Sect. 3 — On the Historic Aims of Homer
For the purposes of anatomy every skeleton may be useful, and may sufficiently tell the tale of the race to which it belongs. But when we come to seek for high beauty and for approaches to perfection, of how infinite a diversity, of what countless degrees, does form appear to be susceptible! How difficult it is to find these, except in mere fragments; and how dangerous does it prove, in dealing with objects, to treat the whole as a normal specimen, simply because parts are fine, or even superlative. When, again, we pass onward, and with the body regard also the mind of man, still greater is the range of differences, and still more rare is either the development of parts in a degree so high as to bring their single excellence near the ideal standard, or the accurate adjustment of their relations to one another, or the completeness of the aggregate which they form.
Now, it appears to me, that in the case of Homer, together with the breadth and elevation of the highest genius, we have before us, and in a yet more remarkable degree, an even more rare fulness and consistency of the various instruments and organs which make up the apparatus of the human being—constituted as he is, in mind and body, and holding, as he does, on the one side of the Deity, and on the other, of the dust. Among all the qualities of the poems, there is none more extraordinary than the general accuracy and perfection of their minute detail, when considered with reference to the standards at which from time to time they aim. Where other poets sketch, Homer draws; and where they draw, he carves. He alone, of all the now famous epic writers, moves (in the Iliad especially) subject to the stricter laws of time and place; he alone, while producing an unsurpassed work of the imagination, is also the greatest chronicler that ever lived, and presents to us, from his own single hand, a representation of life, manners, history, of morals, theology, and politics, so vivid and comprehensive, that it may be hard to say whether any of the more refined ages of Greece or Rome, with their clouds of authors and their multiplied forms of historical record, are either more faithfully or more completely conveyed to us. He alone presents to us a mind and an organization working with such precision that, setting aside for the moment any question as to the genuineness of his text, we may reason in general from his minutest indications with the confidence that they belong to some consistent and intelligible whole.
It may be right, however, to consider more circumstantially the question of the historical authority of Homer. It has been justly observed by Wachsmuth12, that even the dissolution of his individuality does not get rid of his authority. For if the works reputed to be his had proceeded from many minds, yet still, according to their unity of colour, and their correspondence in ethical and intellectual tone with the events of the age they purport to describe, there would arise an argument, founded on internal evidence, for the admissibility of the whole band into the class of trustworthy historical witnesses.
But, first of all, may we not ask, from whence comes the presumption against Homer as an historical authority? Not from the fact that he mixes marvels with common events; for this, to quote no other instance, would destroy along with him Herodotus. Does it not arise from this—that his compositions are poetical—that history has long ceased to adopt the poetical form—that an old association has thus been dissolved—that a new and adverse association has taken its place, which connects poetry with fiction—and that we illogically reflect this modern association upon early times, to which it is utterly inapplicable?
If so, there is no burden of proof incumbent upon those, who regard Homer as an historical authority. The presumptions are all in favour of their so regarding him. The question will, of course, remain—In what proportions has he mixed history with imaginative embellishment? And he has furnished us with some aids towards the consideration of this question.
The immense mass of matter contained in the Iliad, which is beyond what the action of the poem requires, and yet is in its nature properly historical, of itself supplies the strongest proof of the historic aims of the poet. Whether, in the introduction of all this matter, he followed a set and conscious purpose of his own mind, or whether he only fed the appetite of his hearers with what he found to be agreeable to them, is little material to the question. The great fact stands, that there was either a design to fulfil, or, at least, an appetite to feed—an intense desire to create bonds and relations with the past—to grasp its events, and fasten them in forms which might become, and might make them become, the property of the present and the future. Without this great sign of nobleness in their nature, Greeks never could have been Greeks.
I have particularly in view the great multitude of genealogies; their extraordinary consistency one with another, and with the other historical indications of the poems; their extension to a very large number, especially in the Catalogue, of secondary persons; I take again the Catalogue itself, that most remarkable production, as a whole; the accuracy with which the names of the various races are handled and bestowed throughout the poems; the particularity of the demands regularly made upon strangers for information concerning themselves, and especially the constant inquiry who were their parents, what was, for each person as he appears, his relation to the past? and further, the numerous legends or narratives of prior occurrences with which the poems, and particularly the more historic Iliad, is so thickly studded. Even the national use of patronymics as titles of honour is in itself highly significant of the historic turn. Nay, much that touches the general structure of the poem may be traced in part to this source; for all the intermediate Books between the Wrath and the Return of Achilles, while they are so contrived as to heighten the military grandeur of the hero, are so many tributes to the special and local desires in each state or district for commemoration of their particular chiefs, which Homer would, of course, have to meet, as he itinerated through the various parts of Greece.
