  plot,  we  shall  find  in  him  more  to  command  our 
admiration  and  our  love  than  in  any  other  character  of  the  poem. 
"  In  Hector  alone,"  says  Gladstone  (iii.  567),  with  great  truth, 
"  has  Homer  presented  to  us  that  most  commanding  and  most 
moving  combination  of  a  warrior's  gentleness  and  deep  affection 
with  warlike  vigour  and  heroic  strength."  And,  though  it  may 
no  doubt  be  said  that  Homer's  plot  afforded  him  the  opportunity 
of  exhibiting  domestic  virtues  and  family  feelings  only  in  the  case 


400  NOTES  TU  THE  ILIAD.  BuOK  XXIU. 

of  the  Trojans,  it  is  no  less  true  that  it  is  the  part  of  a  great  poet, 
as  of  a  great  general,  both  to  see  where  his  opportunities  lie,  and 
to  use  them  with  wise  selection  and  striking  effect. 


BOOK  XXIII. 


Veu.  30. — Sleek  fat  beeves. 

There  is  no  more  difficult  word  in  Homer  than  dpyos.     But  in 
plain  consistency  with  Homeric  usage  {(M.  xv.  161) — 

aierbs  dp-^rjv  XV"^  (pepwv  oi'i'xecra't  irkXospov, 
and  the  familiar  etymological  affinities  of  apyecrr^ys,  and  the  whole 
family  of  words,  both  Greek  and  Latin,  to  which  it  belongs,  I 
think  we  must  translate  here  white  bulls,  likely  not  alhi  merely, 
but  nitidi  et  candentes  (Virg.  JEn.  v.  236).  See  Dissen  on  the 
apyavTa  ravpov  of  Pindar  (01.  xiii.  96),  and  Nitzsch  on  Od.  ir.  11. 
I  doubt  much,  however,  whether  dpyos  could  mean  shining,  glossy, 
in  the  case  of  a  black  bull.  My  translation,  I  am  sorry  to  find  in , 
this  passage,  has  forgot  to  make  use  of  my  note. 

Ver.  71. — Bise  !  do  my  hnricd  riles. 

The  state  of  the  unburied  dead  in  the  heathen  world,  as  of  the 
unchristened  born  in  the  Christian  world,  has  a  something  of  un- 
satisfactory incompleteness  about  it  that  naturally  leads  to  uncom- 
fortable imaginations.  The  general  doctrine  of  the  Greeks  and 
Romans  with  regard  to  the  unburied  is  familiar  to  every  schoolboy 
from  the  passage  of  Virgil,  ^n.  vi.  325 — 

"  Ha3c  omncSj'^qiiaia  ceviiis,  iuops,  inhumataqiie  iuvhii  est : 
I'di'titor  ille,  Charcni  ;  lii,  quos  veliit  iinda  sepulti. 
Nee  ripas  datnr  horrendas  nee  ranca  lluenta 
Transport  are  prius,  qiiani  scJibus  ossa  quieruiit. 
Centum'errant  annos,  volitantque  hsec  lilora  circmn  : 
Turn  denium  adniissi  stagna  exoptata  revisunt." 

If  there  is  nothing  about  Charon  and  the  boat  here,  or  in  any 


BOOK  XXIIT.  N0TP:S  to  the  ILIAD.  401 

part  of  Homer,  that  part  of  the  picture  may  well  be  considered  as 
the  addition  of  a  later  age ;  but  that  any  Greek  could  have  under- 
stood by  TTOTaiMOLo,  not  Styx  or  Acheron,  which  Homer  knew  per- 
fectly well  (Od.  X.  513),  but  only  the  mighty  stream  of  Ocean,  is 
what  I  cannot  believe.  No  doubt  the  river  of  Ocean,  flowing  as  it 
does  in  the  far  west  and  the  region  of  darkness,  lies  between  the 
home  of  the  living  and  the  realm  of  the  dead,  but  every  dead  man 
passes  it  the  moment  he  dies,  or  as  shortly  after  as  souls  can  travel 
through  air,  and  Patroclus  has  certainly  passed  it  already,  or  he 
would  not  be  in  the  vestibule  of  Hades  at  all.  The  passage  in  Virgil, 
therefore,  and  the  present  passage,  are  perfectly  consistent,  though, 
as  we  see  in  the  whole  course  of  mythological  development,  the 
vague  outlines  of  the  old  Greek  conception  have,  in  the  course  of 
centuries,  been  worked  up  into  a  certain  well-known  and  established 
picturesqueness  of  detail.  But  this  very  consistency  has  been 
made  a  ground  with  certain  microscopic  Germans  of  suspecting  the 
genuineness  of  the  three  lines  72-74.  They  assert  that  there  is  a 
contradiction  between  the  account  of  his  unburied  condition  here 
given  by  Patroclus,  and  the  account  of  the  shade  of  the  unburied 
Elpenor  in  Od.  xi.  51.  For  Elpenor  in  that  passage  is  not 
separated  from  the  other  dead  in  the  manner  here  described  of 
Patroclus.  But  the  answer  to  this  is  plain.  The  poet  was  not 
always  bound  to  say  everything ;  and  it  is  plain,  from  the  very 
circumstance  of  Elpenor's  shade  appearing  first,  as  on  the  very 
threshold  and  border  of  Hades,  not  actually  within  it  (Plut. 
Symp.  IX.  5),  as  also  from  his  anxiety  to  receive  burial,  that  he 
was  virtually  in  the  same  uncomfortable,  incomplete  condition  here 
more  particularly  described  by  Patroclus.  In  Book  xxiv.  of  the 
Odyssey,  however,  the  barrier  of  intercourse  which  Patroclus  here 
speaks  of  is  altogether  broken  down ;  but  whatever  may  be  made 
of  this  mere  omission  by  those  who  look  upon  this  book  as  a  late 
addition,  it  certainly  cannot  be  adduced  to  prove  that  the  three 
lines  72-74  ought  to  be  ejected  from  this  place.  But  to  the  whole 
school  of  minute  criticism  from  which  these  objections  proceed,  we 
may  apply  the  remark  of  Aristotle,  in  the  Ethics^  that  in  the 
VOL.  IV.  2  C 


•102  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIII. 

systematic  treatment  of  no  science  should  a  greater  amount  of  accu- 
racy be  required  than  belongs  to  the  subject-matter;  and  it  is  a 
perverse  and  wrong-headed  proceeding  to  demand  a  minute  and 
curious  consistency  in  a  popular  poet,  with  regard  to  matters  which 
floated  loosely  and  without  distinctness  or  precision  in  the  popular 
imagination.  In  this  note  I  am  unfortunately  opposed  to  Nitzsch 
[Od.  XI.  51),  who  is  generally  a  very  reasonable  commentator. 

Ver.  88. — Waxed  wroth  in  silly  strife  about  the  dice. 

The  astragals,  da-rpdyaXoL,  here  spoken  of  were,  properly  speak- 
ing, the  ankle-bones  (Poll.  ii.  192),  talus — then  also  the  vertebras — 
acfiovSvXos  {Od.  XI.  65),  and  perhaps  also  other  small  bones  of  the 
body.  These  small  bones  were  used  for  a  game  that  went  by  their 
name,  as  we  sometimes  use  pebbles.  One  method  of  playing  with 
them  was  by  holding  them  close  in  the  hand,  and  causing  the  other 
party  in  the  game  to  guess,  odds  and  evens — aprta^etv  (Poll.  ix. 
101).  Another  method,  equally  simple,  but  demanding  practice 
and  dexterity,  is  represented  in  one  of  the  Herculanean  pictures 
figured  in  Smith's  Diet.,  Art.  Talus,  and  consisted  in  throwing  the 
astragals  up,  and  seeing  which  player  could  catch  the  greatest  num- 
ber on  the  back  of  his  hand.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  there  is  a 
distinction,  as  Eustathius  states  {Od.  i.  107),  between  da-TpdyaXoL 
Kvf3oL,  or  dice,  and  Trecrcrot,  draughts.  As,  however,  the  astragals 
were  sometimes  marked  with  pips  of  different  values,  and  thrown 
like  dice,  there  can  be  no  harm  in  so  translating  the  word  in  the 
present  passage.  When  used  as  dice,  they  were  marked  only  on 
four  sides,  because  the  bone  did  not  present  equally  six  even  faces 
on  which  to  rest.  It  may  be  only  further  added  that  the  game  of 
astragals,  being  practised  much  by  boys  (as  by  Cupid  and  Grany- 
mede  in  Olympus,  Ap.  Eh.  iii.  117),  offered  not  a  few  graceful 
attitudes  and  groups  to  the  eye  of  the  artist,  of  which  the  Greek 
sculptors  did  not  fail  to  take  advantage.  A  famous  group  of  this 
kind  is  mentioned  by  Pliny  {N.  H.  xxxrv.  8).  A  similar  group  is 
familiar  to  the  visitor  of  the  British  Museum  (Townley  Gallery,  by 
Ellis,  vol.  i.  p.  304). 


BOOK  XXIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAJ).  4-03 

Ver.  104. — In  its  form  nor  pifJt  nor  pointer  at  all. 

The  word  (fipei'€<;  in  this  passage  is  extremely  puzzling.  Etymo- 
logically,  as  well  as  in  tlie  connexion,  it  ought  to  mean  something 
corporeal  here,  and  so  Heyne  takes  it.  But  the  passage  in  Od.  x. 
493,  which,  if  there  is  to  be  any  science  in  criticism,  must  rule  the 
present  passage,  plainly  forces  us  to  interpret  e^pevcs  here  as  equi- 
valent to  vov?.  Voss  accordingly  translates  "  Besinnung."  I 
think,  however,  there  is  something  wanting  in  this  word  to  express 
the  full  meaning  of  the  word  in  this  place,  and  Donner  has  done 
wisely  to  add  "  Kraft  unci  Besinnung."     I  follow  his  example. 

Ver.  IIG. — IIoAAa,  S'  avavra  Ko.Tavra  TrdpavTO.  re  oo^ynta  r'  i)\dov. 

This  is  a  famous  line  with  the  rhetoricians  (Dem.  Phal.  226), 
and  certainly  in  the  original  it  has  a  very  remarkable  sound,  not 
so  much  by  the  five  dactyles,  as  the  juxtaposition  of  three  words 
ending  in  the  same  dissyllable ;  but  what  it  expresses  di'amatically 
is  not  so  easy  to  say.  If  it  were  meant  to  express  the  quick 
rattling  motion  of  a  stone  down  a  rough  slope,  it  would  be  perfect ; 
but  as  it  expresses  rather  the  slow  motion  of  mules  along  a  rough 
road,  we  must  admire  with  moderation.  Let  us  say  therefore  that 
the  three  words  in  ai'xa,  so  placed,  express  admirably  the  roughness 
of  the  road,  but  that  the  painful  slowness  which  characterized  the 
operation  might  have  been  better  expressed  by  spondees. 

Ver.  135. — And  from  their  heads  the  hair  they  shore. 

The  cutting  of  hair  in  sign  of  grief  for  the  dead  seems  extremely 
natural,  as  the  hair  is  the  honour  of  the  head,  and  its  luxuriance  a 
sign  of  a  vigorous  and  lusty  vitality.  In  the  Odyssey  (iv.  198)  we 
read — 

"This  is  the  honour  of  the  dead  stretched  upon  mortal  bier, 
To  shear  the  glory  of  the  head,  and  drop  the  briny  tear." 

Ver.  141. — The  hair  ivhich  to  Spercheitis^  stream  he  nourished. 
The  consecration  of  the  locks  of  young  persons  to  some  river  is 


404  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIIT. 

frequently  mentioned  by  the  ancients.  In  Pausanias  (i.  37)  the 
statue  of  a  boy  is  mentioned,  on  the  banks  of  the  Attic  Cephissus, 
dedicating  his  hair  to  that  river.  So  the  young  men  of  Phigalia 
dedicate  their  hair  to  the  neighbouring  river  Neda  (viii.  41.  3). 
In  Hesiod  (Theog.  347)  there  is  a  well-known  passage  which  says, 
"  that  Tethys  brought  forth  to  Ocean  the  sacred  race  of  water- 
Nymphs,  which,  along  with  sovereign  Apollo,  and  the  Rivers,  cause 
young  men  to  grow  up  in  lustihood  (avSpas  Kovpi^ova-t)."  This  is 
evidently  a  part  of  the  old-water  philosophy  (xiv.  201),  which 
recognised  the  presence  of  this  element  as  essential  to  all  vegetable 
and  animal  vitality  (schol.  Pind.  Pyth.  iv.  145).  The  River,  in  fact, 
in  all  systems  of  polytheism,  is  one  of  the  most  generally  recognised 
local  gods.  The  hair,  as  a  sort  of  first-fruit  of  puberty,  was  offered 
not  only  to  the  Rivers,  but  to  other  gods  also,  of  which  several 
instances  will  be  found  in  Pausanias  (ii.  32  and  vii.  17.  4.) 

The  Spercheius  here  mentioned — that  is,  the  ruaJiing  river^ 
from  o-!repxo[J.aij — is  a  well-known  stream  that  springs  from  the 
extreme  south-west  corner  of  Thessaly,  in  Mount  Tymphrestus 
(Str.  IX.  433),  and,  flowing  through  the  country  of  the  Dolopians 
and  j3^]nianes,  empties  itself  into  the  Maliac  gulf,  not  far  from 
Thermopylae.  Its  modern  name,  Ellada  (Forchhammer,  Hellen. 
p.  7),  is  a  remarkable  living  witness  to  the  early  settlements  of  the 
Hellenes  in  those  parts. 

Ver.  164-176. 

The  funeral  ceremonies  here  described  require  no  commentary, 
being  so  complete  and  pictorial.  Parallels  from  the  customs  of 
other  nations  will  easily  suggest  themselves  to  the  well-informed 
reader.  The  honey  and  oil  belong  specially  to  the  dead,  and  are 
mentioned  in  Soph.  0.  C.  483;  ^sch.  Pers.  610.  The  blood 
spilt  here  was  part  of  the  rights  of  war,  and  would  have  flowed  on 
the  battle-field  had  not  the  claims  of  piety  towards  a  friend  reserved 
it  for  a  later  hour. 


BOOK  XXIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  405 

Ver.  177. — The  iron  anight  of  flame. 

It  is  characteristic  in  relation  to  the  early  history  of  metallui'gy 
that  the  Homeric  heroes  generally  cut  and  kill,  as  in  the  previous 
line,  with  copper,  while  iron  is  used  as  a  simile  for  hardness  and  the 
power  of  endurance.     Compare  i.  371. 

Ver.  243. — His  hones  place  in  a  golden  urn. 

The  (fituXr]  of  the  Grreeks,  from  which  comes  our  phial,  was  a  broad 
open  bowl  or  saucer  used  in  performing  sacrifice,  and  frequently 
seen  in  ancient  monuments  (see  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  Art.  Patera).  Its 
broad,  comparatively  shallow  shape,  is  sufficiently  illustrated  by  the 
passage  of  iVthenasus  (xi.  501)  which  Eustathius  borrows,  and  by 
its  comparison  to  the  round  Greek  shield  which  was  familiar  to  the 
ancients  (Antiphanes,  Com.  112  in  Meineke,  and  Aristot.  Poet. 
21).  But  in  the  time  of  Homer,  as  in  the  case  of  many  other 
words,  it  seems  to  have  had  a  more  wide  and  general  significance  ; 
in  the  present  passage,  at  least,  "itrw"  is  the  only  proper  transla- 
tion, and  we  cannot  suppose  that  cinerary  urns  were  open  and  wide 
like  a  plate  or  saucer.  On  the  cf>LdXr]  djxcjjlOeTos,  of  ver.  270  infra, 
Athengeus  remarks  that  it  does  not  seem  to  be  a  common  bowl  or 
saucer,  but  rather  a  ^aAKetov  ti  eKTreraAor  Ae/?7^Tc5Ses,  something  of 
the  nature  of  a  large  hroad-mouthed  copper  kettle.  The  afxcficdeTos 
is  a  very  puzzling  epithet,  and  I  only  evade  the  difficulty  by  trans- 
lating double.  Perhaps  I  should  have  said  two-eared,  like  the 
Horatian  diota. 

Ver.  269. — Two  talents  of  pure  gold. 

What  the  Homeric  talent  was  we  do  not  know.  It  is  always 
spoken  of  as  a  talent  of  gold,  and  of  course  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  common  Attic  silver  talent,  of  which  the  value  in  coin  was 
about  £244  (Hussey,  ii.  12).  That  the  Homeric  talent  was  of  no 
very  great  value,  Pollux  (ix.  55)  concludes  from  this  place ;  and 
with  this  the  two  talents  in  xviii.  507  seem  pretty  well  to  agree. 
Hussey  (ii.  10)  sets  down  the  Homeric  talent  of  gold  at  six  Attic 


-tuG  Notes  to  the  iliad.  book  xxm. 

drachmas,  or  seventy-one  grains  weight.  The  word  rdXavTov 
comes  from  rAaw,  to  hear,  support,  loeigli,  and  originally  signified  a 
balance. 

Ver.  346. —^r /on,  Adrastua'  wondrous  steed. 

