GIFT OF
MICHAEL REESE
t~
LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY
i
LANDMARKS
OF
HOMERIC STUDY
TOGETHER WITH
AN ESSAY ON THE POINTS OF CONTACT BETWEEN
THE ASSYRIAN TABLETS AND THE
HOMERIC TEXT
BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE
UNIVERSITY
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
I 890
A I! rights re serried
^^<^y>^
M-0 2 7
CONTENTS
SECTION PAGE
^1. The Homeric Question i
II. Homer as Nation-Maker 30
III. Homer as Religion-Maker 56
IV. Rudiments of Ethics 89
V. Rudiments of Politics 97
\/ VI. Plot of the Iliad . 106
VII. The Geography of the Poems . . . .114
ON THE POINTS OF CONTACT BETWEEN THE
ASSYRIAN TABLETS AND THE HOMERIC
TEXT 127
If THE '
EB8ITY
SECTION I
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
By the use of the term Homerology, I desire
to mark the fact, that the study of the Homeric
text is not like the examination of an ordinary
literary record. That text covers the whole field
of human experience for what may be called an
organic period in the rise of a most important
race, and includes the delineation of an age.
This field of history is more limited, without
doubt, as to time, than Egyptology or Assyriology,
considered in each case as the study of the re-
spective monuments. But it is far more minute
and diversified in its presentation of human life,
experience, character, and thoughts. It is in
2 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
effect, therefore, as I contend, to be treated as a
distinct branch of ancient science.
II
Apart from all literary uses and enjoyment of
the Poems, that separate and early age of human
history, to which they introduce us, is one of
which many precious and determining features
had in the classical times of Greece been either
greatly obscured, or even altogether lost. This re-
mark applies especially, though not exclusively, to
the religion of the nation.
Ill
The most serious of all the impediments to a
right comprehension of Homer in modern times
has been that the picture of life, manners, and
religion, which he draws, has been viewed through
the discolouring medium of the Latin literature
and mythology. Through the whole period of
Roman predominance, and during the long slumber
of the Greek language and of all Hellenism in the
West, these were in exclusive possession of the
field. Nor were they in the slightest degree
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
displaced, so far as Homer was concerned, at the
Renascence. This Latin medium, instead of
merely transmitting the light, disintegrated it,
and gave a false effect.
IV
Of this overshadowing and darkening influence,
exercised through the Latin tongue, it may be
worth while to supply a few illustrations.
1. It supplanted not only the genuine Homeric
name of Achaians, but the classical appellations
of Hellas and Hellenes ; and imposed the desig-
nations of Graecia and Graeci, which had no early
link with the country or the language, except in
the single and perfectly insignificant word Graia^
once mentioned in the text of the Iliad.
2. It bridged over the entire interval between
ancient and modern history, and disguised the
nature of the transition, necessary to be effected in
order to reach the prehistoric time of Homer.
3. Such was the influence of the Latin tongue
in the Middle Ages that, at the opening of the
fourteenth century, Dante was advised to write his
immortal Poem in Latin, as being still the language
of literature and thought. And, later in that
4 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
century, Petrarch founded all his anticipations of
fame upon his Latin works, now in great measure
forgotten.
4. On the revival of printing, the Athenian
Thucydides, prince of historians, was not intro-
duced to the world until about 1480, and was
then presented in a Latin translation. The
princeps edition of his text only appeared in 1 502,
from the press of Aldus.
More pointedly, the mischief has been due in
a great degree to the paramount rank deservedly
held by Virgil among the Latin poets. This
result was aided by the vast influence of Dante,
who, in electing the great Court-poet for his guide
to the Underworld, thereby pushed forward his
design of presenting the modern Western Empire
as the heir to the Emperors of Rome. Now,
however splendid may be the merits of Virgil on
his own ground, it cannot, I conceive, be doubted
that he wholly reverses the relative positions held
by the two great peoples of the Iliad : and that
he very largely hides or vitiates the traditions of
Homer as to characters, manners, and religion.
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
VI
Next to this grave cause of dislocation and
perversion, and perhaps almost as hurtful, has
been the belief, so widely accepted in modern
times without the trouble of examination, that
Homer was an Asiatic Greek,^ and therefore a
person born after the barbarising invasion of the
Dorians. He is thus cut off from the heroic
period, brought into connection with times and
manners long posterior to his own, and subjected
to the falsifying interpretations which alone those
times and manners provide.
VII
Further, the great Eastward migration of the
subdivided Hellenic races, that had been expelled
from the Greek Peninsula by the Dorian conquest,
opened new and varied channels, through which
there were imported among the Hellenes, and
uplifted into a commanding position, fresh supplies
of Asiatic traditions, from sources with which,
1 I notice with pleasure the work of Thiersch (Halberstadt, 1832),
Ueher das Zeitalter unci Vaterland des Homer, oder Beweis dass
Homer vor dem Einfall der Heracliden im Peloponnes geleht habe.
6 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
apparently, the primitive immigrants into Greece
had not been placed in contact. These fresh
supplies enlarged, coloured, and distorted the
older and simpler traditions, of which Homer is
the recorder.
VIII
Whatever the cause or causes may be, it has
happened, as matter of fact, that speculation about
Homer for generations occupied the ground which
should rather have been covered by careful ex-
amination of his text, and by the results of such
examination. There never had been in modern
times, until the present century was well advanced,
any close, minute, and comprehensive study of
the matters contained in the Poems. Moreover,
this method of persistent speculation on the origin
of the Poems, which has, so to speak, buzzed in
the air around them, and given scope for so many
ingenious though discordant theories, greatly
dulled the edge of all searching perception of the
contents.
IX
It can hardly, however, be denied that a certain
share in the trial of the question as to the unity
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
and authority of the Poems belongs to what may
be termed the higher criticism. By this I under-
stand that careful observation of the qualities,
and the methods, of the Maker or Poet himself,
which has been so largely applied to Shakespeare
in literature, and very generally to the most
distinguished artists in other branches. And yet
how small a space, in comparison with other
elements, does this vast and varied subject occupy
in the negative or sceptical Homeric literature.
X
By the facts, or contents, of the Poems, most
conveniently set forth in the German word Realien,
I understand all particulars drawn from the text,
in its parts or as a whole, which may be illustrative
either of the Poet himself or of what he saw and
sang : of the world and the lands and the time in
which, and of the men among whom he lived, of
the ideas of those men, and their actions, and the
whole equipment of their life.
XI
The student seriously set upon mastering the
Y
LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY
contents of the text will, in all likelihood, first be
struck by their enormous mass ; then by their
variety ; and perhaps last, but most of all, by their
consistency^ As respects the point last named, it
is noteworthy that, while many writers have shown
to their own satisfaction that the Poems must be
ascribed to a diversity of sources, the monogra-
phists, usually German, in their humbler but per-
haps more useful office, have found them as a rule
consistent, whereas, if they had sprung from a
number of sources, they must have been frequently
divergent ; have treated them as exhibiting a
unity of the designing mind, and of the picture
drawn ; and have themselves essentially contri-
buted, in their several departments, to establish
that unity.
XII
The extraction and arrangement of the contents
of Homer was begun by Everard Feith, whose
volume of moderate size was published in 1743,
under the title, Antiqiiitatum Hoinericarum Libri
IV. He was followed by Terpstra in 1831 with
his Antiquitas Homerica. A more serious but still
very inadequate effort was that of Friedreich, who
published in 1856, and who first adopted the com-
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
prehensive title of Realien. As the commencement
had been German, so the honour of a complete
performance, of the task was reserved to Germany.
After years of Homeric study, Dr. Buchholz of
Berlin, whose death we have now to lament,
published the first portion of his extended and
systematic work, Die Homerische Realien^ in 1871,
and the last in August 1885.
Throughout this important production, the author
has combined in a single text the Realien them-
selves and his interpretation of them. It may be
a question whether the value of the work as an aid
to the student might not even be enhanced, if the
facts and the interpretation were to be separately
presented. Be this as it may, it is perhaps not
too much to say that the vast multitude and mass
of particulars now collected out of the Poems, and
thoroughly digested, each of necessity witnessing
in its degree for or against the rest, are likely to
supply a far more conclusive test of the unity of
the works, and of the nearness of the Poet to the
men and things he deals with, as well as of his
aims, than loose speculation, or even testimonies
which do not ascend to the source, or to an age
near it, in date or in associations.
lo LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
XIII
Without doubt, Homer sang for bread ; but the
particulars, both of the Iliad and of the Odyssey,
clearly show us that the men, to and for whom he
sang, pre-eminently valued the links which bound
them to preceding times. Witness the institution,
dignity, and influence of the Bards ; the prevalence
and familiarity of patronymics, which kept freshly
alive the idea of lineal descent ; the use of the more
vivid imagery of genealogies, such as we find in
Homer, to serve the purposes of chronology, in an
age anterior to the use of formal record and ex-
tended numeration ; the historic purpose assigned
to the monuments of departed heroes; the accounts
carefully given of the settlement of countries or
districts (such as Scherie, for example, in Od. VII.) ;
and the abundance of pre-Troic legends in the
Iliad, sometimes introduced in situations where the
actual recital would have been inconvenient or
incongruous. All this testifies to the strength and
activity of the historic aim of the Poet.
THE HOMERIC QUESTION
XIV
The external testimonies^ concerning the
Homeric Poems are scanty, superficial, late, and in
some cases certainly erroneous. They are so late,
indeed, that the earliest of them is dated six cen-
turies after the reputed era of the Dorian Revolu-
tion. It is impossible to build upon them any solid,
or even any consistent, history of the Poems. They
are in themselves of doubtful interpretation ; and
they require largely to be pieced together by hypo-
theses, no one of which has obtained any semblance
of general acceptance. One or two of them how-
ever are supported by antecedent probability.
XV
It is a question of cardinal and governing im-
portance what is the true method of Homeric
study, as between the following alternatives of
treating the fundamental questions of unity and
authorship. One is to reason upon and from such
meagre testimonies as antiquity has left us respect-
ing their origin and formation. One is to break
^ These testimonies have been summarily noticed by Mure in his
Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. ii. pp. 181-183 ; and likewise in my
own Homeric Studies (Oxford, 1858), vol. i. pp. 47-55.
12 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
them up into several independent works, on the
ground of individual conjecture. And a third is,
steadily to mine deeper and deeper into the text
by observation and comparison, with the valuable
aids which have been supplied by the archaeological
researches of the last half century. This method
of handling the text involves a provisional, but
only a provisional, assumption of its unity.
I propose, as the most reasonable and the most
fruitful, the last-named of these three methods.
XVI
By the essential unity of the Poems I mean
not only that of each Poem in itself, but of the
two Poems. True, their forming conjointly one
authentic picture of a certain age and country does
not of itself absolutely imply the unity of their
authorship. The main implication, however, is that
which concerns the contents, and which combines
the innumerable particulars of human life and
history furnished by the Poems into one body of
evidence descriptive of a given race at a given
time.
THE HOMERIC QUESTION 13
XVII
But though individuality, or singleness of
authorship, be not of necessity implied in the
term of unity thus understood, it will, nevertheless,
probably be found that any departure from the
hypothesis of singleness embarrasses much more
than relieves the inquirer. The extreme solution
of Bentley, the more moderate but thoroughly
unpoetical suggestion of Grote, the modest and
more ancient scheme of the Chorizontes^ or
separators of the authorship of the Iliad from
that of the Odyssey, only dismiss minor or
imaginary difficulties in order to bring into the
field others of a more formidable kind.
XVIII
Again, it has happened that certain features of
one or both Poems, which have been put forward
as principal grounds for controverting the unity
of authorship, are converted into substantive
evidences in favour of that unity, when we have
widened our researches by taking into view the
fact that Homer was conversant, of course in
14 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
different degrees, first with an inner sphere or
zone of geography, known to him by experience,
and secondly, and far less definitely, with an
outer sphere or zone, known to him only by
report. This outer sphere is not inhabited by
people of his own stock. And so it comes about
that the meaning of the supposed discrepancies,
in mythology or manners, between the Iliad and
the Odyssey^ probably is that they deal, except
within Greece and in Ithaca itself, with separate
races, and with non-Hellenic varieties of religion.
If the manner of handling be the same, much diver-
sity of matter is what we should naturally expect
a skilled and conscientious artist to present.
XIX
Since the study of Homer commenced its first
modern development in the eighteenth century,
most important additions have been made to our
knowledge by archeeological research in points
directly related to the Homeric text This has
occurred particularly in Egypt, in Assyria, in
Troas, and at Mycenae. Entirely new views have
now been opened of the opportunities which may
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 15
have been enjoyed by Homer for receiving and
for incorporating in his works both actual foreign
knowledge and traditions of the past imported
from abroad.
XX
Dividing the Homeric literature into two parts,
one of them that which reasons about the text,
whether from a priori argument or from testi-
mony a posteriori^ the other that which reasons
out of the text itself, and speaking first of the
latter of these methods, I cannot but observe that
there exist works of early date, such as Wood
On the Genius and Writings of Horner^ and such
as Miiller's Hoinerische Versc/mle, which deserve
respect in reference to their pioneering office, but
which, in other respects, have probably been
injurious. They do not indeed pass by the
contents of the Poems, but they are extremely
slight and insufficient in dealing with them, while
they have, through early possession of the field,
exercised a large influence on the current course
of thought and opinion. In respect of their
slightness, they stand in marked contrast with the
large number of German monographs on par-
i6 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD Y sec.
ticular subjects touched in the Poems, which are
usually distinguished by remarkable comprehen-
siveness and care.
XXI
This examination of the text has now pro-
ceeded to so forward a stage, partly through
monographs, and partly by means of comprehen-
sive synthesis of the Homeric world and life, that
the pervading community and consistency of the
contents remains but little open to question. It
has therefore become, to say the least, allowable
to regard them not only as a whole, but as a
historic whole.
XXII
Such acceptance, as is here recommended, of
the Poems as a historic whole, does not of itself
require us to believe either that the received text
is absolutely pure, or that the events purporting
to be historical actually happened, or that the
personages lived, as it is recited that they lived
and happened respectively. All that is absolutely
required by it is to admit that the Ih'ad and
Odyssey exhibit to us a true rendering of life and
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 17
manners, at a given time and within a given local
circumscription. The body of the Poems may
conceivably be to a large extent factitious, and yet
their soul may be in the highest sense historical,
the one being, as it were, a parable of the other.
And it follows a fortiori that the idea of rifacci-
mento^ or linguistic manipulation without corre-
sponding departure from manners, is a question
left open indeterminately to the judgments of
competent inquirers. It is one for which I do
not possess the necessary qualifications.
xsnT
Nevertheless I cannot but deem it probable
that the larger questions involved in the admissions
last made will have to be ultimately determined
by internal evidence : by the strength, namely,
of that web of cohesion and consistency which
supplies the nexus of the contents, and shows how
almost every line is related to some, if not every
other line.
XXIV
Again it may happen, as in the case of the
negative speculations concerning unity and author-
C
i8 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
ship, SO also in relation to the Troic events, that by
resolving them into pure invention, or into figures,
such as (for example) the solar theory, we only
exchange smaller for greater difficulties, and lose
much to gain little. For, if the recitals are of-
facts, they are of great facts, with a great meaning,
which projects itself into the general history of the
world. For it exhibits a principal stage in the
formation of a nationality which is, to speak with
moderation, one among the greatest in the whole
range of human history, and which has exercised
a vast shaping force upon the characters of other
nationalities, and upon the whole civilisation of
modern times.
XXV
On the other hand, there are important liberties,
which still remain intact for those who have found
themselves constrained by the evidence to believe
in the Poems not only as soul-history but as fact-
history. For example, they may exercise a free
discretion upon the two following classes of cases.
The first, that of incidents which lie outside the
range of ordinary human experience, like the
Theophanies, and in fact the entire Theurgy of
the Poems.
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 19
The second, that of matters where the Poet,
following the laws of his art, may have idealised
the facts and persons with whom he had to deal,
so as to bring them up to the standard of the best
and most effective representation, for the enhance-
ment of instruction and delight. For example,
the most finely elaborated characters, such as those
of Achilles, Odysseus, and Helen ; or the three
decades of years — the preliminary, the principal,
and the epilogistic or concluding, which together
make up the full cycle of the transactions associ-
ated with the fall of Troy.
XXVI
Like the pre-Troic legends of human history in
the Iliad^ so the Archaic and foreign legends of
Olympos are introduced with a high art-purpose.
The latter throw light on the genius and structure
of the religion, the former performing the same
office for the nation. To some of these legends
no key has yet been found. But in other cases a
design is sufficiently discernible. For example,
the journey of Zeus and the Olympian Court in
the first Iliad to the banquet of the Aithiopes,
20 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
indicates that the knowledge of Homer went
beyond the Achaian limits, and that his gods
had, in his view, essential points of community
with the gods of other races.
XXVII
If, in every case where legends of gods or men
are introduced in the speeches of the Poems, we
suppose Homer to have intended a representation
of fact as to persons, times, and places, the result is
absurd. For instance, when Achilles in the first
book is persuading his mother Thetis to prefer the
grand petition to Zeus for the satisfaction of the
Wrath, he details to her in full an Olympian legend,
which he says that he had often heard her recite
in his father's halls, and of which, therefore, it could
not be necessary for him to acquaint her with all
the particulars (//. I. 396-412). Again, when
Glaukos meets Diomed in arms on the battlefield,
instead of fighting they interchange speeches run-
ning through nearly a hundred lines (VI. 122-
211), of which the chief part is a history of the
life of Bellerophon, the great Lycian ancestor.
This is utterly incongruous as an incident in the
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 21
day's battle, but most instructive as explaining
the derivation of an Achaian race from Lycia, and
the high position held by the Lycians in the war.
The explanation of such legends is to be found in
recognising the historic intention of the Poet, who
by a strong use of licence wove into his text long
passages which break his narrative, but which have
their justification in the deep interest that they
possessed for his hearers. There can be no good
ground for doubting that this was done to forward
the wide historic aim of the Poem, which carried
him far back into the past.
