the necessity felt for the predominance of one individual in warfare and council. The chiefs were grouped around the monarch like the twelve peers round Charlemagne, or like the barons whose turbulence Shakespeare has described in Richard II.

as found in the Iliad.

The relation of the Homeric sovereign to his princes was, in fact, a feudal one. Olympus repeats the same form of government. There Zeus is monarch simply because he wields the Greek history thunder. When Heré (Juno) wishes to rebel, Hephæstus (Vulcan) advises her to submit, because Zeus can root up the world, or hurl them all from the crystal parapet of heaven. Such, then, is the society of kings and princes in Homer. They stand forth in brilliant relief against the background, gray and misty, of the common people. The masses of the nation, like the chorus in tragedy, kneel passive, deedless, appealing to heaven, trembling at the strokes of fate, watching with anxiety the action of the heroes. Meanwhile the heroes enact their drama for themselves. They assume responsibility. They do and suffer as their passions sway them. Of these the greatest, the most truly typical is Achilles. In Achilles, Homer summed up and fixed forever the ideal of the Greek character. He presented an imperishable picture of their national youthfulness, and of their ardent genius to the Greeks. The beautiful human heroism' of Achilles, his strong personality, his fierce passions controlled and tempered by divine wisdom, his intense friendship and love that passed the love of women, above all, the splendor of his youthful life in death made perfect, hovered like a dream above the imagination of the Greeks, and insensibly determined their subsequent development. At a later age, this ideal was destined to be realized in Alexander. The reality fell below the ideal, but the life of Alexander is the most convincing proof of the importance of Achilles in the history of the Greek race.

Analogy between the child of to-day and the primitive

man.

If Achilles be the type of the Hellenic genius-radiant, adolescent, passionate-as it still dazzles us in its artistic beauty and unrivalled physical energy, Ulysses is no less a true portrait of the Greek as known to us in history-stern in action, ruthless in his hatred, pitiless in his hostility, subtle, vengeful, cunning; yet at the same time the most adventurous of men, the most persua

sive in eloquence, the wisest in counsel, the bravest and coolest in danger. And what remains to-day of the Hellenic genius in the so-called Greek nation descends from Ulysses rather than Achilles. If the Homeric Achilles has the superiority of sculpturesque and dramatic splendor, the Homeric Ulysses excels him on the ground of permanence of type.

"Homer his own witness." -Gladstone.

Homer, then, was the poet of the heroic age, the poet of Achilles and Ulysses. Of Homer we know nothing, we have heard too much. Need we ask ourselves again the question whether he existed, or whether he sprang into the full possession of consummate art without a predecessor? That he had no predecessors, no scattered poems and ballads to build upon, no well-digested body of myths to synthesize, is an absurd hypothesis, which the whole history of literature refutes. That, on the other hand, there never was a Homer, that is to say, that some compiler, acting under the orders of Pisistratus, gave its immortal outline to the colossus of the Iliad, and wove the magic web of the Odyssey; but that no supreme and conscious artist working towards a well planned conclusion conceived and shaped these epics to the form they bear, appears to the spirit of sound criticism equally untenable. The very statement of this alternative involves a contradiction in terms; for such a compiler must himself have been a supreme and conscious artist. Some Homer did exist. Some great single poet intervened between the lost chaos of legendary material and the world of artistic beauty which we now possess. His work may have been tampered with in a thousand ways, and religiously

Gladstone argues that the plot of the Iliad is one of the many internal evidences in favor of its unity, and hence that it is one of the most consummate works known to literature. The objections -founded on the plot "to disprove the unity of the work are," he says, "objections of very small stature, and not only is it not true that want of cohesion and proportion in the Iliad betrays a plurality of authors, but it is rather true that a structure so highly and delicately organized constitutes in itself a powerful argument, to prove its unity of conception and execution. With regard to discrepancies in the text, every effort to show them in mass may be declared to have failed. The markings of time, by division into day and night, are clear and consistent." Mr. Fiske also argues the impossibility of several great geniuses like Homer, coming together, or near enough together to jointly supply the material for so great a poem.

but inadequately restored. Of his age, and date, and country, we may know nothing; but this we do know, that the fire of moulding, fusing and controlling genius in some one brain has made the Iliad and Odyssey what they are.

Symonds, like Gladstone, is satisfied with the internal evi

dences that the Iliad (the Odyssey also) was

the work of one man.

The epic poet merges his personality in his poems, the words of which he ascribes to the inspiration of the muse. The individual is nowhere, is forgotten in the subject and suppressed, while the luminous forms of gods and heroes move serenely across the stage, summoned and marshalled by the maidens of Helicon.* In no other period of Greek literature shall we find the same unconsciousness of self, the same immersion in the work of art. It is the sign of a return to healthy criticism that scholars are beginning to acknowledge that the Iliad may be one poem-that is to say, no mere patchwork of ballads and minor epics put together by some compiler, but the work of a single poet, who surveyed his creation as an artist, and was satisfied with its unity. We are not bound to pronounce an opinion as to whether this poet was named Homer, whether Homer ever existed, and, if so, at what period of the world's history he lived. *The maidens of Helicon--the Muses. They were daughters of Zeus, nine in number, and taught the people song.