This  divine  horse  is  celebrated  also  by  Hesiod,  who  in  the  shield 
of  Hercules  (120)  calls  him  "the  large  dark-haired  horse  Arion." 
Steeds  of  extraordinary  swiftness  and  strength  are  fathered,  accord- 
ing to  Greek  mythological  conceptions,  either  by  the  winds  (xvi. 
150j,  or  by  Neptune,  who  drives  the  strong  sea-coursers,  the 
waves,  and  is  the  natural  patron  of  horses  and  horse -racing  (ver. 
807  supra,  and  xiii.  10,  and  Paus.  vii.  21.  3).  From  Poseidon, 
accordingly,  we  find  that  Arion  comes,  being,  according  to  the 
curious  account  of  Pausanias  in  viii.  25.  5,  the  offspring  of  this  god 
by  Demeter,  who,  having  changed  herself  into  a  mare  to  escape  the 
amorous  pursuit  of  the  sea-god,  profited  nothing  by  her  ingenious 
transmutation,  for  the  god  speedily  assumed  the  form  of  a  stallion, 
and  achieved  his  object  in  that  shape.  Of  course  the  fruit  of  such 
a  connexion  could  only  be  a  horse ;  not  a  common  horse,  however, 
but  a  divine  horse.  This  wonderful  animal  finally  came  into  the 
possession  of  Adrastus  {ii.  572). 

Ver.  325. — The  goal  fliou  canst  not  miss. 

Next  to  the  theatre  and  the  gymnasium  there  was  no  place  in 
our  ancient  Greek  city  more  characteristic  of  Greek  life  than  the 
race-course.  Of  these  there  were  two ;  the  short  race-course  for 
foot-races,  and  a  longer  and  larger  one  for  the  chariot-races.  The 
one  was  called  o-raStov,  being  about  a  o-xaSiov,  or  600  feet  in 
length  (Herod,  ii.  149),  the  other  tVTrtos  Spofxas,  or  hippodrome 
(Paus.  VI.  16.  4,  and  20.  6.  7),  which  at  Olympia  seems  to  have 
been  four  times  the  length  of  the  stadium.  For  the  stadium  there 
was  generally  chosen  a  piece  of  level  ground  formed  by  a  natural 
hollow  in  the  hills,  which  was  often  improved  by  art  for  the  con- 
venience of  the  spectators  and  the  pomp  of  the  spectacle.  Such 
natural   hollows,   anciently   taken    advantage   of   for   architectural 


BOOK  XXIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  407 

embellishment,  are  found  in  the  Panathenaic  stadium  across  the 
Ilissus  at  Athens  (see  the  plan  in  Smith's  Diet.  Geog.,  Art.  Athe?is  ; 
Leake,  Topog.  Ath.  p.  51 ;  Mure's  Greece,  ii.  p.  89),  at  Laodicea 
(Hamilton,  Asia  Ilinor,  i.  516),  and  at  Ejihesus,  which  was 
capable  of  containing  seventy-six  thousand  spectators  (Falkener, 
Ephesus,  p.  104).  The  arrangements  connected  with  the  race- 
course were  extremely  simple,  and  are  mostly  indicated  in  the 
Homeric  description  of  this  book.  By  the  goal,  Ka^Trr^jp  or  vi'o-o-a, 
in  descriptions  of  the  Greek  race,  is  not  to  be  understood  the  end 
of  the  race,  but  the  turning-point  at  the  far  end  of  the  course. 
Details  will  be  found  in  Smith's  Dict.^  Articles  Ohjmpjic  Games 
and  Circus.  The  chariots  which  were  used  by  the  ancients, 
whether  on  the  race-course  or  on  the  field  of  battle,  were,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  extremely  light,  and  easily  lifted  up  by  the  hand 
(x.  505).  From  the  representations  of  them,  which  are  very  fre- 
quent on  vases,  sarcophagi,  and  other  works  of  art,  we  see  that  the 
body  of  them  was  often  little  more  than  a  semicircular  front,  over 
the  rim  of  which  (avrv^)  the  reins  were  thrown,  and  to  which  the 
traces  sometimes  appear  attached.  On  the  battle-field  there  were 
always  two  persons  on  the  car  (hence  the  name  Sicfipos,  from 
8L(f>6po<s),  the  charioteer  (i^vtoxos),  and  the  champion  Trapa^arijs,  as 
we  have  it  in  ver.  132  of  this  book.  The  minute  points  with 
regard  to  the  chariot  the  student  will  find  admirably  set  forth  by 
Yates,  in  Smith's  Diet.  Ant.,  Articles  Currus  and  avrv^. 

Ver.  473. — To  ivhom  O'ileus'  son  thus  spahe. 

The  Oilean  Ajax,  who  appears  here  not  in  the  most  amiable 
light,  belonged  to  the  Opuutian  Locrians,  and  led  their  forces  in 
the  Trojan  expedition.  He  was  a  man  as  we  have  seen  (ii.  527) 
little  of  body  and  light-footed,  and  surpassed  all  the  kings  in  swift- 
ness, except,  of  course,  Achilles  (xiv.  520).  He  forms  a  fine  dra- 
matic contrast  to  his  large-limbed  namesake  the  Telamonian.  The 
ungentlemanly  language  which  he  here  uses  to  Idomeneus,  a  chief 
whose  descent,  character,  and  lyart  locks  ought  to  have  com- 
manded respect,  is  a  fitting  prelude   to  the   unkniglitly  violence 


408  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIII. 

which  he  afterwards  oflFered  to  the  fair  Cassandra  (see  the  repre- 
sentation in  Miiller's  Denkmdler,  i.  7),  a  crime  which  brought 
down  upon  himself  the  wrath  of  Minerva,  and  entailed  a  long 
curse  on  his  country  (Dissertations,  p.  128 ;  Eur.  Troad,  70 ; 
Heyne,  Exc.  x.  to  J^n.  ii. ;  Od.  iv.  499  ;  Timreus  Loc.  in  Mtiller, 
Histor.  fr.  66).  His  characteristic  want  of  wisdom  is  indicated 
below  by  the  interference  of  Athene  to  make  him  slip  his  foot  in 
the  race  (ver.  774).  Notwithstanding  these  faults  the  Opuntians 
canonized  their  hero,  and  left  an  open  place  for  him  in  their  battle 
array  {Gon.  Narr.  18),  and  he  obtained  an  immortality  in  the 
popular  faith,  along  with  Achilles,  in  the  island  of  Leuce  (Pans.  in. 
19.  11). 

Ver.  565. — Eumelus  took  it  from  his  hand. 

This  line  does  not  occur  in  several  mss.,  and  is  bracketed  by 
Spitzner ;  but  the  poetical  effect  loses  by  the  curtailment.  I  re- 
tain. 

Ver.  568. — A  herald  placed  the  sceptre  in  his  hand. 

So  in  the  Odyssey,  ii.  37 — 

"  Now  rose  Telemachus  to  speak  the  word, 
While  warm  for  the  harangue  his  bosom  stirred  ; 
His  hand  Pisenor  with  tlie  staff  did  grace 
Sage  herald,  who  in  council  never  erred." 

WORSLEY. 

The  baton  held  in  the  hand  is  the  emblem  of  authority,  and 
changes  a  private  conversation  into  a  public  meeting  (compare  ii. 
186,  X.  328). 

Ver.  587-595. 

How  opposed  is  the  beautiful  deference  of  this  speech  to  the 
pertness,  insolence,  and  lack  of  reverence  in  the  Athenian  demo- 
cracy, so  graphically  portrayed  by  Plato  in  the  Republic  !  Demo- 
cracy is  and  must  be  everywhere  the  hotbed  of  conceit  and  the 
high  school  of  insolence.     Homer  knew  nothing  of  it. 


BOOK  XXIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  409 

Ver.  679. — When  CEdiiJUs  was  slain. 

This  is  the  only  passage  in  the  Iliad  where  the  ill-starred 
Theban  monarch,  so  much  bruited  in  ancient  and  modern  tragedy, 
is  mentioned.  It  appears  that  Homer  knew  nothing  of  his  exile 
to  Attica,  so  familiar  to  us  from  the  beautiful  drama  of  Sophocles ; 
but  the  main  points  of  his  tragic  story  are  pretty  fully  given  in 
Od.  XI.  271-280. 

Ver.  685. — Then  both  for  coinhat  husked  stept  forth. 

The  admirers  of  the  very  English  fence  of  boxing  will  be  glad 
to  find  it  in  the  early  traditions  of  the  Greeks  under  the  patronage 
of  such  a  reputable  god  as  Apollo  (Paus.  v.  7.  4),  and  such  a  re- 
nowned hero  as  Theseus  (schol.  Pind.  N.  v.  89).  The  t/xavre?, 
or  thongs  mentioned  here,  remained  to  the  last  the  common  name 
for  the  cestus  or  boxing-glove  among  the  Greeks  (Pol.  iii.  150 ; 
Plato,  Protag.  342  c).  It  appears,  however,  from  a  passage  in 
Pausauias  (viii.  40.  3),  that,  while  the  name  remained  the  same, 
the  thing  was  considerably  changed.  The  original  thongs  of  raw 
neat's-hide  no  longer  sufficed  for  the  bruising  ambition  of  later 
pugilists ;  the  simple  thongs  were  now  called  /xeiAt^"',  or  mildies, 
and  the  severe  sharp  thong  {Ifias  o^v<s),  laden  with  lead  (see  the  re- 
presentations from  ancient  monuments  in  Smith's  Did.,  Art.  Cestus), 
retained  the  old  name,  or  got  the  special  appellation  of  {xvpfirjKes. 
For  preparatory  exercise  they  had  a  round  hollow  glove,  like  those 
used  in  our  boxing-schools,  which  they  called  o-^alpai,  or  balls 
(Plato,  Legg.  830  b).  With  regard  to  the  {'w/xa,  or  suhligaculum, 
here  mentioned,  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  Thucydides  in  the  well- 
known  introduction  to  his  History  (i.  6),  where  he  speaks  of  the 
changes  that  had  taken  place  in  the  manners  of  his  countrymen, 
mentions  that  originally  Greeks  and  Barbarians  had  many  things 
in  common,  and  among  others  this,  that  in  the  gymnastic  games 
they  both  appeared  Sta^w/^tara  'iyovre'i  irepl  ra  aiSota  ;  afterwards 
the  Greeks  wrestled  quite  naked.  So  much  for  the  instruments 
and  appointments  of  the  Homeric  boxing-bout.     The  affair  itself 


4-10  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIII. 

is  meagre  and  soon  settled.     Virgil  in  jEneid  v.  has  enlarged  and 
in  every  way  improved  it.     This  is  the  way  to  steal ! 

Ver.  726-732. 

Not  being  a  wrestler  myself,  I  have  done  my  best  in  this  passage 
with  the  note  of  Eustathius  and  my  own  imagination ;  but  if  any 
reader,  skilful  in  these  manly  sports,  will  take  the  trouble  of  com- 
paring my  version  here  with  those  of  other  translators,  and  let  me 
understand  distinctly  whether  I  am  right  or  wrong,  I  shall  be  much 
obliged  to  him.  In  Homer,  I  have  been  pressed  by  no  difficulty 
so  much  as  my  not  being  practically  acquainted  with  some  of  the 
matters  which  he  handles. 

Ver.  733. — And  noiv  a  third  bout  they  had  tried. 

The  power  of  the  number  three,  from  ancient  wrestlings  and 
drinkings  to  the  hammer  of  modern  auctioneers,  is  interesting. 
It  evidently  arises  from  the  circumstance  that  this  is  the  first 
number  which  has  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end,  and  contains 
in  itself  that  completeness  making  a  whole  which  a  reasonable 
creature  naturally  seeks  for  in  all  things.  Three  fits  at  wrestling 
were  the  proper  number ;  hence  the  rpta  TraXata-fiaTa  in  ^schylus 
{Eum.  559). 

Ver.  760. — As  ivhen  a  v:eU-zoned  tooman  holds  the  shuttle. 

I  have  read  and  carefully  considered  what  has  been  written  on 
this  difficult  passage  by  Heyne  and  Yates  (Smith,  Diet.  Ant.),  but 
am  not  able  to  come  to  any  certain  conclusion,  principally,  I  pre- 
sume, from  my  ignorance  of  the  details  of  the  art  of  weaving.  The 
philological  evidence  seems  to  me  decidedly  in  favour  of  ttt^viov 
being  the  tvoof.  If  so,  />tiTos  would  be  the  ivarp,  and  Kavwv  the 
shuttle  (Lat.  radius).  But  I  keep  my  translation  quite  general,  so 
as  to  avoid  nonsense,  rather  than  to  express  that  of  which  I  have 
no  clear  conception.  Dart  revives  Damm's  notion,  found  also  in 
Eustathius,  whose  note  makes  confusion  more  confounded,  that 
spinning  is  intended  here,  not  weaving. 


BOOK  XXIII.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  411 

Ver.  826. — A  hall,  a  big  and  weighty  round. 

The  ancient  writers  on  Greek  synonymes  (Ammon.  p.  40,  Val- 
kenaer,  and  the  scholiasts)  point  out  here  the  difference  between 
Sto-Kos,  a  flat  round  disk,  with  a  hole  in  the  middle,  and  croAos,  a 
round  solid  sphere  of  stone  or  metal.  The  quoit  proper,  not  the 
oo'Aos,  is  thrown  by  Ulysses  before  the  Phjeacians  {Od.  viii.  192). 
In  the  Iliad,  allusion  is  made  to  the  quoit  in  ii.  774,  and  xxiii. 
431,  523.  The  attitude  of  the  quoit-thrower  was  the  subject  of  a 
famous  statue  by  Myron  (Quinct.  Inst.  Orat.  ir.  13),  well  known 
to  the  visitors  of  European  museums  (Miiller,  Denkmaler,  xsxii. 
139).  What  Achilles  says  in  v.  834,  shows  the  great  rarity  and 
value  of  iron  in  those  times. 

Ver.  845. — Far  as  a  I lerdman  flings  his  crook. 

This  is  the  earliest  notice  of  the  shepherd's  crook,  of  which  the 
old  model  is  still  frequently  seen  in  the  Scottish  Highlands  {hata 
krom),  afterwards  transformed  into  the  bishop's  crosier.  The  ety- 
mology of  the  word  KaXavpoip  is  quite  uncertain. 

Ver.  851. — Double  axes. 

See  the  axe  with  a  double  head,  cutting  right  and  left,  on  the 
coins  of  Tenedos  (Smith,  Diet.  Geog.) 

Ver.  870. 
The  Marseilles  recension  was 

"ZirepxbfJ'.evos  3'  6.pa  Mripi6v7jS  eved-qKar    olarbv 
t6^ui.     ev  yap  rb'^ov  ^x^^  irdXat,  k.t.X., 

which  implies  that  each  archer  had  his  own  bow.  But  following, 
as  we  must,  the  great  weight  of  the  authority  of  Aristarchus  in 
this  matter,  we  suppose  that  both  archers  used  the  same  bow, 
and  that  the  moment  Teucer  had  discharged  his  arrow,  Merion 
seized  the  bow  and  laid  his  arrow  on  it,  which  he  had  ready  in  his 
hand,  that  he  might  take  aim.  For  as  to  the  vulgate  ws  Wwiv,  I 
have  no  hesitation  whatever  in  saying  that  there  is  some  funda- 


412  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIY. 

mental  error  in  the  text.  Homer  certainly  did  not  write  nonsense  ; 
and  to  bring  sense  out  of  the  words  as  we  now  have  them,  we  must 
write  Wvvoi,  or  something  to  that  effect.  The  change  is  slight ; 
and  I  entirely  agree  with  Spitzner  in  thinking  it  the  only  way  to 
get  out  of  the  difficulties  which  otherwise  beset  the  passage. 


BOOK  XXIV. 

Ver.  23. — But  lolien  the  gods  beheld  the  sight,  etc. 

The  whole  passage  which  follows  about  the  judgment  of  Paris 
was  suspected  by  reputable  ancients  as  interpolated ;  but  the 
reasons  with  which  they  support  their  negative  criticism  are  some- 
what weak.  That  Homer  never  mentions  this  famous  judgment 
before  this  verse  is  quite  in  his  manner ;  he  supposes  the  materials 
of  old  tradition  to  be  lying  all  about  him  quite  fresh  in  the  popular 
mind,  and  not  requiring  a  detailed  and  formal  exposition.  Hence 
he  tells  one  part  of  a  story  at  one  place,  and  another  at  another. 
It  is  a  great  mistake  to  judge  a  great  popular  poet  as  if  he  were  a 
professor,  giving  an  orderly  course  of  lectures  to  an  audience  sup- 
posed to  be  altogether  ignorant  of  the  subject.  The  exact  contrary 
is  the  fact.  As  to  individual  objections,  there  is  no  doubt  some- 
thing sti'auge  in  the  use  of  vetKccrcre,  but  not  so  strange  certainly  as 
to  warrant  us  in  throwing  suspicion  on  the  line  ;  and  to  those  who 
say  that  [xax^oa-vvrj  is  a  word  properly  applied  to  females,  L.  and 
S.  reply  very  properly  that  the  poet  is  here  charging  the  Trojan 
shepherd  with  effeminacy.  Besides,  I  doubt  very  much  the  legiti- 
macy of  so  circumscribing  the  meaning  of  general  terms  in  the 
Homeric  age,  in  reference  to  which  the  specializing  effect  of  time 
is  particularly  noticeable.  T  am  glad  to  observe  that  Welcker 
(Episch.  CycJ.  ii.  p.  113)  agrees  with  the  views  here  expressed. 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  413 

Ver.  45. — SJictiue  ivhich  much  harms  in  much  excess,  etc. 