XXVIII
Upon this idea, however, a question may justly
be. put. If Homer introduces these passages into
the Poem in order to feed the appetite of his]
hearers for their national traditions, why are they '
found in the speeches and not in the narrative,
which at first sight would appear to be their
proper place ? Here we touch upon a striking
peculiarity of Homer as compared with other
Epic poets. His narrative is usually short and ]
simple : his speeches not only incessant, and often
LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
long, but never merely ornamental or reflective,
and always so contrived as to advance the action.
This is the manner of the drama, to which Homer
approaches in a degree unknown elsewhere. The
spirit of both the Poems is intensely and vividly
dramatic. And these legends, though they might
theoretically have found a more appropriate place
in the narrative, would, if so placed, have laid a
much heavier weight on the elastic movement of
the works, especially of the Iliad^ to which these
remarks principally apply. They find a direct
illustration in the speech of Glaukos (//. VI.)
XXIX
Even more important than the speech of Glaukos
is the great legend put into the mouth of Thetis
by Achilles in the first Iliad. The immediate
purpose of the hero is to prove to his mother her
power, and thereby to leave her no room for
evading compliance with his request. This he
does by showing how Zeus was indebted to her,
and was bound to pay the debt on her demand.
So we have a description of the convulsion brought
about in the religious system of the country by
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 23
the conflict of the various elements, imported into
it by its various races, and not, as yet, thoroughly
compounded. And the method of the reconcilia-
tion is exhibited by representing Thetis, who
herself belonged mythologically to the order
of Nature Powers, as the agent whose activity
and resource brought the several influences into
harmony under the sovereignty of Zeus.
XXX
The question whether the Poems were written,
or recited without writing, may be taken, I conceive,
as settled in favour of the latter opinion.
The mode in which the Iliad mentions, in one
or two passages, the use of inscribed signs to
convey ideas of itself goes far to prove that the
Achaians knew no form of writing available for
the transmission of Poems exceeding respectively
15,000 and 12,000 lines.
Particular passages may supply strong arguments
against the contrary hypothesis. The Preface to
the Catalogue represents it as a great effort ; and
so it was for memory, because there is no such
nexus in reciting a list of places as in a series of
connected events or ideas. But if the Poems were
24 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
written compositions, to frame the Catalogue would
require less and not more than the ordinary effort.
It seems probable that the unwise denial of
Wolfs introductory contention against the writing
of the Poems, by its explosion made a breach in the
wall, through which came in a flood of scepticism
unsustained by reason concerning the Poems.
XXXI
An opinion has been held, though it has not
prevailed to any wide extent, that the diction of
the two Poems respectively differs in date, as well
as that the diction of both, and especially of the
Odyssey^ savours of a late age. While leaving these
questions to students who have special qualifications,
I venture to interject a remark on what we term
style in the Poems. There is no author of any
date who has a more marked style than Homer :
there are very few who come near him in this par-
ticularity. It is impossible to take five or ten
consecutive lines from any part of the Poems
(though I admit a certain heaviness, and declension
of spirit, in Od. XXIV.) which could possibly be
ascribed to any one except Homer ; this observation
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 25
embraces both the Poems. I find it difficult to
conceive how this unity and particularity of style
could have been maintained in works largely
patched, and made up as to their form, by later
hands.
XXXII
Notwithstanding that some few pleas may be
urged to a contrary effect, the Iliad and the Odyssey
bear conclusive marks of the same parentage.
Among them are these : but nothing more than
specimens of argument can be here given.
1 . The Homeric style of each severs them from
all other works.
2. The mythological variations fit in with true
ethnical conceptions as to the two geographical
zones respectively, and are therefore such as we
should have reason to expect from the author of
the Iliad.
3. That two such master poets should spring
from a race insignificant in numbers at the same or
nearly the same time, each of them isolated and each
consummate, is of the very highest improbability.
4. The supreme, and except by Shakespeare
unapproached, faculty of drawing character, is
common in the fullest sense to the two Poems.
26 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
5. The particular characters, as they appear in
each, are in the finest correspondence with one
another.
6. The characters of particular gods, hardly less
remarkable as portraits than those of the men,
present in the two Poems the same radical harmony
as the human characters.
7. The coincidences of the class which we term
undesigned will be found almost countless, and
their collective strength might appear irresistible.
XXXIII
It may be right to supply a few specimens of
these coincidences. They might be indefinitely
multiplied.
1. The strong family affections of Odysseus are
a leading feature of the Odyssey. In the Iliad
he is the only chieftain who mentions his absent
son : and he does it with tenderness and exultation
(//.IT. 260; IV. 3 54).
2. With the high prerogatives assigned to the
use of speech in the Iliad^ may be compared the
striking reply of Odysseus {Od. VIII. 169-174).
3. In the two spondaic lines of the Odyssey
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 27
there is the same evident relation of sound to sense
as in the three of the Iliad.
4. The later mythology gives horses to the sun :
but they are alike withheld in both the Poems.
5. The free use of proper names in considerable
numbers to describe by their etymology occupation v
and race, and so to assist in drawing main lines
of the plan, is common to both the Poems. See
//. XVIII. 39-49; and Od. IX. 111-117.
6. Compare the appeal of Thetis to Zeus (//. I.
503-5 16), and her plea of personal disparagement
in the event of refusal, with that of Poseidon {Od. \^
XIII. 128-138).
7. Apollo in //. XXI. 468, declines fighting
with Poseidon, as being his uncle. Athene, in
Od. VI. 329, for the same reason will not act
openly in Scherie on behalf of Odysseus.
8. As to delicacy in the exposure of the person, /
compare Od. VI. 218-222, with //. XXII. 75, and
conversely with //. II. 262.
9. Thought is used as an emblem of rapid
motion in Od. VII. 36, and in //. XV. 80-82. That
is to say, once, and once only, in each Poem an
abstract idea is employed to illustrate corporeal
movement.
/
28 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
10. In //. IX. 70, it is signified that a ruler
ought to entertain his friends hospitably : and also
in Od. XL 184-186.
11. The epithet ^eto? is used in both Poems
with a reserve altogether singular. (See Mure,
Literature of Greece, vol. ii. p. 81.)
12. It is never applied in either Poem to any
living person or class, except a king, a herald, a
bard, or one of the two protagonists.
13. Poseidon travels freely in both Poems:
but when he appears specially in the character of
sea-god, both Poems give him Aigai as his dwell-
ing (//. XIII. 10-31 ; Od. V. 381).
J 4. A good repute in public opinion is highly
valued, and the want of it keenly felt. See //. IX.
460 (Phoinix), and Od. VI. 29, 273 (Nausicaa).
15. A peculiar designating force of the Greek
article without other specification is found in both
the Poems, e.g. II. I. 1 1 ; Od. III. 299.
16. While Themis has no substantial part or
clear impersonation in either Poem, she has peculiar
dignity in both. In the Iliad she presides at the
Olympian feast (XV. 95), and summons the greater
Assembly (XX. IV.) In the Odyssey she is, with
Zeus, the object of the prayer of Telemachos (II. 6?>).
I THE HOMERIC QUESTION 29
17. Ares is the paramour of Aphrodite in Od,
VIII. ; and is placed in peculiar sympathy with her
in the Iliad^ when he lends his chariot (V. 347-363),
and when he is led off by her after his defeat
(XXI. 416).
18. A wife is promised to Hephaistos by Here
in the Iliad where the mythology is Hellenic : but
in the Odyssey^ where for the outer zone it is
eastern, Aphrodite is his wife.
19. The character of Aphrodite is disparaged
by Homer in a manner quite peculiar to himself:
and this is common to both the Poems. In the
case of the daughters of Pandarus, she is not even
goddess of Beauty.
SECTION II
HOMER AS NATION-MAKER
All through the Poems of Homer, but especially
in the Iliad^ we trace an aim which was before all
things national. Everywhere he forms and fosters
the national idea, and equips it at all points.
He cuts off the Achaians from everything that
could bear the aspect of derivation from a foreign
land or race, and all the evidences we. can gather
on that subject are incidental and undesigned.
He had to launch into the world what we may
term the Greek idea.
He records with singular care and consistency,
through the medium of his genealogies, all that
can be linked to the Achaian families subsisting at
the Troic period, but he nowhere refers the nation
SEC. II HOMER AS NATION- MAKER 31
to a foreign origin : nor is he careful to deal with
any foreign legend except it be one (such as that
of Bellerophon, and that of the Phaiakes) to which
he can give an Achaian purpose.
It is part of his design to isolate his race, and
this isolation in the historic times was conspicuous
through the familiar distinction between Gre^eks
and Barbarians.
II
Absorbed in this Greek idea, he gives himself
wholly to it, and seems as though he had no
superlative care either for heaven or earth, near
or far, old or new, except in relation to the
Achaian race, which it was his office alike to
commemorate and to mould. For other things
he cared only in relation to that race. Even his
Thearchy was so constructed as above all things
to reflect Achaian ideas, Achaian characters,
Achaian polity. Uplifting this race, and its ideal
out of the mass of things human, he furnishes it
with its grand point of departure in the history
of the world, on which it has never since ceased
to exercise a powerful influence.
32 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
Ill
As with regard to remote times, so also is it
with regard to remote places. In no single case
does the Poet verbally relate or admit that the
beloved country, to which in its ductile stage of
existence he could hardly yet dare to give a
name, was in debt to any outside place or person
for its qualities, habits, or institutions. Only
when we have found certain persons and families
to have special relations to particular titles and
characteristics of art, manners, and religious tradi-
tions, and when we have noted as far as possible
the respective starting-points of each, do we
obtain indications of the manner in which, through
successive immigrations, the factors of the com-
posite Greek whole were supplied.
Though Homer does not speak of autochthons,
it is easy to see how, out of this exclusiveness of
his, the estimate of autochthonism, as it prevailed
in later times, might spring.
IV
The Greek nation has at all times been recog-
nised more or less definitely as composite. But
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 33
the Poems represent it to us in a period of its
composition, nearer by many centuries to the
original commencement of the process, than any
other record in our possession. We see the course
of its genesis still going on ; and the several
qualities and attributes of the several constituent
factors have not yet been detached from their
primary associations, or made common property
by complete fusion into a single whole.
When the historic aim of the Poems has teen
taken thoroughly into view, we shall look for the
signs of that aim in all cases where it is reason-
ably to be inferred. We find them in the record
of two remarkable pre-Troic efforts : one that of
the two consecutive wars of Achaians against
Thebans, who are called Kadmeians, and thereby
specially marked with the note of foreign origin ;
the other the voyage of the ship Argo, directed
against what was traditionally reported as we
know from Herodotos to be an Egyptian colony,
and thus falling into line with the retaliatory
invasion of Egypt by revolted peoples, in which
D
34 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
it has been held that the monuments show the
Achaians to have taken part.
VI
If the aim of the Poems be historic, their
ethnographical features come to be of high
interest, since they indicate the distinctions of
human manners, pursuits, and religion, as in Od.
1-3.
TToXXwz^ S' avOpaiTTCDV Ihev dcrrea koX vbov €'yvoi>*
These may be the key which will give us
a real access to the great Homeric problems of
the actual, and also of the Olympian world ; which,
as to ethnical considerations, follows the actual
in the manner of its articulation. It is needful
therefore to inquire whether there are any
primary lights on the face of the Poems, indica-
tive of racial origins.
VII
The proper names of persons in Homer are
very generally the vehicles of ideas. They thus
become a ready means for indicating pursuits and
qualities, not only of individuals, but, when taken
in combination, or formed into groups, for races
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 35
also. They thus become the basis of ethnological
inductions. The most plainly demonstrative in-
stance is found in the assemblage of sixteen
personal names of Phaiakes in Scherie,^ who offer
themselves as competitors in the games. Every
one of these names is etymologically maritime, with
the single exception of Thoon. This, however,
is derived from the adjective thoos, which is with
Homer a favourite epithet for ships, and signifies
the motive power they carry, commonly called by
us way. By these names the Phaiakes are
pointed out to us as a maritime race ; and, when
other particulars are taken into view, ground is
laid for connecting them with the Phoinikes.
VIII
The great name of Hellas, which reigned
supreme in the historic times until the Romans
supplanted it for Europe at large by the less
appropriate designation of Greece, is found in
Homer in various forms —
a. He names the Helloi or Selloi, vTrocprjrat of
1 Od. VIII. Ill -116.
36 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
Zeus, his organs or interpreters at Dodona
(//. XVI. 234).
b. We have the derivative ^ Hellenes (//. 11.
684) used as a local but not as a general
national name.
c. We have also a national name supplied in
the compound HaveWrj^^e^ {J^- II. 530)
coextensive with Achaioi.
d. The name Hellas itself appears in many
passages, but never for the entire country :
it may be said to have loosely signified
what was afterwards Thessaly.
e. The designation reappears in the name of
Kephallenes, meaning in the Iliad the
soldiers of Odysseus, in the Odyssey his
subjects.
IX
The ordinary or stock names of the nation
^ The later tradition bore a rude witness to the earlier, in the
mythical story that Hellen was the father of three sons, Aiolos,
Doros, and Xouthos, and of two grandsons. Ion and Achaios, four
of whom became the eponymists of the chief branches of the race.
It was only after the great eastward migration that this mythical
story could have come into being. Colonel Mure pointed out that
the name Hellen was a derivative {Literature of Greece, vol, i. p.
39, «.), so the story condemns itself.
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 37
which fought against Troy are three in number,
and they are so named by Thucydides in the
following order : —
1. Danaans.
2. Argeiaris.
3. Achaians.
Each appears to correspond with a distinct
phase in the settlement of the Greek Peninsula :
and each also to betoken one of the three great
factors of the Hellenic stock.
The Achaian name is used, in the masculine
gender, with a few cases of the feminine, nearly
800 times, to designate the people : the Argeian
188 times: the Danaan 147.
The first is represented in the territorial name
Achaiis, the second in Argos ; and both these
terms appear to have been familiar. The third is
according to all indications the senior of the three
appellatives, but is not represented in any terri-
torial name, as though it had had less to do, in
bulk, with peopling the country, and had thus a
slighter hold upon the national tradition.
38 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V
XI
In following carefully the uses of these several
appellatives, it will be found that the Achaian
name has a decided leaning to the aristocratic and
historically most distinguished portion of the com-
munity. The Argeian name leans to the masses.
The Danaan is an archaic name, which perhaps
had never been in actual use for the whole people,
and in the Poems it has a specially military
colour. These uses are illustrated by the text of
the Odyssey^ where the Danaan name altogether
disappears, except in connection with a recital of
the war. In this Poem the use of the names is
less frequent, but the distinctions between them
are maintained.
XII
In one passage only of the Poems do we find
any two of the three names in combination as
adjective and substantive. The line {Od. VIII.
538) is as follows —
^Kp^eiwv Aavacov ^8' TXtou olrov clkovcov
It occurs in a description of Odysseus listening
to a Trojan lay, which was sung in the palace of
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 39
Alkinoos. Are we in this place to understand
the Argeian Danaans, or the Danaan Argeians ?
For I take it as certain that the two words refer
to the same subjects. The Danaan name is used
twelve times in the Odyssey^ the Argeian (apart
from Helen) seventeen. No light is supplied by
these facts. The Danaan name is associated with
Greece only in the North -Eastern Peloponnesos
and long before the war, at the time of contact
with and probable subjection to Egypt, and her
maritime agents the Phoenicians. Now if Danaan
were a Phoenician name, and the Phaiakes were,
as appears most probable, of Phoenician line and
association, then it seems most appropriate to
include in the description of the army before
Troy terms of a Phoenician colour ; while avoid-
ing confusion by the turn of the phrase, calling
them those Danaans who were connected with
the Argeian name and country, the Argeian
Danaans.
XIII
The name Argos in Homer is one of great
significance. It is used on special occasions, in
//. n. 559, and VI. 52, for the capital of a section
40 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
of the country ; but it is also used to designate
the whole country which supplied the army before
Troy. Again it is employed in III. 75 and 258,
jointly with Achaiis, to designate the entire
country. We have some guidance towards the
distribution of the territory between the two
appellatives in the phrase Argos Achaiicho^z, II. IX.
141, 283. This phrase appears probably to mean
the Argos which was the centre of Achaian power,
namely the Peloponnese. Comparing with these
passages the line II. 681, we find Thessaly as
a whole to have been designated the Argos
Pelasgicon ; and the Zeus of Dodona was (XVI.
233) Pelasgic Zeus. Thus the word Argos in its
larger sense runs over the entire country, and it is
in conformity herewith that the name of Argeioi
is applied to the army at large ; while, on the other
hand, the characteristic epithet Argeie so often
applied to Helen meant Helen of Argos in the
narrower sense of the specially Agamemnonian
dominion.
XIV
While the names of Argeioi and Danaoi both
disappear from use in the Odyssey^ excepting in a
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 41
retrospective manner, they differ in this respect
that Argeioi has, and Danaoi has not, a leaning
towards the mass of the people. Were we to
exchange the indeterminate for the determinate,
we might say that Danaoi means properly the
soldiers, Argeioi the people, Achaioi the chiefs.
XV
In support of the special signification which I
attach to the word Argeioi^ the following observa-
tions may be adduced : —
a. Its disappearance (except retrospectively)
from the Odyssey is in close accordance
with the fact that in that Poem the Pen-
insula and people are never dealt with as
a whole, but we have particular persons
or districts only brought before us.
b. It is a territorial rather than a race-name,
and it stands alone in its embracing the
entire territory.
c. It is never used when the chiefs are spoken of
distinctively or apart from the army.
<^. It may be conjectured to mean field-workers :
42 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
as argon^ is an old form of ergon^ and
ergon without specialising epithet signifies
principally (in the plural) operations of
agriculture.
XVI
Achaiis is also used as a territorial name, both
adjectively with ^(^2(3; (//. I. 254; VII. 124) and
substantively (III. 75, 258 ; XI. 769). In two of
these passages it is used alone,' and evidently
covers the whole country. In XI. 770 it may
have the same signification, or may (less probably)
be limited to the country to which Achilles and
the Hellic people were specially related. In the
two passages from the Third Book we have the
words, " To horse-feeding Argos, and Achaiis, fair
women's land." It is not likely that the Poet
would give the epithet fair women's land (Kalli-
gunaika) to one portion of the country : and prob-
ably the word here means the whole, while Argos
is named as the royal and metropolitan province.
