Homer and His Age Part 20

The Gortyn inscription implies the power of writing out a long code of laws, and it implies that persons about to go to law could read the public inscription, as we can read a proclamation posted up on a wall, or could have it read to them. [Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. pp. 52-55.]

The alphabets inscribed on vases of the seventh century (Abecedaria), with "the archaic Greek forms of every one of the twenty-two Phoenician letters arranged precisely in the received Semitic order," were, one supposes, gifts for boys and girls who were learning to read, just like our English alphabets on gingerbread. [Footnote: For Abecedaria, cf.

Roberts, vol. i. pp. 16-21.]

Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century, there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. [Footnote: Roberts, vol.

i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading, just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The Athenian potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph, but the grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually uninscribed till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference to custom, itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in times past. [Footnote: Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii. p. 426.

1888.] I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there were some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and that primary education was common in the seventh. In these circ.u.mstances my sense of the probable is not revolted by the idea of a written epic, in [blank s.p.a.ce] characters, even in the eighth century, but the notion that there was no such thing till the middle of the sixth century seems highly improbable. All the conditions were present which make for the composition and preservation of literary works in written texts. That there were many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am not inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could read, but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside, there is no such thing as a reading _people_.

The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the _jongleurs_' books of their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite purposes, interpolated matter into their texts. There were also texts, known in later times as "city texts" ([Greek: ai kata poleis]), which Aristarchus knew, but he did not adopt the various readings. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p, 435.]

Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the Panathenaic festival. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 395.] "This implies the possession of a complete text." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii.

p. 403.]

Cauer remarks that the possibility of "interpolation" "began only after the fixing of the text by Pisistratus." [Footnote: _Grundfragen_, p.

205.] But surely if every poet and reciter could thrust any new lines which he chose to make into any old lays which he happened to know, that was interpolation, whether he had a book of the words or had none. Such interpolations would fill the orally recited lays which the supposed Pisistratean editor must have written down from recitation before he began his colossal task of making the _Iliad_ out of them. If, on the other hand, reciters had books of the words, they could interpolate at pleasure into _them_, and such books may have been among the materials used in the construction of a text for the Athenian book market. But if our theory be right, there must always have been a few copies of better texts than those of the late reciters' books, and the effort of the editors for the book market would be to keep the parts in which most ma.n.u.scripts were agreed.

But how did Athens, or any other city, come to possess a text? One can only conjecture; but my conjecture is that there had always been texts--copied out in successive generations--in the hands of the curious; for example, in the hands of the Cyclic poets, who knew our _Iliad_ as the late French Cyclic poets knew the earlier _Chansons de Geste_. They certainly knew it, for they avoided interference with it; they worked at epics which led up to it, as in the _Cypria;_ they borrowed _motifs_ from hints and references in the _Iliad_, [Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 350, 351.] and they carried on the story from the death of Hector, in the _AEthiopis_ of Arctinus of Miletus.

This epic ended with the death of Achilles, when _The Little Iliad_ produced the tale to the bringing in of the wooden horse. Arctinus goes on with his _Sack_ of _Ilios_, others wrote of _The Return_ of _the Heroes,_ and the _Telegonia_ is a sequel to the Odyssey. The authors of these poems knew the _Iliad_, then, as a whole, and how could they have known it thus if it only existed in the casual _repertoire_ of strolling reciters? The Cyclic poets more probably had texts of Homer, and themselves wrote their own poems--how it paid, whether they recited them and collected rewards or not, is, of course, unknown.

The Cyclic poems, to quote Sir Richard Jebb, "help to fix the lowest limit for the age of the Homeric poems. [Footnote: _Homer_, pp. 151, 154.] The earliest Cyclic poems, dating from about 776 B.C., presuppose the _Iliad_, being planned to introduce or continue it.... It would appear, then, that the _Iliad_ must have existed in something like its present compa.s.s as early as 800 B.C.; indeed a considerably earlier date will seem probable, if due time is allowed for the poem to have grown into such fame as would incite the effort to continue it and to prelude to it."