Now, this appetite for commemoration does not fix itself upon what is imaginary; it may tolerate fiction by way of accessory and embellishment, but in the main it must, from its nature, rely upon what it takes to be solid food. The actions of great men in all times, but especially in early times, afford it suitable material; and there is nothing irrational in believing that the race which in its infancy produced so marvellous a poet as Homer, should also in its infancy have produced great warriors and great statesmen. Composing, with such powers as his, about his own country, and for his own countrymen, he could scarcely fail, even independently of conscious purpose, to convey to us a great mass of such matter as is in reality of the very highest historic truth and value. If, indeed, we advance so far as to the conviction that his hearers believed him to be reciting historically, the main question may speedily be decided. For each generation of men, possessed of the mental culture necessary in order to appreciate Homer, knows too much of the generations immediately preceding to admit of utter and wholesale imposition. But it is a fair inference from the Odyssey, that the Trojan War was thus sung to the men and the children of the men who waged it. Four lays of bards13 are mentioned in that poem; one of Phemius, three of Demodocus; and out of the four, three relate to the War, which appears to show clearly that its celebrity must have been both instantaneous and overpowering; the more so, as the only remaining one has reference not to any human transaction, but to a scene in Olympus. And I shall shortly advert to the question, whether the Homeric poems themselves were in all probability composed not later than within two generations of the War itself.
It may be true that, with respect to some parts of his historical notices, the poet, adapting himself to the wishes and tastes of his hearers, might take liberties without fear of detection, most of all where he has filled in accessories, in order to complete a picture; but I think we should be wrong in supposing that in the interest of his art he would have occasion to make this a general practice, or to carry it in historical subjects beyond matters of detail. Nor can I wholly disregard the analogy between his history and his equally copious and everywhere intermixed geographical notices: such of them, I mean, as lay within the sphere of Greek experience. These indeed, he could not, under the eyes of the men who heard him, cast into the mould of fiction; yet there could be no call of popular necessity for his unequalled and most minute precision, and it can only be accounted for by the belief that accurate record was a great purpose of his poems. If he was thus careful to record both classes of particulars alike, and if, as to the one, we absolutely know that he has recorded them with exemplary fidelity, that fact raises a corresponding presumption of some weight as to the other.
But there is, I think, another argument to the same effect, of the highest degree of strength which the nature of the case admits. It is to be found in the fact that Homer has not scrupled to make some sacrifices of poetical beauty and propriety to these historic aims. For if any judicious critic were called upon to specify the chief poetical blemish of the Iliad, would he not reply by pointing to the multitude of stories from the past, having no connexion, or at best a very feeble one, with the War, which are found in it? Such brief and minor legends as occur in the course of the Catalogue, may have a poetical purpose; it appears not improbable that they may be introduced by way of relief to the dryness of topographical and local enumeration. But in general the narratives of prior occurrences are (so to speak) rather foisted in, and we must therefore suppose for them a purpose over and above that, which as a mere poet Homer would have in view. It is hard to conceive that he would have indulged in them, if he had not been able to minister to this especial aim by its means. Thus, again, the curious and important genealogy of the Dardanian House14 is given by Æneas, in answer to Achilles, who had just shown by his taunt that he, at least, did not want the information, but knew very well15 the claims and pretensions of his antagonist. Again, the long story told by Agamemnon, in the assembly held for the Reconciliation, when despatch was of all things requisite, may best be accounted for by the desire to relate the circumstances attending the birth of the great national hero, Hercules. It certainly impedes the action of the poem, which seems to be confessed in the rebuke insinuated by the reply of Achilles:—
νῦν δὲ μνησώμεθα χάρμης
αἶψα μάλ’· οὐ γὰρ χρὴ κλοτοπεύειν ἐνθάδ’ ἐόντας
οὐδὲ διατρίβειν· ἔτι γὰρ μέγα ἔργον ἄρεκτον.16
Still more is this the case when Patroclus, sent in a hurry for news by a man of the most fiery impatience, is (to use the modern phrase) button-held by Nestor, in the eleventh Book, and, though he has ‘no time to sit down,’ yet is obliged to endure a speech of a hundred and fifty-two lines, ninety-three of which, containing the account of the Epean contest with Pylos, are absolutely and entirely irrelevant. It may be said, that these effusions are naturally referable to the garrulous age of Nestor, and to false shame and want of ingenuousness in Agamemnon. In part, too, we may compare them with the modern fashion among Orientals of introducing parables in common discourse. But many of these have no parabolic force whatever: and from all of them poetical beauty suffers. On the other hand, the historic matter introduced is highly curious and interesting for the Greek races: why, then, should we force upon Homer the charge of neglect, folly, or drowsiness,17 when an important purpose for these interpolations appears to lie upon the very face of them?