The Peloponnese is however the Achaic Argos as
distinguished from Thessaly the Pelasgian. All
Greece was Achaiis, and the inhabitants of its
^ Juventus Mundi, p. 54.
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 43
sections were either everywhere or to a large
extent called Achaioi, as we may see from //.
11. 562, 684, and Od. XXIV. 438.
XVII
The proof of my proposition that the Achaian
name in the Poems, though frequently applied
to the army or nation at large, has a leaning to
the chiefs and aristocracy, depends upon a large
number of passages. I will take one as, for the
Iliad^ instar omnium. In the Teichoscopy, when
the armies are gathered in the field, Priam, on the
walls, asks Helen for information respecting the
persons of different chiefs who are present with
their several contingents. First comes Aga-
memnon, and the question put is, "Who is this
Achaian warrior?" (III. 167). Then comes
Odysseus, with another identifying mark. Thirdly,
the King points to Aias (or Ajax),and again employs
the epithet Achaian as a distinctive word. But
he fixes it further by saying, "Who is this other
Achaian warrior who stands, taller by head and
shoulders, among the Argeians?" (III. 226),
evidently meaning the soldiery around him.
44 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
XVIII
This great name of Achaians overshadows every
other. In the course of the Iliad alone it is used I
think, in one or other of its grammatical forms, over
640 times, and more than twice as often as all the
other appellatives put together. It is in fact the
true contemporary national name of the people
that conquered Troy ; and the undeniable though
partial civilisation of that people, the first grand
manifestation of Hellenism is, and as I conceive
ought to be called, the Achaian civilisation.
They may from use be called Greeks, but it is only
in a secondary and improper sense. And that
secondary sense becomes a very misleading one,
if it be allowed to draw off our minds from the
fact that this Achaian civilisation is independent
and historical, and is somewhat broadly dis-
tinguished, sometimes to its great advantage, from
the later and more splendid civilisation of Greece.
XIX
We are therefore justified in looking, and indeed
required, as searchers, to look at the meanings of
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 45
names, whether individual or national, so as not
to use them only for the purpose of designation,
whenever those meanings can be found, and are
illustrative of matters relevant to the purpose of
the Poems. This rule will be found to run very
far, and to open up some really important parts
of the sense which the Poet means to convey.
XX
Homer gives the name of Phoinikes to the
remarkable maritime people on whom the Greek
Peninsula was dependent for all that came to it
over sea ; not only in articles of trade, but in
knowledge of the arts of life. Their maritime
traffic embraced Egypt and Libya as well as the
Syrian coast, to say nothing now of the regions
westward, so that the name is related in Homer
to everything which arrived, and everything which
was learned, by ship from the south and south-
east. And, in order to embrace this great aggregate
in a collective appellation, I call by the name of
Phoenicianism everything within the Greek limits
that savours of derivation from those quarters.
46 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
XXI
So far as the text of Homer carries us, we find
marked notes of Phoenicianism in the following
portions of the Peninsula.
1. Boeotia, from the (Egyptian) names of Thebai
and Hupothebai : the worship of Poseidon at
Ongchestos (//. II. 506), which was not a port:
the Achaian wars, which are described as against
not fellow -Achaians but Kadmeians : and the
traditions of Antiope {Od. XL 260-265) and
Epicaste {Ibid. 271-280).
2. The nook of Sikuon, from the legend of
Sisuphos in //. VI., and from indications in the
Odyssey.
3. The Western Peloponnese, from the legend
of Turo {Od. XI. 235-259), and the position of
Nestor with his descent, and his Poseidon-worship,
in Od III.
4. The North-Eastern Peloponnese, from the
pre-Troic legends of which it is the seat.
5. Ithaca, from a combination of very diversi-
fied features, requiring to be considered in their
aggregate.
HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 47
XXII
The legend of Glaukos in //. VI., which with-
draws that noble chieftain from an impending
conflict with Diomed, in the first place illustrates
the uniform care of the Poet to do honour to the
Lycian name. Secondly, he gives to Glaukos a
Phoenician lineage. For there are no more absol-
ute marks of Phcenicianism than the use of the
names Ephure and Aiolid (//. VI. 152-154).
Thirdly, he places this ancestor of the Lycian
chieftain upon the Gulf of Corinth. And fourthly,
he declares that there was a hereditary xeinian
bond, or bond of hospitality, between Glaukos
and a prime Achaian prince and warrior. This
example may serve as an indication of the place
assigned to the Phoenician element, as one of the
grand factors, by settlement in the Peninsula, of
the Achaian nation. It also betrays to us the
reason of the marked and otherwise inexplicable
predilection which the Poet shows for the Lycians
among the Trojan epicouroi or allies, namely their
kinship with Greece.
48 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
XXIII
The prayer of //. XVI. (233-249), offered by
Achilles to Zeus, is the most remarkable of the
many prayers in the Poem. In the fate of Patro-
clos, it deals with the central hinge of the Trojan
war. In its theology it is purely monotheistic ;
and it treats Zeus as the sole arbiter. What we
have here specially to note is the importance of
this prayer in relation to the Achaian nationality.
First Achilles, who offers it, is not only the
protagonist of the Poem, constructed on a colossal
and almost preter-human scale, but is also, among
all the warriors, the one most properly Achaian
and Hellenic : and indeed both these names are
assigned, with an evident significance, to his
contingent alone (//. II. 684). He is the truly
national hero in a sense quite distinct from that
of the political headship, 'which Homer, possibly,
or probably in deference to actual history, has
allotted to Agamemnon. Likewise Zeus is the
truly national god. Accordingly, he is described
as Pelasgic, and as Dodonian ; and this last epithet
appears to be illustrated by the introduction of the
Helloi, his ministers and votaries, and the source of
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 49
the Hellenic stock. Thus he is associated with
two great race-factors of the Achaian nation. For
the third or Phoenician factor, however import-
ant, was, except in Boeotia, not racial, but existed
only in dominant families.
XXIV
In this great cardinal prayer there are other
points not unworthy of notice. It consecrates,
as it were, by a solemn religious Proem, the new
departure in the conduct of Achilles, which, from
the moment of sending forth Patroclos, on an errand
perfectly justified by his computation of relative
martial superiority, is consecutive and unchanging
throughout. Again it is distinguished, among
the Homeric prayers, by its length, and particularity,
and by the formality of its Invocation, which, in
this case alone, includes a recital concerning the
worshippers of the Deity invoked. And further,
it is placed on a higher level than that of the
other Homeric prayers, by being more strictly
intercessory ; it is the prayer of an individual for
another individual.
It is in effect the foundation stone of the whole
subsequent action of the Poem.
E
so LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V sec.
XXV
The connection of Achilles with Homeric
nationalism is further exhibited in the following
among other ways : —
1. On the Thearchic side of the Poem he is
associated, through his mother Thetis, silver-footed
daughter of Nereus, with the old Nature-cult of
the country ; while by his father he is descended,
in the Aiakid line, from Zeus, now set forth as in
the fullest sense the Achaian Zeus.
2. Although the numerical force of his con-
tingent was secondary (fifty ships, II. 685), yet
the usual order of the Catalogue is varied, so as
to introduce it with a Proem which marks off the
whole Pelasgic Argos, or Thessaly, as the region
which, if not subject throughout to the sovereignty
of his house, yet is assigned to him in this sense,
that it is not allowed to contribute any other
prominent or important figure to the action of the
Poem. Although in the aggregate this region
supplies no less than two hundred and eighty
ships, the whole stage is kept clear for the one
dominant character.
3. The phrase Pelasgic Argos (II. 681) appears
HOMER AS NATION-MAKER
to show at least the numerical preponderance of
the senior race in this region. But the subjects of
Achilles are denominated specially in //. II. 684
as Achaians ; and the whole region seems in //.
III. 75, 258, to be denoted as the Achaiis of the
Poems : a phrase for which it seems difficult to
assign a reason except its having produced Achilles.
XXVI
Except as to the Kadmeians, who have no
special significance in the war, the Phoinikes no-
where appear in Greece as a people, colony, or
race. They are only traceable in the thread-
lines of particular families. Their importance can
hardly be overrated : but they must be weighed,
not counted. It has been supposed by some that
the Homeric Greeks were Aiolians. The (mythical)
genealogy, which makes Hellen the parent of the
nation, gives him Aiolos for his eldest son. The
kernel of truth in this myth is that Aiolids (never
called in Homer Aiolians) may be traced, by their
longer genealogies, to an older standing in Greece
than Achaians, who were already famous at the
Troic period ; and they are older in fame than
Dorians or lonians, though these two are both found
52 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V sec.
locally in the Poems. The two most palpable
notes of Phoenician lineage are (i) connection
with the name of Aiolos (//. VI. 154 ; Od. XI.
236) and (2) descent from Poseidon.
XXVII
The Phoinikes of Homer may be described
roughly in one word as merchant-pirates : traders,
kidnappers, and buccaneers. The immigrant Phoe-
nician element has a wider meaning. As between
the two, they were upon the whole a great intellectual
force ; a deteriorating moral element. With them
is associated almost every rudiment of art and
manners which we find mentioned in the Poems.
For example : the art of navigation ; of stone-build-
ing ; of work in metals, with a close approach to Fine
Art ; of embroidery ; of medicine, and a chemistry
however simple ; the institution of the Games ; the
importation of the horse, and the art, nay arts, of
horse-driving (//. XXIII. 402-447, 566-601). Pos-
sibly even the driving of the plough in a superior
manner. Not that these belonged to Phoenician
sailors ; but they belonged to the countries of
Phoenician traffic and to immigrants brought by
their ships. We also trace the foreigner, and
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 53
this variously, in the manufacture of arms. But
the policy of the Phoinikes proper was to avoid
intervention in quarrels not their own.
XXVIII
It seems probable that we are to consider the
gift of song as an exception. For this gift of
song has been markedly assigned to Achilles,
and to him alone (//. IX. 186-189). It is almost
the only gift which is not ascribed to the all-
accomplished Odysseus, who is even a consum-
mate ploughman and mower, as well as artificer
{Od. XVIII. 365-375). The two protagonists
are evidently the two greatest orators of the
Poems. In Homer the two elements materially
or numerically strongest are the Hellenic and the
Pelasgian. The two elements, between which the
higher gifts and properties are divided, are the
Hellenic and the Phoenician. The Phcenician
share was in progress made, in accomplishments
possessed. The Hellenic share lay in the region
higher still : in character, in purpose, in force of
will, in creative genius : in the many-sided capa-
bility of assimilating, and of reproducing, multiplied
54 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold, the importations
from the East.
XXIX
What then, it may be asked, has the Poet
reserved for the third factor in the composition
of the nation, for his Pelasgian people ? Of the
loftier endowments little. It is observable {a)
that they are named among the populations of
Crete {Od. XIX. 177); {b) that they are never
mentioned by Homer, even as serving in the
Trojan army, without a favourable epithet ; (c)
that the etymology of the names among the
common soldiery points to them as engaged in
the pursuits of rural life, and sometimes as
accumulators of substance. We may credit them
with the gifts of soldiery, industry, and order.
In point of higher qualities they were undeveloped.
Perhaps they may be called a nation in the gristle.
XXX
It would be generally allowed that the first
commanding factor in the compound, that of
Hellenic or Achaian character, is represented in
the great and towering personality of Achilles.
:^
II HOMER AS NATION-MAKER 55
After long consideration and inquiry I have
arrived at an opinion that the second or Phoenician
element, of course in its amalgamation with the
paramount stock, is set before us in the character
and the position of Odysseus. His character,
besides universality of accomplishment, exhibits
to us, in their highest development, activity,
persistency, comprehensiveness, and design leaning
towards craft. As to his position, I have en-
deavoured to show in another connection^ how it
will be found on examination that the small Ithacan
kingdom abounds in signs of Phoenicianism.
XXXI
If the final judgment of Homerologists shall
affirm these general conclusions with regard to
the composition of the great Hellenic race, and
more specifically the propositions last stated, we
shall have in them a most interesting view of the
completeness and symmetry of the Poet's mind in
his dealing with the several factors of the com-
pound nationality, and in the provision made for
their personal presentation to his hearers in the
characters of his two protagonists.
* Nineteenth Centtiry for August 1889.
SECTION III
HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER
If Homer lived and sung as a great creative
genius, at a period when his nation was in course
of formation ; and if, with whatever degree of
consciousness, he exercised his art so as to pro-
mote that formation, it was in the nature of the
case hardly possible that he should not contribute
largely to the formation of a national unity in
religion, for without this there could in those
days be no national unity at all. The nation, as
we have seen, was composite. Apart from the
question of a Divine revelation, which is not here
supposed, the peoples of antiquity, each according
to its several genius, developed great differences
in their particular forms of religion. Their
SEC. Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 57
systems stood on the same footing as to authority,
and when brought locally together, their diverg-
ence and the chance of possible conflict required
that they should be moulded into some kind
of concord. A composite nation, with a strong
national spirit, required to arrive at a composite
religion.
II
The necessity for a formula concordice^ or, in
modern phrase, a modus vivendt, was raised to the
highest point in a case like that of the Greek
Peninsula, where, before the dominant political
factors found their way into the country, a local
worship, which appears to have been a culttcs of the
Nature-Powers, was evidently in possession of the
ground. The Phoenician and Achaian elements
respectively were associated with power, as
invaders, or as immigrants of high station and
authority ; so that power stood on one side,
numbers and possession on the other. But
neither were these powerful influences in accord
with one another ; both the local sources and the
moral standard being materially diflerent
58 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY
III
The diversity of the religious traditions con-
stituted the greatest obstacle to the attainment of
the high national aim ; because for each of the
branches these traditions demanded recognition
and manifestation in the common outward acts of
religion, elicited by the ever-returning occasions of
daily life. Thus was continually raised the question
which traditions should prevail, and whether their
relations to one another should be in harmony or
in conflict. And so, conversely, the reciprocal
relations of the religious acts raised also the
question what should be the reciprocal relations
of the persons performing them.
IV
It is then plain that, if the function of Homer
as nation - maker had for its main object to
combine in one harmonious polity the men of the
three great descents — Pelasgian, Phoenician, and
Achaian, — that function must also touch the
question of their several religions, and must be
helped by establishing an unity among them. The
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 59
nature and limits of that unity we shall have
hereafter to specify, that we may not exaggerate
the office of a poet so great and having such an
access to the minds of his countrymen through
the medium of their institutions.
We thus appear to obtain, from a consideration
of the natural course of facts, an insight into the
rationale of those peculiar local traditions in
Greece which tell of contests between different
deities for different points of the territory, and of
the issue of those contests ; they cannot do other-
wise than signify the original conflict or competi-
tion of religious traditions between the respective
sectaries of the older and newer populations, and
their settling down into an unity. It is thus, for
example, that we may discern in the Twenty-First
Odyssey the accommodation between the Sun-god
Apollo brought from the East, and perhaps there
supreme, and the far loftier conception of the
obedient son Apollo such as he stands in the
Olympian system.
6o LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V
VI
Of these traditions, outside Homer, some
related to Corinth and its neighbourhood. Here
it is that Poseidon struggles for the supremacy of
the region against Helios, and obtains the coast-
ing district, where the descendant of Aiolos, an
Eastern personage, had settled. The upper tract
is afterwards made over by Helios to Aphrodite.
The first of these two may well be related to a
pre- Homeric state of the facts, when the Poseidon
worship, imported several generations before the
Trojan war, might come into competition with
an old Sun worship of the Pelasgian population
generally prevailing. The second is as clearly
post-Homeric ; for, at the period of the Poems,
the Aphrodite worship, though it has passed from
Cyprus to Cythera, has not yet obtained a footing
on the mainland of Greece. So that it would be
out of place, as would probably be a Poseidon
worship in Attica or Athens.
VII
We find many indications of the difficulties,
which beset the path of the Poet in the execution
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 6i
of his compounding office. One who dwells like
Plato in the region of abstract ideas may find
fault with him for admitting within his thearchy
elements of too low a standard. But he was
one who had to deal with the facts of his race
and his time ; and the careful investigator of the
Poems will find cause for wonder as well as
satisfaction at the persistency with which he has
excluded from his system the most degrading
ingredients in which the religions around him
abounded ; the pollution of our nature by the
lust-worship of the East, and the disparagement
done to it by the cultus of the lower animals, and
of material objects exhibited in the great Nature-
forces. He seems only to have tolerated persons
and ideas belonging to the foreign systems as
long and as far as he could work them into some
kind of consistency with the national genius, and
with his Olympian ideal.
vni
Not only is the Homeric Thearchy composite
as a whole, but each divinity is often composite
within itself, and comprehends elements derived
62 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
from more than one of the three great sources of
the Poet's theology. Thus the Artemis, who is
whipped by Here in the Theomachy, is the gross
figure of Asiatic worship with a hundred breasts,
and not the pure and beautiful Artemis who
administers the law of painless death, and is
besought by Penelope to deliver her from her
troubles {Od. XVIII. 201). And the Apollo,
who appears as a jester in the foreign episode of
Ares and Aphrodite, is very different from the
Apollo who throughout the Iliad is the right arm of
Providence, and who in the Odyssey mysteriously
presides over the trial of the bow.
IX
The Olympian gods of the Iliad are divided
into an Achaian and a Trojan party. The censure
of Plato on Homer for dealing lightly with the
deities is really much more applicable to the
religion of his own time, as it is exhibited in Aris-
tophanes. No deity of the Hellenic party is ever
disparaged by Homer ; and upon what principle
was he bound to pay great respect to foreign
deities as such, when they were in conflict with
in HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 63
Achaian nationality and with substantial justice?
Ares and the Asiatic Artemis are the deities
seriously disparaged in the Theomachy ; Aphrodite
everywhere and with great justice.
The religion of Troy, as exhibited in the Iliad^
differs materially from that of the Achaians, in that
it is largely based on the worship of the Nature-
Powers. This is conclusively shown from //. III.
103, 104, where it is arranged that the Trojans are
to offer lambs to Earth and the Sun, while the
Achaians are to offer a lamb to Zeus. Hence /
again Helios, though as a Nature-Power he is not
admitted into 01ympos,nor allowed to take any part
in the Theomachy, yet is a partisan of Troy, and
puts an end with reluctance to the day which was to
witness the last of the Trojan successes (//. XVI 1 1.)
