I. APPENDIX Wolf would probably have welcomed as decisive evidence in support of his view. Yet we see that by Ritschl and others it is regarded in a totally different light, as perfectly consistent both with the high antiquity of the poems, and with an original unity of design in each of them. as To any one who considers the variety of opinions which has been noticed in this slight sketch, and the obscurity of the period to which they relate, it must be evident that little reliance can be placed on any conclusions grounded on facts extraneous to the poems themselves; and it will excite no surprise, that the ablest writers who have applied their attention to the question, still look upon a closer examination of the poems as the only sure method of arriving at a satisfactory result. It must however be observed, that some of these critics have paid more attention to the general outline of the composition, while others have entered farther into the details of the execution. And it seems to have happened, might perhaps have been anticipated, that those who have adopted the former of these methods have more frequently been led to maintain the original unity of design, while those who have instituted a minuter analysis have commonly discovered what has appeared to them conclusive indications of a divided authorship. Some, among whom may be named Nitzsch, Welcker, K. O. Mueller, Bode, Dissen, and Schneidewin (Rhein. Mus. f. Phil. v. 3.), contend not only that the original plan of the Iliad might, with more or less frequent interpolations, have comprised its present extent, but that it could not, consistently with the laws of poetical continuity, have stopt short at any antecedent point and they are disposed to consider the interruptions and delays by which the main action is retarded, as calculated to heighten the interest, and therefore as the strongest proofs of the poet's consummate mastery of his art. Others conceive that nothing more can have belonged to the original plan than is announced in the opening lines, which contain no intimation that would not be fully satisfied by that part of the narrative which describes the reverses and distress of the Greeks: and consequently, that the scenes which follow, including the death of Patroclus and its consequences, can neither be explained nor vindicated as coming from the same hand: but, however excellent in themselves, can only be regarded as a sequel drawn out to an arbitrary length, without any principle of poetical composition to determine its limits. It is evident that these are questions not to be decided by reasoning upon universally admitted premisses, but depending in a great degree on the measure and quality of the inquirer's individual feeling and judgment. A nearer approach to a decisive conclusion has been confidently expected from a more minute investigation of details. In his Essay De Interpolationibus Homeri (Opusc. tom. v.) Hermann expressed his belief (p. 68.) that if any one were to go through the whole of the Iliad with the requisite diligence and circumspection, applied to the minutest circumstances, there was reason to hope that most of its component parts might be discovered with a sufficient degree of probability, and restored almost exactly to their original form. But the samples which he gave in that essay of the process which he recommended have not produced the same impression on all other critics. (See Schneidewin in the Rhein. Mus. v. p. 405.) An analysis of the whole Iliad, as searching as Hermann himself could well desire, has lately been instituted by Lachmann, a critic who had previously applied a very diligent study to the German epic poetry of the middle ages, in two papers published among the Transactions of the Berlin Academy (Ueber die ersten zehn Buecher der Ilias, 1837, and Fernere Betrachtungen ueber die Ilias, 1841). By these researches Lachmann appears to believe that he has re-established Wolf's hypothesis on an immovable basis, and has resolved the Iliad into some eighteen pieces, possibly of as many authors, but at any rate distinct and independent poems. He points out specimens of an incoherency which appears to him utterly irreconcilable with the supposition, that the lays to which he has endeavoured to assign their proper limits could have been originally designed as parts of one work. Many of these lays he considers as much finer than the whole in which they have actually been made to coalesce: a judgment which brings us back to that field of inquiry, in which, as has just been observed, there is no room for any reasoning that can command universal assent. Perhaps also he trenches a little on the right of free discussion, when he remarks (§ xxiii.) with regard to the diversity which he has pointed out in the case of four of these lays, that it may serve as a test of his reader's capacity : inasmuch as any one who thinks it immaterial, or who fails to recognise it at the first suggestion, thereby betrays his incompetence to form a judgment on such questions, or on epic poetry in general. The sagacity and industry with which Lachmann has conducted this investigation are indeed unquestionable. It appears already to have exercised considerable influence on public opinion in Germany, as may be collected from the manner in which it is noticed by F. Ritter, the reviewer of Mueller's History of Greek Literature in the Wiener Jahrbuecher, vol. cvii. p. 129.: and no one can deny that the facts on which his conclusions are founded deserve serious attention. It will however remain to be considered, how far the probability of those conclusions is affected by a comparison with the different combinations into which the facts have been brought by other writers, who, like Grotefend in the above cited article of the Halle Encyclopædia, have subjected the Iliad to a APPENDIX I. I. APPENDIX similar analysis. It will also be useful to recollect Wolf's ingenuous admission in the Preface to his Homer, p. xxii., (Nunc quoque usu evenit mihi nonnunquam, quod non dubito eventurum item multis, esse ut quoties abducto ab historicis argumentis animo redeo ad continentem Homeri lectionem et interpretationem, mihique impero illarum omnium rationum oblivisci, quantum