There  is  no  valid  objection  to  this  line.  It  is  merely  a  fami- 
liar proverb  dragged  in  wholesale  in  the  manner  in  which  popular 
poetry  delights.  There  is  no  greater  mistake  in  Homeric  criticism 
than  being  curious  about  such  points. 

Ver.  82. — TJie  lead  hound  to  an  ox-horn. 

The  scholiast  remarks  that  the  line  was  let  through  the  horn  of 
an  ox,  close  to  the  hook,  that  the  fish  might  not  be  able  to  gnaw  it 
away. 

Ver.  94. — Kvaveov,  tou  S'  ovti  jiiXdvnpov  eTrAero  ecrOos. 

There  are  few  students  of  the  classics  who  have  not  been  struck 
occasionally  with  the  apparent  vagueness  in  the  use  of  certain 
words  expressive  of  colour.  In  this  peculiarity  no  poet  is  more 
marked  than  Homer,  and  in  him  no  line  perhaps  is  more  suitable 
than  the  present  for  endeavouring  to  bring  out  the  principles  on 
which  this  phenomenon  depends.  For  if  we  translate  this  verse 
according  to  the  common  notions  which  we  get  from  our  lexicons, 
we  shall  make  of  it  simply, — TJietis  tvore  a  light-hlue  veil,  than 
which  nothing  coidd  he  blacker.  This  looks  very  like  saying  that 
black  is  white,  or  that  yes  means  no,  a  subtlety  of  which  we  shall 
not  suppose  plain  old  Homer  to  be  guilty,  and  therefore  must  look 
about  for  some  explanation  of  this  seeming  absurdity. 

On  this  subject  there  are  some  admirable  observations  in  the 
third  volume  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Homeric  Studies  (p.  457),  which, 
however,  are  not  in  all  respects  so  satisfactory  as  to  have  enabled 
them  to  escape  the  animadversions  of  Continental  critics.^  My 
principal  objection  to  them  is,  not  that  they  are  wrong  in  the  main, 

*  Schuster,  in  the  Zeitschrift  fur  das  Gymnasialwesen  (xiv.  7),  has  two 
papers,  one  on  "  Homer  s  Avffassiingund  GebravcJi  der  Farhen,"  and  another, 
"  Der  neueate  Englische  Homeriher,  und  seine  Stelluvr/  zur  Tlomerischen 
Frage;'"  botli  criticisms  on  Gladstone.  The  same  author  has  published  a  Ger- 
man version  of"  the  ^^  Homeric  Studies,^''  condensed  into  one  volume.  Leipzig, 
1863. 


414  NOTES  TO  TIIK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

but  there  are  some  points  so  overstated  as  to  carry  the  impression 
of  a  special  pleading  rather  than  of  a  judicial  statement.  Instead 
of  endeavouring  to  palliate  the  offence  of  the  poet,  he  exaggerates 
it  till  a  defect  of  very  secondary  importance  assumes  the  nature  of 
a  paradox.  I  will  endeavour  to  state  the  matter  in  what  may  seem 
a  less  startling  and  exceptionable  form : — 

(1.)  In  the  first  place,  we  must  take  special  care  not  to  start 
with  a  false  translation  of  a  Greek  word,  a  very  common  blunder, 
arising  from  the  unphilosophical  manner  in  which  the  meanings  of 
words  are  sometimes  put  down  in  our  dictionaries,  or  used  in  our 
grammars.  We  are  taught,  for  instance,  that  /xeAas  means  Uack^ 
and  we  believe  it.  But  this  word  strictly  does  not  mean  Hack  any 
more  than  the  Avord  dog  means  a  Shye-terrier.  MeAa?  is  the  Greek 
for  the  genus,  of  which  black  is  the  species,  and  this  is  a  difference 
with  which  every  juvenile  framer  of  a  syllogism  is  familiar.  All 
moss-roses  are  roses,  but  every  rose  is  not  a  moss-rose.  The  proper 
English  lexicographical  equivalent  of  /xeAas,  therefore,  is  dark,  not 
Hack,  and  this  generic  word  can  signify  black  only  when  specialized 
and  confined  to  a  particular  object.  And  if  it  be  the  case  that 
the  Greek  language  has  no  special  word  to  express  the  species 
of  dark  to  which  our  word  Uack  is  confined,  this  is  merely  a  want 
of  wealth  in  the  vocabulary  of  that  language  in  a  particular  domain, 
to  which  the  composition  of  all  languages,  oven  the  most  perfect, 
presents  abundant  analogies. 

(2.)  When  making  any  deduction  from  the  use  of  a  word  signi- 
fying colour  in  any  author,  we  ought  to  make  ourselves  quite  sure 
that  the  word  does  signify  colour  in  the  particular  passage  where  it 
occurs.  Thus,  when  Homer  (xxiii.  180)  talks  of  "  rosy  unguent," 
it  may  be  that  he  alludes  to  the  fragrance  rather  than  to  the  hue 
of  the  rose.     Mr.  Gladstone  (p.  470)  takes  no  account  of  this. 

(3.)  A  certain  vagueness  in  the  use  of  many  words  arises 
naturally  in  all  languages,  out  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
human  speech  was  formed.  Words  do  not  receive  their  peculiar  sig- 
nifications from  a  conclave  of  cixi'ious  philosophers,  artists,  or  men 
of  science,  but  from  the  common  people  to  express  common  ideas  ; 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  'J'HE  ILIAD.  415 

and  common  ideas  are  often  extremely  vague.  As  observation  is 
extended,  and  science  advances,  new  words  are  invented,  and  old 
words  receive  a  more  exact  specification  than  tlie  necessities  of 
early  times  required.  Mr.  Gladstone  justly  remarks  that  the  taste 
for  colour  in  this  country  of  late  years  has  improved  remarkably 
along  with  the  recent  extraordinary  advances  in  chemical  science. 
The  English  word  "green"  is  a  general  term,  like  the  Greek 
fjLeXws,  and  includes  every  variety  of  this  colour,  from  the  light 
yellowish  green  of  the  poplar  in  spring  to  the  dark-blue  green  of 
the  Scotch  pine.  No  doubt  we  distinguish  familiarly  between  pea- 
green  and  bottle-green  ;  but  if  our  language  possessed  only  one  word 
for  both  these  contrasts, — for  contrasts  most  certainly  they  are,  not 
mere  shades  of  difference,  the  one  being  specialized  by  the  pre- 
sence of  the  element  of  light,  the  other  by  the  j^resence  of  the 
opposite  power  of  darkness, — if,  I  say,  we  had  no  term  in  our 
language  to  designate  every  variety  of  green  from  yellowy  green 
to  blue  green  save  the  generic  word  green,  no  person  would  feel 
surjjrised  at  the  double  character  thus  given  to  a  single  word. 
Every  word,  in  fact,  expressive  of  colour,  is  a  two-faced  Janus,  of 
which  the  one  face  looks  to  the  light,  the  other  to  the  darkness. 

(4.)  The  wide  field  covered  by  our  English  word  green  affords  a 
perfect  analogy  to  the  vague  use  of  the  word  Trop^upeos  in  Greek 
and  Latin.  Many  a  schoolboy  may  remember  the  day  when  he 
first  stumbled  on  the  " purpiirei  olores"  of  Horace,  and  wondered 
if  the  classical  swans  really  were  as  peculiar  in  the  hue  of  their 
plumes  as  in  the  melodious  quality  of  their  death-notes.  But  these 
purple  swans  are  just  the  bright  face  of  the  double-faced  Janus 
Trop(f>vpeos,  which  delights  in  Homer  more  frequently  to  show  its 
dark  face.  Purple  is  a  mixture  of  red  with  a  dark  element,  which 
may  become  so  potent  as  practically  to  become  the  opposite  of  the 
brilliant  hue  from  which  it  started ;  or  the  luminous  element  may 
become  so  potentiated  as  that  the  idea  of  brilliancy  overwhelms  the 
idea  of  colour  altogether.  This  is  no  doubt  a  very  improper  exag- 
geration ;  but  a  very  few  centuries,  when  applied  to  language,  can 
much  more  easily  change  dark  into  bright,  than  millions  of  centu- 


416  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

ries,  applied  to  natural  organisms,  could,  according  to  certain  recent 
shallow  and  godless  theories,  change  a  monkey  into  a  man.  Homer 
talks  of  purple  blood  (xvii.  3G1),  a  purple  cloud  {ibid.  551),  a 
purple  rainbow  {ibid.  527),  and  the  purpling  of  a  dark  emotion  in 
the  soul  (xxi.  551).  In  this  I  do  not  find,  with  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  a 
startling  amount  of  obvious  discrepancy,"  but  only  a  very  natural 
vague  use  of  an  essentially  vague  word  ;  for  I  have  little  doubt  that 
Lucas  is  right  {Quoest.  Lexil.)  in  deriving  this  word  from  the  verb 
(f>vp(Oj  to  mix,  to  mingle,  so  that  purple  was  originally  a  troubled 
colour,  and  belongs  specially  to  the  region  of  darkness,  when  con- 
trasted with  €pv9p6s,  (f^oivrjeis,  fiiXros,  and  other  words  by  which  a 
bright  red  is  regularly  signified. 

(5.)  The  influence  of  time  in  bringing  forward  the  dark  or  the 
bright  side  of  a  vague  word  of  colour  will  be  seen  most  strikingly 
in  the  words  Kvavos  and  Kvdveos.  I  have  shown  above  (xi.  24),  by 
two  very  distinct  passages  from  authors  who  lived  in  the  Roman 
and  Byzantine  periods,  that  Kvdveos  meant  light-blue,  azure.  But 
we  are  not  entitled  to  conclude  that,  because  it  had  this  distinctive 
meaning  popularly  then,  it  had  so  always  and  from  the  beginning. 
On  the  contrary,  there  is  not  a  single  passage  of  the  poet  from  which 
it  can  be  proved  that  a  hue  like  the  brightness  of  the  unclouded 
sky  was  understood  by  him  when  using  this  word.  Had  this  been 
the  dominant  idea  of  the  word  he  could  not  possibly  have  talked  of 
/xeXas  Kvavo's  (xi.  24).  But  if  Kvavos  merely  meant  blue  in  Greek 
with  the  same  vagueness  that  belongs  to  green  in  English,  then 
there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  mean  both  light  blue  and  dark- 
blue  ;  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  do  not  think  it  ever  does  mean 
azure  in  the  Iliad.  It  is  essentially  dark  in  its  affinity,  as  the 
places  XVIII.  564,  i.  528,  xxiii.  188,  iv.  282  plainly  speak.  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  raised  difficulties  about  this  word  that  seem  to  me 
altogether  uncalled  for.  If  Thetis  in  our  present  passage  wears  a 
dark-blue  veil,  than  tohich  nothing  coidd  be  darker,  what  more  natu- 
ral, seeing  she  was  a  sea-goddess,  to  whom  the  dark-blue  colour 
characteristically  belongs?  If  the  eyebrows  of  Jupiter  are  called 
dark-blue,  and  the  storm  cloud  the  same,  it  is  for  the  obvious  reason 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  417 

that  clouds  are  often  dark-blue,  and  Jove  is  king  of  the  clouds. 
The  advancing  phalanxes  of  the  Greek  hosts  are  also  called  dark- 
blue,  as  Schuster  justly  observes,  plainly  because  the  poet  had  in 
his  eye  the  onrushing  of  a  dark  thunder- cloud,  with  which  he 
compared  them  in  his  mind ;  and  if  the  sea-sand  is  on  one  occasion 
called  Kvdveos  {Od.  xii.  243),  this  is  either  because  the  colour  of 
the  sand  is  often  affected  by  the  colour  of  the  rock  from  whose 
debris  it  is  formed,  or  because,  as  the  same  intelligent  critic  remarks, 
the  seafarer  sees  the  sand  here  only  through  the  yawning  dark- 
blue  billow,  with  whose  horrors  it  is  tainted. 

(6.)  In  reference  to  the  Homeric  use  of  words  denoting  colour,  we 
ought  specially  to  bear  in  mind  that  not  the  scientific  distinction  of 
the  marked  varieties  of  light  in  the  spectrum  or  elsewhere  were  the 
objects  with  which  his  Muse  was  conversant,  but  the  living  play  of 
light  in  the  concrete  forms  of  the  external  world  as  they  affect  the 
common  eye  and  stir  the  common  emotions  of  men.  If  there  is  a 
certain  vagueness  in  the  use  of  such  words  as  /^eAas,  Trvp^vpeos, 
Kvdveos,  we  must  recollect  that  the  great  phenomena  of  nature 
with  which  the  poetic  eye  is  conversant  present  not  distinctly  sepa- 
rated colours,  but  the  constant  interflow  of  colour  into  colour,  so 
that  only  a  very  general  term  can  express  the  actual  sensuous  fact. 
If  any  one  will  look  at  the  sea  under  the  action  of  the  various  play 
of  light  and  shade,  he  will  often  find  it  impossible  to  express  the 
wonderful  sport  of  blended  hues  which  its  surface  presents  by  any 
single  word  expressing  a  definite  colour.  No  doubt  the  briny 
expanse  is  sometimes  distinctly  blue,  sometimes  distinctly  green ; 
but  on  many  occasions  there  is  a  combination  of  darkness  with 
changeful  hues  of  glowing  light  on  its  face,  which  a  poet  could  best 
express  by  such  a  vague  word  as  oTvo\^',  loine- coloured.  If  any 
man  should  say,  therefore,  that  the  minstrel  was  deficient  in  the 
organ  of  colour  because  he  designated  the  sea  by  this  vagiie  word,  I 
would  meet  him  by  saying  that  the  critic  is  deficient  in  the  organ 
of  poetry.  The  colour  of  a  dragon-fly,  as  Goethe  has  observed  in 
one  of  his  most  thoughtful  little  poems,  is  one  thing  when  you  see 
it  playing  in  the  air,  another  when  you  have  it  in  your  hand;  so 

VOL.  IV.  2  D 


41 S  NOTES  TU  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

Homer  may  call  iron  TroAtds.  aWwv,  and  I'det?,  and  be  more  true  to 
nature  than  if  he  had  always  designated  the  metal  by  one  definite 
unvarying  word.  Iron  may  look  glancing-grey  or  dark-blue  accord- 
ing to  the  position  in  which  it  is  viewed. 

(7.)  If  Homer  is  not  always  so  nicely  accurate  about  hues  of 
colour  as  a  man  of  the  same  genius  would  now  be,  we  ought  to 
consider  that  the  art  which  he  practised  in  those  days  did  not 
require  him  to  have  the  eye  of  a  Ruskin  or  a  Tennyson  in  the 
contemplation  of  sunsets  or  the  description  of  liverworts.  Living 
forms  and  living  motions  are  the  grand  material  of  the  epic  poet ; 
the  broad  effects  of  light  and  shade  in  connexion  with  these  are 
the  only  phenomena  of  colour  with  which  he  has  to  deal.  It  would 
have  been  impertinence  in  him  to  have  shown  in  his  popular  songs 
any  curious  attention  to  colour  beyond  what  either  his  audience 
generally  was  able  to  appreciate,  or  the  epic  art  of  his  time  pre- 
pared to  admit. 

(8.)  Under  these  limitations  Mr.  Gladstone's  doctrine  may  be 
generally  accepted,  that  "  the  organ  of  colour  and  its  impressions 
were  but  partially  developed  in  the  heroic  ages."  The  very  fact 
that  the  language  of  Homer  has  no  special  word  for  hiack  seems  to 
prove  this.  In  the  whole  twenty-four  books  of  the  Iliad  there  is 
no  word  signifying  either  green  or  light-blue.  The  word  x^wpds, 
which  signifies  green  injhe  Odyssey  (xvi.  47),  if  it  does  not  rather 
signify  fresh  and  juicy  as  opposed  to  hard  and  dry,  is  used  in  the 
Iliad  to  signify  pale  or  saUovj,  or  an  extremely  light  yelloiv  (xi.  631). 
Here  we  have  the  same  vagueness  that  characterizes  the  word 
TTvp^vpeo'i — a  word  which  has  two  opposite  faces,  the  one  green  and 
the  other  yellow,  and  which  is  familiarly  used  to  express  every 
gradation  of  blended  hue  from  the  one  end  of  the  visual  gamut  to 
the  other.  The  number  of  words  in  the  poet  which  it  is  necessary 
for  us  to  express  by  the  single  word  dark  shows  a  want  of  precision 
in  the  designation  of  colours  of  which  a  highly  cultivated  sense  for 
colour  could  not  be  guilty.  It  is  more  correct,  however,  in  my 
opinion,  to  say  that  Homer  and  the  stage  of  poetic  art  which  he 
represented  did  not  care  to  express  curious  distinctions  of  colour, 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  419 

than  to  say  that  he  did  not  appreciate  them.  It  is  a  peculiarity 
precisely  analogous  to  that  looseness  in  the  use  of  epithets  to  which 
we  have  so  often  referred  in  these  notes  as  a  specific  character  of 
ballad -poetry.  Homer  knew  quite  well  that  the  blood  when  it  comes 
out  of  a  wound  is  red^  not  dark.,  but  he  did  not  always  care  to  say  so. 
The  art  which  he  practised  had  not  yet  learned  to  be  curious  about 
the  special  propriety  of  common  epithets.  It  was  content  with 
their  general  truthfulness. 