And hence again Scamandros, the only Nature-
Power in the Theomachy, contends on the Trojan
side, and is indeed its best supporter. It may be for
the same reason that the Nature-Powers generally
are summoned to the Great Assembly on Olympos,
which authorises the divinities of each party to
assist their friends.
64 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V sec.
XI
Homer has carefully severed his Apollo from
the character of a Nature-Power, by investing the
Sun with a separate personality. He appears
indeed in the Theomachy on the Trojan side, and
his mother Leto is there also, probably as an
appendage to him. But this arrangement has
reference to the fact that he is always the organ
of the will of Zeus : and that the plot of the Poem,
which required the sin of Agamemnon to be re-
buked by the temporary success of his foes, allowed
the will and action of Zeus to take the Trojan
side until that purpose had been accomplished.
XII
The disposition to incorporate deity with
humanity, which I venture to term the thean-
thropic^ spirit, and which, though belonging pro-
perly to the Hellenic sphere, pervades the whole
of the Poems, finds its most marked exhibition in
^ The phrase anthropomorphism, which has obtained much
currency, is open to the objection that it is not wide enough for the
case ; since the term niorph^ may be said to be exclusively applicable
to material form.
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 65
the characters of those higher gods who inhabit
Olympos. These, except as to dimension both
physical and mental, are cast in the human mould ;
subject however to these two conditions, of which
the one tends to exalt, and the other to lower them.
1. That when they are dealing collectively
with the business of governing the world, they
give signs of a certain gravity, sense of duty, and
consciousness of moral responsibility for the use
of their power over men.
2. That in many of them individually, as in
most men of all times, increased capacity prin-
cipally exhibits itself in increased indulgence.
It is also needful to bear in mind that these
deities fall into classes, differing widely one from
the other.
And that a portion of what has been let slip
from the full Divine idea has been as it were saved
and reproduced in the majestic conception of the
Eriniies, as well as in the dark and powerful, but
ethically less exalted, Moira or Fate.
. XIII
The differences between the divinities are not
exclusively those of rank, local origin, or ethno-
66 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD Y sec.
logical connection ; they also rest upon broad
grounds, both intellectual and moral. There is little
in common as to essence between the conception
of the debased Aphrodite, and the lofty imperson-
ation of Athene as absolute in intellect and in
power. And there is no more between the brutal
Ares and the Apollo who, in the whole action of the
Iliad^ both conforms and gives effect to the will of
Zeus. Still, I think it has to be allowed that the
moral element is less emphatically represented in
the individual action of the gods than it is among
men. There is no god of the Poems (unless it be
the purely abstracted theos^ who is constantly in
the background of the scene) that is so good as
the swineherd Eumaios.
XIV
The collective action of the Olympian gods,
who are the classe dirigeante of Homeric antiquity,
is higher not only than their individual, but than
their collective character. In the main, it befriends
righteousness and the righteous man, and is adverse
to the unrighteous and to wrong at large. There
is an habitual ascription of righteousness in the
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 67
Poems to theos and to the theoi^ which, if not
absolutely free from caprice or other imperfection,
yet as a general rule completely makes good for
them the standard of character and action which
has just been described. In this conception there
is no alliance with meanness, impurity, or weakness.
Nor are theos and theoi merely abstract ideas ; they
are true personalities, but cleansed by severance
from what is eccentric or depraved among the
actual gods of Olympos.
XV
It is possible to carry up to a certain point the
principle of discrimination among the prominent
or Olympian deities according to local origin, or
racial affinities and sympathies which are con-
nected with it.
a. We may rank as imported from the south
and south-east, and as specially associated
with the Phoenician name.
1. Poseidon. 3. Aphrodite.
2. Hermes. 4. Hephaistos.
5. Dionusos.
h. There are residuary Nature-Powers, no longer
68 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
invested with actual function in the govern-
ment of the world so far as the Achaian
race are concerned.
1. Aidoneus. 3. Demeter.
2. Helios. 4. Gaia.
c. We have also deities in whose equipment
we find the marks of foreign or inferior
traditions, but whom Homer has effectually
transfigured for the purposes of his thean-
thropic religion.
1. Here.
2. Artemis.
d. And we have such as embody, if with varying
admixtures, much loftier conceptions with
reference to the supremacy of Deity, its
illuminating intelligence, and even its re-
deeming action, than can be accounted
for by mere reference to the before-named
sources. These are —
1. Zeus.
2. Athen^
3. Apolla
4. Leto.
HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 69
XVI
First in the active Olympian Thearchy, as given by
Homer, come the five greater gods, not so defined,
but so exhibited in action and character. These
are —
1. Zeus. 3. Here.
2. Poseidon. 4. Athene.
5. Apollo.
But of these Poseidon is wholly exotic, and
Here is, in all that is central to her, indigenous,
Achaian, national.
XVII
In each of these five greatest among the
Olympian gods, as they are exhibited in the
Poems, we find a dominant or characteristic idea.
In Zeus it is policy, a care not confined to
Greece.
In Here it is the Achaian nationality.
In Poseidon it is physical might, with a singular
absence of moral elements.
In Athene it is intellect, supreme in the uniform
attainment of its end.
In Apollo it is obedience to Zeus, not by effort,
but from pure conformity of will.
70 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
XVIII
There are other personages whom we find
present in Olympos, though without important
functions of government over men. Such are —
1. Themis, who has a high precedence, and a
supreme messengership.
2. Iris, the messenger in ordinary, a conception
of extraordinary beauty.
3. Hebe, the cup-bearer.
4. Paieon, the physician.
5 . Dione, mother of Aphrodite, without function.
Nor is it possible to omit Persephone, whose place
is in the Underworld. She is thus severed from
Olympos, but appears alone in the actual exercise
of power below.
In the eighteenth Iliad^ Hephaistos has fabri-
cated twenty seats which moved automatically for
the Olympian gods. This number may, as appears
probable, have been suggested by the Assyrian
tradition. It may have been conceived rather
vaguely by Homer. The number of deities enu-
merated above amounts in all to twenty-one. The
titles of Gaia and Persephone appear, on grounds
belonging to each, to be doubtful.
HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 71
XIX
There is, besides the ordinary assembly or
council {Boide) of the gods, a greater Olympian
assembly, corresponding with the Agore or mass-
meeting of the Greek community. It includes
(//. XX. 4- 1 o) the Nature-Powers at large, with the
single and marked exception of Okeanos. He is
probably exempted on account of the dignity
attaching to him as the great Origin, which stands
in contrast with the rather negative place assigned
to the Nature-Powers on this occasion. Their
presence seems to give validity to the sentence
under which the Theomachy takes place ; but it is
a presence, and nothing more ; there is not, as in
the case of the human assembly, any decision or
assent actually recorded.
XX
The population of Homer's preter-human world
is multifarious, and not altogether easy to classify.
I present it, however, as follows —
1. Olympian gods, ordinary or proper.
2. Retired or deposed dynasties : Okeanos in
the first category, Kronos in the second.
72 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
3. Nature -Powers, having no share in the
government of the Achaian world, such as the Sun
(HeHos) and the Earth (Gaia).
4. Purely figurative personages, such as Ossa^
Phuza^ KudoimoSy and the like.
5. Impersonated ideas of moral or super-sensible
objects, such as the Eriniies, Moira, and Sleep with
his brother Death {Hupnos^ Tha7iatos),
6. The alien and condemned Powers, namely
the Titans and the Giants.
7. The minor and purely local Nature-Powers
— that is to say, personalities given to Rivers,
Fountains, Mountains, Trees.
8. Deified mortals, beginning to find their way
into some kind of beatification : Heracles in
Olympos, Ino in the sea or sky.
9. The spirits of the dead.
XXI
In Zeus we have a remarkable assemblage of
characters not always the most homogeneous.
1 . He is the head of the Olympian Court and
Polity.
2. In union with that court he is the chief
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 73
Executive Governor of human affairs within the
h'mits of the Achaian Peninsula, and of Troas as
associated with Achaian action.
3. He is the chief national god both of the old
Pelasgian and the new Achaian or Hellenic stock.
A struggle for the maintenance of his supremacy,
or for the amalgamation of the competing worships
is indicated in the curious legend of//. I. 396-406.
4. As towards men, he is the exclusive source
of the political authority of sovereigns.
5. He is what may be called the residuary
legatee of the old monotheism. In this character
his supremacy passes beyond the Hellenic circle
into the zone of the outer geography, where the
execution is in the hands of other divinities ; and
it is thus also that he directs his gaze in //. XHI.
3-6 over the nations northward of the Balkan
mountains. To him accrue the care of the poor
and the suppliant. He is exempt from all
particular enmities. In the government of man
he is moderate and passionless, and acts as
peacemaker in the Ithacan civil war {Od. XXIV.
539-548).
6. He is the person in whom, under the action
of the theanthropic idea, human qualities and
74 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
passions are most broadly and universally de-
veloped, both for good and for evil : affection on
the one side, cynical selfishness and lust on the
other, with a great dislike to be disturbed or
bored. ♦
XXII
The Olympian, like the Achaian, system is
governed mainly by opinion. Its head views the
fall of Troy with an evident reluctance. The
fatal sentence is really carried by the united
action of the three deities who after Zeus are the
most powerful, namely Poseidon, Here, and Athene;
Apollo being put out of the case, as he has no
decided volition apart from that of Zeus. Troy,
on the other hand, is only supported by Divinities
of a feebler mould. To secure the rescue of
Hector's body (//. XXIV. 65), and even to disarm
the single-handed hostility of Poseidon in the
Odyssey — that is to say, in its Outer zone — Zeus
has recourse to the authority of the Olympian
assembly {Od. I. 77-79). He is apt to look for
expedients of accommodation, as when Helios has
taken what, under the principles of the system,
is reasonable offence {Od. XII. 374-388). He
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 75
threatens largely the use of his reserved stock of
force (//. I, 566 et alibi\ but does not employ it
against the three above named, though he is ready
to do it against Poseidon singly (//. XV. 176-
183), or against Here with Athene (//. VIII.
399, 403). Both these however touch cases of
offence against a collective decision of the gods.
XXIII
Theanthropy, as an intimate combination of the
divine and human natures, is the principle on
which Homer has elaborately constructed his
Olympian system, and the after history of his
country bears testimony to the care, solidity, and
comprehensiveness of his work, which was doubt-
less founded in a clear and keen appreciation of
the genius and the mental wants of his country-
men. This principle was in due time exhibited
as the basis of Greek life, in religion, in history,
and beyond all in Art. It is an idea eminently
original ; for what has been called anthropomorphism
in other schemes bears only the faintest and rudest
resemblance to the subtle and refined conception
wrought out by Homer, with a care only equalled
76 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
by that which he has bestowed on the twin con-
ception of nationality. In all this we see the
vigour of his revulsion from the mere nature cult,
and the Egyptian and Eastern worships.
XXIV
The religion of Egypt in so far approached the
Olympian system, that it freely exhibited deity in
created forms. But it utterly violated the Greek
ideal by placing brute and human natures on a
level, and using the two combinedly for the repre-
sentation of the Divine. It even did this in the
most repulsive manner, by assigning the head, or
imperial part of the frame, to beast or bird, and
leaving the inferior function to humanity in the
trunk and members. So we have the human figure
with the cow head, and with the hawk head.
Symbolism of this kind, it now seems certain, may
have been before the eyes of the Poet and his
contemporaries. He perhaps could not afford
wholly to break with it in his impersonations.
Accordingly, he assigns to Her^ the eye proper to
kine, and consecrates the hawk to Apollo.
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 77
XXV
Much more largely, in all likelihood, must he
have had before him the institutions and emblems
of the nature cult. Of these it may be said that
sun, moon, and stars, visible and in definite form,
did not need the intervention of statuary to inter-
pret them ; and that such substitution could not,
as a rule, have prevailed in the Achaian age as an
indigenous practice, by reason of the backwardness
of art. And it may be doubted whether, if they
had been represented in visible images, it would have
been possible for him to throw these Nature-Powers
so completely into the background of his Poems ;
especially the moon, who had so high a place in
Assyria, who was worshipped in later times as one
of the forms of Diana, and who in Homer is not
only not a deity but not even a person. It is
probable that the Poet found it the more necessary
to disarm as it were certain deities, in cases where
they had a high place in foreign or in ancient
associations, as these were the most likely to
interfere with his great theanthropic design, which
united heaven and earth. It is the more remark-
able In the case of Selene from the fact that she
yS LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
resumed her personality in the Pseudo-Homeric
Hymns, through the title anassa, and the epithets
leukolenos and euplokamos.
XXVI
That he did thus thrust them out of view
appears undeniable, and this not only with regard
to celestial bodies. From his high place as a
member of the Triad, Aidoneus must have been at
some time and place a great, perhaps a supreme
divinity ; but while he is relegated to the Under-
world, he is never named in prayers relating to it,
and there is but little sign of his performing any
function there. But this method of relegation was
practised by him in a manner which is even start-
ling. It even seems as though he meant to make
it the ordinary abode of the Nature-Powers. This
appears from the Address of Achilles, in //. XXIII.
144, to the Shade of Patroclos, in which he
intrusts his friend, now on his way to Hades, with
a message for the River-God Spercheios.
XXVII
Further indications of this remarkable anta-
gonism to nature worship are found, inter alia : —
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 79
1. In its marking off the religion of Troas from
that of Greece.
2. In the repression of Demeter who, though
she had been, like Leto, a consort of Zeus, is no
more than a lay figure in the Poems.
3. In his never confounding Zeus with atmo-
sphere, or Poseidon with water, and in the broad
severance of Nereus who dwells in the hollows of
the sea, and is only named indirectly.
4. In his similarly severing Hephaistos from
fire, except in one instance where the old or alien
usage as it were peeps into the Poems (//. II. 426)}
5. From his changing the symbols of animal
life, which the Egyptians had incorporated with
their Divinities into more remote and purely
poetical relations, as in the cases of Here and
Apollo.
XXVIII
By these and other such like devices, Homer gets
rid of what, from proximity and wide extension, may
have been the most formidable competitors with
his Olympian figures. But the facts of purely local
worship were, without doubt, too palpable for him
^ This seems to be the only clear case. In several instances we
have the expression_^^;p Hephaistoio.
8o LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
to overcome, or overlook. The Olympian unity,
which he was an agent, perhaps a main agent, in
achieving, was the only unity that the case
admitted, but it was a literary and political unity,
probably most helpful in transmitting the religion,
but not governing or superseding local or pagan
usages, not without their counterpart in other
religions. Hence, as to divine personages of an
inferior order, like the Nymphs {Od. XIII. 356
et alibi), he does not interfere, but simply allows
the facts to stand. We have, however, in Ithaca
a sort of blurred picture, which seems at one
moment to be Apollo, and at another Helios.
Here he uses the artifice of avoiding nomenclature,
and referring to the holiday as sacred to the
ruling deity (ioio theoio, Od. XXI. 258). We
seem here to see the Olympian Apollo gradually
effacing the old Nature-Power.
XXIX
On this subject there is no point more obscure
than that which arises out of the twinship of
Apollo and Artemis. In the Poems they are
invested with resemblances sufficient for their
relationship as brother and sister. But Artemis,
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 8i
pure as well as beautiful, and thus in contrast
with Aphrodite, has not the lofty features which
lift Apollo above the merely Olympian level.
The anomaly offered by this twinship may have
for its explanation a joint worship of Sun and
Moon in the previously existing nature cult.
The light epithets which place Apollo in affinity
with a Sun - god have their analogue in the
Chrusenios and Chncselakate of Artemis. And it
seems as if the distaff was assigned to her as in
correspondence with the bow of her brother. All
this relates to the Achaian and Olympian sphere.
Into a foreign sphere the Poet is too good a work-
man to carry his Achaian particularities. The
Artemis of the Theomachy is a Trojan goddess
and may represent a tradition of the all-producing
Earth like the later Ephesian Artemis. In this
view she is appropriately matched with Here, in
whom we have the Hellenised form of the Earth
tradition, and who therefore chastises in her a
personal rival (//. XXII. 489). The reproach of
Artemis to Apollo {ibid, 472), is appropriate not
to her sisterhood, but to her foreign attributes as
Nature-Power.
82 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD Y sec.
XXX
The position of Demeter in the Poems illus-
trates effectively the same vital element of the
system. It is evident from the later Eleusinian
tradition, and from the worship-chart of Pausanias,
where she stands fourth in the number of her
temples, that she was a great divinity in the local
cult of the Greek Peninsula. She seems to be
marked as elemental by the epithets xanthe and
euplokamos taken from the corn ; as we have in
Propertius excutit et flavas aurea terra comas.
Yet she is mentioned but seven times in the
Poems, and has no part in the action of the story,
Her name, as a form of Earth- Mother, Ge Meter.
appears to tell its own tale. She does not appear
among the Trojan party in the Theomachy ;
being probably the Earth-deity of the Peninsula
and not of the foreign sphere. The Trojans
worshipped Gaia (//. III. 102-103).
XXXI
The high art of the Poet is nowhere more
notably exhibited than in his religious adjust-
ments. While endeavouring to subdue the exotic
traditions into his Olympian unity he avoids
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 83
such forms of proceeding as would have placed him
in sharp collision with them. It may be from
this cause, and in any case it appears to be the
fact, that where one of his deities has an exotic
background belonging to the old religion of the
country, he takes care not to place in the
Olympian court, which implies a governing office,
any other deity having similar attributes. Apollo
has a solar background, and accordingly Helios has
no place in the Achaian system. Here is founded
on the Earth tradition ; so in like manner Demeter
becomes a purely negative personage. But in the
Theomachy, which is not an Achaian picture, the
actual duels are between competing claimants for
the same prerogative. Here and Artemis as to the
Earth tradition ; Athene and Ares (not yet a
naturalised Achaian divinity) as gods of war.