Though the Homeric age appears to be a late one when considered with reference to the whole career of the human race, there is a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as 'the youth of the world.' However long man may have existed upon the earth, he becomes thoroughly and distinctly human in the eyes of the historian only at the epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature." "We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period at which we can begin to study human society in general and Greek society in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking, the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of the first Olympiad, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly prehistoric."

"We do not know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all probability we never shall know. The data for settling the question are now inaccessible, and it is not likely that they will ever be discovered." "It is fair to suppose the Helleno-Dorian conquest must have begun at least a century before the first Olympiad." "If this be the case, the minimum date for the composition of the Homeric poems must be the tenth century before Christ; which is, in fact, the date assigned by Aristotle." John Fiske in his essay "Juventis Mundi."

We are not bound to put forward a complete view concerning the college of Homeridæ, from which the poet must have arisen if he did not found it. Nor, again, need we deny that the Iliad itself presents unmistakable signs of having been constructed in a great measure out of material already existing in songs and romances dear to the Greek nation in their youth, and familiar to the poet. The æsthetic critic finds no difficulty in conceding, nay, is eager to claim, a long genealogy through antecedent, now forgotten, poems for the Iliad.

the Iliad, the

les.

But about this, of one thing, at any rate, he will be sure, after due experience of the tests applied by Wolf and his folThe key-note of lowers, that a great artist gave its present form to wrath of Achil- the Iliad, that he chose from the whole Trojan tale a central subject for development, and that all the episodes and collateral matter with which he enriched his epic were arranged by him with a view to the effect that he had calculated. What, then, was this central subject, which gives the unity of a true work of art to the Iliad? We answer, the person and the character of Achilles. It is not fanciful to say, with the old grammarians of Alexandria, that the first line of the poeni sets forth the whole of its action

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus.

The wrath of Achilles, and the consequences of that wrath in the misery of the Greeks, left alone to fight without their fated. hero; the death of Patroclus caused by his sullen anger; the energy of Achilles, re-awakened by his remorse for his friend's death; and the consequent slaughter of Hector, form the whole of the simple structure of the Iliad. This seems clear enough when we analyze the conduct of the poem.

The first book describes the quarrel of Achilles with Agamemnon and his secession from the war. The next seven books and a half, from the second to the middle of the poem as shown ninth, are occupied with the fortunes of the Greeks and Trojans in the field, the exploits of Diomed and In the middle of the

The plan of the by Symonds.

Ajax and Hector's attack upon the camp. ninth book Achilles reappears upon the scene. Agamemnon sends Ulysses and Phoenix to entreat him to relax his wrath and

save the Greeks; but the hero remains obdurate. He has resolved that his countrymen shall pay the uttermost penalty for the offense of their king!* The poet having foredetermined that Achilles shall only consent to fight in order to revenge Patroclus, is obliged to show the inefficacy of the strongest motives from without; and this he has effected by the episode of the embassy.† The tenth book relates the night attack upon the camp of the Trojan allies and the theft of the horses of Rhesus. The next

five books contain a further account of the warfare carried on among the ships between the Achaians and their foes. It is in the course of these events that Patroclus comes into prominence. We find him attending on the wounded Eurypylus and warning Achilles of the imminent peril of the fleet. At last, ing point of the in the sixteenth book, when Hector has carried fire to the ship of Protesilaus, Achilles commands Patroclus to assume the armor of Peleus and lead his myrmidons to war.

The culminat

poem.

The same book describes the repulse of Hector and the death of Patroclus, while the seventeenth is taken up with the fight for the body of Achilles' friend. But from the eighteenth onward the true hero assumes his rank as leader or chief actor, making us feel that what has gone before has only been a preface to his action. His seclusion from the war has not only enabled the poet to vary the interest by displaying other characters, but has also proved the final intervention of Achilles to be absolutely necessary for the success of the Greek army. All the threads of interest are

The retirement of Achilles a proof of the unity of the poem.

Whatever we have

gathered together and converge on him. learned concerning the situation of the war, and the characters of the chiefs now serve to dignify his single person, and to aug

*The poet's plan is to show the superior force and power of Achilles above all other Greeks; hence he continually puts a stronger to conquer a weaker, the stronger in turn to be conquered by a stronger yet-until he reaches Hector, whom none but Achilles can overpower.

+ In this episode, Agamemnon's pride is humbled far enough for him to return to Achilles the captive about whom the quarrel began. In addition to this humiliation Agamemnon sends many horses and much gold and several captives. But Achilles is too 66 great" to be appeased.