(9.)  If  any  passage  could  be  pointed  out  in  Homer  from  which 
the  legitimate  conclusion  might  be  drawn  that  words  signifying 
colour  are  used  by  him  not  only  with  a  certain  vagueness,  but  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  confound  hues  essentially  distinct, — for  exam- 
ple, if  a  word  signifying  red  in  one  passage  could  be  proved  to 
signify  green  in  another,  in  this  case  I  should  rather  call  in  the 
common  German  Deus  ex  machind  of  interpolation  than  admit  such 
an  absurdity.  I  could  not  believe  in  the  identity  of  age  or  author- 
ship in  passages  containing  such  gross  and  palpable  contradictions 
in  the  use  of  the  most  obvious  words. 

(10.)  There  is  another  element  which  ought  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  judging  all  questions  of  this  kind, — the  element  of 
locality.  The  word  7rop(fivpeo<;,  for  instance,  might  signify  bright 
purple  in  one  part  of  Greece  and  dark  purple  in  another.  I  do 
not  say  that  this  consideration  aifects  any  Homeric  passage,  or 
indeed  any  passage  of  any  Greek  author  that  I  know  ;  I  only  direct 
attention  to  it  as  an  element  which  future  investigators  should  not 
overlook. 

(11.)  In  arriving  at  satisfactory  conclusions  on  such  questions, 
important  aid,  of  course,  may  be  derived  from  comparative  philo- 
logy. When  ascending  the  mountain  of  Ben  Screel  one  summer 
lately,  on  the  north  shore  of  Loch  Hourn,  in  Inverness  shire  (one 
of  the  finest  sea-lakes  in  the  world),  I  happened  to  pick  up  a 
sprig  of  heather,  and  asked  my  guide  what  was  the  Gaelic  for  the 
colour  of  the  leaves.  He  replied,  gorm.  Now,  I  knew,  from  a 
little  dabbling  in  Gaelic  with  which  I  had  been  amusing  myself, 
that  this  same  word  also  signified  "blue."     Here  was  an  obvious 


420  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

analogy  to  those  vague  Homeric  words  whose  meaning  we  have 
been  endeavouring  to  exphxin ;  an  analogy  the  more  important  as 
coming  from  a  people  living,  like  Homer,  in  habitual  sympathy 
with  the  open  air,  and  whose  language  was  formed  and  cultivated 
altogether  apart  from  the  influence  of  books  and  bookish  culture. 
Not  being  able,  however,  to  arrive  at  any  trustworthy  conclusions 
from  the  talk  that  I  had  with  various  Highland  wayfarers  on  this 
subject,  I  applied  to  the  Rev.  Di-.  M'Lauchlan  of  this  place,  the 
well-known  editor  of  the  Dean  of  Lismore's  Booh,  who  kindly 
furnished  me  with  the  following  note  : — 

"  The  word  'gorm'  is  used  in  Gaelic  both  for  blue  and  (jreen. 
Instances  of  this  are  numerous,  as  '  na  speuran  gorma,'  the  bhie 
heavens ;  '  muir  ghorm,'  the  blue  sea ;  '  feur  gorm,'  cjreen  grass. 
This  is  peculiar  to  the  Gaelic  dialect  of  the  Celtic ;  for  in  Irish 
'  gorm '  means  only  bine,  while  in  Welsh  '  gwrm '  means  dusJx-y 
or  dim.  It  would  appear  that  the  radical  meaning  of  the  Gaelic 
word  is  bhce.  The  use  of  it  by  the  Irish  seems  to  settle  this.  In 
the  use  of  the  word  '  gorm'  by  the  Gael  as  applicable  to  gree?},  it 
is  needful  to  observe  that  this  use  is  entirely  confined  to  the  green- 
ness of  the  earth's  surface.  In  all  other  cases  the  word  in  use  is 
'  uaine  • '  '  eudach  gorm'  is  blue  cloth,  while  greeji  doth  is  called 
'  eudach  uaine.'  The  use  of  the  word  as  so  applied  may  conse- 
quently arise  from  the  indefiniteness  and  variableness  of  the  colour 
of  the  earth^s  surface,  which  often  assumes  a  tint  almost  blue,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  mountains  seen  in  certain  lights  or  in  certain 
states  of  the  atmosphere.  The  grass  itself  appears  in  various 
shades  of  colour,  often  verging  towards  blue.  Or  this  use  of  the 
word  may  arise  from  the  Gaelic  dialect  of  the  Celtic  retaining 
more  of  a  British  admixture  than  the  Irish,  and  the  meaning  of  the 
word  as  applied  by  the  Welsh  being  retained  in  a  modified  form. 
That  the  Gaelic  has  many  relations  to  its  Kymric  cousin  cannot 
be  denied. 

"  There  is  another  Gaelic  word  applied  to  colour,  whose  use  is 
more    various    and    remarkable    than    that   of   '  gorm,'   the    word 

o'las.'     This  word  is  represented  in  Gaelic  dictionaries  as  mean- 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  421 

ing  grcy^  Hue,  green,  pale  ;  in  Irish  it  means  green,  pale  ;  in  Manx, 
pale,  grey,  pale  blue,  green ;  in  Welsh,  blue,  grey,  green ;  in  Cor- 
nish, hlue,  grey,  green ;  and  in  Breton,  green,  blue,  pale,  grey. 
Here  we  have  the  same  peculiarity  pervading  the  whole  class  of 
Celtic  languages,  the  same  word  indicating  not  only  blue  and  green, 
but  grey  besides.  At  the  same  time  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
the  radical  meaning  of  the  word  is  green.  Its  application  to  bhic 
in  Gaelic  is  rare,  while  it  is  extended  to  grey,  apparently  owing  to 
a  certain  amount  of  greenness  appearing  in  connexion  with  pallor 
of  countenance,  and  this  paleness  for  the  most  part  accompanying 
age  and  grey  hair.  As  applied  to  natural  objects  of  a  green  colour, 
such  as  grass,  its  use  is  very  general.  The  word  used  for  grey, 
and  which  expresses  the  idea  definitely,  is  'liath.'  This  word  is 
sometimes  associated  with  '  glas,'  and  forms  the  compound  '  liath- 
ghlas,'  or  light  grey.  It  may  be  observed,  however,  that  the  word 
'liath'  for  grey  is  chiefly  applied  to  man.  A  grey  horse  is  uni- 
formly '  Each  glas,'  never  '  Each  liath.'  It  is  difficult  to  account 
for  this  use  of  '  glas'  in  the  case  of  an  animal,  imless  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  meaning  of  the  word  was  extended  gradually,  so  as 
to  comprehend  a  wider  range  of  objects." 

Ver.  130. — Or  mingle  with  a  woman  fair  in  love. 

This  verse  was  marked  as  spurious  by  the  ancients,  Stct  to  aTr/otTres, 
because  it  is  unseemly  that  a  mother  should  on  such  an  occasion 
make  such  a  remark  to  her  son.  This  is  prudery  and  impertinence. 
If  criticism  of  this  kind  is  to  be  allowed,  a  pen  must  be  drawn 
through  not  a  few  passages  of  the  Old  Testament.  See  on  the 
moral  tone  of  Homer,  Dissertations,  p.  182. 

Ver.  257. — Troilus,  the  steed-delighting  boy. 

Troilus,  like  many  a  name  connected  with  the  tale  of  Troy,  had 
a  mediaeval,  and  still  asserts  a  modern  celebrity,  for  which  the 
sources  are  to  be  sought,  not  in  Homer,  but  in  the  rich  stores  of 
the  Cyclic  poetry  which  Virgil  used,  and  the  romancers  of  the 
middle  ages  transmitted.      In  the   Latin  narrators  of  the   Trojan 


422  NOTES  TO  TllK  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

cycle,  Troilus  falls  a  victim  to  the  impetuous  rage  of  Achilles 
{Diet.  Cret.  IV.  9).  Whether  the  loves  of  Troilus  and  Cressida, 
which  Chaucer  and  Shakspeare  have  immortalized,  can  be  traced  to 
any  classical  source  I  do  not  know.  On  "  Mediaeval  Homerism," 
see  Glad.  iii.  611. 

Yer.  265-274. — And  forth  they  hrought  the  ivell-wheeled  wain. 

The  minute  and  curious  description  of  this  waggon  and  its  har- 
nessing is  quite  Homeric,  no  doubt,  but  not  a  little  embarrassing  to 
readers  who  have  not  had  much  experience  in  these  matters,  and 
have  not  learnt,  like  Homer,  to  make  a  conscience  of  always  using 
their  eyes.  Chapman,  whether,  because  he  thought  the  details  in 
bad  taste,  or  because  he  despaired  of  comprehending  them,  has 
omitted  the  description  altogether.  Heyne  says,  conscious  of 
weakness, — "  Casterum  si  in  hoc  loco  quicquam  a  me  est  peccatum, 
veniam  dabunt  eeqrn  rerum  gestimatores,  qui  nunquam  mulionis 
partes  et  operas  prsestiterim."  I  make  the  same  confession,  and 
cherish  the  same  hope. 

Ver.  883. — Eftsuons  to  Hermes  spoke  the  god. 

The  reason  why  Jove  employs  Hermes  in  this  place  to  do  his  bid- 
ding, whereas  in  the  Iliad  elsewhere  he  employs  Iris,  is  plain  enough. 
Mercury  appears  here  not  only  or  chiefly  as  a  messenger,  but  in  his 
own  natural  and  proper  character  as  a  tto/xttos,  or  guide  to  the  aged 
monarch.  Mr.  Gladstone  (ii.  237)  has  asked  the  further  question, 
why  this  god  appears  as  a  young  man  (ver.  358)  in  the  early  bloom 
of  youth;  and  he  finds  in  this  fact  a  proof  of  his  theory  that 
Hermes  was  a  god  of  recent  introduction  in  Greece,  that  he  was 
"  young  in  Olympus."  But  the  obvious  motive  for  the  youthfulness 
of  this  god  is,  that  the  lightness,  grace,  and  dexterity  so  character- 
istic of  his  person,  and  so  congruous  with  his  office  as  a  messenger 
and  guide,  naturally  belong  to  the  young.  Under  the  influence  of 
this  feeling,  Tasso  has  given  the  same  age  to  the  angel  Gabriel, — 

"  Tni  giovHiie  e  fanciullo  eta  confiiii' 
Piese,  ed  orno  di'  raggi  il  bioiulo  crine  "  (i.  13). 


I    BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  423 

Is  the  rod  (/3a/38os)  which  is  here  described  as  having  the  power 
to  cast  men  into  a  trance  the  origin  of  the  magician's  wand  in  the 
mediaeval  necromancy?  Circe  also  {Od.  x.  319)  has  a  pd/SSos. 
There  is  a  much  more  intimate  connexion  between  classical  and 
Gothic  witchcraft  than  appears  on  the  surface. 

Ver.  4U0. — Here  in  war  to  serve  the  lot  -was  mine. 

It  has  been  noted  here  by  some  commentators,  who  compare 
xxiii.  296,  that,  though  military  service  seems  to  have  been  to  a 
certain  extent  compulsory  in  the  Homeric  age,  yet  the  stringency 
of  the  conscription  was  mitigated  by  ballot  in  some  cases,  and  by 
commutation  in  others. 

Ver.  426. — 3Iy  son,  if  ere  such  son  were  mine. 

The  critic  in  the  Saturday  Revieio  (April  28),  is  quite  right  that 
the  scholiast  who  makes  ei'  ttot'  e^v  ye  equivalent  to  «XP'5  e'^Vj,  either 
did  not  understand  Greek,  or  by  an  inborn  prosaic  instinct  too 
common  in  commentators,  was  turning  poetry  into  prose.  No 
man  acquainted  with  Homer  could  doubt  the  real  meaning  of  so 
marked  a  phrase  (iii.  180;  Od.  xv.  268).  It  merely  requires  a 
slight  dash  of  emotion  to  make  such  things  intelligible.  But  tlie 
Homeric  scholia  are  confused  heaps  of  gold  and  rubbish,  kept  by 
an  ass,  whicli  it  requires  some  animal  not  being  an  ass  to  sift  and 
appropriate. 

Ver.  450. — The  tent  which  Myrmidons  did  frame  of  pine. 

Fraas  and  Lenz  agree  that  the  eAdrr/  is  the  pinus  picea  of  Lin- 
naeus, the  abies  pectinata  of  Decandolle.     Billerbeck  is  more  vague. 

Ver.  480. 

A  man  whose  hands  are  red  from  murder's  recent  stain. 

The  scene  here  depicted  was  one  that  constantly  occurred  in  the 
rude  and  violent  times  which  we  call  patriarchal  and  heroic'     See 

'  On  the  perpetuatiiii  of  family  lends  among  the  Sfakian  mountaineers  in 
f'rele,  see  Tashley,  ii.  245. 


424  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

Midler  {Dur.  i.  854),  who  proposes  to  read  dyvtVeo)  instead  of 
d(j)veiov  in  ver.  482.  But  no  sound  critic  will  suppose  that  the  use 
of  the  word  ayvcTrjv  iu  the  Schol.  Ven.  v.  on  this  passage,  can 
justify  such  an  alteration  of  the  text.  These  grammarians  were 
always  forward  to  display  their  learning,  when  the  text  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it.  A  person  who  had  committed  manslaughter,  went, 
when  he  possibly  could,  to  the  house  of  a  rich  and  powerful  man, 
for  such  a  man  was  best  able  to  aflford  him  the  protection  that  he 
required.  He  was  afterwards  purified  by  certain  sacrifices  and 
rites,  which  are  well  described  by  Miiller  in  the  dissertations  pre- 
fixed to  his  edition  of  the  Eumenides,  of  which  there  is  an  English 
translation  by  Drake. 

Ver.  514. — Kac  oi  aTro  TrpaTTLSwv  r/Xd'  i'fiepos,  k.  t.  A. 

This  line  is  tautologic,  and  altogether  superfluous;  and,  though 
not  necessarily  spurious,  may  wisely  be  omitted  by  the  translator. 

Ver.  524. — For  so  the  gods  have  spun  our  fate,  etc. 

I  see  nothing  in  these  words  to  call  forth  the  strong  language  in 
which  distinguished  ancients  (Plat.  lie]),  ii.  379)  and  moderns 
(Glad.  ii.  337)  have  indulged  in  reference  to  them.  It  is  a  fact 
that  mortal  men  suff'er  many  woes,  which  we  cannot  suppose  the 
blissful  gods  to  suffer.  And  what  harm  is  there  in  saying  so  ? 
The  men  who  spoke  thus  were  at  least  as  pious  as  we  are  gene- 
rally, and  perhaps  a  little  more  so. 

Ver.  544. 

When  Leshos,  seat  of  Macar,  meets  the  sailors'  view. 
This  Macar  {Ilacon  is  a  misprint)  was  well  known  in  the  old 
legendary  history  of  Lesbos  (Diod.  Sic.  v.  c.  81,  Hymn.  Del.  87). 
Preller  (Myth.  ii.  Ill)  is  of  opinion  that  he  is  identical  with  the 
famous  Tyrian  Hercules. 

Ver.   55G-558. — 7r0A.Au,  to.  toi  (fyepofxei',  K.T.A. 

I  can  see  nothing  wrong  in  these  lines,  unless  perhaps  the  third 
be  an  addition  by  some  grammarian  who  did  not  understand  how 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  425 

€acra5  could  be  used  without  some  infinitive  following.  But  I 
have  translated  freely,  in  order  to  avoid  the  ofience  which  may 
seem  to  lie  in  this  third  line  taken  literally. 

Ver.  602. — Nlohe  heautifid-haired. 