XXXII
The idea of Theanthropy is worked out not
only in the characters of divinities individually,
but in their political society ; which is made to
correspond with the established form of Achaian
polity on earth in its triform organisation. Zeus,
as its head, holds a position markedly analogous
84 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY
to that of Agamemnon. The Court or minor
assembly of Olympos is certainly called Agore by
the Poet, but it corresponds to the Boule or
Council of the higher Achaian chiefs. The
greater assembly of //. XX. corresponds with the
assembly of the army in Troas, of the people in
Ithaca. It has before it the greatest question,
that of the part the gods themselves are personally
to take in settling the final crisis of Troy : as the
army is summoned to consider the Return in //.
II. ; and as the Ithacan assembly in Od. XXIV.
treats of the situation created by the slaughter
of the Suitors. This close correspondence, when
compared with the confusion of the Assyrian and
Egyptian mythologies, seems to exhibit in a vivid
light the symmetry of the Greek mind.
XXXIII
The researches of the last generation have
supplied materials for proving that Homer was
acquainted with Egyptian and Phoenician ideas,
and has largely dealt with them. Yet more
recently, we have had similar evidence produced
with respect to Babylonian and Assyrian records.
It has also become plain that the Hebrew
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 85
traditions of the earliest Scripture were drawn
from a source common to the ancestors of other
nations as well as the Hebrews. There is thus no
antecedent improbability that the ancestors of the
Achaians had access to these venerable traditions
before their separation from the common stock, and
had transmitted them down to the contemporaries
of the Poet ; although there is room on the other
hand, at least at first sight, for the contention that
these also were acquired through the medium of
Phoenicia.
XXXIV
But the evidence of the Poems goes to show
that the Achaian Greeks had some direct acquaint-
ance with these primeval traditions. The Homeric
conception of a Trine Government of the world,
though moulded according to the exigencies of
the ' Olympian system, is not without features
of originality, tending to show that it may have
been more than a mere copy from contemporary
mythologies. Still less could he thus have found
materials for his Apollo, who holds a great saving
office, and whose will is identified with that of
Zeus ; or for his Athene, who represents the
Supreme Wisdom afterwards conceived of, possibly
86 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
on a traditional basis, as the logos. Without
pursuing further the extraordinary attributes and
prerogatives of these divinities in the Poems, it
seems obvious that they correspond with the two
great phases of the Messianic idea. The Iris of
Homer is inexplicable except as an impersonation
of the rainbow, conceived as that phenomenon is
conceived in the Book of Genesis. His treatment
of the serpent and the tree is closely analogous
to the method in which he manipulates other
exotic ideas, so as to bring them into correspond-
ence with his theanthropic basis. Other particulars
not few in number might be specified in detail.
XXXV
It may be remarked generally that, if the
sources of many markedly Homeric presentations
are to be found in the Hebrew traditions, or at the
fountain-head from which those traditions may have
been drawn, the mode of presentation is absolutely
distinct, less ethical and spiritual, more imagina-
tive and poetical. But we seem to trace in him
at least remainders and tokens of many among
the great moral conceptions, of which the early
chapters of Genesis may be a parable as well as
a history.
Ill HOMER AS RELIGION-MAKER 87
XXXVI
There is not found in the Homeric Poems any
reminiscence which points either to the creation or
the formation of the world or of the heavenly bodies,
or to the succession of animated life upon this globe.
There is no reference to the elements of which we
are made, except in the line (//. VII. 99), which
signifies, that our bodies are to be resolved after
death into earth and water. There are traces of a
war in heaven, a rebellion in high places. There
is a probable trace of the tradition of the Flood, so
widely spread elsewhere.^ The Poet gives no dis-
tinct record of anything like a golden age, but in two
particular forms we have indications akin to those
upon which it was founded. One is in some of the
repeated references to the superior physical force
possessed by the earlier generations of men. The
other is in the divine descent of royalty at large,
signified in his two remarkable epithets, Diotrephes
and Diogenes, which correspond with the popular
Egyptian tradition given by Herodotos.
XXXVII
Only in the Thearchy, not in human history or
^ See itif. , the Essay at the close of the volume.
88 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec hi
legend, have we a distinct recognition of prior
periods, sharply severed from the present. Here
we find —
1. The reference to Okeanos, as the source of
all life : still severed, though in abdication, and
having no tie of lineage with the present.
2. The reference to Kronos, parent or an-
cestor of Zeus, but deposed, and holding a position
related to that of the alien and subdued powers,
who pass by the name of Titans.
3. The recital of the convulsion in Olympos,
in which the throne and liberty of Zeus were
threatened, but through the resource and agency of
Thetis (who represents both the old Nature dynasty
and the new Hellenic ideas) an accommodation
was effected, and the Thearchy securely established
on the basis on which it appears in the Poems.
Also there are other minor indications.
XXXVIII
The two ideas in Homer that are really
cardinal, central, generative, are the nation, and
its reflection in the Thearchy, or Olympian society.
All remaining subjects will be treated much more
succinctly.
SECTION IV
RUDIMENTS OF ETHICS
With the progress of wealth and the multiplication
of natural wants and comforts there grows up, as
society becomes older, a new system of social ethics.
Or rather, the preceding and more primitive system
is both enlarged and braced in one of its provinces,
while it is relaxed and lowered in others. If we take
the three departments of good life as godly, righteous,
and sober, or in other words as piety towards God,
regard for relative rights, and the government of
ourselves, morality may be found advancing under
the second of these heads, at least in regard to
property, while under the first and third of them
it recedes. Such I conceive will be found to be
the case with the morality of Greece in its classical
90 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
age, as compared with the morality of the Achaian
age represented in Homer.
II
The idea of sin, which is effaced from the
thought and conscience, and even from the speech
(so far as I know) of historic Greece, is powerfully
though not perfectly represented in the Poems by
the remarkable expression atasthali^.^''. <i\^(r%<KJ(\f
Atasthalie does not signify merely a debilitated
and disordered state of nature, or the victory of
violent or seductive passion over opposing forces
in man, but it means perverse, conscious, hardened,
offending against an external law of righteousness.
Most curious is the treatment of this subject by
Zeus in the divine assembly of the First Odyssey,
where he says, " How do men accuse the gods ? for
they say that from us proceed their woes ; but
they also themselves through their atasthaliai
have sorrows which come upon them despite of,
and as overruling, the law of destiny." For destiny
and its results he accepts the responsibility of a
governor, but not for the further mischiefs im-
ported into our lot by the element of a will of
ours, independent and perverse.
RUDIMENTS OF ETHICS
III
In an altogether lower order of offence stands
the act of yielding to Ate the temptress, who is
ever busy among men : ate^ he pantas aatai^ II.
XIX. 91, 129. It is indeed a fault to yield, and
men must take the consequences of their fault,
as Agamemnon in the case of his offence against
Achilles {ibid. 137) ; but the gods have their re-
sponsibility, for Ate is the elder daughter of Zeus
{ibid. 91), who is himself sometimes a sufferer by
her deceiving arts {ibid. 126-129), though she is
not mentioned as acting upon deity except from
without. Agamemnon, while accepting the con-
sequences, seems to refer the blame to Zeus and
the higher powers, who introduced Ate within his
soul {ibid. 86-89).
IV
The Atasthalie of Homer seems to hold to his
Ate a relation resembling that between the kakia
and the akrasia of Aristotle : the one indicating
innate mischief, the other only inadequate means
of defence against evil when it solicits from with-
out. But neither of these have any reference to a
92 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
divine or objective la\y, whereas both the Homeric
conceptions have to do with the realities of religion ;
the greater one as a distinct and seemingly always
fatal and unpardoned offence, the other as a
liability occurring dimly, and not without the
concurrence or allowance of the gods.
If it be asked, in what relation do the Achaian
ethics stand to the Olympian gods ? the answer )
will be complex and in the main unsatisfactory.
It is when the Poet refers to theos or theoi without
specification that the citation is usually made in the
interest of righteousness. Chastity and purity as
such are not under the guardianship of the gods
personally made known to us ; but the precinct of
the family is very sacred as we perceive from the
quasi -personification of Histi^, the hearth {Od,
XIV. I 59). And the poor, with the suppliant, are
placed everywhere under the protection of Zeus.
Collective morality, in the conduct of nations, is
more in the province of the gods than morality
merely personal. But Homer places all morality
in connection with the supernatural ordier by the
sublime conception of the Eriniies, which degen-
IV RUDIMENTS OF ETHICS 93
crated, perhaps about the fifth century B.C., into
the baser one of the Furies. In the Hiketides of
iEschylus the transition is about taking place, and
these singular personages are presented in both
the competing characters — that is to say, as
priestesses, so to speak, of the moral order, and
as the avengers of crime.
VI
The ethical character of the Achaian civilisa-
tion is exhibited on its favourable side in the
Poems by the following characteristics : —
I. The very high position assigned to women,
and the purity and charm of the delineations of
them.
2-. The lofty conception of marriage, especially
on the side of the wife.
3. The great strength of the family affections.
4. The absence from Achaian life of all the
extreme forms of sin.
5. The stringency of the obligation to regard
the suppliant, the stranger, and the poor.
6. The association established between piety
towards the gods, and the sense of duty towards
man {Od. VI. 120, 121).
94 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
7. The early development of a genuine courtesy
and refinement in manners.
8. The strong habit of self-government, which
implied regard and veneration for an internal
standard or law of nature.
9. A marked deference in the individual to the
moral judgments of the community (//. IX. 459,
460) ascribed to a divine infusion.
10. The noble sense of political duty on the
part of sovereigns, exhibited in the speech of
Sarpedon to Glaukos (//. XII. 310-322), and in
the kingly rule of Odysseus.
1 1. With a strong sense of social enjoyment
there was combined an aversion to excess. In
the case of drunkenness this amounted to a sort
of contempt towards it as involving degradation.
VII
In these capital respects there was, speaking
generally, a decline in the ethical standard of
classical Greece as compared with that of the
heroic age. The large exhibition of Hebrew
character in the Old Testament, which may with
some latitude be called a contemporary exhibition,
IV RUDIMENTS OF ETHICS ' 95
affords a better ground for comparison between
Hebrews and Achaians, than pre-historic or remote
antiquity elsewhere supplies. So far as I am
able to discern, the average Hebrew of the earlier
historical Books of Scripture falls short of rather
than exceeds in moral stature the Achaian Greek.
VIII
On the other hand, among the weaker points
of Achaianism as compared with the classical
time were these —
1. A low value set upon human life, so that
the homicide, who has offended through passion,
though he has to fly from the spot in order to
escape from the vengeance of the relatives, yet
obtains a reception elsewhere without difficulty.
2. Freebooting, presumably among strangers,
is not held to be an offence.
3. Revenge for wrongs received is carried to a
great or even brutal length, as by Achilles against
the Trojans for the death of Patroclos, and by
Odysseus in putting to death all the unchaste
among the women-servants, who had had to attend
on the Suitors in his absence.
96 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec. iv
4. If all kinds of wanton cruelty are absent on
the one hand, neither do we find the quality of
mercy, properly so called, on the other.
5. A vein of fraud with a view to gain in
transactions is tacitly admitted even into high
characters like that of Diomed, to wit in the ex-
change with Glaukos (//. VI. 232-236).
SECTION V
RUDIMENTS OF POLITICS
The politics of Homer contain ideas, hardly ex-
hibited elsewhere in a state of vitality and pro-
minence by the literature of the succeeding ages,
or of antiquity at large. These ideas seem like
a river which has sprung from its source in a
limestone country, and has again been buried in
the fissures of the rock ; but after a time it again
escapes from darkness into light, with its waters
clear as before. So the revived conceptions have
come to be incorporated in modern history.
II
First, the Poet sets a high value on the personal
freedom of the human being as such, and slavery
H
98 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec
seems to wear in his eyes none of the sacredness
of an ancient established institution. In the view
of Homer, apart from all incidental abuses (and
of these it must be admitted that we have no
pointed notice), it cripples and dwarfs the person
enslaved. By the ordinance of God, says he, on
the day when a man becomes a slave he loses
half his manhood {Od. XVII. 322). And it is
remarkable that when Achilles, worn and wearied
with the Underworld, would rather be in the
service even of a poor employer on the face of the
earth, it is in his service for hire, and not as a
slave {Od. XL 489-491). It seems that in his
emphatic condemnation of slavery the Poet has in
view not corporal suffering but moral results.
Ill
We have no case, in all the Poems, of the slave's
misery or the master's abuse of his power.
There is not found in them a purer character,
in point of piety or of relative duties, than
Eumaios, the dios htiphorbos of the Odyssey^ who
was kidnapped in his youth, and was the slave of
Odysseus.
Odysseus himself, at the proper time, kisses, on
V RUDIMENTS OF POLITICS 99
the wrist, Dolios, the slave-gardener of Penelope
{Od. XXIV. 398) ; the six sons of Dolios seized
his hands {ibid. 410) ; and the whole family-
aided him in fight (497-499).
There are masters and slaves, but there is no
community or class of masters as such, or slaves
as such ; while there is a class distinction between
the wealthy or well-to-do, agathoi^ and the poorer,
cJierees {Od. XV. 324). Slaves can possess pro-
perty, and may, as in the case of Eumaios, hold
other slaves. Familiarity between masters and
domestic slaves has been known in modern times,
and was carried to a high point in the Southern
States of America; but it has prevailed much less
as to predial slaves. There is no mention of slaves
in the army before Troy.
IV
Another characteristic and singularly striking
idea of the Poems is the power of the spoken
word. It is a wonderful fact that, in those times,
word and sword should stand together and in
equal honour. It is the spoken word which
agitates and sways and sometimes even converts
the crowded assembly. The great epithet kudi-
lOO LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V sec
aneira, glory-giving, is used exclusively for the
agore and the battle. In the Odyssey (VI 1 1. 169-
173) this gift seems to be treated as superior to
beauty, even to godlike beauty. And, though we
are probably closing the third millennium from
Homer, the intervening time has produced no
nobler specimens of oratory than some of those
found in the Poems.
At that early stage in the social career of man,
we find the oratory in the Poems singularly
diversified. In the Trojan assemblies there is
hardly a trace of the art. Among the Achaians,
we have the bluntness of Aias, the chivalrous
ardour of Diomed, so effective by downrightness
and straightforwardness, the persuasive calmness
of Nestor, the comprehensiveness and art of
Odysseus, with perfect array of his resources, all
strictly addressed to the end in view ; the
grandeur of Achilles, impassioned and almost
Titanic, but ranging (to borrow a musical term)
over the entire register of human feeling, and
always checking emotion at the point where,
through extravagance, it would become false in art.
RUDIMENTS OF POLITICS
VI
Scope is given for the action of collective
opinion first in the Boide or Council ; where Aga-
memnon has a primacy, but nothing more. The
speech of Nestor (//. 11. 29), advising concurrence
in the scheme of Agamemnon, has the tone of
an entirely free assent. In the critical meeting
of //. XIV. Odysseus sternly resists the device of
Agamemnon (82 seqq}), who accepts the rebuke
{ibid. 1 04) ; and Diomed will not hear of retreat.
VII
The speeches made in the Assemblies are such
as befit bodies which really deliberate. The speech
of Thersites indeed is followed by blows from
Odysseus, but the Poet is careful to record that
the punishment inflicted had the approval of Tis.
Now Tis is a character of great importance in the
Poems. He is the impersonal representative of a
dispassionate and free public opinion, collecting
and expressing the sum of the case. And the
existence of such a form of speech testifies to the
habitual formation and expression of such opinion,
I02 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUD V sec.
and shows that, even in the atmosphere of the
camp, there was a breath and flavour of liberty.
The mode of assent in an Assembly is manly
and becoming. In Ithaca a large party dissents,
and these quit the meeting (Od. XXIV. 464).
In the Assembly of //. IX. 32, Diomed resists
outright the proposal of Agamemnon, declares
that, whatever others may do, he and Sthenelos
will remain, and carries the day against his chief
by the acclamation of the army (ibid. 5 o).
VIII
Mr. Grote has, by his notice,^ given dignity to
a half verse, ascribed to Homer, but nowhere, so
far as is known, admitted by the Ancients into the
text. It ascribes to Agamemnon the power of life
and death. The possession of such a power would
have been in opposition to the pervading spirit of
the Poems throughout their whole extent. Had
it been genuine, this scrap of four words {^par gar
emoi thanatos) would surely have found illustration
and support from some other portion of the text
But there is no such thing in Homer, among the
proper instruments of government, as arbitrary
^ History of Greece^ vol. ii. p. 86, n.
V RUDIMENTS OF POLITICS 103
power. Power works in conjunction with reason.
On the other hand, civil authority is always treated
as flowing directly from Zeus, a fact which invests
it with sanctity, but which is entirely compatible
with its limitation.
IX
It is a seeming exception to the statement in
the last paragraph, that on the tumultuary disper-
sal of the Assembly in the Second Iliad^ Odysseus,
in his bold struggle to rally and recall it, ex-
postulates with the chiefs, but strikes the common
soldier while upbraiding him (//. II. 200). This
however is a time of great and indeed desperate
straits, a time therefore of exception, when risks
have to be run ; and it is not the mere runaway
whom he treats thus roughly, but the runaway who
is also shouting to others in order to inflame the
panic.
X
The body politic, as we see it in the Poems, and
in the several princedoms or sovereignties, rather
than in the central primacy or supremacy, is a
regular organism, potentially complete ; but it is
so to speak in the gristle, not having hardened
I04 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
into bone. Its rules of action are customary and
unwritten. There is no such thing as law in the
sense of something formulated and enacted ; and
the word for it (nomos) is not found in the Poems.
There are however fundamental though undefined
principles, which are personified in the goddess
Themis, and are habitually called Themistes in the
Poems. They are the adamantine links of social
order, and have in them a strong element of
morality.
XI
This God-given power of rulers, which takes
effect in action by means of counsel, has to do
with priestly functions, at least within the Hellenic
precinct. So Agamemnon presides at the sacrifice
of the Poet in the Third Iliad^ and Nestor at the
festival of Poseidon in Od. III. Nor have we any
mention of a priest at the Court of Alkinoos.
The administration of justice between man and
man was also a cardinal function of the sovereign.
The language in //. II. 201 and elsewhere seems
as if it were personally exercised ; but in //. XVIII.
(497-508), on the Shield, the suit is tried by a
body of elders as judges in the face of the people.