It will be observed, that if this reasoning in reference to the interlocutory legends be sound, it supplies an historical character to the poem just in the places where the general argument for it would have been weakest; inasmuch as these legends generally relate to times one or two generations earlier than the Troica, and are farther removed, by so much of additional interval, from the knowledge and experience of his hearers.
But, over and above the episodes, which seem to owe their place in the poem to the historic aim, there are a multitude of minor shadings which run through it, and which, as Homer could have derived no advantage from feigning them, we are compelled to suppose real. They are part of the graceful finish of a true story, but they have not the showy character of what has been invented for effect. Why, for instance, should Homer say of Clytæmnestra, that till corrupted by Ægisthus she was good?18 Why should it be worth his while to pretend that the iron ball offered by Achilles for a prize was the one formerly pitched by Eetion?19 Why should he spend eight lines in describing the dry trunk round which the chariots were to drive?20 Why should he tell us that Tydeus was of small stature?21 Why does Menelaus drive a mare?22 Why has Penelope a sister Iphthime, ‘who was wedded to Eumelus,’ wanted for no other purpose than as a persona for Minerva in a dream?23 These questions, every one will admit, might be indefinitely multiplied.
But, after all, there can be no point more important for the decision of this question, than the general tone of Homer himself. Is he, for ethical and intellectual purposes, the child of that heroic age which he describes? Does he exhibit its form and pressure? Does he chant in its key? Are there a set of ideas of the writer which are evidently not those of his heroes, or of his heroes which are not those of the writer, or does he sing, in the main, as Phemius and Demodocus might themselves have sung? Wachsmuth says well, that Homer must be regarded as still within the larger boundaries of the heroic age. There are, perhaps, signs, particularly in the Odyssey, of a first stage of transition from it; but the poet is throughout identified with it in heart, soul, speech, and understanding. I would presume to argue thus; that Homer never would have ventured to dispense with mere description, and to adopt action as his sole resource—to dramatise his poem as he has dramatised it—unless he had been strong in the consciousness of this identity. It is no answer to say that later writers—namely, the tragedians—dramatised the subject still more, and presented their characters on the stage without even those slender aids from interjected narrative towards the comprehension of them, which Homer has here and there, at any rate, permitted himself to use. For the consequence has been in their case, that they entirely fail to represent the semblance of a picture of the heroic age, or indeed of any age at all. They produce remote occurrences or fables in a dress of feelings, language, and manners suited to their own time, as far as it is suited to any. Besides, as dramatists, they had immense aids and advantages of other kinds; not to mention their grand narrative auxiliary, the Chorus. But Homer enjoyed little aid from accessories, and has notwithstanding painted the very life. And yet, seeking to paint from the life, he commits it to his characters to paint themselves and one another. Surely he never could have confined himself to this indirect process, unless he had been emboldened by the consciousness of his own essential unity with them all. He would have done as most other epic poets have done, whose personages we feel that we know, not from themselves, but from what the poet in the character of intelligencer has been kind enough to tell us; whereas we learn Achilles by means of Achilles, Ulysses by means of Ulysses, and so with the rest. Next to their own light, is the light they reflect on one another; but we never see the poet, so to speak, holding the candle. Still, in urging all this, I feel that more remains and must remain unspoken. The question, whether Homer speaks and paints essentially in the spirit of his own age, or whether he fetches from a distance both his facts and a manner so remarkably harmonizing with them, must after all our discussions continue one to be settled in the last resort not by arguments, which can only play a subsidiary part, but first by the most thorough searching and sifting of the text; then by the application of that inward sense and feeling, to which the critics of the destructive schools, with their ἀναποδεικταὶ φάσεις, make such copious appeals.