The  legend  of  Niobe,  whether  as  respects  its  mention  in  ancient 
poets,  the  frequent  allusions  to  it  in  modern  poetry,  or  its  embodi- 
ment in  certain  well-known  works  of  the  plastic  art,  is  one  of  the 
most  famous  in  the  whole  range  of  Hellenic  mythology.  Niobe  was 
the  daughter  of  the  Lydian  Tantalus — a  name  connected  in  the 
Greek  imagination  with  a  display  of  that  v(3pLs,  or  insolent  pride 
and  vain  boasting  which  they  justly  regarded  as  one  of  the  greatest 
of  all  sins,  and  the  mother  of  many.  Tantalus,  admitted  into  the 
privacy  of  the  gods,  betrayed  their  confidence,  and  suffered  what 
we  all  know.  Niobe,  his  daughter,  was  favoured  with  a  numerous 
and  beautiful  offspring.  Her  heart,  to  use  the  expressive  Scripture 
phrase,  was  lifted  up,  instead  of  being  humbly  grateful  and  rejoic- 
ing with  trembling  at  this  divine  favour ;  and  the  consequence 
was  what  always  must  be  ;  "  for  before  honour  comes  humility,  but 
pride  walketh  before  destruction."  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
this  legend  had  an  historical  foundation,  with  which  the  geological 
phenomenon  seen  by  Pausanias  (Paus.  i.  21.  5)  is  not  at  variance. 
The  form  of  a  weeping  woman  may  have  been  recognised  in  the 
rocks  about  Sipylus,  between  Smyrna  and  Sardes,  the  more  readily 
just  because  the  disconsolate  sorrow  of  a  real  Niobe  was  so  bruited 
in  the  district.  Duncker  (Ges.  All.  iii.  309),  with  the  Germans 
generally  I  presume,  is  inclined  to  look  upon  Niobe  as  a  goddess, 
the  magna  Mate?-,  or  Mother  Earth  of  the  Phrygians,  weeping  for 
the  departure  of  glorious  summer.  Bunsen  [Goft  in  der  Gcs.  i. 
p.  283)  seems  to  think  that  Homer  here  is  alluding  to  some  work 
of  art — an  idea  which  does  not  lie  in  the  passage.  The  famous 
group  of  Niobe,  familiar  to  Italian  tourists,  was  supposed  to  be 
the  work  of  Scopas  or  Praxiteles  (Plin.  N.  H.  xxxvi.  5).  The 
Achelous  of  this  passage  was  an  insignificant  rivulet,  likely  a 
tributary  of  the  Hermus  (Paus.  viii.  38.  7). 


426  notes  to  the  iliad.  book  xxiv. 

Ver.  614-617. 

These  four  lines,  bracketed  as  suspicious  by  Baiimlein,  show, 
more  clearly  than  any  other,  the  utter  impossibility,  in  certain 
cases,  of  settling  questions  of  interpolation  in  Homer.  Nothing, 
on  the  one  hand,  is  more  probable  than  that  these  lines — which  are 
quite  foreign  to  the  purpose  of  Achilles — should  have  been  added 
by  some  fluent  rhapsodist  of  later  times,  to  give  the  latest  edition 
of  the  legend  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing  more 
characteristically  Homeric  in  Homer  than  the  practice  of  telling 
the  whole  story  in  a  large,  easy,  gossiping  way,  though  only  a  part 
of  it  bears  upon  the  matter  in  hand.  In  such  circumstances,  the 
probabilities  being  e(i[ual  on  either  side,  the  judgment  must  remain 
in  suspense.  Nevertheless,  a  verdict  must  be  given  in  favour  of 
the  received  text,  because  the  law  is  in  favour  of  possession,  and 
the  burden  of  proving  an  interpolation  lies  with  the  objector. 

Ver.  721-722. 

The  minstrel  then  tliey  hrovglit^  and  hade  uplift  the  ivail. 

From  this  point,  down  to  ver.  776,  goes  on  the  formal  wail,  or 
CORONACH  (in  Romaic,  juvptoAoytai)  for  the  death  of  Hector  ;  a  sad 
ceremonial,  which  formed  a  precedent  for  many  a  well-known 
finale  in  the  Greek  tragedy.  Heyne,  with  his  infatuate  dogmatism, 
says  that  the  whole  affair  from  725  to  776  is  an  interpolation.  If 
so,  we  can  only  say,  as  on  other  occasions,  that  the  interpolator 
must  have  been  a  man  of  genius,  and  the  original  bard  a  very 
meagre  fellow.  As  to  the  practice  of  formal  wails,  or  coronachs, 
among  the  ancients,  we  may  note  that  they  are  merely  the  public 
outpouring  of  that  grief  which  our  more  private  manners  and  emo- 
tional reticence  prefer  to  veil  from  the  general  eye.  The  ancients 
indulged  in  this  luxury  of  grief  to  such  a  degree  that  they  hired 
special  persons  (5Vp>ji/a>Sot),  generally  women,  with  wailing  song 
and  flute,  to  form  part  of  the  funeral  procession  (Hesy.  Kaptvat  ; 
Plat.  Legy.  vii.  800  e  ;    Poll.  iv.  75).     These  public  lamentations 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  42  7 

often  went  to  such  an  excess  that  the  hiw  was  obliged  to  intei*- 
fere  to  moderate  them  (Plut.  Solon.  21).  The  physical  violence 
with  which  the  wails  were  sometimes  accompanied,  is  stereotyped 
in  the  name  kojxuoi.  (from  kotttm,  to  cut),  by  which  they  were 
known  in  the  Greek  drama.  One  of  the  most  effective  exhibi- 
tions of  this  kind,  of  course  always  with  the  music  imagined,  not 
indeed  over  the  body  of  a  dead  man,  but  over  the  prostration  of 
a  mighty  empire,  will  be  found  in  the  last  scene  of  The  Persians 
of  ^schylus. 

Of  the  three  female  figures  who  enact  this  concluding  wail  in 
Homer  one  has  been  already  noticed  (iii.  180).  Of  Andromache 
there  is  little  to  tell  beyond  what  the  Iliad  has  already  made  the 
reader  familiar  with.  At  the  taking  of  Troy  she  fell  to  the  lot  of 
Neoptolemus,  the  son  of  Achilles,  who  took  her  to  Epirus,  where 
she  became  the  mother  of  the  race  of  Epirotie  kings,  afterwards 
famous  in  Macedonian  and  Roman  history.  She  was  afterwards 
married  to  Helenus  the  soothsayer,  the  brother  of  Paris,  whom 
legend  transported  to  the  Albanian  coast.  All  this  the  schoolboy 
knows  from  the  detail  in  the  third  book  of  the  ^neid.  Euripides 
also  has  portrayed  some  scenes  of  her  life  in  Epirus  in  the  well- 
known  tragedy  which  bears  her  name.  Tradition  told  that  she 
finally  returned  to  Pergamus,  and  received  divine  honours  there 
(Paus.  I.  11.  2).  With  regard  to  the  poet's  management  of  the 
wife  of  Hector,  Mure  (i.  428)  remarks,  that  "  the  part  of  Andro- 
mache in  the  Iliad  is  one  of  suffering  rather  than  of  action.  Her 
appearances  on  the  scene  are  rare  and  brief.  Yet  there  is  perhaps 
no  heroine  in  the  whole  range  of  poetical  fiction  who  inspires  more 
powerful  feelings  of  admiration  and  interest ;  a  fine  proof  of  the 
poet's  faculty  of  imparting  life  and  reality  to  his  actors  with  the 
smallest  apparent  amount  of  machinery.  Nowhere  throughout  the 
distressing  scenes  of  the  poem  where  she  plays  a  part  is  the  meek 
affliction  of  this  most  innocent  and  sensitive  of  sufferers  alloyed  by 
a  single  expression  of  anger  or  bitterness  even  against  the  hand 
which  had  successively  bereaved  her  of  father,  mother,  brother, 
arid  husband.     Had  Andromache  combined  but  a  small  share  of 


■i28  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  BOOK  XXIV. 

the  sternuess  of  the  Spartan  mother  with  her  anxieties  for  the  life 
of  Hector,  had  she  uttered  a  few  natural  ejaculations  of  vindictive 
wrath  against  his  destroyer,  the  charm  which  makes  her  the  most 
angelic  and  interesting  of  her  sex  would  at  once  have  been  dis- 
solved." 

Hecuba,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  character  which  exhibits  along 
with  feminine  tenderness  no  small  mixture  of  that  ferocity  which 
belongs  to  a  bereaved  mother,  a  w^oman  of  Oriental  blood,  and  a 
discrowned  queen.  This  taint  of  fierceness  eminently  adapted  her 
for  the  genius  of  Euripides,  who  has  made  her  the  heroine  of  one 
of  his  most  bloody  tragedies.  In  this  play  he  represents  the  un- 
fortunate wife  of  Priam,  after  the  fall  of  Troy,  as  in  the  Thracian 
Chersonesus  with  the  Grreek  army,  where  she  is  made  the  witness 
both  of  the  sacrifice  of  her  daughter  Polyxena  to  the  shade  of 
Achilles  (xix.  1),  and  of  the  death  of  her  son  Poly d ore  to  satisfy 
the  avarice  of  Polymestor  (xx.  407).  Towards  the  faithless  bar- 
barian king  she  comports  herself  with  such  murderous  ferocity  that 
tradition  would  have  her  changed  into  a  raging  dog,  in  which 
shape  she  leapt  into  the  sea  at  a  place  called  Gynos  Sema — kwos 
ariixa — or  the  dog's  barroia,  known  in  the  after  history  of  the  Greek 
wars  (Str.  xiii.  595  ;  Thucyd.  viii.  104  ;  Hygin.  Fah.  cxi).  Legend 
evidently  intended  to  work  up  the  catastrophe  of  the  Trojan  tragedy 
to  a  climax  by  making  the  mother  of  the  prime  off"ender  ('AAe^- 
civSpov  up)(i]<;^  III.  100)  end  her  existence  in  a  paroxysm  of  rage, 
revenge,  and  madness.  For  guilt,  as  JEschylus  says,  is  never 
childless ;  and  the  seed  which  is  sown  in  wantonness  is  sure  to 
blossom  in  blood,  to  ripen  into  ruin,  and  to  bear  a  harvest  of 
despair.     For  the  wages  of  Sin  is  Death. 

Ver.  804. — '^'i  oiy  a/x(/)te7rov  Tac^ov  "Ekto/30s  iTTTroSa/xoio. 
•'  I  cannot  take  my  leave  of  this  noble  poem  without  expressing 
how  much  I  am  struck  with  this  plain  conclusion  of  it.  It  is  like 
the  exit  of  a  great  man  out  of  company  whom  he  has  entertained 
magnificently,  neither  pompons  nor  familiar ;  not  contemptuous,  yet 
without  much  ceremony.     I  recollect  nothing  among  the  works  of 


BOOK  XXIV.  NOTES  TO  THE  ILIAD.  429 

mere  man  that  exemplifies  so  strongly  the  true  style  of  great  anti- 
quity. ' ' COWPER. 

The  fact  is  that  Homer  tells  his  story,  and  then  says  that  he  is 
done  with  it.  Compare  the  last  words  of  the  narrative  of  the 
evangelist  Luke  in  Acts  xx.  38.  If  other  men  would  follow  the 
simplicity,  naturalness,  and  directness  of  such  a  peroration,  there 
would  be  fewer  blunders  committed  in  oratory.  Homer  is  great 
here  and  elsewhere,  principally  because  he  is  not  ambitious  of 
wishing  to  appear  great. 


List  of  the  Editions  of  Homee,  and  Translations  used 
BY  THE  Author  ;  also  of  the  principal  Works  of 
frequent  Reference,  with  the  Abbreviations. 

I. — Editions  of  Homer. 

1.  Homeri  Opera,  Florent.    Fol.     1488.     Gra?ce.     Clialcondyles. 

Editio  princeps. 

2.  Homeri  Ilias.     Aldi.     1504. 

:i.  lAias.      Argent.      Cephal.,  1525. 

4. Ilias.     Paris.,  1554.      Turneb. 

5. Opera.     Cant.     1711.     Barnesii. 

6.  Opera.    Ex  recens.  Clarkii-cura  Ernesti.    Lips.,  1759. 

7. Ilias.     Yilloison.     Venet.,  1788. 

8, Ilias.     Wolf.     Lips.,  1804.     (W.) 

9.  Opera.     Heyne.     Lips.,  1802.     (H.) 

10.  Carmina  Homerica.     R.  P.  Knight.     London,  1820. 

11.  Ilias.     Spitzner.     Gothge,  1832.     (8p.J 

12.  - — -  Carmina.     Bothe.     Lips.,  1832. 

13.  Ilias.     Faesi.     Lips.,  1851. 

14.  Carmina.     Bekker.     Bonn,  1858. 

15.  Iliadis  Carm.  xvi.     H.  Kocbly.      Lips.,   1861. 

16.  .,  ,,  Biiumlein.     Lips.,  1854. 

17.  Doderlein.     Lips.,  1863. 

18.  Homeri  Ilias.     Paley.     London,  1866. 

19.  Odyssey.     By  Ameis.     Lips.,  1861. 
20. KirchhoflF.     Berl.,  1859. 

21.   Hayman.     London,  1866. 

11. — Translations. 

1.  The  Latin  translations  in  most  of  the  editions  of  the  middle 
period 

2.  The    Iliads    of    Homer.      By   George   Chapman.      London, 
1843.     (Ch.) 


3. 

The  Iliad 

of  Homer. 

4. 

5. 

fi. 

7. 

8. 

9. 

10. 

432  LIST  OF  WORKS  OF  REFERENCE. 

By  Thomas  Hobbes.     1686. 
Pope.     London,  1806.     (P.) 
Cowper.     1854.     Bohn.^     (C.) 
Sotheby.     (Soth.) 
Brandreth.     London,  1846.     (Br.) 
Newman.     London,  1856.     (N.) 
Wright.     London,  1859  65.     (Wr.) 
Earl    of    Derby.       London,    1864. 
(Drb.)  _ 

11.  „  ,,  In     English     hexameters    by    Dart, 

London,  1865.     (Drt.) 

12.  „  „  Worsley,  Books  i.-xir.     Edinb.,  1866. 

(Wors.) 
l.S.  ..  „  French.       By    Dacier.       4th     Edit. 

Amsterdam,  1731. 

14.  „  „  French.     By  Montbel.     Paris,  1853. 

15.  ,,  ,,  German.    By  Voss.    Stuttgart,  1856. 

16.  „  „  German.     By  Donner.     1855.    (D.) 

17.  „.  „  Italian.     By  Monti.     Milano.    1829. 

III. — Homeric  Commentaries  and  Glossaries. 

1.  The  scholia  and  notes  in  the  editions  of  Barnes,  Ernesti, 
Yilloison,  Heyne,  Montbel,  Bothe,  Faesi,  Spitzner,  Paley,  Hayman, 
Ameis. 

2.  Eustathii  Comment,  in  Homerum.     Lips.,  1827.     (Eust.) 

3.  Scholia  in  Homeri  Iliad.  Bekker.  BeroL,  1825.  (Schol. 
Ven.) 

4.  Didymi  Chalcenteri  Opuscula.     Schmidt.     Lips.,  1854. 

5.  Aristonici  Trepl  o-r^jxe'nav  lAtaSos.     Friedliinder,  1853.      Gott. 

6.  Koppen  :  Anmerkungen  zum  Homer.     Hannov.,  1792. 

7.  Apollonii  Lexicon  Homericiim.  Villoison.  Paris,  1773. 
(Apoll.) 

8.  Dammii  Lexicon  Homericum.     Duncan.     London,  1827. 

9.  Buttmann's  Lexilogus.     Fishlake.     London,  1840.     (But.) 

10.  Wolf,  F.  A.,  Vorlesungen  tiber  die  vier  ersten  Gesiinge  der 
Bias.     Bern.,  1831. 

1  In  my  Dissertations,  pp.  437-439,  1  quoted  from  the  olJ  quarto  edition. 
This  will  explain  ci"!rtain  discrepancies. 


LIST  OF  WORKS  OF  REFERENCE.  433 

11.  Scholia  in  Odysscam.     Buttmanii.     BeroL,  1821. 

12.  Niigelsbach  Anmerk.  zur  Ilias.     Niirnberg,  1850.     (Nag.) 

13.  G.   W.   Nitzsch :  Anmerk.  zur   Odyssee.     Hannov.,    1826. 
(Nits.) 

14.  Doderlein.     Homerischcs  Glossarium.     Erlang.,  1850. 


IV. — Miscellaneous  Dissertations  on  Homer  and 
Homeric  Poetry. 

1.  Studies  on   Homer  and  the   Homeric  Age.     By  the  Right 
Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone.     Oxford,  1858.     (Glad.) 

(German  by  Schuster.     Leip.:ig,  1863.) 

2.  Die  Realicn  in  der  Iliade  uud  Odyssee.  Von  J.  B.  Fried- 
rich.     Erlangen,  1856. 

3.  Die  Bildwerke  zum  Thebischen  und  Troischen  Heldenkreis. 
Von  Dr.  J.  Overbeck.     Stuttgart,  1857. 

4.  Die  Sagenpoesie  der  Griechen.  By  G.  W.  Nitzsch.  Bruns- 
wick, 1852. 

5.  Beitrage  zur  Geschichte  der  Epischen  Poesie  der  Griechen. 
Von  G.  W.  Nitzsch.     Leipzig,  1862. 

6.  A  Critical  History  of  the  Language  and  Literature  of  An- 
cient Greece.  By  William  Mure  of  Caldwell.  Vols.  I.  and  II. 
London,  1850. 

V. 

General  Works  on  Greek  Mythology. 

1.  Griechische  Gotterlehre.  Von  F.  G.  Welcker.  Gottiugen, 
1857-63.     (W.  (J.  L) 

2.  Griechische  Mythologie.  Von  Eduard  Gerhard.  Berlin, 
1850.     (Gerh.  Bli/th.) 

3.  Griechische  Mythologie.  Von  Ludwig  Preller.  Leipzig, 
1854.     (Prel.  3Ii/th.) 

4.  Die  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Griechen.  Von  J.  A. 
Hartung.     Leipzig,  1866. 

5.  Mythological  Articles  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of  Biography 
and  Mythology.     London,  1844. 

VOL.  lY.  2  E 


434  LIST  OF  WORKS  OF  REFEKEXCE. 

VI. 

