pensing weal or wo. The general notion of a * We have dwelt the more largely on this subject here, because the changes which took place in the Greek religion after the age of Homer affect its external aspect rather than its essential character. Its relation, indeed, to the state, to science, and to morality, did not continue always the same as fresh avenues opened for commerce with foreign regions, some new objects of worship were introduced: the progress of wealth and art multiplied and refined its rites; but the germe, at least, of every important religious principle and institution is visible in the Homeric poems. IV. It is not our intention fully to describe the state of knowledge and of the arts in the heroic ages, or to combine all the scattered touches by which Homer has illustrated it, into a picture as complete as they might enable us to form. We must confine ourselves to selecting a few of the most striking, which may serve to mark the limits of the progress which the Greeks of this period had made in intellectual acquirements, and in their application to the purposes of life. A just but indiscriminating veneration for Homer's genius led the Greeks of later times, when science and erudition flourished, but the spirit of poetry was nearly extinct, to form very exaggerated notions of his learning. They could not bring themselves to believe that the divine bard, who for so many centuries had fashioned the mind of Greece, whose wisdom they had been accustomed to revere from their infancy, should have been ignorant of things which, in their own day, were familiar to the vulgar, and that his conceptions of the objects which lay beyond the narrow range of his knowledge should have been at once mean and extravagant to a degree which a more enlightened age finds it difficult to comprehend. Strabo employs a considerable space in the introductory part of his work to refute Eratosthenes, who had presumed to inaintain that the poet's aim was merely to afford entertainment, that his geographical information was confined to the countries inhabited by Greeks, and that, as in the description of foreign regions he had free- If we begin by endeavouring to ascertain the KNOWLEDGE AND ARTS. to the intermediate tract. We find no intima- On the whole, we may observe, and it is a re- countries may have been, his description of on Homer's Phracians, in the new series of the Rheinisches This has been lately very satisfactorily shown by Professor Welcker, in a most ingenious and interesting essay Museum, i., 2. But I find it very difficult to assent to his grounds, that the poet does not mean to represent Scheria as an island. position, which he adopts apparently only on etymological ther side, however, is land; but a land of darkness, which the sun cannot pierce; a land of Cimmerians, the realm of Hades, inhabited by the shades of the departed, and by the family of dreams. As to the other dimensions of the earth, the poet affords us no information, and it would be difficult to decide whether a cylinder or a cone approaches nearest to the figure which he may have assigned to it; and as little does he intimate in what manner he conceives it to be supported. But within it was hollowed another vast receptacle for departed spirits, perhaps the proper abode of Hades. Beneath this, and as far below the earth as heaven was above it, lay the still more murky pit of Tartarus, secured by its iron gates and brazen floor, the dungeon reserved by Jupiter for his implacable enemies. and the southern extremity of Italy are repre- | ible line, admits of much doubt. On the farsented as the limits of all ordinary navigation. Beyond lies a vast sea, which spreads to the very confines of nature and space. Sicily itself, at least its more remote parts, is inhabited by various races of gigantic cannibals; whether, at the same time, any of the tribes who really preceded the Greeks in the occupation of the island were known to be settled on the eastern side, is not certain, though the Sicels and Sicania are mentioned in the Odyssey. The marvels with which the poet has embellished this part of his narrative were no doubt suggested by some real features in the nature of the scenes described, as the dangers of the straits and the appearance of the volcanic islands on the northern coast; but the boldness of his fictions seems to prove that he is only giving shape to an indistinct rumour. Yet the copper mines of Temesa are already so celebrated as to attract the Taphians, who carry iron to barter for it * But Italy, as well as Greece, appears, according to the poet's notions, to be bounded on the north by a formidable waste of waters. The waters of Ocean, as they nourish the earth, also renovate and purify the lustre of the heavenly fires, among which one only never repairs its waste in the refreshing bath. The sun rises-it would seem out of a spacious reach which the river makes in the east-to perform his journey over the vault of heaven. The luminary itself is perpetually confounded with the power which animates it or controls its career. But the god does not appear under the form of a charioteer, who, as he climbs the heights of ether, darts his beams on the earth: nor is it certain how the poet conceived the close of his daily task to be connected with its renewal. There is no intimation that he was supposed to descend below the surface of the earth, nor, indeed, would such a revolution be consistent with the other parts of the mundane system. If the necessity of some additional supposition to explain