V RUDIMENTS OF POLITICS 105
Thirdly, they had the duty of leadership in war ;
and finally, they possessed endowments in land,
which appertained to them as discharging these
duties (//. XII. 313). Kingship, even in Ithaca,
brings wealth ; and Telemachos, in the event of
surrendering it, looks to falling back upon the
estate and the serfs whom Odysseus had obtained
for him by predatory enterprise {Od. I. 392-398).
XII
. Between the Trojan and the Achaian assemblies
there are marked distinctions. First, as has been
remarked,^ as to oratory. Secondly, there is no-
where an indication of differences in popular senti-
ment, and the supremacy of Hector seems to be
unquestioned. Thirdly, the word commonly used
to signify the acceptance by the people of what
may have been proposed is keladesan, they rattled or
clattered their assent : a term never applied to the
decisions of the Achaian Assembly. Lastly, and
perhaps most important of all, there is no Tis, no
organ of a spontaneous, equitable, and pervading
sentiment, of what we term a public opinion.
^ Supra, V. p. 100.
SECTION VI
PLOT OF THE ILIAD
I
The work of Homer, as an Epic poet, is to incor-
porate Beauty and Grandeur, and whatever most
harmonises with them, in living action. In the
place he has chosen for this purpose, it appears that
nationality, or patriotism, supplies his governing aim.
And if this be allowed, then I further submit that
the plot of the Iliad is a product of the nicest and
most consummate constructive art. It may almost
be said that Achaianism breathes in every line of
it ; nay that, in some marked forms of licence, this
idea modifies, though without subverting, the higher
laws of poetry. The Poet seeks to fashion his
country, to glorify his country, to make known his
country's crown in the highest developments of
SEC. VI PLOT OF THE ILIAD 107
character, to which human nature, by the means
which were in his view, could reach.
II
While thus working intensely for Achaian
nationality as a whole, the Poet does not forget
local interests and feelings. He has contrived to
incorporate in the movement of the Iliad a variety
of scenes, which set forth the aristeia or prime per-
formances of the several chieftains of principal rank.
Arrangements of this kind are made first for
Achilles not only in the closing books but in the
whole structure of the Poem. Odysseus receives,
even after allowing for his civil action in the
Second Book and for his direction of the Doloneia,
less than his share, but then he was to be amply
compensated by becoming the protagonist of the
sister Poem. Besides these, there are no less than
six marked military presentations of as many
different chieftains : Agamemnon, Diomed, Aias,
Menelaos, Patroclos, and Idomeneus. This
arrangement, setting aside the case of Patroclos,
who is as a moon to set off the sun of Achilles, is
admirably adapted to the territorial distribution
of Greece before the Dorian conquest, and awards
io8 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY SEa
to each population its due share of honour and
of pleasure, as an itinerating minstrel, dependent
on his art for subsistence, might be expected to
award them.
Ill
In this arrangement, so viewed, it may be said
that I only indicate a personal and interested
purpose ; but there seems to be a very high
poetical purpose also. The colossal character of
Achilles requires the Poet to bridge over the
interval between him and common men. The
intermediate grandeur of these personages, who
are as satellites placed around him, not only
sets off and enhances his surpassing magnitude,
but also helps to keep it within the bounds of the
natural. Could we by laceration sever an Achilleis
from an Ilias, I believe the delineation of the great
hero would at once be more extravagant and less
effective ; would strain us more, and impress us
less.
IV
Considering Homer in his double relation, at
once to his subject and to his . auditory in the
Greek Peninsula, we perceive that the task he had
VI PLOT OF THE ILIAD 109
to perform was one requiring the most profound
skill. He had to give to each and all of the
Achaian warriors, who stood in the first class, a
decisive predominance over such champions as
Troy could set against them. For, unless he had
rigidly observed this condition, he would have
imparted a painful shock to national feeling. And
yet he had to contrive that the Trojans as a body
should reduce the Achaians, manifestly their
superiors in war, to the last extremities, inasmuch
as this was the only method by which Achilles
could either be sufficiently glorified, or brought
anew into the field to re-establish the fortunes of
the enterprise.
It was also necessary that the Trojan warriors
individually, while in each case palpably inferior,
should, notwithstanding, not appear to be con-
temptible, but should be such that there would be
credit in beating them. Nay, he had to invest
Hector with such powers as would make him a
presentable match for Achilles. And yet Hector,
carefully observed through the vicissitudes of the
field, is in reality inferior to all the Greek chieftains
no LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
whom he has to encounter : to Aias, to Diomed,
and (apart from the intervention of Apollo) to
Patroclos. There is not a single Trojan chieftain
who has the true Achaian fibre. We find it only
among the allies of Troy, in the persons of Sar-
pedon and Glaukos ; and it is evident that these,
as Lycians, have some racial affinity with Greece.
Nor is there a single case in which any Achaian
of the first, or even the second order, is slain
in fair fight by a Trojan. It is by the bow,
and from the safe distance it allows, that the
great Achaian chieftains are ingloriously disabled.
VI
To these difficult conditions the Poet has con-
formed, and I think with a perfect success, except
in the case of Patroclos. Here the jealousy of
Homer for Achaian honour has led him, as it
appears to me, to the use of a clumsy expedient,
which must be esteemed a poetical defect. Second-
ary aid from a divinity is one thing, as where
Athene, in XXH. 276, restores to Achilles the
spear which he had launched. Her principal
trick is to personate Deiphobos (XXH. 226), and
to persuade Hector to fight by the hope of being
VI , nOT OF THE ILIAD ill
two to one. But against Patroclos Apollo actually
fights, so as to cripple and virtually almost destroy
him, after which he is wounded from behind by
Euphorbos, and nothing of substance remains for
Hector to do (//. XVI. 791, 806, 850).
VII
There is not a single book of the Iliad^ any
more than of the Odyssey^ which, when judged by
the proper standard, is not found to be contributory
to its end. For example, the Doloneia or night-
raid of Book X. is wanted to give to Odysseus
such a share in the action as his greatness, and
especially his manysidedness, require. The con-
trivance is a double one, by which the diversified
feats of the Achaian warriors are at once ; to
exhibit their martial superiority, and yet to fail in
their main purpose of sustaining the cause, so that
they may create an overwhelming necessity for the
protagonist to encounter and overcome. The
more brilliant their performances are in themselves,
the more overpowering is the pre-eminence of him
who does what they cannot do. There is a subtlety
of adaptation in this arrangement such, as it may
not be easy to indicate in any other Epic.
LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY
VIII
Attention may be especially directed to the
s)<ill with which the case of Odysseus is treated
ifei the Iliad. For this end let us consider what
ifDnditions were required. It was needful that he
• should in all things be worthy to be coupled with
Achilles as a brother protagonist, and yet that he
should not in any way compete with him, as such
a rivalry would have marred the central purpose
of the Iliad. It was needful also to leave to such
warriors as Diomed and Aias a place second
to none but the colossal warrior. Accordingly
Odysseus is kept out of competition with them,
and his great powers as a soldier are indicated
rather than described. Yet he is the twin of a
rth nearly superhuman : he is the many-minded,
tHe all-accomplished, the never baffled. His sur-
assing political energy is exhibited in the Second
^^ook ; in the Ninth, his oratory ; in the Tenth his
fresources in the craft of war ; in the Twenty-Third
his vast physical force. Even his peculiar strength
of domestic affection is significantly exhibited in
//. II. 260 by his reference to his son, which has
not any parallel in the Poem.
VI PLOT OF THE ILIAD 113
IX
Homer differed from all, or almost all, epic
poets in this, that he sang of men so much moi t
than of things. This might probably be illustrated
by showing what proportion of the lines in Xki^IlL d
are thrown into speeches, and comparing it with t e
corresponding proportion in other Poems. But
the case admits of a larger view. In the " Tale
of Troy divine," Troy is wholly subservient For
Troy, and for the war of Troy, the Poem has no
beginning, and no ending. Not so for the glory
and character of the " man " whose " wrath " the
Poet sang. It is as if he had had a forethought
of the painter's and the sculptor's secret, that the
consummation and perfection of their work lie in
the human form.
X
The greatest among the structural peculiarities
of the Iliad is the twofold and parallel movemet^ .
of the Olympian and the human agencies, eaf/-
of them so fully developed in speech, individua.
character, and action, that either might almost be
conceived of as an Epic in itself without the other ;
so complete in each is the elaboration of the parts,
and the determination of their relation to the whole.
I
SECTION VII
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS
The Geography of the Poems, and of the Odyssey
in particular, is not a mere question of delimita-
tions upon the surface of the earth, but is a key-
to their ethnography, which in its turn is a key
to manners and religion, in a word to the most
central part of their contents. This geography
of the Odyssey has been thoroughly vitiated and
obscured by the action of spurious Latin tradition,
which forcibly accommodated Homer to the exi-
gencies of a Roman dynasty and a South Italian
Poem. In this manner the scheme of the Odyssey
has been reduced from a basis which, though inde-
terminate, is, when viewed with due reference to
the circumstances of the Poet and his means of
SEC. VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 115
information, entirely rational, to a tissue not only
of fable but of something near absurdity.
II
It may be well to select a case, in order to
illustrate the determined recklessness of the Latin
representations of Odyssean geography. It habit-
ually identifies the island of Aiolos {Od. X. i)
with Stromboli. Now in the way of such an
identification there stand the following facts :
1. From this island, a continuance of Zephuros,
say N.N.W. wind, carries the ship straight home-
wards until it has sighted Ithaca ; that is to
say, right across the Italian Peninsula.
2. The island of Aiolos is one, and apparently
solitary ; whereas the Lipari islands are many.
3. Stromboli is mentioned without either moun-
tain or volcano, a double objection for any one who
has passed by it at sea, since, to the eye of the
voyager, it is simply a volcanic mountain, with
nothing else projecting from the main.
4. The time given is nine days and nights from
the Cyclop-land. But, as the same tradition
places that land in Sicily, the time allowed is
incompatible with other adjustments between space
Ii6 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
and time, such as the five days from Crete to
Egypt, nearly double the distance as the crow flies.
Ill
The geography of the Iliad may be said to have
generally the same limits as the personal ex-
perience of Homer, if we may include in that
phrase, together with what he had seen, what he
had the means of learning from adequate, easy,
and diversified sources of information. There will
still be exceptions ; as in the noteworthy survey by
Zeus of the country beyond the Balkans in //. XIII.
3-6 (which probably illustrates the far-reaching
action of the god), and the reference in II. 857
to the silver mines of Alube. The Poet may
personally have had a coast knowledge of Western
Asia Minor, and the text of the Trojan Catalogue
pretends to no more. He was probably acquainted
with the plain of Troy, but in a loose manner :
for the descriptions, while they are stamped with
local features, and highly picturesque, have not
been shown to be accurate.
IV
Schliemann has argued, with high probability,
VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 117
that the site of Troy was on the hill of Hissarlik.^
This argument is favoured by one, or more, marked
indications of the text. But it is understood that
there are to be further excavations, under the
same generous auspices, with a view to more
ample means of judgment. Meantime the field of
choice has been narrowed. Eckenbrecher has
proved to a demonstration that the site was not,
according to the evidence of the Poems, on the
rock of Bounarbashi,^ as it had been somewhat
fashionable to assume.
It will be allowed on all hands that the geo-
graphy peculiar to the Odyssey in the voyages of
Odysseus has no relation whatever to the personal
experience of the Poet, unless it be within the
limit of the Odyssean dominions. It thus happens
to be very nearly the fact that each of the Poems
has a geography to itself.
For the sake of convenience I term the precinct
^ Troy andits Remains, by Dr. Henry Schliemann, Murray, 1875;
Homeric Synchronism, by W. E. G., pp. 22-31.
2 Die Lage des Homerischejt Troja, Dlisseldorf, 1875 ; Ueber
die Lage des Hoinerischen Ilion, in the Rheinisches Museum, 1842 ;
Homeric Synchronism, p. 22.
ii8 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
of the Iliadic geography the Inner Zone, and the
peculiar sphere of the Odyssey the Outer Zone.
VI
An important subdivision, belonging to the Inner
Zone, is presented by the dominions of Odysseus.
They are in four provinces or departments : Douli-
chion, Same, Zante, and Ithaca. The Doulichian
force is placed under Meges in //. 11. 625-630,
but the Doulichian Suitors, though only a selection,
constitute half the entire number of those gathered
in Ithaca. The Poems nowhere describe Douli-
chion and Same as separate islands. I construe
them to be portions of what is now Cephalonia,
divided physically and socially in the midst by
the bay of Same and a neck of mountain land.
Here the name Dulichi still subsists, and the
position agrees fairly well with the expression of
Homer " over against Elis." Zante requires no
comment. The remarkable harbour of Ithaca is
well described in Od. XIII. 96-101, as is the
general contour and character of the island in
other passages.
VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 119
VII
As the Phoenicians were the only navigators
known to Homer who frequented either the
Euxine, or the Mediterranean westwards of Greece,
with the Ocean lying beyond, we are led at once
to the inference that the mariners of this race must
have been the sources of his information as to the
geography of the Outer Zone, and that his informa-
tion could only have been oral. Oral information
on geographical sites and distances, unchecked by
visible delineations, or by general knowledge of
the distribution of land and sea, were of necessity
subject to much misapprehension ; while the nar-
rators, dealing with one who was at their mercy,
had the double temptation, on the one hand, of
indulging in the marvellous, and on the other, of
so dressing their relations as not to invite possible
competitors into the regions from whence they
drew exclusive gains.
VIII
Moreover, as practical rather than scientific
mariners, they could only speak in general terms ;
their narratives could hardly be consistent one with
I20 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
another ; marked natural features would be easily
reported and remembered, yet without any adequate
means of fixing relative situation, and with a great
risk of amalgamating locally indications existing
at more than one place. We have also to bear
in mind that, in the state of knowledge then sub-
sisting, descriptions would sometimes mislead on
account of their very truthfulness in referring to
one and the same region contradictory phenomena,
which were indeed to be found there, but at different
times. Thus Homer had evidently been informed
that perpetual day, and also perpetual night, were
characteristics of the north. The only expedient
open to him was to interpose a great distance
between his Laistrugonians of the double day, and
his Kimmerians of the unending night. So again,
the accounts he would probably pick up of the
Bosporos, the Straits of Messina, and the Straits
of Gibraltar, would readily, and almost inevitably,
tend to fuse themselves in his mind into one de-
scription. A narrow sea-passage, a current through
it, and more or less of rocky shore, form the essence
in each case. And they were likely to run together
at the local point which, from any cause, had
most deeply impressed the mind of the Poet.
VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 121
IX
With these formidable difficulties the Poet
struggles as best he may, and exhibits an ingenuity
which is in thorough keeping with his higher gifts.
It is remarkable, considering the nature of the
task and the scantiness of the resources, that the
whole narrative he has woven together does not
contain any gross inconsistency as to its general
structure. Where he is at fault he simply, instead
of giving particulars, leaves us an hiatus. Thus at
several points of the great circuit we find ourselves
wholly without guidance. But this lapse into
silence bears witness to the importance of the
indications, in the cases where he has supplied
them.
X
And, in truth, he has contrived to furnish many
such tokens, which are for the most part utterly
disregarded in the Latin identifications. They
are contrived as follows —
1. As to direction, by naming the winds, by
the sun, and in one instance by the stars {Od. V.
270-277).
2. As to distance, by weather, and by the mode
122 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
of locomotion, which is either sailing, or rowing,
or floating on a raft, or swimming, together with
the number of days occupied in the several opera-
tions.
3. As to latitude, or distance northward, this is
conveyed through a change of climate indicated
by the use of fires otherwise than for food. See
particularly the great fire of the cavern of Kalupso
{Od. V. 59), where there was no cooking.
4. As to the identification of spots, by specify-
ing marked local features, as in the form of the
island of Thrinakie, and in the harbour of the
Laistrugones.
XI
The chief winds of Homer are Boreas and
Zephuros. Euros and Notos fill a smaller space
in the action. But these four winds do not closely
correspond with the four chief points of the com-
pass, as North, South, East, and West. Zephuros is
from W. northwards, and Boreas from N. principally
eastwards. Zephuros is the best defined, Euros
and Notos very indeterminate, but all seem to
cover at least several points of the compass. The
indications from sunset and sunrise in like manner
may be understood to range over an arc of the
VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 123
horizon corresponding with the variations at
different seasons.
XII
The voyage of Odysseus in the Outer Zone
may be taken to commence with his passing the
Malean Cape, and to close either upon the border-
land of Scherie, or upon the voyage to Ithaca,
which is represented vaguely as covering a large
distance. The several stages are : —
1. Land of the Lotophagoi.
2. Land of the Kuklopes.
3. Island of Aiolos.
4. Laistrugonie.
5. Aiaie, the island of Kirke.
6. The Underworld.
7. Aiaie, on his return.
8. Island of Thrinakie.
9. Ogugie, the island of Kalupso.
I o. Scherie, the land of the Phaiakes.
XIII
The indications given by Homer, as to the
situation of the several spots which mark the
stages, do not in all cases admit of verification.
It is only surprising that there is not more of
124 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec.
obscurity and confusion. Among cardinal points,
as conceived and arranged in the brain of Homer,
which can be established by reasoning from the
text, I place the following : —
1. The land of the Kuklopes is in the south.
2. The island of Aiolos lies to the north of
west from Ithaca.
3. The island of Calupso is in the far north.
4. Laistrugonie is also northern.
5. Aiaie lies to the eastward, and perhaps north
of east. But the site is vaguely conceived.
6. Thrinakie, with Scylla and Charybdis, lies
between Aiaie and Greece, on the way homeward.
7. Northward of the Greek Peninsula, there lies
(not the mass of the European continent but) a
great expanse of sea.
8. There is no trace of the existence of Italy
to be found in the Poems.
XIV
If these propositions be sound, their combined
effect will be to draw in rough outline the voyage
of Odysseus. It is begun under the influence of
Boreas, and the route lies by the south-west to
the west, north-west, north, and then south-east-
VII THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE POEMS 125
ward to the island of Thrinakie, lying east of
Greece. From this point he is driven back to
Ogugie in the far north ; and then brought over
sea, by the longest of his passages, to Scherie.