Works  on  Ancient  Geography, 

1.  Travels   in    Northern    Greece.      By   Wm.    Martin    Leake. 
London,  1835.     (L.) 

2.  Travels  in  the  Morea.     By  Wm.  Martin  Leake.     London, 
1830.     (L.) 

3.  Journal  of  a  Tour  in  Greece.     By  William  Mure  of  Cald- 
well.    Edinburgh,  1842. 

4.  Peloponnesus.     A^on  Ernst  Curtius.      Gotha,  1851.     (Curt.) 

5.  Reisen  auf  den  Griechischen  Inseln.     Von  Dr.  Ludwig  Ross. 
Stuttgart,  1840. 

6.  Wanderungen    in    Griechenland.      By   the    Same.      Halle, 
1851. 

7.  Peloponnesus  :    Notes  of   Study  and   Travel.      By   W.    G. 
Clark.     London,  1858. 

8.  Geographic  von  Griechenland.     Von  Conrad  Bursian.     Leip- 
zig, 1862. 

9.  Athens  and  Attica.     By  the  Rev.  Ch.  Wordsworth.     London, 
1836. 

10.  Reisen  und  Forschungen  in  Griechenland.     Von  Ulrichs. 
Bremen,  1840. 

11.  Griechische   Reisen  und   Studien.      By  Ussing.      Kopen- 
hagen,  1857. 

12.  Le  Mont  Olympe  et  rAcarnanie.     Par  L.  Heuzey.     Paris, 
1860. 

13.  Journal  of  a  Tour  in   Asia  Minor.      By   W.   M.   Leake, 
London,  1824. 

14.  Researches  in  Asia  Minor.     By  W.  L.  Hamilton.     London : 
Murray. 

VII. 

General  Works  on  Greek  History  and  Antiquities. 

1.  Geschichte   des   Alterthums.     Von   Max    Duncker.     Berlin, 
1855-1860.     4  vols.  8vo. 

2.  Geschichte   Griechenlands.      Von    Ernst    Curtius.      Berlin, 
1857. 


LIST  OF  WOKKS  OF  REFERENCE.  435 

3.  History  of  Greece.     By  Geo.  Grote,  Esq.     London,  1862. 

4.  Lehrbuch  der  Griechisehen  Antiquitaten.  Von  K.  F.  Her- 
mann.    Heidelberg,  1852-8.     {Gr.  Ant.) 

5.  Charicles  ;  from  the  German  of  Becker.     London,  1854. 

6.  Dictionary  of  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities.  By  Dr.  W. 
Smith.     London,  1842. 

7.  Clinton's  Fasti  Hellenici.     Oxford,  1834. 

8.  Miiller's  Dorians.     By  G.  Cornewall  Lewis.     Oxford,  1830. 

9.  Wachsmuth's  Greek  Antiquities.     Oxford,  1837. 

The  Etymologicum  Magnum  (Gaisford,  1848)  is  quoted  by  E. 
M.,  and  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon  (1861)  by  L.  and  S.  When 
Passow  is  named  independently,  the  edition  of  Leipzig  (1828)  is 
meant. 


INDEX   OF   GREEK   WORDS. 


This  Index  contains  only  those  words  whose  meaning  has  been  disputed,  or  of 
vjhich  the  translation  in  our  best  versions  varies. 


'AyeXeirj,  iv.  128. 
ayKvXo/xriTrjs,  li.  321. 
d5ivbi'  KTJp,  XVI.  481. 
(}S7]s,  I.  3. 

aidp7]yevris,  xv.  171. 
aWiof,  XV.  690,  XVI.  488. 
al6\os,  xu.  167. 
"Ap7os,  II.  559. 
dpyds,  I.  50,  xxiii.  30. 
dfJLcpiKinreWov,  i.  584. 
dva^,  I.  80. 
dpye(7T7]s,  XI.  306. 
a-KLOs,  I.  270. 

dirb  dpvbs  oapi^^Lv,  xxii.  126. 
ai^XcoTTts,  III.  328. 
"AipXaara,  ix.  240. 

^aOu^wvos,  IX.  594. 
dadvKoKiros,  ix.  594. 
^07]v  dyaOos,  V.  347. 
/SoujTTts,  I.  550. 

yeXdu,  vi.  471. 

7Xai;K6s,  and  yXavKwiris,  i.  206. 

70^765,  VIII.  349. 

Slos,  I.  7. 

SaLfiovios,  1.  561,  II.  190. 


dalp-wv,  VIII.  164,  ix.  600. 
5ai(f)pU3v,  II.  23. 

AT]p.riT7jp,  V.  500. 

eXaTT],  XXIV.  450. 

ei'iror'  irjv  ye,  ill.  180,  xxiv.  426. 

eXtKWTTis,  I.  98. 

ed<t)poveiv,  1.  73. 

evpvoTra,  I.  498. 

evpvxt^pos,  II.  498. 

feid,  V.  196. 

'H^^tos,  ui.  8. 
ftbs,  XV.  365. 

TjXiKTUp,   VI.    513. 

^/ows,  I.  3. 

^07;  w'^,  X.  394. 
&WS,  XI.  474. 

te/s6s,  X.  56. 
'16/j.upos,  IV.  242. 
iKTis,  X.  335. 
iirwoKopvaTris,  11.  1. 

/f^pay,  XI.  385. 

(c%es,  11.  302,  VIII.  527. 

KTjTweaaa,  11.  581. 


i36 


INDEX  OF  GKEEK  WOEDS. 


Kbpvfx^a,  IX.  240. 
Kopwfis,  I.  169. 

KOpdlfT],  IV.   105. 

Kv'avos,  XI.  24,  XXIV.  94. 
KVKewv,  XI.  624 
KvfMivSts,  XIV.  291- 

XtVoj,  xviii.  570. 
\u}t6s,  II.  776. 
Ai>K?j7ei'??s,  IV.  101. 

fxaKap,  XI.  68. 

(leyaK-qTTjs,  II.  581,  VIII.  222. 

/jLeveaipu,  xvi.  491. 

Ai^po;/',  I.  250. 

ixopdeis,  XIV.  183. 

flVplKT},  VI.  39, 
^'TjSl'/XOS,   II.  3. 

6\vpa,  V   196. 
oplokXt),  XII.  273. 
6ju.<^77,  VIII.  250. 
oSXos,  II.  6. 
fii/'oi',  XI.  630. 

Trattivtos,  V.  401. 
naXXds,  I.  200. 
tt^ttXos,  VI.  90. 
■rrripds,  ii.  599. 


TToXijad'os,  XI.  430. 
TTop^upeos,  XVII.  547   xxiv.  94. 
■wbrvia,  i.  550,  iv.  2. 
irprjOw,  I.  481. 


cAtyov,  II.  776. 
crx^T-Xtos,  II,  112,  X.  164. 
(tCjkos,  XX.  72. 


Tavv(p\oL6s,  XVI.  765. 
1erpd<paXyjpos,  III.  328. 
TpiToy^peia,  iv.  514. 
TpvcpdXeia,  in.  328. 
TavrfKe-yqi,  viil.  70. 
T7?Xt;7eT0S,  V.  153. 
TpiyX-qvos,  xiv.  183. 


(prjyos,  V.  693. 
<pid\T],  XXIII.  243. 

(pL\0fJ./J.€(.SrjS,   IV.  10. 

<Po\k6s,  II.  217. 
(ppives,  XXIII.  104. 

XaX/c6s,  I.  371. 
X'?pw(rT^s,  V.  158. 
X^tfd  re  /cat  Trpuji^',  ii.  302. 
xXoi^fr;?,  IX.  539. 
xXw/36s,  XXIV.  94. 
Xpvcrdiop,  V.  509. 


GENERAL  INDEX  OF  MATTERS. 


The  Xotes  are  referred  to  by  Roman  nuih^rals,  followed  by  Arabic,  the  former  denoting 
the  book,  the  latter  the  verse  of  the  Iliad,  to  which  each  note  belongs.  Where 
Arabic  numerals  alone  are  used,  these  refer  to  the  pages  of  Vol.  I.  of  this  Work. 


Abantes,  II.  536. 

Abii,  XIII.  6. 

Ablutions  and    lustrations,    i.   313, 

VI.  266. 
Abydos,  ii.  836. 
Achseans,  ii.  684. 
Aclaelous,  xxi.  194,  ii.  638. 
Achilles,  xix.  1,  ix.  668. 

shield  of,  xviii.  590. 

Adrasteia,  ii.  828. 
Adrastus,  ii.  572. 
^gaB,  XIII.  21. 
J^gialus,  II.  575,  855. 
.^gilips,  II.  633. 
.'Egeira,  ii.  573. 
.^gina,  IT.  562. 
^gis-beariug,  i.  202. 
^^gium,  II.  574. 
^^neas,  vi.  77. 
^^^^niaues,  ii.  681,  749. 
^Enos,  IV.  520. 
^peia,  IX.  149. 
JE\)y,  II.  592. 
.-Epytus,  II.  604. 
.Esculapius,  iv.  194. 


^sepus,  XII.  19. 

.^ilsyetes,  mound  of,  ii.  793. 

^syme,  viii.  304. 

iEthices,  ii.  744. 

^thra,  III.  144. 

^tolia,  II.  638. 

Agamede,  xi.  740. 

Agamemnon,  xi.  15. 

Agapenor,  ii.  609. 

Agricultural  improvement  in  mytho- 
logy, v.  383. 

Ajax  the  Locrian,  xxiii.  473. 

the  Telamonian,  vii.  206,  xiu. 

824. 

Alalcomente,  iv.  8. 

Aleisium,  ii.  617. 

Aleian  plain,  vi.  201. 

Allegorical  interpretation  of  Homer, 
323. 

Alexandrian  Museum,  351. 

• — —  scholars,  355. 

Alimentation,  law  of,  iv.  478. 

Alliteration,  xvi.  776. 

Alizones,  ii.  856. 

Aloidse,  v.  385. 


no 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


Alope,  II.  682. 
Alos,  II.  682. 
Alpheus,  II.  592. 
Alybe,  ii.  856. 
Amazons,  xi.  186,  ii.  811. 
Ampliigenia,  ii.  593. 
Amyclse,  ii.  584. 
Amydon,  ii.  859. 
Ancestry  and  pedigree,  i.  1. 
Anchises,  xx.  215. 
Andromache,  xxiv.  721. 
Anemoreia,  ii.  521. 
Animals  sacrificed,  iii.  103. 
Antenor,  vii.  347. 
Antliedon,  ii.  508. 
Antheia,  ix.  149. 
Antiloclius,  XVII.  694. 
j^jitron,  II.  697. 
ApaBSus,  II.  828. 
Aphroditds  v.  330,  ix.  390. 

(piXo/jLfxeiSris,  IV.  10. 

tier  cest,  or  girdle,  xiv.  214. 

Apis  and  Apia,  i.  270. 

ApoUo,   I.   9,  IV.   101,  V.  401,  509, 

XV.  237,  XXI.  442. 
Araithurea,  ii.  576. 
Arcadia,  ii.  603. 
Architecture,  roofs,  xxiii.  7 1 2. 
Arene,  ii.  591. 
Ares,  XIII.  298. 
Argissa,  ii.  738. 
Argos,  II.  559  ;  the  Pelasgic,  ii.  681  ; 

thirsty,  iv.  171. 
Arimi,  ii.  783. 
Arisbe,  ii.  836. 
Aristocracy,  171  ;  i.   1,  ii.  51,  204; 

and  priesthood,  v.  9. 
Arion,  the  horse,  ii.  572,  xxili.  346. 
Ariosto,  55. 
Ariatarchns,  353,  361. 
Armour,  Homeric,  iii.  328. 

exchange  of,  vi.  219. 

Arne,  ii.  507. 

Arnold,  Dr.,  on  Translation,  383. 

Artemis,  xvi.  183. 


Artemis  causes  sudden  death,  vi.  205, 

xxi.  483. 
Arthur,  King,  56. 
Article,  the  Greek,  in  topographical 

designation,  ii.  681. 
Arts,  the,   in  ancient  Greece,  xviii. 

590. 
Ascania,  it.  863. 
Ascre,  ii.  507. 
Ashen-spears,  xvx.  143. 
Asina,  ii.  560. 
Asopus,  IV.  383. 
Asjiledon,  ii.  511. 
Assaracus,  xx.  215. 
Assyrian  traditions,  41. 
Asterium,  ii.  735. 
Astragals,  xxiii.  88. 
Astrology,  xviii.  251. 
Ate,  IX.  503. 
Athene,  i.   198,  200,   202,   200,  in. 

202,  IX.  254,  xxiT.  247. 
Athens,  ii.  546. 
Athos,  XIV.  229. 
Augese,  ii.  532,  583. 
Augeas,  xi.  699. 

Augury  by  birds,  vi.  76,  xii.  243. 
Aulis,  II.  303,  496. 
Aurora,  viii.  1. 
Autumn  unhealthy,  xxil.  32. 
Axius,  II.  850. 

Ballads  and  Ballad  Poetry,  140  ; 

IX.  186,  XIII.  517,  XVII.  279,  xvi. 

328. 
Ballad  measures,  English,  409,  421. 
Barter,  purchase  by,  vii.  467. 
Baths,  X.  576. 
Batieia,  n.  813. 
Baton,  XXIII.  578. 
Battle,  order  of,  iv.  297. 

shout,  TIL  8. 

Battles  of  the  gods,  i.  399. 
Bear,  the,  xvtil  489. 
Beauty,  Greek  sense  of,  iii.  65. 
Bellerophon,  vi.  155. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


441 


Belt,  III.  328. 

Bentley,  Riohartl,    a    foreruuner   of 

Wolf,  201. 
Bessa,  ii.  532. 
Birds  a  favourite  disguise  of   gods, 

VII.  61. 
Blackwell  on  Homer,  112. 
Blaming  the  gods,  iii.  164. 
Blood  in  pactions,  iii.  292. 
Blood-money,  ix.  633,  xviii.  497. 
Bloody  dew  and  bloody  rain,  xi.  54. 
Boastfulness  and  humility,  vi.  127. 
Boagrius,  ii.  533. 
Boebe,  ii.  712. 
Boeotia,  243 ;  ii.  494. 
Botany,  medical,  xi.  832. 
Boxing  and  boxing-gloves,  xxiii.  685. 
Booty,  I.  167. 

Bows  and  arrows,  iv.  105,  151. 
Bowmen,   iv.  242,  viii.    273,    xiii. 

713,  xxiii.  870. 
Briareus,  i.  399. 
Brysese,  ii.  583. 
Buckle,  XVII.  446. 
Budteum,  xvi.  372. 
Bull,  the,  symbol  of  rivers,  xxi.  238, 

XI.  728. 
Buprasium,  ii.  615. 

Oadmeans,  II.  505,  IV.  378. 
Calchas,  i.  69. 
CaUiarus,  ii.  531. 
Calydnse,  ii.  677. 
Calydon,  ii.  639. 
Cameirus,  ii.  656. 
Capys,  XX.  215. 
Cardamyle,  ix.  149. 
Caresus,  xii.  20. 
Carians,  ii.  867,  iv.  141. 
Carlovingian  romances,  55. 
Carpathus,  ii.  676. 
Carystus,  ii.  539. 
Cassandra,  xiir.  366. 
Castor  and  Pollux,  iii.  243. 
Cases,  II.  676. 


Catalogue  of  the  ships,  238. 

Catena  aurea  Homeri,  vtii.  2. 

Caucones,  x.  427. 

Ciiyster,  ii.  461. 

Celadon,  vii.  133. 

Celibacy,  v.  9,  vi.  299. 

Centaurs,  i.  263,  xi.  832. 

Cephalonia,  ii.  631. 

Cephissian  lake,  ii.  500. 

Cephissus,  ii.  522. 

Cerberus,  viii.  366. 

Ceres,  v.  500. 

Cerinthus,  ii.  538. 

Chalcis,  II.  537,  640. 

Chalybes,  ii.  856. 

Chant,  antiphonal,  i.  604. 

Chapman,  his  Homer,  425. 

Chariot,   Greek,   x.    505,   viii.    185, 

XXIII.  325. 
Childbirth,  goddess  of,  xi.  270. 
Chimera,  vi.  179,  xvi.  328. 
Chiron,  xi.  832. 

Chivahy  and  Hellenism,  161 ;  x.  487. 
Chronology  and  tradition,  77. 
Chryse,  i.  37. 
Cicala,  cricket,  in.  151. 
Cicones,  ii.  846. 
Cilicia,  vi.  397. 
CiUa,  I.  38. 
Cinyras,  xi.  20. 
Citizenship,  ix.  648. 
Clanship,  ii.  362. 
Cleonse,  ii.  570. 
Club-bearers,  vii.  9. 
Clymene,  in.  144. 
Collocation  of  words,  xviii.  18. 
Colour,   use  of  words  signifying,   in 

Homer,  xxiv.  94. 
Concubinage,  i.  113. 
Consanguinity,  xi.  226. 
Conscription,  military,  xxiv.  400. 
Constellations,  xviii.  484. 
Copse,  II.  502. 
Copper,  I.  371. 
Corinth,  ii.  570,  vi.  152. 


442 


GENEKAL  INDEX. 