the vicissitude of day and night had been observed, it was probably met by a fiction similar to that which became current in later times. The poet Mimnermus, who flourished between the seventh and sixth century B.C., may only have expressed an idea which had been long familiar to the Greeks, when he sang of the golden bowl which Hephaestus had wrought, and furnished with wings, as a floating couch for the god of day, who, after finishing his task, reposes in the enchanted vessel, and is rapidly transported over the surface of the water from the abode of the Hesperides to the land of the Ethiopians, where he finds another chariot and fresh steeds waiting to receive him. When we proceed to inquire how the imagination of the people filled up the void of its experience, and determined the form of the unknown world, we find that the rudeness of its conceptions corresponds to the scantiness of its information The part of the earth exposed to the beams of the sun was undoubtedly considered, not as a spherical, but as a plane surface, only varied by its heights and hollows; and as little can it be doubted that the form of this surface was determined by that of the visible horizon. The whole orb is girt by the ocean, not a larger sea, but a deep river, which, circulating with constant but gentle flux, separates the world of light and life from the realms of darkness, dreams, and death. No feature in the Homeric chart is more distinctly prominent than this: hence the Divine artist terminates the shield of Achilles with a circular stripe, representing the mighty strength of the river occan, and all the epithets which the poet applies to it are such as belong exclusively to a river. It is by no means easy to account for this notion, even if it should be supposed to have arisen before the Greeks were acquainted with the Asiatic continent: for still they saw nothing but land to the north; and even if they imagined the earth to be encompassed by waters, there was nothing to suggest the thought of a limitary river. It would rather seem that they must have been led to it in endeavouring to explain It does not appear that the poet was aware the origin of the liquid element by tracing it to of any distinction worth his notice between the a single source, which would naturally be fixed northern and the southern half of the terrestrial at the extremity of the earth. And, according-plane; but the regions subject to the immedily, Homer describes all the other rivers, all springs and wells, and the salt main itself, as issuing from the ocean stream, which might be supposed to feed them by subterraneous channels. Still it is very difficult to form a clear conception of this river, or to say how the poet supposed it to be bounded. Ulysses passes into it from the western sea; but whether the point at which he enters is a mouth or opening, or the two waters are only separated by an invis * Od.. i, 184. It is not, however, certain that this Te mesa was in Italy; the direction in which the speaker is sailing is at least quite as favourable to the opinion of those who took it for a town in Cyprus. But see Eustr h. ate influence of the rising and setting sun are scenes of wonder, and peopled by a peculiar race. The adjacent shores or islands are blessed with a double portion of light and heat, and teem with inexhaustible fertility. The Elysian plain, though not far remote from the land of darkness and dreams, enjoys an uninterrupted serenity of atmosphere. The people that inhabits these favoured regions of the extreme east and west attests the neighbourhood of the sun by their swarthy complexion, which is expressed by the name of Ethiopians: the gods themselves sometimes leave their celestial home to share the plenty of their banquets, and to honour their piety and innocence. It half-decked boats: according to the calculation has been supposed that a rumour of a dark-col- of Thucydides, who seems to suspect exaggeroured race on the eastern shores of the Euxineation, the largest contained 120 men, the greatmay have suggested the thought of the fabulous est number of rowers mentioned in the cataEthiopians; but their colour was determined logue; but we find twenty rowers spoken of as by their position, and the seats of perfect inno- a usual complement of a good ship. The mast cence and justice could only be fixed at the was movable, and was only hoisted to take adfarthest ends of the earth. These Ethiopians vantage of a fair wind, and at the end of a day's became the model of a similar, perfect, happy, voyage was again deposited in its appropriate and long-lived race, which inhabited a paradise receptacle. In the daytime the Greek mariner in the extreme north, sheltered from the blasts commonly followed the windings of the coasts, of Boreas by a barrier of mountains; and when or shot across from headland to headland, or the Greeks became acquainted with the African from isle to isle; at night his vessel was usualtribes, Ethiopia was shifted to the shores of the ly put into port or hauled up on the beach; for southern sea, where, in the reign of Cambyses, though on clear nights he might prosecute his a people was believed to exist of extraordinary voyage as well as by day, yet, should the sky beauty, stature, and longevity, in whose coun- be overcast, his course was inevitably lost. try gold was more plentiful than copper, the ta- Engagements at sea are never mentioned by ble of the sun yielded every day spontaneously Homer, though he so frequently alludes to pia banquet of various meats, and a soft and fra- ratical excursions. They were probably of rare grant spring supplied an elixir of life. occurrence; but, as they must sometimes have been inevitable, the galleys were provided with long poles for such occasions. The approach of winter put a stop to all ordinary navigation. Hesiod fixes the time for laying up the merchant-ship, covering it with stones, taking out the rigging, and hanging the rudder up by the fire. According to him, the fair season lasts only fifty days: some, indeed, venture earlier to sea, but a prudent man will not then trust his substance to the waves. Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heaven seem to imply that he considered it as a solid vault of metal. But it is not necessary to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any such inference from his description of Atlas, who holds the lofty pillars which keep earth and heaven asunder. Yet it would seem, from the manner in which the height of heaven is compared with the depth of Tartarus, that the region of light was thought to have certain bounds. The summit of the Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the highest point on the earth, and it is not always carefully distinguished from the aerian regions above. The idea of a seat of the gods-perhaps derived from a more ancient tradition, in which it was not attached to any geographical site-seems to be indistinctly blended in the poet's mind with that of the real mountain. Hence Hephæstus, when hurled from the threshold of Jupiter's palace, falls from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve, before he drops on Lemnos; and Jupiter speaks of suspending the earth by a chain from the top of Olympus. The practical astronomy of the early Greeks consisted of a few observations on the heavenly bodies, the appearances of which were most conspicuously connected with the common occupations of life. The succession of light and darkness, the recurring phases of the moon, and the vicissitude of the seasons, presented three regular periods of time, which, though all equally forced on the attention, were not all marked with equal distinctness by sensible limits. From the first, and down to the age of Solon, the Greeks seem to have measured their months in the natural way, by the interval between one appearance of the new moon and A wider compass of geographical knowledge the next. Hence their months were of unequal and more enlarged views of nature would duration; yet they might be described in round scarcely have been consistent with the state of numbers as consisting of thirty days; and Henavigation and commerce which the Homeric siod speaks of a thirtieth day as if it belonged poems represent. The poet expresses the com- to every month; a mode of speaking which, mon feelings of an age when the voyages of the though it has occasioned dispute among modern Greeks were mostly confined to the Egean, in writers, was not liable to be misunderstood by the language used by Nestor in speaking of the his contemporaries, even if he has not himself wanderings of Menelaus. So, when Troy is furnished a hint for correcting it.* The comsaid to be at a vast distance from the Achæan putation of the days of the month seems to land, this is not to be considered merely as the have been important only in a religious point judgment of an Ithacan shepherd. We find the of view, partly through the popular superstition Greeks, after the fall of Troy, earnestly deliber-which stamped each day of the month with its ating at Lesbos on the long voyage which lay peculiar character of good or evil omen, and before them, and uncertain whether they shall partly through the sacred traditions which fixed cross the open sea from the north of Chios to the festivals of certain deities on certain days. Euboea, or steer along the coast of Cape Mimas. Hesiod devotes a part of his poem on husbandThe former course is adopted, and, on their ar-ry to the days of the month, which he enumerrival at Geræstus, they offer many victims to Poseidon, in gratitude for having been brought in safety over so great a sea. It accords with this view of the distance, that the failure of the first expedition against Troy was attributed to a mistake of the pilots, who guided the fleet to the coast of Mysia instead of the kingdom of Priat The vessels of the heroes, and probinterretation Handbuch der Chronologie, 1., p. 263), which By the hue 766, cỗ t' dv. K. T. X., according to Ideler's bly of the poet's contemporaries, were slender. is not overthrown by Goettling's objections. ates and describes according to their various It was the goddess, who assumes the person of a Taphian chief, professing that she is on her way to Temesa, with a cargo of iron to be exchanged for copper; and in the Iliad, Jason's son, the prince of Lemnos, appears to carry on an active traffic with the Greeks before Troy. He sends a number of ships freighted with wine, for which the purchasers pay, some in copper, some in iron, some in hides, some in cattle, some in slaves. Of the use of money the poet gives no hint, either in this description or elsewhere. He speaks of the precious metals only as commodities, the value of which was in all cases determined by weight. The Odyssey represents Phoenician traders as regularly frequenting the Greek ports:* but as Phoenician Phoenicians do not scruple, even where they are received as friendly merchants, to carry away Greek children into slavery.