give any account of their condition. With respect to the Etolians indeed it is uncertain how far they are entitled to the name of Greeks. The Acarnanians, as soon as they begin to take a part in the affairs of Greece, distinguish themselves as a finer and more civilised people; and it is probable that the Corinthian colonies on the Ambracian gulf may have exerted a beneficial influence on their social progress.

CHAP.

X.

500

APPENDIX I.

ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.

I.

APPENDIX THE slight sketch of this subject given in the text seemed, beyond most parts of the volume, to stand in need of some enlargement and illustration; but it appeared advisable to let it remain unaltered, and to subjoin the following observations as an appendix.

It may be convenient to begin with an extract from a little work of Professor Ritschl, of Bonn (Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken unter den ersten Ptolemäern und die Sammlung der Homerischen Gedichte durch Pisistratus nach Anleitung eines Plautinischen Scholions), which will show what view was taken by a distinguished scholar, in the year 1838, of the progress which the controversy had then made. He observes (p. 68.), that the footing on which the Homeric questions then stood, rendered it necessary to abstain from all assumptions contradicting either the belief that the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally committed to writing, or the unity of design in the original composition of each poem. But at the same time he avows his own conviction, that the evidence which had been adduced to prove the early use of writing among the Greeks, did not bear upon the history of the Homeric poems; while, on the other hand, the arguments for their oral transmission, grounded on the language, were so strong, as to exclude all reasonable doubt: but that the supposition of their original poetical unity, could only be admitted in a general sense, as possible under certain limitations, but not as a fundamental principle which could be applied to the decision of other points in the controversy. Still he is anxious to guard himself against the suspicion that he means to return to the hypothesis of the poems having been first committed to writing in the time of Pisistratus; or that he adopts the notion of a primitive Iliad and Odyssey, of minute dimensions, or the theory that either poem was composed of parts originally independent of each other, and finally cemented together after a period of insulated existence. The method by which he thinks the conflicting theories of other authors may be best reconciled, it will be most convenient to reserve for another place.

From this statement the reader may gather that one of Wolf's main propositions that of the oral transmission of the poems,

L

though strenuously assailed, has still kept its ground; but that APPENDIX among those who now hold it, there are several who reject both the premisses on which it was founded by Wolf, and the most important conclusion he deduced from it, that which relates to the composition of the poems. It will be the object of the following remarks to enter into some details on each of these heads, which will also bring down the history of the controversy to the present day.

Homer's silence as to the art of writing, the deficiency of characters and materials for writing in his age, the tradition preserved by Strabo as to the laws of Zaleucus, and the testimony of Josephus to the oral transmission of the Homeric poems, are the points on which Wolf laid the main stress for the establishment of his hypothesis. Later investigations, particularly those of Kreuser, (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, 1828), and Nitzsch (De Historiâ Homeri, of which the Fasciculus Posterior appeared in 1837), have shown that no reliance can safely be placed on any of them, and that if nothing else stood in the way, we might well return to the opinion which generally prevailed on the subject, before it was shaken by Wood and Wolf.

The supposition of Homer's silence as to the art of writing depends on the interpretation of Il. vi. 166, foll. Grotefend (in the article Homeros in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopædia, p. 230.) considers the whole episode (119 — 236.) as an interpolation, but as proving that even the rhapsodist who inserted it knew of none but a sort of Runic character, and consequently that the poet himself was entirely a stranger to the art of writing. As to the contents of Bellerophon's tablet, Wolf himself does not profess to have formed any distinct notion. Only he thinks that part of the description in which it is said that it was to be shown to the king of Lycia, clearly inconsistent with the character of an ordinary letter. He seems most inclined to look upon it as a token inscribed with marks which, according to a previous concert between Prœtus and his Lycian ally, signified that the bearer was to be put to death. This however is evidently an arbitrary assumption; for if it be said that the Lycian king, at the end of the nine days, asked to see what his guest had brought from Prœtus, it may be fairly answered, that Bellerophon had probably on his arrival disclosed the general nature of his commission, but, according to the laws of the ancient hospitality, was not permitted immediately to execute it by the delivery or production of the letter. (The explanation proposed by Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, i. p. 226., is not quite satisfactory or intelligible. He considers the tablet as one of those presents, with which persons connected together by ties of hospitality used to seal their mutual relation. It was in reference, he

I.