Corouea,  ii.  503. 
Cos,  II.  677,  XIV.  255. 
Council,  the  privy,  i.  144. 
Couplets  in  Homer,  416. 
Courtesy  to  dependants,  x.  68. 
Cowi)er,  XXIV.  804. 

his  Homer,  435. 

Crauiie,  iii.  445. 
Crete,  ii.  645. 
Cretan  dances,  xviii.  590. 
Creuzer  on  Greek  theology,  22. 
Crissa,  ii.  520. 

Criticism,  ancient  Greek,  334,  349. 
Crocyleia,  ii.  633. 
Cromne,  ii.  855. 
Crook,  shepherd's,  xxiii.  845. 
Cuirass,  iii.  328. 

Cunning  in  early  ages,  iii.  202,  iv. 
235  ;  of  Greeks,  x.  353,  xxii.  247. 
Curates,  ii.  638. 
Cyclic  poets,  119. 
Cydonia,  ii.  645. 
Cylleue,  ii.  603,  xv.  318. 
Cynus,  II.  530. 
Cyparisseis,  ii.  593. 
Cyparissus,  ii.  519. 
Cyphus,  II.  748. 
Cypria,  the,  123. 
Cyprus,  XI.  20. 
Cythera,  xv.  432. 
Cytorus,  ii.  853. 

Dacier  and  French  taste,  ii.  637. 

Dfedalus,  xviii.  590. 

Danai,  ii.  684. 

Dances,  sacred  and  military,  xviii. 

590. 
Dardania,  ii.  819. 
Dardanus,  xx.  215. 
Daidis,  II.  520. 
Dead,  the  unburied,  xxiil.  71. 

cutting  of  hair  to,  xxiii.  136. 

Death,  sudden,  vi.  205. 
Deiphobus,  xii.  94,  xiii.  517. 
De  la  Motte,  237  ;  xxii.  515. 


Delphi,  II.  417,  ix.  405. 
Demeter,  v.  500. 

the  Phigalian,  21. 

Democracy,   173;  ii.   51,   204,   217, 

XI.  807,  XXIII.  587. 
Desultores,  xv.  679. 
Development  in  rehgion,  v.  749,  vi. 

152-210. 
Devil,  Greeks  had  no,  ix.  503. 
Dice  and  draughts,  xxin.  88. 
Diomede,  v.  i. 
Dione,  v.  370. 
Dionysus,  vi.  132. 
Dium,  II.  538. 
Dodona,  xvi.  234. 
Dogs  and  vultures,  i.  5. 
Dolopes,  IX.  483. 
Dorium,  ii.  594. 

Drama  of  acted  symbols,  iii.  292. 
Dream,  baneful,  ii.  6. 
Dreams  and  dream-readers,  i.  63. 
Dress  of  Greek  men,  ii.  42. 

women,  vi,  90. 

gay  in  Homer,  169. 

Dryden  and  Pope,  i.  220. 
Dry  den  on  translation,  381. 
Didichium,  ii.  625. 
Dying  words,  xxii.  355. 
Dyke  or  rampart,  vii.  436,  443. 

Eagle  in  augury,  %aii.  247. 
Eagle  aud  snake,  xii.  300. 
Earth,  the  goddess,  iii.  275. 
Earth  aud  water,    the   elements   of 

man,  vii.  99. 
Echinades,  ii.  625. 
Education  in  ancient  Greece,  307. 
Eileithuia,  xi.  270. 
Eilesion,  ii.  499. 
Eiones,  ii.  561. 
Eiretria,  ii.  537. 
Elders,  iii.  149. 
Elemental  gods,  iii.  275-6. 
Eleon,  II.  500. 
Elis,  Ti.  615. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


443 


Elone,  II.  739. 

Eloquence,  Greek,  ix.  442,  xv.  113. 

Emathia,  xiv.  226. 

Euglisli  translators,  282. 

English  and  Greek  languages   com 

pared,  377- 
Enispe,  ii.  606. 
Enope,  IX.  149. 
Enyalms,  v.  333. 
Enyo,  V.  333. 
Epeii,  II.  619. 
Ephialtes,  v.  383. 
Ephyra,  vi.  152,  xv.  531. 
Ephyri,  xiii.  298. 
Epic  cycle,  113. 

Epic  poetry,  its  leading  laws,  262. 
Epidaurus,  ii.  561. 
Epitalium,  ii.  592. 
Epithets,    144;  i.   303,  ii.    738,  in. 

180,  243,  IX.  14,  VII.  75. 
Erebus,  viii.  366. 
Ereehtheus,  ii.  547. 
Erichthonius,  king  of  Troy,  his  3000 

mares,  xx.  221. 
Erythini,  ii.  855. 
Erythrse,  il.  499. 
Eteonos,  ii.  497- 
Ethiopians,  i.  424. 
Eubcea,  ii.  536. 
Euhemerism,  11. 
Eumelus,  ii.  764. 
Euphorbus,  xvi.  808,  xvii.  51. 
Eurynome,  xviii.  397. 
Eurypylus,  vii.  167. 
Eutresis,  ii.  502. 
Eveniis  river,  ii.  638. 
Evil  from  Jove.  ii.  6,  in.  164.  xxiv. 

524. 
Ewes,  black,  x.  215. 
Exchange  of  garments  or  arms,  vi. 

230. 
Exodus,  the  Jewish,  37. 

Falsehood  and  perjury,  iv.  235, 
X.  383. 


Fasting,  xix.  210. 

Fate,  VI.  489,  xii.  116,  xx.  127. 

Fathers,  the  Christian,  how  they 
handled  Homer,  332. 

Fever,  marsh  or  malaiia  of  hot  cli- 
mates, XXII.  30. 

Fierceness  and  ferocity  of  Greeks, 
159. 

Fire  and  water,  their  relation,  xviii. 
397. 

Firmament,  i.  426. 

First-fruits,  ix.  534. 

Fish,  XVI.  747. 

a  sacred,  xvi,  407. 

Fishing,  xxiv.  82. 

Flute,  X.  13,  IX.  186. 

Forchhammer,  67. 

Funeral  rites,  vii.  328,  xix.  212, 
xxiii.  135,  164. 

Furies,  in.  275-6,  ix.  454,  xix.  407. 

Gaelic  ballads,  48. 

Games  at  Ehs,  xi.  700. 

Ganymede,  xx.  233. 

Garlic,  xi.  630. 

Genealogies,  71  ;  xx.  215. 

Geology    and    mythology,     i.     399, 

XXIV.  602. 
Gerenia,  xi.  149. 
German  war-songs,  46. 
Gesture    in    public    speaking,     xv. 

113. 
Giants,  v.  383. 

Gladiatorial  shows,  xxii.  164. 
Gladstone  and  the  Wolfian  theory, 

183. 
Glaphyrae,  ii.  712. 
Glaucus,  XVII.  163. 
Ghsas,  IL  504. 
Gnossus,  II.  646. 
Gods,    the    source    of   all   good,    v. 

53. 
authors  of  evil.  ii.  6,  in.  164, 

xxn.  247. 
Homer's  relation  to  the,  13. 


444 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


Gods,  battle  of  the,  323. 

changed  into  birds,  viT.  59. 

hating  mortals,  vi.  200. 

language  of,  ii.  811. 

live  at  ease,  vi.  138,  xxiv.  524. 

men  taken  for,  vi.  1 09. 

not  to  be  looked  in  the  face, 

XX.  131. 

suffering  from  mortals,  v.  383. 

their  form  of  government,  viii. 


thralled  to  mortal  men,   xxi. 

442. 
—  war  of,  I.  399. 


Gonoessa,  ii.  573. 

Gorgons,  viii.  349. 

Gortyn,  ii.  646. 

Government,  form  of,  in  heroic  times, 

171 ;  II.  51,  204. 
Graces,  the,  xviii.  382. 
Grasa,  ii.  498. 
Granicus,  xii.  21. 
Granville,  Earl,  his  Homeric  studies, 

XII.  322. 
Greaves,  i.  17,  m.  328. 
Grote,  Geo.,  80,  247 ;  vii.  436. 
Gygean  lake,  ii.  865. 
Gyrtone,  ii.  738. 

Hades,  i.  3. 

Hair,  cutting  off,  xxiii.  135. 

consecration  of,  xxiii.  141. 

yellow,  I.  197. 

the  long-haired  Greeks,  ii.  11. 

Haiiy -breasted  heroes,  i.  189. 
Halcyon  days,  ix.  557. 
Haliai-tus,  ii.  503. 
Harma,  ii.  449. 
Harpies,  xvi.  150. 
Harvest-home,  ix.  534. 
Hawk,  the  Cymindis,  xiv.  291. 

and  Ai^ollo,  xv.  237. 

Hebe,  iv.  1. 
Hecamede,  xi.  624. 
Hecatomb,  i.  66. 


Hector,  259  ;  xi.  189,  xx.  434,  xxii, 
515. 

Hecuba,  xxiv.  721. 

Helen,  iii.  180. 

Helenas,  vi.  76. 

Helice,  ii.  575. 

Helios,  or  the  sun-god,  iii.  275. 

Hell,  gates  of,  viii.  366. 

Hellas  and  Hellenes,  ii.  684. 

Hellespont,  ii.  845,  vii.  86,  xxi.  1. 

Helmet,  in.  328. 

Helos,  II.  584,  594. 

Heneti,  ii.  852. 

Hephsestus,  i.  591,  xvin.  382. 

Heptaporus,  xir.  20. 

Heralds,  i.  334. 

Hercides,    v.    397,    xiv.    255,    324, 

XX.  145,  213,  215. 
Her^,   T.  550,    ix.    254 ;    her  sacred 

marriage  with  Jove,  xiv.  345. 
Hermes,  xiv.  491,  xxiv.  333. 
Hermione,  ii.  560. 
Hermus,  xx.  385. 
Heroes,  i.  3. 

Heroic  age,  manners  of,  153. 
Herons  in  augiu'y,  x.  274. 
Hexameters,  English,  391. 

German,  415. 

Hir^,  IX.  149. 

Histisea,  ii.  537. 

Historical  forgery,  65. 

Homer,  his  dramatic  style,  143. 

and  the  heroic  age,  i.  272. 

as  an  epic  artist,  260. 

date  of.  111. 

estimation  of,  in  Greece,  295. 

his  knowledge  of  anatomy,  xiii. 

547. 


his  morality,  182  ;  xxiv.  130. 

—  his  patriotism,  xi.    189,   xxii. 
247,  515. 

his  realism,  31. 

his  religious  sincerity,  15. 

his  rustic  siniUes,  149. 

—  his  simj^licity  of  style,  151. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


445 


Homer,  how  far  a  historical  authority, 

XX.  215. 

his  invention,  205. 

his  naturalness,  166. 

his    personality    and    personal 

history,  80. 

plain-speaking  of,  167. 


Homeri  aurea  catena,  viii.  2. 
Homeric  poetry,  sources  of,  115. 

q^iestions,  .311. 

rhytluB,  417. 

HomeridfB,  the,  .344. 

Honour,  sense  of,  xv.  561. 

Horsemen,  iii.  127. 

Horses,  where  mortally  woundea, 
VIII.  S3 ;  riding  on  horseback, 
XV.  679  ;  speaking,  XTX.  407  ;  of 
Laomedon,  xxiii.  348 ;  spurs  for, 
IV.  375 ;  simile  of  the  stalled  horse, 
VI.  506  ;  sacrificed  to  Rivers,  xxi. 
132. 

Hospitality,  vi.  174. 

Hours,  the,  v.  749. 

Houses,  VI.  242. 

Huckle-bones,  xxiii.  88. 

Human  life,  misery  of,  xvii.  446. 

Humility,  vi.  127-9,  xxiv.  602. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  on  Pope  and  Dryden, 
I.  220. 

Hyampolis,  ii.  521. 

Hyda,  xx.  385, 

Hyle,  II.  500. 

Hyllus,  XX.  385. 

Hyperesia,  ii.  573. 

Hyjieria,  ii.  734. 

Hyperion,  viii.  480. 

Hypothebse,  ii.  505. 

Hyria,  ii.  496. 

Hyrmine,  ii.  616. 

Ialysus,  ii.  656, 
lapetus,  VIII.  478. 
lardanus,  vii.  135. 
Icarian  sea,  ii.  145. 
Ida,  VIII.  47,  XII.  19. 


Ideal  and  real  in  Homer,  147- 
Idomeneus,  xiii.  240,  517. 
Iliad,    flaws    and   interpolations    in, 
221,  343. 

plan  of,  211. 

unity  of,  183. 

lUegitimaey,  vi.  24,  viii.  273. 

Iton,  II.  696. 

Ilus,  XX.  215. 

Imbros,  xiii.  33. 

Inferiors,  attention  to,  x.  69. 

lolcus,  II.  712. 

lonians,  xiii.  685. 

Iphigenia,  ii.  303. 

Iris,  VIII.  398,  xvii.  547. 

Iron,  xxiii.  177,  826. 

Ithaca,  II.  632. 

Ithome,  II.  729. 

Jason,  vii.  467. 

Jove,  his  supremacy  and  attributes, 

179  ;  I.  5,  175,  VIII.  2. 
and  Her^  ;  the  sacred  marriage 

of,  XIV.  345. 
arbiter  of  peace  and  war,   iv. 


86. 

—  avenger  of  perjury,  iii.  275-6. 

—  his  nod,  i.  528. 

his  wisdom,  ii.  169. 

protector    of    strangers,    xiir. 

625  ;  and  suppliants,  ix.  503. 
sender  of  rain,  v.  91. 

—  source  of  oracles,  viii.  250. 
steals  human  wits,  vi.  233. 


Jove-bred  kings,  i.  176. 
Judges  in  law  cases,  xviii.  497. 

KiLLA.     See  Cilia. 
King  and  priest,  iii.  271. 

,  Lords,  and  Commons,  ii.  51. 

Kings,  I.  80,  176,  234,  ii.  85,  204. 

revenues  of,  xii.  3L3,  xvii.  250. 

Kinship  bj'^  females,  xxi.  95. 
Knox,  John,  and  the  Scottish  people, 
101. 


446 


GENEKAL  INDEX. 


Kiichly,    Hermann,    his  new   model 

of  the  Iliad,  233. 
his  remarks  on    symmetry    in 

the  Homeric  rhythm,  420. 
Kronos,  ii.  321,  viii.  478. 
Kynos,  ii.  531. 

Laas,  II.  585. 

Lacedsemon,  ii.  581. 

Lachmann,    his   life  and    character, 

227. 

his  dissection  of  the  Iliad,  229. 

Laomedon,  xx.  215,  xxi.  442. 

Lapithfe,  i.  263. 

Larissa,  ii.  841. 

Latona,  v.  447. 

Lawsuit  on  the  shield,  xviii.  497. 

Leleges,  x.  427. 

Lemnos,  i.  591. 

Lesbos  and  Lesbian  women,  ix.  129. 

Letters,  invention  of,  206. 

Lies  and  lying,  iv.  235. 

Life,  brevity  of  human,  vi.  147. 

Lightning,  sidphurous,  viii.  135. 

Lilsea,  ii.  523. 

Lindus,  ii.  656. 

Linus,  xvni.  570. 

Livy  and  credibility  of  early  Roman 

history,  58. 
Lobeck  on  the  mysteries,  28. 
Locri,  II.  527,  xiii.  713. 
Locusts,  XXI.  12. 
Lots,  divination  by,  vii.  171- 
Lustration,  i.  313. 
Lycaon,  xxi.  35,  xxii.  46. 
Lycastns,  ii.  647. 
Lycians,  ii.  876. 
Lyctus,  II.  647. 
Lycomedes,  ix.  84. 
Lycurgus,  vi.  130. 
Lydians,  ii.  864,  iv.  141. 
Lyrnessixs,  ii.  690. 
Lyre,  the  Greek,  ix.  186. 

Macar,  xxiv.,544. 


Machaon,  XI.  832. 

Mseander,  ii.  869. 

Mffionia,  ii.  864. 

Magician's  wand,  xxiv.  333. 

Magnesia,  ii.  681,  716,  756. 

Man,   his  physical  constitution,  vii. 

99. 
Manslaughter,  xxiv.  480,  ix.  633. 
Mantinea,  ii.  607. 
Marching  to  battle,  iii.  8. 
Mares    impregnated    by    the    wind, 

xvi.  150. 
Marpessa,  ix.  557. 
Marriage,  ix.  146,  xi.  226,xvTii.  432. 
Mars,  xin.  298. 
Mases,  ii.  562. 

Meals,  Homeric,  viii.  53,  ix.  206. 
Medeon,  ii.  501. 
Medicine  and  medical  men,   v.  401, 

XI.  514,  832,  740,  xiv.  5. 
Meges,  XIII.  692. 
Meleager,  ix.  543. 
Melibcea,  ii.  717. 
Memory,  208. 
Menelaus,  xvii.  1. 
Menestheus,  xii.  331. 
Meriones,  xiii.  240. 
Messe,  ii.  582. 
Messene,  ii.  591,  ix.  150. 
Metals,  xxiii.  177,  826. 
Meteor-star,  iv.  77- 
Methone  in  Magnesia,  li.  716. 
Metis?,  wife  of  Jove,  i.  175. 
Metres,  philosophy  of,  395. 
Mice  and  rats,  their  ravages,  i.  39. 
Midea,  ii.  507. 
Miletus  in  Crete,  ii.   647  ;    in  Asia 

Minor,  ii.  868. 