† The general impression which the Homeric pictures of society leave on the reader is, that many of the useful arts-that is, those subservient to the animal wants or enjoyments of life the apparent annual revolution of the sun, and that, if this were taken to be equal to twelve of the former, the seasons would pass in succession through all the months of the year. This in itself would have been no evil, and would have occasioned no disturbance in the business of life. Seen under the Greek sky, the stars were scarcely less conspicuous objects than the moon itself: some of the most striking groups were early observed and named, and served, by their risings and settings, to regulate the labours of the husbandman and the adventures of the seaman. But though for such purposes it was not necessary to adjust the order of the lunar months to that of the seasons, the interests of religion seem to have required that this should be done. The spirit of a cere-slaves are sometimes brought to Greece, so the monial worship prescribes a rigid adherence to the established rites, in all their forms and circumstances; and, accordingly, it was not held sufficient for the due celebration of a sacred festival among the Greeks, that it took place on a stated day of the month, if it did not also conform to the ancient rule in the season of the year. This is the remark, indeed, of a late--had already reached such a stage of refineGreek writer, but it is so consistent with the ment as enabled the affluent to live, not merewhole character of the earliest religion of his ly in rude plenty, but in a considerable degree countrymen, that it may safely be adopted, and of luxury and splendour. The dwellings, furapplied to the remotest times.* Hence it is niture, clothing, armour, and other such properhighly probable that, even before the time of ty of the chiefs, are commonly described as Homer, the Greeks had begun to compensate magnificent, costly, and elegant, both as to the for the defect of the lunar year by the occa- materials and workmanship. We are struck sional addition of an intercalary month. In the not only by the apparent profusion of the predivision of the seasons Homer seems to make cious metals, and other rare and dazzling obno distinction between summer and autumn;jects, in the houses of the great, but by the and the goddesses who preside over them-skill and ingenuity which seem to be exerted in the Hours-were originally three in number. Their name was not yet given to portions of the day; these the poet usually describes by the civil occupations belonging to them; as, the morning by the filling of the market-place, the noon as the time when the wood-cutter rests from his toil and takes his repast, the evening as the unyoking of the oxen, or as the time when the judge quits the seat of justice. In the night, the stars, as they supplied the place of a calendar to the husbandman, served as a clock for those whose habits made them conversant with the aspect of the heavens. Commerce appears, in Homer's descriptions, to be familiar enough to the Greeks of the heroic age, but not to be held in great esteem. We find Ulysses taunted by one of the Phæacians, though themselves a maritime people, as a person whose appearance betokened that he was more used to command sailors in a merchant vessel, to take charge of a cargo, and to keep an eye on the outlays and the profits of a voyage, than to engage in athletic sports. And in such a capacity Ulysses, relating his fictitious adventures, describes himself as having been once employed by a Phoenician; but in the same narrative he mentions, with pride, that, though left an orphan, with a very slender provision, he could never bear to apply himself to any peaceful occupation for acquiring wealth at home: ships were his delight, and he had made many expeditions from Crete to foreign parts, but always with armed comrades, to enrich himself with the plunder of the coasts which he visited. Yet in the Odyssey we find *Geminus, Isag., 6, quoted by Ideler, i., p. 256. working them up into convenient and graceful forms. Great caution, however, is evidently necessary in drawing inferences from these descriptions, as to the state of the arts in the heroic ages. The poet has treasures at his disposal, which, as they cost him nothing, he may scatter with an unsparing hand. It depends entirely upon himself with what degree of magnificence he shall adorn the various scenes which he depicts. Nor has he need of any real models to enable him to give a minute description of the most elaborate works. A very rude performance may sometimes be sufficient to suggest to him new combinations, more ingenious and artificial than any which his own experience had ever brought under his eye. These remarks are all applicable to Homer. The shield made by Hephæstus for Achilles cannot be considered as a specimen of the progress of art, since it is not only the work of a god, but is fabricated on an extraordinary occasion, to excite the admiration of men: and the figures in silver and gold which adorn the fairy palace of Alcinous, and which, in part at least, are ascribed to the same divine artist, are undoubtedly such as the poet had never beheld in any human habitation. But, besides this doubt as to the degree in which his imagination may have overstepped reality in his descriptions of such objects, another is suggested by several passages, which might lead us to suppose that, even where he had some real patterns before him, they were the productions, not of Grecian, but of foreign art Nor should it be forgotten, that if, as is at least + Ibid., xv., 452. * Od., xiii., 272 |