APPENDIX thinks, to this usage that Iobates asked to see a oñμa. And the plural onμara signified the same thing, only perhaps so as to designate the two-fold tablet, together with its contents. But a tablet would have been a strange present, and there is nothing to suggest the idea that it was intended as one by Protus.) Why the poet, if he meant to speak of a letter, should not have used the term δεῖξαι show, exhibit, or produce. is by no means clear: but whatever force there may be in the argument derived from that expression, is certainly more than counterbalanced by the effect of the epithets Toλá and #tuktų, (v. 169.), the former plainly implying that the contents of the tablet were to explain themselves: the latteras is justly observed by Kreuser, p. 202.—that they were meant to be concealed from the eye of Bellerophon. If however the signs of the tablet (onμara) are to be considered as hieroglyphical, which seems to have occurred to some of the ancients, other difficulties present themselves. For however nearly certain it may be that such was the origin of the Phoenician alphabet, nothing can be less probable, or more at variance with all tradition, than that this was the stage at which the art of writing was introduced by the Phoenicians into Greece and it would be a still wilder conjecture to attribute the introduction of the art to any other people.

Wood indeed (Essay on the original Genius of Homer) seems to have thought that these hieroglyphics might have been of native Greek invention. He observes, (p. 153.): As to symbolical hieroglyphical or picture description, something of that kind was no doubt known to Homer, of which the letter (as it is called) which Bellerophon carried to the king of Lycia is a proof. The Mexicans, though a civilised people, had no alphabet; and the account which they sent to Montezuma of the landing of the Spaniards was in this picture-writing. But it is extremely doubtful whether such pictures, even with the help of all the explanation that the Mexican artists were able to add to them, would have enabled Prœtus to convey his wishes. Humboldt (Atlas Pittoresque, p. 64.) observes: Le style de ses peintures hieroglyphiques ne lui auroient pas fourni de moyen pour exprimer en général le sentiment de haine et de Les recueils que nous appelons assez improprement des manuscrits Mexicains, renferment un grand nombre de peintures qui peuvent être interpretées ou expliquées comme les reliefs de la colonne Trajane, mais on n'y voit qu'un très petit nombre de caractères susceptibles d'être lus. In another point of view the comparison between the Greeks and the Mexicans may not be uninstructive. Humboldt observes (Atlas, p. 66.), Les manuscrits Mexicains (codices Mexicani) qui ont été conservés sont peints les uns sur des peaux de cerfs, les autres sur des toiles de coton, ou sur du papier de maguey. Il est très probable que

vengeance.

parmi les Americains, comme chez les Grecs et chez d'autres APPENDIX peuples de l'ancien continent, l'usage des peaux tannées et preparées a precédé celui du papier. So that if the Greeks of the Homeric age were only on a level with the Mexicans in their command of visible signs of their ideas, still they might have been amply furnished with materials, and instruments for the exhibition of them. If, as is most probable, they had advanced much farther, there could be still less room for doubt on this head. The Greeks as is well observed by Nitzsch, De Hist. Hom. i. 72. p.

were

not left to the resources of their own ingenuity, so as to proceed by slow steps from the use of the less commodious materials, stone, or metal, or wood, to others better suited to the purpose. The Phoenicians, no doubt, along with their characters, communicated their own methods of writing. And Wolf's surmise (Prolegg. p. lxii.), that the use of the dip0épaι was only introduced among the Ionians about the beginning of the Olympiads, appears to be merely arbitrary.

Let us remark, before we go farther, that he has not even disdained to borrow an argument from Rousseau, who fancied that the Odyssey would become a tissue of absurdities, if it were supposed that the heroes were able to write: forgetting, it would seem, as well as Wolf, that the bearer of a letter might also convey a message or bring news; so that the poet would need just as much excuse on the one supposition as on the other.

Wolf thought that his opinion as to the slow progress of the art of writing was signally confirmed by Strabo's statement, that the Epizephyrian Locrians were the first Greek people that received a code of written laws. Yet their lawgiver Zaleucus flourished so late as Ol. xxix. B. C. 664. To get rid of this argument, Kreuser (p. 195.) endeavours to show, that Strabo himself placed little reliance on the tradition he reports, and that the story contradicts itself, since the laws of Zaleucus are said to have been compiled from those of Creta, Sparta, and Athens, which implies that these had been written before them. Nitzsch (p. 63.) gives a different and more probable explanation of Strabo's meaning, grounded on a comparison of the passage with one in the next page (260. A.), from which he infers that the point in which the novelty consisted was, not that the laws were reduced to writing, but that the discretion of the Locrian magistrates was limited by a penal code: an important epoch, not in the history of the art of writing, or in Greek literature, but in that of the Locrian constitution.

As to the testimony of Josephus, Kreuser (p. 208.) and Nitzsch (p. 25.) are agreed that Wolf has enormously magnified its weight by his arbitrary interpretation of the historian's expression parí, which, as Nitzsch observes, intimates rather than excludes the pre