Lost  Tales  of,  i.  69. 

Military  character,  157. 

criticism      on     Homer,     vii. 

436. 


service,  xxiv.  400. 

Milton,  his  Paradise  Lost,  282. 
Minos,  XIV.  322. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


44' 


Minstrel  epic,  generic  character  of, 

138. 
Mceonians,  ii.  864. 
Molions,  the  twin,  xi.  709. 
Money,  vi.  236. 
Morehead,   his  translation  of    Iliad, 

I.  181. 
Moss-troopers,  i.  154. 
Muses,  II.  484. 

Music  in  Greek  education,  ix.  186. 
Mycale,  ii.  869. 
Mycalessus,  ii.  498. 
Mycene,  71  ;  ii.  569. 
Mygdonians,  ii.  862. 
Myrine,  ii.  814. 
Myrmidons,  ii.  684. 
Mysia,  ii.  858. 
Mysians  in  Eivro2)e,  ii.  858. 
Myrsinus,  ii.  616. 
Mysteries,  the,  25. 
Mythology,      how     interpreted,     i. 

399. 

Names,  double,  ii.  811. 

Nature  essentially  divine,  iii.  275. 

Nemesis  Adrastea,  ii.  828. 

Neoptolemus,  xix.  326. 

Nereids,  xviii.  39. 

Nereus,  xviii.  141. 

Neritum,  ii.  632. 

Nestor,  xi.  655. 

Niebelungen  Lay,  50,  407. 

Night,  XIV.  259. 

Niobe,  XXIV.  602. 

Nireus,  ii.  673. 

Nisa,  II.  508,  vi.  132. 

Nisyi-os,  II.  676. 

Nomad  races,  morals  of,  xiii.  6. 

Number  Three,  xxiii.  733. 

Nymphs,  vi.  420. 

Oath,  form  of  Greek,  iii.  275,  310, 

VII.  412. 
Ocalea,  ii.  501. 
Ocean,  xix.  7,  xiv.  201. 


Odyssey,  163. 

CEchalia,  ii.  730. 

CEdipus,  xxiii.  679. 

CEtylos,  II.  585. 

Olenia,  ii.  617- 

Olenus,  II.  639. 

Olizon,  II.  717. 

Oloosson,  II.  739. 

Olympic  games,  xi.  699. 

Olympus,  V.  754. 

Omens,  ix.  171,  xii.  243. 

Onchestus,  ii.  506. 

Onomatopoeia  in  Homer,  xvii.  265. 

Opus,  n.  531. 

Orchomenus,  the  Breotian,  it.  511. 

the  Arcadian,  ii.  605. 

Oreads,  vi.  420. 
Orion,  xviii.  498. 
Ormenium,  ii.  734. 
Ornese,  ii.  571. 
Orthe,  II.  739. 
Otus  and  Ephialtes,  v.  385. 
Oysters,  xvi.  747. 
Ozone,  VIII.  135. 

P.^ON,  V.  401. 

Pseonia,  ii.  848. 

Pajsos,  II.  828,  v.  612. 

Pallas  Athene,  i.  202,  206,   ix.  254, 

XXII.    247  ;  the  Itonian,   ii.  503  ; 

of  Alalcomenaj,  iv.  8  ;  Tritonian, 

IV.     514 ;     the     enlightener,     v. 

127. 
Panhellenes,  ii.  530. 
Panoi^eus,  ii.  520. 
Panthus,  xv.  522. 
Paphlagones,  ii.  851. 
Paris,  VI.  522. 

judgment  of,  xxiv.  23. 

Parrhasia,  ii.  608. 
Parthenius,  ii.  854. 
Patriarchal  simplicity,  ii.  85. 
Patroclus,  xvii.  671. 
Peasantry,  music  of,  xviii.  570. 
Pelasgi,  II.  840. 


448 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


Pelasgi,  religion  of,  xvi.  234. 

Pedasus,  vi.  34,  ix.  149. 

Peleus,  XVI.  143. 

Pellene,  ii.  574. 

Pelops,  II.  104. 

Peneiis,  ii.  752. 

Penn,  Granville,  on  Homer,  17. 

Peplus,  VI.  90. 

Percote,  ii.  835. 

Pereia,  ii.  764. 

Peroration  of  a  discourse,  how  Homer 

manages  it,  xxiv.  804. 
Perrlia^bi,  ii.  750. 
Perseus,  xiv.  320. 
Personality,  43. 
Personifications,  ii.  93,  302. 
Peteon,  ii.  500. 
Phajstus,  II.  648. 
Pilaris,  II.  582. 
Pheia,  ni.  135. 
Pherai,  v.  543. 
Pheneos,  ii.  605. 
Philoctetes,  ii.  725. 
Phlegyse,  xiii.  298. 
Phocis,  II.  517. 
Piirygia,  ii.  862. 
Phtheiron  Mount,  ii.  868. 
Phthia,  II.  683. 
Phtliiotis,  II.  684. 
Phylace,  ii.  695. 

Physical  training  of  Greeks,  1 58. 
Picturesque,  the,  iv.  275,  vi.  420. 
Pieria,  xiv.  226. 
Pirithous,  i.  263,  xiv.  318. 
Pityiseia,  ii.  829. 
Plataeas,  ii.  504. 
Plato  on  the  gods,  xxiv.  524. 

on  Greek  education,  319. 

Pleiads  and  Hyads,  xviii.  485. 
Pleuron,  ii.  639. 
Pluto,  V.  845,  IX.  457,  xiti.  10. 
Podalirius,  ii.  732,  xi.  832. 
Poetry,    ancient    and    modern    con- 
trasted, 154. 
early,  materials  of,  ix.  ISC. 


Poetry,  construction  in,  261. 

Polites,  II.  791. 

Polydamas,  xviu.  249. 

Polydore,  xx.  407- 

Polygamy,  xxi.  95. 

Polyidus,  XIII.  663. 

Poly|ioetes,  ii.  740. 

Polytheism,  elemental,  i.  9. 

growth  of,  23. 

fall  of,  331. 

Polytheistic  piety,  i.  7,  218,  ii.   112. 

Pope,  his  Homer,  429. 

Poplar  tree,  the  white,  xiii.  389. 

Poseidon,  ii.  478,  xiii.  10,  xi.  728. 

Practius,  ii.  835. 

Prayers,  impersonated,  ix.  503. 

how  made,  ix.  568. 

Predestination,  vi.  488. 

Priam,  xiii,  460,  xx.  215. 

kingdom  of,  ii.  819,  ix.  328. 

Priesthood  in  Greece,  iii.  271,  v.  9, 
VI.  299. 

celibacy  of,  v.  9,  vi.  299. 

I election  of,  vi.  299. 

Primogeniture,  xv.  206. 
,  Prophets,  i.  106. 
j  Proverbs,  iii.  56,  65,  xxrv.  45. 
I  Proserpine,  ix.  457- 

I  Protesilaus,  ii.  698. 

I 

i  Philology,  germs  of  Greek,  349. 

Pisistratus,  his  edition  of  Homer, 
j       217,  347  ;  xii.  331. 

Pride,  the  greatest  of  sins,  xxiv.  602. 

Prose  translations  of  poetry,  387- 

Pteleon,  ii.  594,  697. 

Pugilism,  xxiii.  685. 

Pygmies,  iii.  6. 

Pylsemenes,  225  ;  v.  576,  xiii.  158. 

Pylene,  ii.  639. 

Pylus,  II.  591. 

Pyrasus,  ii.  695. 

Pyrrhic  dances,  xviii.  590. 

Pyrrhus,  xix.  326. 

Pythagoras  in  the  Trojan  War,  xvi. 
808,  XVII.  51. 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


-rni 


Pytho,  II.  519,  TX.  40.5. 

Quadriga,  viii.  185. 

Quoits  and  putting-stone,  xxiii.  826. 

Quintus  Srayrnaeus,  291. 

Race-course,  xxiii.  325. 

Eain,  bloody,  xi.  54. 

Rainbow,  xvii.  547. 

Ramayana,  the,  53. 

Rampart,  the,    or  dyke  {reixos),  vii. 

436,  443. 
Realism  of  Homer,  i.  5. 
Reality  in  poetry,  5. 
Religion  of  Hellenes,  177. 
Rewards,  military,  vii.  320. 
Rhadamanthus,  xiv.  332. 
Rhseteau  and  Sigean    liromontories, 

XIV.  36,  XXI.  1. 
Rhesus,  X.  427. 

the  river,  xii.  20. 

Rhipe,  II.  606. 

Rhodes,  ii.  654. 

Rhyme,  411. 

Rhyme  in  Homer,  413. 

Rhythm,  imitative,  xxiii.  116. 

and  metre,  389,  395. 

Rhytium,  ii.  648. 

Rhodius,  XII.  20. 

Rivers,  in.  275,  v.  77,  xi.  728,  xvi. 

174,  XXI.  132. 
Romaic  ballads,  45. 
Roman   history,  credibility  of  early, 

59. 
Rumour,  ii.  93. 
Rustic  life  in  Homer,  164. 

Sacrifice,  i.  66,  447,  vii.  443,  xix. 

197. 
Sacrificial  animals,  in.  103,  xxi.  132. 
Salamis,  ii.  557. 
Same,  ii.  631. 
Samicum.  ii.  591. 
Samos,  II.  634. 
Samothrace,  xiii.  12. 

VOL.  IV. 


Sangarius,  ii.  862. 

Sardonic  laughter,  xv.  101. 

Sarpedon,  xii.  292. 

Satniois,  vi.  34. 

Saturn,  viii.  478. 

Scsean  gates,  in.  145. 

Scamander,  v.  77,  xxi.  1. 

Scandia,  x.  268. 

Scarborough,  33. 

Scarphe,  ii.  532. 

Sceptre,  or  staff,  i.  14,  i.  234,  ii.  101, 
xxiii.  568. 

Scepticism,  historical,  29. 

Schedius,  xvii.  306. 

Schiller  on  the  Wolfian  theory,  219. 

Schoenus,  ii.  497. 

Schuster,    Albert,    introduces  Glad- 
stone to  the  Germans,  xxiv.  94. 

Scolus,  II.  497. 

Scyrus,  ix.  668. 

Selli,  the,  xvi.  234. 

Selleis,  ii.  839. 

Senators,  i.  144. 
I  Sensuality,  xxiv.  130. 
i  Sentinels,  x.  182. 

Sepulchral  monuments,  vii.  328. 
'  Serpents,  ii.  308,  xxii.  93. 

Servian  ballads,  47. 

Sesamus,  ii.  853. 

Sestus,  II.  836. 

Shahuameh,  51. 

Sheep  with  dark  wool,  x.  215. 

Shepherd's  crook,  xxiii.  845. 

Shield,  Greek,  iii.  328,   xii.  297. 

Shield  of  AchiUes,  xviii.  590. 

Ships,  I.  169,  n.  165,  637. 

Sicyon,  ii.  572. 

Sidon  and  Sidonians,  vi.  291. 

Silent  march,  in.  8. 

Simois,  XXI.  1. 

Sisyphus,  vi.  154. 

Skinker,  i.  600. 

Slavery  and  captivity,  xxi.  454. 

Sleep,  XIV.  231. 

Slings,  XIII.  600. 

2  F 


450 


GENERAL  INDEX. 


Smiiitheus,  i.  39. 

Solymi,  vi.  184. 

Sootbsaj'ers,  vi.  76,  xii.  243. 

Spanish  ballads,  54. 

Sparta,  il.  582. 

Spartan  system,  162. 

Spercheius,  xxiii.  141. 

Spear,  iii.  328. 

Spoil,  partition  of,  i.  165. 

Stars,  shooting,  iv.  77- 

Stoning,  ill.  56. 

Sthenelus,  V.  241. 

Stratie,  n.  606. 

Stymphalus,  ii.  60S. 

Styra,  n.  539. 

Styx,  VIII.  369. 

Succession  to  property,   v.    158,   xv. 

206,  XXI.  95. 
Suicide,  xviii.  34. 

Sulphur,  fumigation  with,  xvi.   228. 
smell  of,  from  lightning,  viii. 

135. 
Supplication,  i.  14,  500,  xvii.  514. 
Symbolical  theory,  vi.  130. 
Symbols  acted,  iii.  292. 
Syme,  ii.  671. 
Sword,  III.  328. 
Symmetry  in  Greek  versiiication,  iii. 

320. 

Tactics,  iv.  297. 

Talent,  xxiii.  269. 

Tarphe,  ii.  533. 

Tasso,  his  Jerusalem,  277- 

Tautology,  i.  270. 

Tegea,  ii.  607. 

Telemachus,  iv.  354. 

Teuedos,  i.  37. 

Tereia,  ii.  829. 

Teucer,  viii.  273. 

Text  of    Homer,    double    forms  of, 

xiii.  99. 
Textual  criticism,  principles  of,  367. 
Thamyris,  i^.  595. 
Thaxxmacia,  ii.  716. 


Theano,  vi.  298. 

Thebes,  Boeotian,  ii.  505,  iv.  378. 

Egyptian,  ix.  382. 

hypoplacian,  i.  368, 

Themis,  xv.  87. 

Theology,  pre-Homeric,  19. 

Arcadian,  21. 

Theophany,  i.  198,  vi.  109,  xiii.  72, 

XX.  131. 
Thersites,  ii.  217. 
Thessaly,  ii.  681. 
Theseus,  i.  265. 
Thespiffi,  II.  498. 
Thetis,  I.  357. 
Thisbe,  ii.  502. 
Thoas,  IV.  526. 
Thronium,  ii.  533. 
Three,  the  number,  xxiii.  733. 
Thrace  and  Thracians,    ii.    844,    iv. 

533. 
Thi-acian  sword,  xiii.  576. 
Thryum,  ii.  592. 
Thymbra,  x.  427,  xxi.  1. 
Tiryns,  ii.  559. 
Titans,  viii.  478. 
Titauus,  II.  735. 
Titaresius,  ii.  751. 
Tithonus,  viii.  1. 
Tlepolemus,  v.  628. 
Tmolus,  II.  866,  xx.  385. 
Toleration  in  ancient  Greece,  317. 
Trachis,  ii.  682. 
Tradition,  9. 

oral,  33. 

■  primeval,  iu  theology,  24. 

Translation,  poetical,  351. 

Tribes  and  clans,  ii.  362. 

Tricca,  ii.  729. 

Trinities,  heathen,  iv.  288,  xtii.  10. 

Triphylia,  ii.  591. 

Tripods,  ix.  122. 

Tritogeneia,  xv.  514. 

Trcezen,  ii.  561. 

Trojan  kings,  xx.  215. 

peojde,  xti.  87,  xx.  215. 


GENERAL  IM)EX. 


451 


Trojan  war,  69. 
Troilus,  XXIV.  257- 
Tros,  XX.  215. 
Troy,  plain  of,  xxi.  1. 
Trumpets,  x^^II.  219. 
Tydeus,  iv.  375. 
Typhon,  ii.  783. 

Unity  of  Iliad,  183. 
Utilitarianism  of  Homer,  i.  316. 
Uschold  and  the  German  symbolists, 
67;  VI.  130. 

Various  readings,  337. 
Venetian  scholia,  341. 
Virgil,  his  ^^neid,  273. 
Votive  gifts,  vi.  90. 

Waggon,  Priam's,  xxrv.  265. 

Wails  and  mourning,  xxiv.  721. 

War,  155. 

Wars  iu  heaven,  i.  399. 

Watch  keeping,  x.  182. 

Water  the  first  principle  of  things, 

xw.  201. 

used  in  lustration,  i.  313. 

Wealth,     Greek    estimate     of,     xi. 

68. 
Weaving,  xxiii.  760. 
Welcker,  Professor,   his  epic   cycle, 

121. 
West  wind,  108. 
Wigtown  martyrs,  35. 
Williams'  Homerus,  16. 


Wilson,  John,   on  the  unity  of  the 

Iliad,  215. 
Winds,  Etesian,  in  Greece,  xxi.  346, 
Wine,    IX.    70  ;   mixed   with   water, 

IX.  203. 
Wines  from  Lemnos  and  Thrace,  vii. 

467  ;  Pramnian,  xi.  639. 
j  Wives,    husbands   buy   their  wives, 

IX.  146. 
Wolf,  F.  A.,   his  life  and  character, 

189. 
Wolfian  theory,  the,  183,  194. 
Wolfianism  before  Wolf,  202. 
Women  skilled  in  medicine,  XI.  740. 
dominancy    of,    vi.    152-210, 

XXI.  95. 

Trojan,  long-trained,  vi.  442. 

Wood,  Eobert,  forerumier  of  Wolf, 

201. 
Wreath  or  chaplet,  i.  14. 
Wrestling,  xxiii.  726,  733. 
Writing,  art  of,   207  ;  vi.   168,  vii. 

171. 

Xanthus,  in  Lycia,  ii.  877. 

or  Scamander,  xxi.  1. 

Xenophanes    of    Colophon     attacks 
polytheism,  315. 

Zacynthus,  II.  634. 
Zeleia,  ii.  824. 
Zenodotus,  352,  359. 
Zoilus     and     other     opponents     of 
Homer,  313. 


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