The voyage so viewed occupies about three-
quarters of ' the whole compass of the horizon.
The remaining quarter is covered by the tour of
Menelaos, as it is summarily described in Od.
IV. 81-86.
XV
Scherie is almost conclusively identified with
Corfu by the account given in Od. V. 281 of its
aspect from the north, as that of a shield, a nearly
level line along the sea, with a boss or upward pro-
jection. The northern coast of the island lies rather
low, with the very marked exception of Mount San
Salvador, which at a single point rises to a height
of near 3000 feet. Both the representation and the
reality are peculiar, and the resemblance is exact,
except in a single particular, namely, that the
" boss " on the line of coast is not in the middle,
but towards the eastern end. Homer's idea of
Scherie was probably derived from report, and is
much less precise than his account of Ithaca ; but
it appears reasonably to suffice for identification.
[26 LANDMARKS OF HOMERIC STUDY sec. vii
XVI
The interesting question remains, What was
Homer's idea of the figure into which the surface
of the earth, so largely conceived by him, was cast ?
This might perhaps be called his geotypy.
It seems a mistake to suppose he thought the
earth was like a plate, although undoubtedly he
conceived that it had bounds, which were supplied
by the great river Okeanos. He plainly believed
that the Underworld lay beneath the ground on
which we walk, and at no immeasurable distance
from it. He believed also that access to the
Underworld was to be had by passing to the
extremity of the land in an eastern region, and
then crossing Okeanos. Finally, the sun, in his
course from one day to another, passed over the
mouth of the Underworld, so that he could threaten
{Od. Xn. 382, 383) if offended to stop, or enter
in, and shine there. Apparently the conception
of the Poet concerning the earth approximated
to the idea of sphericity, but we should perhaps
suppose a slice cut off from the lower side.
On the Points of Contact between the
Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric
Text
The picture of the Homeric world, belonging to
the period when legend hardens into history, lies
within the range of that comparative science which
of late has done so much to illuminate antiquity.
But we step beyond the process of collecting and
comparing allied phenomena, when circumstances
enable us to arrange them in order of time, or to
connect them, such as they appear in one country,
by affiliation, with their yet older forms manifested
in another.
To this purpose, the condition of Homeric
Greece is eminently favourable. Although the
Greek Peninsula is surrounded at all points of the
circle by masses of land as well as sea, all the
solid and operative traditions of the Poems, all
that exercised an influence in developing the
nation, came from within one-fourth part of that
128 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
circumference, lying to the South and South East,
and came over sea with the ships of the Phoenicians.
We are thus directed by geographical indications
to certain quarters, and especially to Syria, Assyria,
and Egypt. By the aid of Egyptian discoveries, it
has been found possible to trace into that country
much that we find in the Poems, and to draw
from the connection thus established some lights
that help to clear the early history of Greece.^
And the time seems now to have arrived, when it
may be reasonably attempted to show, from the
Babylonian and Assyrian monuments, how numer-
ous appear to be the points of contact between
them and the Homeric text Apart from the
wider investigations of comparative science, it is
matter of legitimate interest to trace upwards to
their source, through the channels now opened, a
portion at least of the influences which have oper-
ated in moulding the Greek nation, and thus
somewhat to advance at a point of capital interest
the important work, now in progress, of recon-
stituting piecemeal the earlier records of our race.
I have already made some slight efforts in this
^ Lauth, Homer und ^gypten ; Homeric Synchronism^ 1876,
part ii.
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 129
province of inquiry ; ^ but increased knowledge is
now accessible, and with it increased evidence of
Babylonian derivation. In particular, the points are
numerous, which appear to associate the indications
of the Poems with the Babylonian cosmogonies and
theological systems. Those indications indeed are
not abundant. The simple and healthy realism
of Homer indisposed him alike to physics and to
metaphysics. But, as respects the origin of things.
Homer has given us at least one decisive indication.
The great encircling river Okeanosis the parent of
the gods themselves (//. XIV. 301, 302) and of
their entire number {ibid. 245) ; or, in other words,
water is the origin of all things. Hence, no doubt,
it is that this ancient and venerable, though purely
elemental. Power is treated by the Poet with such
singular respect, and is not called, like the other
elemental powers, to appear in the great Olympian
Assembly (//. XX. 7), where with them he would
only have taken a secondary rank.
Now it is a priori most unlikely that this could
have been an original conception of the Poet's
brain. The Poems are intensely pervaded by the
theanthropic principle, and at all points they
^ Homeric Synchronism, pp. 230, 234.
K
I30 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
depress and repel merely elemental conceptions.
To place, therefore, an elemental personage in the
relation of parent to all the ruling divinities is
therefore a somewhat gross anomaly. The
force of this idea will be most clearly seen, if we
bear in mind how venerable in Homer's eyes were
parentage and seniority —
oT(rO^ (OS 7rp€(r/3vT€poi(rLV 'E/oivvcs alev eirovrai.^
And again in the light of the shift, to which the
Poet has been driven in order to save at once
his general principle and the integrity of this
particular conception. For surely it is a shift
to save the dignity of Okeanos by excluding him
from the divine assembly. It was likely, then, that
the notion of an oceanic origin of things came
to him from a foreign source, and from a foreign
source such as would invest it in his eyes with
something of authority and sanctity. This con-
dition in all likelihood would for him be supplied
by a Babylonian stamp.
The entire tenour of the Poems bears witness
to the reverence of Homer for the past. Such
reverence could not be confined within the geo-
graphical limits of his own country. So the
1 //. XV. 204.
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT - 131
doctrine of oceanic origin, which is incongruous in
relation to the Olympian system and the thean-
thropic principle, can readily and naturally be
accounted for as a Phoenician importation from
Babylonia ; and, alike from the evidence of the
monument and from the records of later times,
we learn how the conception of a water origin of
things prevailed in the Babylonian system.
It is, perhaps, with some reference to this
primary conception, that Homer has given us an
isolated and seemingly casual utterance in the
line (//. VII. 99) which appears to refer the com-
position of the human frame to the elements of
earth and water. Menelaos speaks of the Greek
chiefs, in their momentary hesitation to accept
the challenge of Hector, as physically doomed to
pass at death into these elements —
aXK, vfxets fi€V Travres vSoyp Kal yata ykvoicrOe.
There is nothing in the Poems to associate this
notion of aqueous origin with the Kronid dynasty
of deities, either by explaining the manner, or by
detailing the stages, of the derivation. I add
however some words cited by Dr. Driver-^ from the
Assyrian tablets —
^ In the Expositor, No. XIII. p. 39. Also Sayce, Hibbert Lectures^
p. 384.
132 , ASSYRIAN TABLETS
" When as yet the heaven above had not declared,
Nor the earth beneath had recorded a name,
The august ocean was their generator,
The surging deep was she that bare them all.
When of the gods none had yet issued forth,
Or recorded a name, or fixed a destiny,
Then were the great gods formed."
I turn now to the subject of mythological
relations between Olympian, and Babylonian or
Assyrian divinities.
In all attempts to trace, in a deity of a parti-
cular system and country, a thread of historical
derivation from a deity of another name, belonging
to another system and country, it is to be borne
in mind that the names and attributes of such
deities are subjected to change in a manner and
degree totally unknown within the precincts of
those other religions which have carried upon
them, from their origin onwards, a characteristic
stamp capable of certifying their identity through-
out all ages. Such are the Christian, Jewish, and
Mahometan religions.
It is indeed possible in such cases that, while
the stamp remains intact, and in the absence of
any violent breach with the current traditions of
the system, its character and effect may suffer
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 133
from within important and even essential changes.
But this is alteration within definite dividing lines,
alteration without mixture. In earlier days, the
silent causes of disintegration were actively at
work ; but there were others to boot. There were
constant migrations and conquests, settlements and
resettlements, displacements and coalitions of the
populations ; the religions underwent along with
them perpetual modifications, and shifted, like a
kaleidoscope, from time to time, in the combina-
tions which they presented. In the competitions
of languages caused by new arrivals, names are
changed ; and competing worships give and take,
and arrive by intercommunication at a kind of co7i-
cordatiim. Such a result, in satisfying the demands
of social peace, disfigures or transfigures, again and
again, the religious traditions of a country ; or
breaks them up into a multitude of local worships,
liable to be unsettled afresh by the neutralising
schemes which may have been devised and pro-
secuted in their own interests by sovereigns and
priesthoods. To all the difficulties produced by
these causes are to be added the absence or
imperfection of record. Apart from this last
source of embarrassment, the picture presented by
134 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
Babylonian and Assyrian religion may perhaps be
compared to the network of those Norfolk and
Suffolk rivers, which join and part, and rejoin and
part again, so as to defy or greatly hamper any
clear continuous tracing of their several identities.
Subject to the full force of the preceding
observations, it seems safe to say that the Poseidon
of Homer carries marks, which are highly probable
if not demonstrative, of Babylonian association.
In the Poems, he presents to us traits of
Southern and of Eastern derivation ; for example
in the following points, the detailed proof of which
has of course to be given in its proper place,
where the needful details would be permissible.
1. As the god of the Phoenicians.
2. As the god of the Aithiopes.
3. As the father of the Kuklopes.
4. As the god of the horse.
5. As the dark-haired god.
6. As resting on the Solyman mountains.
7. As related to the Giants.
But the Aithiopes stretch from the rising to
the setting sun ; and all these indications taken
together do not suffice to mark any one particular
region of the South and South-east, from which the
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 135
Poseidonian tradition was derived. Let us see,
however, whether there are not some grounds for
supposing that it may have been partially at least
borne upon that stream of report, which from the
Persian Gulf passed into Syria, and then by the
Mediterranean into Greece.
It seems evident that some important tradition
connected with the sea found its way from Chaldaea
into Greece : because Thalassa (or Thalatta), their
name for the sea, is of Chaldaean origin.
Again, the position of Poseidon is peculiar in
this that he is the god of the sea, and yet is not
an elemental god. He has a palace in the sea-
hollows, but he does not inhabit the sea like
Nereus, and he seems to appear in Olympos {Od.
XIII. 125-160), and moves constantly and variously
on the surface of the earth. The correspondence
is here very strong between him and the Ea or.
Hea of the Babylonian Triad. That name is pre-
Semitic, and Hea belongs to Eridu on the Persian
Gulf, the earliest seat of the Chaldsean civilisation
(Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 104). Within his local
sphere he was supreme, the supreme god of his
country. It is probably in this character that
Merodach is the son of Ea. And so Poseidon
136 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
likewise bears upon him the notes of having been
supreme in his country of origin, a Zeus-Poseidon,
as Aidoneus was the Zeus catachthonios. Hence
it may be that Poseidon exhibits in Homer a
constant tendency to set himself up as a match for
Zeus. It is with the utmost difficulty that Iris
induces him to obey the command which requires
him to quit the Trojan plain (//. XV. 200-207) ;
and in the Odyssey^ where he persecuted the hero
against the wish of the whole Thearchy, Zeus
says no more than that he surely will not persevere
(which however he does) in defiance of the entire
body of the gods {Od. I. 78).
One of the most characteristic notes of the
Homeric Poseidon is his complexion, as the dark
or black Poseidon. This is not only indicated by
epithet : the word Kiianochaites or dark-haired (//.
XX. 144), stands substantively to describe him,
without any other name or epithet. With this we
have to compare the Hymn which treats Ea as the
creator of the black race, meaning the old non-
Semitic population belonging to Eridu (Sayce,
pp. 142, 143). There is no other appropriation
in Homer of an epithet of colour to a divinity
which resembles that given in the case of Poseidon.
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 137
In one point the representation of Poseidon
{ibid. p. 131) is markedly different from that of
Ea ; this, namely that Ea was the god of wisdom.
This may mean little more than that Eridu was
the first known seat of civilisation, and that Ea
was the god of Eridu. Certainly there is here no
mark or resemblance to Poseidon, who represents
nothing but the conception of mere force. But
then the particular attributes of different deities
continually shifted with the courses of social
change ; and the feature of wisdom may have been
effaced from the portraiture of Ea at some period
before any reflection of it was conveyed into the
Syrian, Phoenician, and Olympian systems ; or he
may have been blended with another form of the
tradition ruling westwards, and presenting the rude
and brutal character to be expected {Od. VII. 56-
60, 205, 206), in the father of the Kuklopes, the
kinsman of the Giants, and the object, in historic
times, of worship by human sacrifices.
Again : In Babylonia we find the earliest source
of the legends of human deification, and in associa-
tion with this, of the gigantic size and strength of
primeval man. Izdubar has already mounted
into heaven. Leucothie, our only case of pure
138 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
deiiication in Homer {Od. V. 335), meets us in
the Outer Zone. These legends are associated
by Lenormant with the remarkable passages in
Genesis (Gen. vi. i, 2, also 4), which, as he holds,
describe the monstrous preterhuman births from
sons of God and daughters of men, and which
state that the Nephilim, rendered giants, were in the
earth in those days {Origines de VHistoire^ p. 334).
Now Ea is the great deity, whom alone we can
trace even from the Persian Gulf into the Olympian
Thearchy, and whose counterpart we find in
Poseidon. But the Poseidon of Homer stands in
immediate relation to these Nephilim. The
Cyclop Poluphemos is his son. Nausithoos also
sprang from him, by a human mother, who was
herself the daughter of Eurumedon, King of the
Giants, and the mother of Alkinoos, King of the
Phaiakes {Od. VH. 56-66). These were related
to the gods, like the Kuklopes and the impious
and savage Giants (VH. 205). So again the
gigantic Laistrugones, and the deified Leucothie
belong to the sea-domain {Od, X. 120). Thus
we have new ties between Poseidon and the
home of Ea.
We have yet another connecting link between
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 139
Ea, the offspring of the Persian Gulf, and Poseidon.
Evidently, in Homer's eyes, the Persian Gulf was
part of the Ocean-stream, coiled around the world.
For in //. I. 423 he places his Aithiopes upon the
Ocean verge. True, they are visited, in that
passage, not by Poseidon only but by the whole
body of the gods. But the visit paid to these
same Aithiopes in Od. I. 22-25, ^^^ P^i<i by
Poseidon alone. The indication seems to be first
of a relation between the Olympian religion and
these southern people, as having supplied some at
least of its elements ; and secondly, of a more
special relation between them and Poseidon. Who
then were these Aithiopes ? It seems more than
probable that they were, at least in their eastern
branch, the Babylonian Assyrians ; for these only,
so far as we know, could fulfil that condition of
Homer's description, which placed them on the
River Okeanos. It will be remembered that
Menelaos, after his tour, which extended to an
eighth year, enumerates the countries he had
visited, not without some attempt at geographical
combination. He gives first Kupros, Phoinike,
the Egyptians. These may be considered as ex-
hibiting a comparatively usual route. He then
I40 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
mentions another group of three countries and
races.
AlOioirds 6^ iKO/JL-qv kol 2t8ovtoi;s kol 'E/)€/x/3ovs.
He finally describes Libya, in the next line, by a
mark of its own. In the line I have quoted, the
Sidonians are appropriately mentioned. Sidon
was in Homer's time the chief state of Phoenicia,
and best represents its intercourse and traffic with
the East. The Eremhoi are doubtless the Arabs,
and it thus seems that these Aithiopes can hardly
be other than their neighbours the Babylonian
Assyrians. Through their medium then, and
through the location assigned to them on the
River Ocean, we seem to have Poseidon placed
once more in apparent derivation from the Baby-
lonian Ea, who came from Eridu on the Persian
Gulf.
While, however, I think it to be beyond doubt
that the Babylonian Ea, or Hea, is principally
represented for Achaian purposes by Poseidon,
I do not wholly dissent from the opinion of those
who hold that he is represented in Kronos. For
Kronos is directly associated with the rebellious
Titans (//. XIV. 274-279), who dwell in his
company below the groutid, therefore in a portion
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 141
of the Underworld ; and indeed below Tartaros, its
deepest region (//. VIII. 14), and the operation of
placing them there is performed at the extremity of
the earth or land (//. XIV. 200-205), which we have
reason to connect with the Aithiopes and Babylonia.
We must not be startled at this change from a
singular to a dual form of the tradition. The
severance may have taken place in the local
divisions of Babylonia itself; and we must re-
member that the Babylonian doctrines could only
come to Homer piecemeal, and as it were in
tatters, by oral report, and often without connect-
ing links save such as the insight of his genius
could imagine.
There is another not less characteristically
marked relation established, apparently, by the
monuments ; namely, the relation between the
Ishtar of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and the
Aphrodite of Homer.
The Homeric Aphrodite offers to us a picture
so remarkable as almost absolutely to require that
we should refer it to some historical source, which
may serve to account for, if not to reconcile, the
incongruous elements which it presents to us. Let
me briefly note some of these particulars. In the
142 ASSYRIAN- TABLETS
first place, she is evidently a foreign goddess, who
as such has little claim on the reverence of the
Poet. She is related to Cyprus and Cythere, and
we must therefore take it for granted that her wor-
ship was established in those islands. But we
have no sign that it had in Homer's time found
its way into the Greek continent. Still she was,
in her own person, the acknowledged model of
form. As Pallas represented the unattainable in
art and skill, so Aphrodite exhibited it in beauty
(//. IX. 389, 390). But it is evident throughout
that her power lies only in the region of sense.
She supplies Here with the means of stirring up
lust in Zeus ; she bestows the same baleful gift
on Parifs (//. XXIV. 30) ; she drives Helen into
the arms of her paramour, and is taunted by her,
and by Athene, as the great pander of the world
(//. III. 400, V. 42). And though she is placed in
a certain special relation to nuptials, this, we may
plainly see, is only on the fleshly side (//. V. 429 ;
Od. XX. 73). So it is that the loveliest of all
visible temples, the female form, is dedicated to
a foul demon. There is not a single trace of a
moral element in her character. This combination
is evidently revolting to the Poet ; so that he
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 143
habitually exhibits the goddess as odious or con-
temptible. Nay, he will not allow her to be
supreme even over corporeal Beauty ; for, in the
case of the daughters of Pandareus, it is Here who
gives them loveliness, and Artemis stature, while
the office of Aphrodite is to supply them with
cheese, honey, and soft wine {Od. XX. 68-71).