Sir Richard then takes the point on which we have already insisted, namely, that the Cyclic poets of the eighth century B.C. live in an age of ideas, religions, ritual, and so forth which are absent from the _Iliad_ [Footnote: Homer, pp. 154, 155.]

Thus the _Iliad_ existed with its characteristics that are prior to 800 B.C., and in its present compa.s.s, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As it could not possibly have thus existed in the _repertoire_ of irresponsible strolling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by a system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that written texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of Athens.

We can scarcely suppose, however, that such texts were perfect in all respects, for we know how, several centuries later, in a reading age, papyrus fragments of the _Iliad_ display unwarrantable interpolation.

[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. pp. 422-426.] But Plato's frequent quotations, of course made at an earlier date, show that "whatever interpolated texts of Homer were then current, the copy from which Plato quoted was not one of them." [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 429] Plato had something much better.

When a reading public for Homer arose--and, from the evidences of the widespread early knowledge of reading, such a small public may have come into existence sooner than is commonly supposed--Athens was the centre of the book trade. To Athens must be due the prae-Alexandrian Vulgate, or prevalent text, practically the same as our own. Some person or persons must have made that text--not by taking down from recitation all the lays which they could collect, as Herd, Scott, Mrs. Brown, and others collected much of the _Border Minstrelsy_, and not by then tacking the lays into a newly-composed whole. They must have done their best with such texts as were accessible to them, and among these were probably the copies used by reciters and rhapsodists, answering to the MS. books of the mediaeval _jongleurs._

Mr. Jevons has justly and acutely remarked that "we do not know, and there is no external evidence of any description which leads us to suppose, that the _Iliad_ was ever expanded" (_J. H. S_, vii. 291-308).

That it was expanded is a mere hypothesis based on the idea that "if there was an _Iliad_ at all in the ninth century, its length must have been such as was compatible with the conditions of an oral delivery,"--"a poem or poems short enough to be recited at a single sitting."

But we have proved, with Mr. Jevons and Bla.s.s, and by the a.n.a.logy of the Chansons that, given a court audience (and a court audience is granted), there were no such narrow limits imposed on the length of a poem orally recited from night to night.

The length of the _Iliad_ yields, therefore, no argument for expansions throughout several centuries. That theory, suggested by the notion that the original poem _MUST_ have been short, is next supposed to be warranted by the inconsistencies and discrepancies. But we argue that these are only visible, as a rule, to "the a.n.a.lytical reader," for whom the poet certainly was not composing; that they occur in all long works of fict.i.tious narrative; that the discrepancies often are not discrepancies; and, finally, that they are not nearly so glaring as the inconsistencies in the theories of each separatist critic. A theory, in such matter as this, is itself an explanatory myth, or the plot of a story which the critic invents to account for the facts in the case.

These critical plots, we have shown, do not account for the facts of the case, for the critics do not excel in constructing plots. They wander into unperceived self-contradictions which they would not pardon in the poet. These contradictions are visible to "the a.n.a.lytical reader," who concludes that a very early poet may have been, though Homer seldom is, as inconsistent as a modern critic.

Meanwhile, though we have no external evidence that the _Iliad_ was ever expanded--that it was expanded is an explanatory myth of the critics--"we do know, on good evidence," says Mr. Jevons, "that the _Iliad_ was rhapsodised." The rhapsodists were men, as a rule, of one day recitations, though at a prolonged festival at Athens there was time for the whole _Iliad_ to be recited. "They chose for recitation such incidents as could be readily detached, were interesting in themselves, and did not take too long to recite." Mr. Jevons suggests that the many brief poems collected in the Homeric hymns are invocations which the rhapsodists preluded to their recitals. The practice seems to have been for the rhapsodist first to pay his reverence to the G.o.d, "to begin from the G.o.d," at whose festival the recitation was being given (the short proems collected in the Hymns pay this reverence), "and then proceed with his rhapsody"--with his selected pa.s.sage from the _Iliad_, "Beginning with thee" (the G.o.d of the festival), "I will go on to another lay," that is, to his selection from the Epic. Another conclusion of the proem often is, "I will be mindful both of thee and of another lay," meaning, says Mr. Jevons, that "the local deity will figure in the recitation from Homer which the rhapsodist is about to deliver."