But the assumption by an effort of mind of the manners and tone of a remote age, joined with the consistent support of this character throughout prolonged works, is of very rare occurrence. In Greek literature there is nothing, to my knowledge, which at all approaches it; and this I think may fairly be urged as of itself almost conclusive against ascribing it to Homer. The later tragedians, in whose compositions we should look for it, do not apparently so much as think of it; and it is most difficult to suppose a poet so national as Homer to be in this cardinal respect entirely different from all others of his race. Indeed the supposition is radically at variance with the idea of his poetical character; of which the very groundwork lies in a childlike unconsciousness, and in the unity of Art with Nature24.
May we not, however, go a good deal further, and say boldly that the faculty of assuming in literary compositions an archaic costume, voice, and manner, does not belong at all either to an age like that of Homer, or to any age of which the literary conditions at all resemble it?
In the first place, an inventor, working like Homer for the general public, must, by departing altogether from the modes of thought, expression, and action current in his own day, pro tanto lose his hold upon those on whose approval he depends. It seems to follow that this will not be seriously attempted, except in an age which has ceased to afford a liberal supply of the materials of romance. Is not this presumption made good by experience? The Greek tragedians, it is indisputable, did not find it necessary to aim, and did not aim, at reproducing the whole contemporary apparatus, which was in strictness appropriate and due to their characters. Virgil made no such attempt in the Æneid, of which, notwithstanding the manners abound in anachronisms of detail. The romance poets of Italy idealize their subject, not, however, by the revival of antique manners with their proper apparatus of incidents, but by means of an abundant preternatural machinery. Even in Shakespeare’s King John, Henry IV, or Henry VIII, how little difference can be detected from the Elizabethan age, or (in this point) from one another25. Again, in Macbeth or Lear, enough is done to prevent our utterly confounding their ages with the common life of the hearers; but there is nothing that approaches to a complete characteristic representation of the respective times to which the personages are supposed to belong. So, again, in Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, or Antony and Cleopatra, there is a sort of Roman toga thrown loosely over the figures; but we do not feel ourselves amidst Roman life when we read them. And, in truth, what is done at all in these cases is not done so much by reproducing as by generalizing, in the same sense as a painter generalizes his draperies. A great instance of the genuine process of reproduction is to be found in Sir Walter Scott. He, however, besides being a man of powerful genius, cast not in the mould of his own age, but in one essentially belonging to the past, was a master of antiquarian knowledge. And this leads me to name what seems to be the second condition of serious and successful attempts (I need not here speak of burlesques, of which all the touches must be broad ones) at disinterring and reviving bygone ages in the whole circle and scheme of their life. The first, as has been already said, is to live in an age itself socially old, so as not to abound in proper materials for high invention. The second is, to live in an age possessed of such abundant documents and records of a former time as to make it practicable to explore it in all points by historical data. This condition was wanting to Virgil, even supposing him to have had the necessary tastes and qualifications. It was not wanting to Scott, with reference especially to the period of the Stuarts, who, besides a vast abundance of oral and written traditions, had laws, usages, architecture, arms, coins, utensils, every imaginable form of relic and of testimony at his command, so that he could himself first live in the age of his works, and then, when himself acclimatised, invent according to it.
In all this it is not forgotten that a certain amount of archaism is indispensable in all works purporting to draw their subject from a long-past age. But this minimum need only be slight and general, as in the Æneid; and it consists rather in the exclusion of modern accessories, than in the revival of the original tone. And again, the very choice of subject, as it is grave and severe or light and gay, will to some extent influence the manners: the former will spontaneously lean towards the past, the latter, depending on the zest of novelty, will be more disposed to clothe itself in the forms of the present. Thus we have a more antique tone in Henry the Fifth, than in the Merry Wives of Windsor. But archaic colouring within limits such as these is broadly different from such systematic representation of the antique as Homer must have practised, if he had practised it at all.