She is corporally punished both by Diomed in
battle, and by Athene in the Theomachy, in which
however she appears only as an interloper. She
is not honoured with a place among the com-
batants (//. XXI. 416-426). The poet evidently
would not present her as a match for any one
among his recognised Hellenic deities. On ex-
amining this picture as a whole we are compelled
to say the original, from which it was drawn,
must have been of a peculiar character, and to
ask where it was to be found ? I conceive that
it was not a copy, but a reproduction which had
been subjected to the modifications required by
the ideas of the Poet and his nation.
It has long been familiarly known that we are
to look to Syria and the East as the region in which
was fully accomplished, by a sort of spurious con-
secration, the baleful union between unrestrained
144 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
lust and the observances of divine worship. On
the one side there was the image of perfect beauty,
on the other the sensual appetite associated with
a frightful disregard of all boundary and measure,
of the structure of the family, and of the laws of
nature. Against the suggestions thus conveyed,
the Poems of Homer form a noble protest ; and it
is only in the mildest shape, and under the veil
which is of itself a confession, that we find
exhibited in Achaian life this touch of human
infirmity. The conception of what is thoroughly
and entirely dissolute, embodied some of the forms
in which Ishtar has been worshipped, was in her
associated not only with divinity but with para-
mount rank among divinities. She was the only
goddess who had a place in the Assyrian system
by the side of Asshur (Sayce, Hibbert Lectures^
p. 123) ; and in the Old Testament and Phoenicia,
as Ashtoreth, she ranks not less high than Baal. It
is noteworthy that, while Phoenician immigration
could not but bring her worship into Greece, at
least she did not come there vested with the
attributes of supremacy. Shorn not of her
sensuous beauty but of her supreme rank, she
enters the Olympian assembly in its lowest and
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 145
least honoured grade : and Homer may have been
in a degree the cause of what is at any rate to all
appearance a fact, that the Aphrodite worship did
not very greatly spread in many parts of historic
Greece. Pausanias assigns to her thirty -seven
temples and shrines in his Attic, Corinthian, and
Arcadian sections ; but only seventeen in all the
rest of the country.
Great obscurity overhangs the origin of Ishtar
as a deity. Nor can we wonder if it was found no
simple process to promote to so high a place a con-
ception in which the impure ingredients were found
so greatly to preponderate. What was good in it
passed over to the pale and ineffectual tradition
of the Aphrodite Oiirania : in Asia, the coarser
elements alone became widely and permanently
operative.
As recorded on the tablets, the doings of Ishtar
have imposed reserve upon Mr. G. Smith. He
says, " In the succeeding lines, various amours of
Ishtar are described. These I do not give, as
their details are not suited for general reading"
{Assyrian Discoveries, p. 178). She offers her
love to Izdubar, but is repelled, and complains to
her father Anu :
L
146 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
" Father, Izdubar hates me,
Izdubar despises my beauty,
My beauty and my charms."
And she asks Anu to create a winged bull to
be the instrument of her vengeance accordingly.
Another remarkable though limited correspond-
ence with the Babylonian system is to be found
in one of the epithets applied by the Homeric
text to Aidoneus. He is called by Homer
pulartes, the gate - fastener. Elsewhere in the
Poems, the word appears as a proper name, taken
no doubt from the office of a gate-keeper. As
an epithet, it is applied only to Aidoneus (//. VHI.
367 ; XHI. 415 ; Od. XL 277), and always in
conjunction with the word krateros^ signifying his
might. Now the " gates of hell " supply a com-
mon figure, expressive of strength, but without
any very special point or significance, and it long
remained an unsolved riddle to interpret /^//^r/^j-,
for it is far from evident at first sight why the
king of the Underworld should be his own porter.
Now the legend of Ishtar's descent to the
Underworld appears to supply a pretty complete
explanation : which is all the more wanted because
the rather elaborate description of the Underworld
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 147
in the Odyssey makes no reference whatever to any
gates. There are, indeed, gates of Tartaros, which
have the characteristics of a prison. But Tartaros
was not within the Hmits of Hades, which alone
appears to have constituted the realm of Ai'doneus
(see//. VIII. 15, 16, and XV. 188). That region
is to all appearance modelled to some extent upon
Egyptian ideas. Now, in the Egyptian Book of
the Dead, there is a representation of a gate, that
is to say of folding doors, but, so far as I have
learned, they stand open,^ and cannot possibly
have suggested the epithet we are examining.
And the common idea of Hades is rather the
all -devouring, and therefore open, than the all-
imprisoning, and therefore shut. But, according
to the Assyrian tablets, the gates of the Under-
world are an elaborate and principal part of its
equipment. We derive our knowledge of the
particulars from the descent made into it by
Ishtar (Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, IV. p. 221, seqq})
when in quest of the healing waters which were
to restore Tammuz to life. The Assyrian Under-
world is not here the all-receiving, but " the house
^ Book of the Dead. Printed for the British Museum, 1890.
Introduction, p. 12.
148 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
from within which there is no exit" (Smith,
Assyrian Discoveries^ p. 220).
" The passage to these subterranean abodes is
through the seven gates of the world, each guarded
by its porter, who admits the dead, stripping him
of his apparel, but never allowing him to pass
through them again to the upper world " (Sayce,
Hibbert Lectures, p. 364).
Ishtar threatens the gate-keeper m order to
procure entrance into Hades. At each of the
seven gates, she has to deposit a portion of her
ornamentation, in conformity with the rules of the
place, and the orders of its queen Allat. It may
be conjectured that the purpose of this operation
was to secure her withdrawal after the transaction
of the business on which she had come. The
account of it is given in language sufficiently
obscure : but it seems to be completed (Sayce, ubi
Sup.) when the waters of life are poured upon
her ; and, as she retraces her steps to the upper
world, Namtar the agent of Allat restores to her,
at each of the gates successively, the attire and
ornaments of which she had been divested. These
gates with their fastenings are thus a principal,
and perhaps the only distinct, feature of the
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 149
Assyrian Underworld, and they appear to supply
the explanation otherwise lacking of the epithet
pulartes given by Homer to A'fdoneus as its
monarch.
In the Olympian and perhaps in other mytho-
logies, there is a great lack of the personal ties,
as among the divinities, which so powerfully unite
human beings one to another. This defect becomes
glaring in the Olympian system, by reason of the
close resemblances it exhibits to the human forms
of family and polity. But for one exception, it
might almost be said that while jealousy, rivalry,
contempt, and conflict abound reciprocally among
them, there is no case to be found where any one
deity has any personal affection for any other.
The one exception, however, is conspicuous and
remarkable. It is found in the relation between
Apollo and Zeus. Apollo is not only the exact
and constant executor of the commands of his
sire, but he pays an obedience evidently founded
on conformity of mind and will. This is a
peculiarity so great as to be almost a solecism in
the Olympian system ; and it is strongly indicative
of some origin lying beyond the mere invention
or experience of the Poet.
I50 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
With this representation of Apollo it is difficult
to avoid comparing the great sonship of Merodach.
His is a brilliant and powerful figure, like that of
Apollo. He resembles the Apollo of general tradi-
tion, in being the champion and avenger of the gods
against Tiamat (Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 379,
p. 1 01), and is so far like the Homeric Apollo,
that this conquest may very possibly be signified
in many of his characteristic epithets, and by the
punishment inflicted on Tituos for violence offered
to his mother Leto {Od. XI. 576-581). To
Merodach, their first-born, the gods appeal (Sayce,
pp. 95, 320), and on him they rely. But while
he is this to the deities at large, he is much more
than this to his primitive father Ea (p. 1 04) ; in
the language of Sayce, Merodach is the minister
of his counsels, the active side of his character.
There is also in Merodach another note of
correspondence with the Homeric Apollo, which
is, moreover, a note of distinction from the other
deities generally.
He is " the merciful one among the gods "
(p. 99). At times he appears as the sun -god
(p. 1 01), and we have marks in the Poems that
such had been the case with Apollo : but the
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 151
general character of his attributes is philanthropic
rather than solar. Among other such marks we
find him to be, like Apollo, the god of hqaling
(p. 106).
He belongs to the Arcadian or pre-Semitic
system ; and in that system is the son of Ea.
Elsewhere he is affiliated to other fathers, and
this diversity is naturally consequent on the sub-
divisions of Babylonia, and the diversified and
local character of its worship. It is in later and
Assyrian times that he becomes himself Belmero-
dach, and obtains a supremacy probably due to
a local ascendency acquired by his worshippers.
Homer has drawn the formula of his trinity or
triad with much exactitude. According to the
account given by Poseidon himself (//. XV. 187,
seqq^^ he, Zeus, and Aides, are all of equal rank,
and they draw lots for their several sovereignties.
Poseidon allows to Zeus authority over his own
sons and daughters ; but claims independence for
himself: grudgingly admitting in the last resort
that Zeus has the prerogatives of a senior {ibid,
204-207). In the division of power, the earth,
including Olympos, remains unappropriated, or
common ground. The Babylonian triad, of Anu,
152 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
Bel, and Ea, is less precisely outlined, and in its
ordinary shape does not include the Underworld.
But in some forms of that mythology the lord of
the ghost-world even carried the notes of supre-
macy. It seems probable, as the Egyptian
arrangement appears much less distinct, that
Homer drew his suggestion of a triad from a
Babylonian source, and readjusted the particulars
according to the exigencies of his Olympian
system : paying off, as it were, with dignity,
divinities who had elsewhere been actually
supreme, but who were only represented in the
nascent Hellas by influences of secondary power.
This triad has all the appearance of an artificial
and borrowed arrangement, inasmuch as the three
have as a body no common action, and no govern-
ing authority. But it is convenient in securing
for Poseidon the rank he had enjoyed as Ea ;
and in placing Aidoneus on a kind of retired list.
It may also be that the arrangement, by which
Homer brings the office of Aidoneus nearly to
a sinecure, may possibly have been suggested by
the position of Ana or Anu, who was more a
superintending than an active divinity.
I have now gone through the points in which the
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT ^ 153
present evidence of derivation from the Assyrian
monuments of knowledge or ideas exhibited in
the Homeric next appears to be the most clear
and full. There remains, however, another class
of cases deserving some notice ; inasmuch as at
a number of points, the Assyrian monuments
establish presumptions respecting the derivation
of Homeric knowledge from that quarter, which
cannot be termed more than conjectural, but which
are not on that account to be cast aside at once as
unreasonable.
For example, as to the observation of the stars,
and the use of them as guides in navigation.
Wherever we find these in Homer it is in
company with foreign not Hellenic association.
The works of Hephaistos, that is to say works
of art, lie outside the domestic sphere of the
Achaians. Of these works the Shield of Achilles
is the chief; and it is on the Shield, in its
first compartment, that we have the only passage
where Homer presents to us the stars as a whole
together with the names of some principal stars.
The coasting navigation, and those narrow seas
with which the Poet's countrymen were conversant,
left little scope or need for the aid of astronomical
154 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
observation. But, when Odysseus has to perform
his seventeen days' voyage from Ogygie, then
he receives from the foreign goddess of the island
express instructions to work the course of his raft
by this means (Od. V. 270-278). It seems clear
that all such knowledge came to him from the
Phoenicians, and rational if not necessary to sup-
pose that they derived it, in their original home
on the Persian Gulf, from a Chaldsean source.
I will hazard another conjecture with respect
to the singularly bold conceptions which Homer
formed of works of fine art. Here at least the
scientific doctrine of abiogenesis is not applicable.
In this highest branch of industry Homer dis-
tinctly assigns to the divine artist the faculty of
giving actual life to its metallic products. Remark
for instance the figures on the battle compartment
of the Shield.
<i)jjllX,€vv 8' a)(rT€ ^(ool ^poroi, ^81 ixdyovTo,
V€Kpovs t' aXkyXtov tpvov KaraTedveiioTas.^
Doubtless, the words are susceptible of an interpre-
tation less daring. They might mean a mere
resemblance to actual life by way of suggesting
it. But they are exceptionally vivid in themselves :
1 //. XVIII. 539, 540.
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 155
and the construction I put upon them becomes I
think the natural one, when it is borne in mind that
Homer unquestionably ascribes automatic movement
to the metallic dogs in the Palace of Alkinoos, where
they fulfil the office of guards. They are also death-
less, and have perpetual youth((9^. VII.9 1-94). But
further, not only the attendant figures of Hephais-
tos, but even the chairs or seats which Hephaistos
wrought for the Olympian assembly (//. XVI 1 1. 4 1 7-
420, 313-377) had the power of automatic move-
ment ; in sum, the idea of spontaneous motion was
never so boldly applied as by Homer in dealing with
works of art. He could hardly have been led in this
direction by Egyptian art, which is successful in re-
presenting rest but ineffective in dealingwith motion.
This idea is, I conceive, far more congenial to the art
of Assyria. It seems at least possible that the wings
so boldly given to gods, men, and quadrupeds, both
in Assyria and to some extent in Egypt,^ may have
been the means of suggesting to Homer a further
step or stride, and may have led him to endow the
metallic figure itself, as it comes from the artist's
hands, with the spontaneous gift ? I pass on.
Heptaism, or the systematic and significant use
^ See Dr. Tylor in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archce-
ology for June 1890.
156 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
of the number seven, while it may be traced else-
where, is eminently and peculiarly Chaldaean. It
appears (i) in the representation of the winds as
seven in number ; (2) in the number of trans-
gressions, seven multiplied by seven ; ^ (3) in the
seven days of the Flood Legend ; (4) in the
intervals chosen for the mission of the birds from
the vessel of Hasisadra ; (5) in the number of
the rebellious spirits, described as seven ; ^ (6) in
the seven gates of the Underworld, and in a
multitude of other particulars. Of these the most
remarkable is the number of seven heavenly
bodies, which entered profoundly into the system
of worship, so that in an Assyrian inscription we
even find the stars taking precedence of the higher
gods, of Assur and of Merodach.^ The only very
marked use of the number seven in Homer is as
to the city of Thebes ; and the name of that city
appears to be not of Assyrian but of Egyptian
origin. The two currents, however, joined, and
formed as it were a common pool, when they
^ Manual published by the Society for promoting Christian
Knowledge, pp. 27, 28.
2 Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 4CX)-402 ; Sayce, Hibbert Lec-
tures, p. 82.
3 Sayce, p. 403.
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 157
reached Phoenicia and her ships ; so that Homer
may have derived much, both from the one
country and the other, without knowing in each
instance to which of them it was that he owed his
information.
A conjecture of Assyrian derivation may again
be hazarded in connection with the twenty seats
which Hephaistos is engaged in fabricating for
the gods of the Olympian assembly, at the time
when Thetis visits him for the grand purpose of
replacing the lost arms of Achilles.
These seats, endowed with the power of auto-
matic motion, were {eeikosi pantes) twenty in
number. The Poet's numerical ideas were com-
monly vague, and we have no exact means of
determining the number of his Olympian deities.
The religion of the country was still in a state of
fluxion, and there are one or two divinities of doubt-
ful title. But upon the whole, as I have already
shown {^Sicp. Sect. III., XIV., and XVIII.), the
number of those who had seats in the ordinary
Olympian meetings seems to have been about
or nearly twenty. So again in Assyria we have
no means of designating with confidence a parti-
cular number for the members of the Thearchy,
158 ASSYRIAN TABLETS
whereas, as in the case of the Romans, we describe
them by the name of the twelve Dt majores.
Canon Rawlinson, however, has touched this sub-
ject in his Religions of the Worlds p. i8, and he
notices the existence of eight great gods, six of
their wives, and five astral gods. It seems pro-
bable that the number twenty may have been
suggested from this source, with a vagueness
strange to us, but by no means alien to the
manner of Homer.
A fourth case of possible suggestion is offered
by the curious representation of the effect pro-
duced on earth by the descent of Ishtar to Hades.
It was a general disorganisation, caused by the
absence of a ruling deity from her proper sphere.
"The master ceases from commanding, the slave
from obeying" (Rawlinson, p. 25). Does it not
seem possible that some form of this legend may
have suggested to the Poet the bold threat of
Helios in the Odyssey^ XII. 381, that unless due
respect is paid to his demands for redress, he will
not rise next morning as usual upon gods and
men, but will shine in the Underworld ?
Again, the story of the^jFlood has a con-
spicuous place among the Babylonian legends, and
AND THE HOMERIC TEXT 159
was the first among the discoveries to challenge
a large share of public attention in this country.
The chief interest attaching to it lies in its rela-
tion to the account given in Genesis.^ In Homer
there is but one, and that not an unequivocal
trace of this tradition. It is conveyed in the
form of a simile, where he compares the motion of
Trojan horses at full speed to a flood sent by
Zeus upon a land to punish the iniquities of evil
rulers. ^ The pointed nature of this connection
between a great inundation and the offences of
men renders it probable that the Poet was
acquainted with some legend such as could
supply a basis for it. I suppose it was little
likely that he could draw this information from
the valley of the Nile ; where indeed the swelling
of the waters was familiarly known, not, however,
as a retributive visitation, but as a blessing, and
indeed a necessity. It seems then reasonable to
suppose that the knowledge which suggested the
simile came from the same source as that which
supplied the Tablets of Nineveh.
Lastly. It has to be observed that the Helios
of Homer is furnished with a patronymic. He is
1 Mr. George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 188 seqq.
i6o ASSYRIAN TABLETS
Eslios Huperion ; but this epithet is not given I
think except in cases outside the familiar Greek
tradition, as in //. VIII. 480, and again in the
Odyssey, I. 3, and XII. 176; both of these last
being cases where the scene is laid in the Outer
Zone, and in a part of it where the Sun is the
working head of the Thearchy. Now in the
Babylonian system also the Sun had a Father.
The Sungod was the offspring of the Moongod.
The particular form of this arrangement was
obviously one which, as 'Sayce observes {Hibbert
Lectures, p. 155), could only prevail where the
Moongod was, as in one form of the Babylonian
system, the supreme object of worship.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any
University of California Library
or to the
NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
University of California
Richmond Field Station, BIdg. 400
1301 South 46th Street
Richmond, CA 94804-4698
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
To renew or recharge your library materials, you may
contact NRLF 4 days prior to due date at (510) 642-6233
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW
NOV 01 2008
DD20 12M 7-06
oetkeley
I
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11