These explanations, at all events, yield good sense. The invocation of Athene (Hymns, XI., XXVIII.) would serve as the proem of invocation to the recital of _Iliad_, V., VI. 1-311, the day of valour of Diomede, spurred on by the wanton rebuke of Agamemnon, and aided by Athene. The invocation of Hephaestus (Hymn XX.), would prelude to a recital of the _Making of the Awns of Achilles_, and so on.

But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom there is practically nothing said in the _Iliad_; for it is a proof of the antiquity of the _Iliad_ that, when it was composed, Dionysus had not been raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-G.o.d only.

The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce the G.o.d into his recitation. The G.o.d is not in his text, but he adds him. [Footnote:_Ibid_., VI. 130-141]

Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's theory supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the pa.s.sages to suit the Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting.

The same explanation is offered for the long story of the _Birth_ of [blank s.p.a.ce] which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and reconciliation. [Footnote:_Ibid_., XIX. 136.] There is an invocation to Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his rhapsody of the Reconciliation, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of this long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, "the peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny.

We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it is quite plausible in itself.

Local heroes, as well as G.o.ds, had their feasts in post-Homeric times, and a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother, Aphrodite, may have foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and AEneas, [Footnote:_Ibid_., XX. 213-250.] with its reference to Erichthonius, an Athenian hero.

In other cases the rhapsodist rounded off his selected pa.s.sage by a few lines, as in _Iliad_, XIII. 656-659, where a hero is brought to follow his son's dead body to the grave, though the father had been killed in _V. 576_. "It is really such a slip as is often made by authors who write," says Mr. Leaf; and, in _Esmond_, Thackeray makes similar errors. The pa.s.sage in XVI. 69-80, about which so much is said, as if it contradicted Book IX. (_The Emba.s.sy to Achilles_), is also, Mr. Jevons thinks, to be explained as "inserted by a rhapsodist wis.h.i.+ng to make his extract complete in itself." Another example--the confusion in the beginning of Book II.--we have already discussed (see Chapter IV.), and do not think that any explanation is needed, when we understand that Agamemnon, once wide-awake, had no confidence in his dream. However, Mr.

Jevons thinks that rhapsodists, anxious to recite straight on from the dream to the battle, added II. 35-41, "the only lines which represent Agamemnon as believing confidently in his dream." We have argued that he only believed _till he awoke_, and then, as always, wavered.

Thus, in our way of looking at these things, interpolations by rhapsodists are not often needed as explanations of difficulties. Still, granted that the rhapsodists, like the _jongleurs_, had texts, and that these were studied by the makers of the Vulgate, interpolations and errors might creep in by this way. As to changes in language, "a poetical dialect... is liable to be gradually modified by the influence of the ever-changing colloquial speech. And, in the early times, when writing was little used, this influence would be especially operative."

[Footnote: Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 461.]

To conclude, the hypothesis of a school of mnemonic teaching of the _Iliad_ would account for the preservation of so long a poem in an age dest.i.tute of writing, when memory would be well cultivated. There may have been such schools. We only lack evidence for their existence. But against the hypothesis of the existence of early texts, there is nothing except the feeling of some critics that it is not likely. "They are dangerous guides, the feelings."

In any case the opinion that the _Iliad_ was a whole, centuries before Pisistratus, is the hypothesis which is by far the least fertile in difficulties, and, consequently, in inconsistent solutions of the problems which the theory of expansion first raises, and then, like an unskilled magician, fails to lay.