As in romance and poetry, so in the progress of the drama, this method appears to be the business of a late age. The strength of dramatic imagination is always when the drama itself is young. It then confidently relies upon its essential elements for the necessary illusion; it knows little, and cares less, about sustaining it by elaborate attention to minor emblems and incidents. But when it has lived into the old age of civilized society, when the critical faculty has become strong and the imagination weak, then it strengthens itself by minute accuracy in scenery and costume,—in fact, by exact reproduction. This is indeed the novel gift of our own time: and by means of it theatrical revivals are now understood and practised among ourselves in a manner which former generations could not emulate, but did not require.
Nor must we forget the importance, with reference to this discussion, of Homer’s minuteness, precision, and multitude of details. Every one of these, be it remembered, if we suppose him not to be painting from the life, affords an additional chance of detection, by the discrepancy between the life habitually present to the poet’s experience, and that which he is representing by effort. But the voice of the Homeric poems is in this respect, after all, unisonous, like that of the Greeks, and not multiform, like that of the Trojan army26. We are driven, therefore, to suppose that Homer practised this art of reproduction on a scale, as well as with a success, since unheard of, and this at a period when, according to all likelihood and all other experience, it could only in a very limited sense be possible to practice it at all. The extravagance of these suppositions tells powerfully against them, and once more throws us back on the belief that the objects which he painted were, in the main, those which his own age placed beneath his view.
This view of the historical character of Homer, I believe, substantially agrees with that taken by the Greeks in general. If I refer to Strabo, in his remarkable Prolegomena27, it is because he had occasion to consider the point particularly. Eratosthenes had treated the great sire of poets as a fabulist. Strabo confutes him. Eratosthenes had himself noticed the precision of the geographical details: Thisbe, with its doves; Haliartus and its meadows; Anthedon, the boundary; Lilæa by the sources of Cephissus; and Strabo retorts upon him with force—πότερον οὖν ὁ ποιῶν ταῦτα ψυχαγωγοῦντι ἔοικεν ἢ διδάσκοντι; his general conclusion is, that Homer used fiction, as his smith in the Odyssey used gold for plating silver:—
ὡς δ’ ὅτε τις χρυσὸν περιχεύεται ἀργύρῳ ἀνὴρ,
that so Homer adjoined mythical ornaments to true events. But history was the basis:—ἔλαβεν οὖν παρὰ τῆς ἱστορίας τὰς ἀρχάς28. And, in adopting the belief that Homer is to be taken generally for a most trustworthy witness to facts, I am far from saying that there are no cases of exception, where he may reasonably be suspected of showing less than his usual fidelity. The doctrine must be accepted with latitude: the question is not whether it is absolutely safe, but whether it is the least unsafe. We may most reasonably, perhaps, view his statements and representations with a special jealousy, when they are such as appear systematically contrived to enhance the distinctive excellencies of his nation. Thus, for instance, both in the causes and incidents of the war, and in the relative qualities and merits of Greeks and Trojans, we may do well to check the too rapid action of our judgments, and to allow some scope to the supposition, that the historical duties of the bard might here naturally become subordinate to his patriotic purpose in glorifying the sires of his hearers, that immortal group who became through him the fountain head to Greece, both of national unity and of national fame.
Indeed, while I contend keenly for the historic aim and character of Homer, I understand the terms in a sense much higher than that of mere precision in the leading narration. We may, as I am disposed to think, even if we should disbelieve the existence of Helen, of Agamemnon, or of Troy, yet hold, in all that is most essential, by the historical character of Homer. For myself, I ask to be permitted to believe in these, and in much besides these; yet I also plead that the main question is not whether he has correctly recorded a certain series of transactions, but whether he has truly and faithfully represented manners and characters, feelings and tastes, races and countries, principles and institutions. Here lies the pith of history; these it has for its soul, and fact for its body. It does not appear to me reasonable to presume that Homer idealized his narration with anything like the license which was permitted to the Carlovingian romance; yet even that romance did not fail to retain in many of the most essential particulars a true historic character; and it conveys to us, partly by fact and partly through a vast parable, the inward life of a period pregnant with forces that were to operate powerfully upon our own characters and condition. Even those who would regard the cases as parallel should, therefore, remember that they too must read Homer otherwise than as a poet in the vulgar and more prevailing sense, which divests poetry of its relation to reality. The more they read him in that spirit the higher, I believe, they will raise their estimate of his still unknown and unappreciated treasures.