potest, et cum veteribus Grammaticis nonnullas ¿noεis postremarum rhapsodiarum ut interpolatas legere, et alia pro non dubiis sumere plura quæ nos ad pristinam legendi consuetudinem reducant, atque ita penitus immergor in illum veluti prono et liquido alveo decurrentem tenorem actionum et narrationum: quoties animadverto ac reputo mecum, quam in universum æstimanti unus his carminibus insit color, aut certe quam egregie carmini utrique suus color constet, quam apta ubique tempora rebus, res temporibus, aliquot loci adeo sibi alludentes congruant et constent, quam denique æquabiliter in primariis personis eadem lineamenta serventur et ingeniorum et animorum: vix mihi quisquam irasci et succensere gravius poterit, quam ipse facio mihi, simulque veteribus illis, qui tot non temere jactis indiciis destruunt vulgarem fidem et suam; soleoque interdum castigare sedulitatem et audaciam meam, quæ timido alioquin et antiqua libenter retinenti, nec sine religione monumenta vetusta tractanti, hanc extorquet voluptatem, ut pro Homereis habeam omnia, atque Homeri unius artem admirer in his quæ apud eum hodie legimus), and to consider, whether discrepancies which the critic could so easily bring himself to forget or overlook, might not as easily have escaped the poet's attention. And finally, it will be necessary to inquire, how far the incongruities pointed out by Lachmann may be explained by Ritzschl's hypothesis, that the author of the Iliad was largely indebted to the works of earlier poets. It has been no part of the object of this appendix to give a complete survey of the voluminous literature to which the controversy has given birth. The most copious references will perhaps be found in the notes to Bode's Geschichte der Hellenischen Dichtkunst, vol. i., which probably include almost every work of any importance which had then appeared on the subject. 517 APPENDIX II. ON THE NUMBER OF THE SPARTAN TRIBES. THAT before the conquest of Peloponnesus, the Dorians were divided into three tribes which were supposed to have derived their names from Hyllus, the son of Hercules, and from Dymas and Pamphylus, sons of the Dorian king, Ægimius, seems sufficiently certain (Steph. Byz. Avuār). This, of itself, without any direct testimony, raises a presumption that the same division prevailed in all the Dorian states, where the contrary cannot be distinctly proved. Beside this, there appears to be scarcely any valid ground for assigning the same number to the Spartan tribes. Pindar's allusion to the forefathers of the Dorian race (Pyth. 1. 61.), seems not to deserve the stress which is laid upon it by Mueller (Dor. iii. 5. 1.), whose argument does not need it. It gains little from the remark of the scholiast, who introduces Dorus among the sons of Ægimius. The main question is, whether there is any reason for preferring a different number for the Spartan tribes. Several authors, overlooking the Dorian tribes altogether, have confined their attention to passages in which the local divisions of Sparta, or its immediate neighbourhood, are described as tribes, and especially to a passage of Pausanias, where he speaks of the inhabitants of these four divisions as if they comprehended the whole body of the Spartans (iii. 16. 9. Οἱ Λιμνᾶται Σπαρτιατῶν καὶ Κυνοσουρεῖς καὶ ἐκ Μεσόας τε καὶ Πιτάνης). Το these four some add a fifth, the Ægeids, on the authority of Herodotus (iv. 149.) Aiyɛīdaι puλù μeyáλŋ év Σñáрry). And Barthelemy (Anacharsis, note to c. 41.), acutely perceiving the necessity for a local division corresponding to this fifth tribe, places the chapel, or, as he calls it, the tomb of Ægeus, mentioned by Paus. iii. 15. 8., in an imaginary hameau des Egides. Schoemann (Antiq. J. P. G. 115.) considers Aúpa as the fifth tribe, but conceives that this local division was substituted for that of the ancient tribes by Cleomenes III. Other authors, without making any such supposition, add the Heracleids as a sixth tribe. So Cragius De Rep. Lac. 1. 6., who is followed by Manso (Sparta 1. Beylage 8.). But as Barthelemy urges the number of the Ephors in confirmation of his hypothesis, so Manso insists on the ancient division of Sparta into six regions, APPENDIX II. APPENDIX II. as an argument for the six tribes; but does not point out any connexion between these two divisions. He seems to have found no difficulty in associating two purely genealogical tribes, such as the Ægeids and the Heracleids, if they were tribes at all, must have been, with others, attached to certain localities. So Meursius (Misc. Lac. 1.7.) enriches the same list with the tribes Avμavic and Пlaupuλic, without troubling himself about the quarter which they inhabited. On much slighter grounds Goettling (Excursus 1. ad Aristot. Polit.), who strangely misconceives the force of Mueller's arguments, contends for ten tribes. He does not pretend to assign their names; but he thinks that this number is proved by that of the Cretan Cosmi, which he supposes to have been likewise that of the Spartan Ephors, before the reign of Theopompus. This supposition he grounds on a passage in the Lexicon of Timæus, which speaks of ten Ephors five superior, and five inferior (Epopot. πέντε μείζους, καὶ πέντε ἐλάττους). It is clear however that this passage, whatever may be its authority, will admit of a very different explanation, and can only prove that there were two sets of officers, differing in dignity, both bearing the title of Ephors. Nothing can be more arbitrary than to suppose that the number of the Ephors was reduced from ten to five by Theopompus. It would be a much more probable conjecture, that the number was increased in his time from five to ten, as might have happened, if the original functions of the Ephors, or a part of them, were then transferred to other magistrates called by the same name. But a - statement so insulated as this of Timæus affords no foundation for any hypothesis. Still less can Aristotle's remark, that the Spartans were said to have amounted at one time (TOTE, which Goettling translates ab initio) to ten thousand, warrant any inference as to the original number of the tribes. On the whole, as there is no difficulty in supposing that both the Heracleids and the Ægeids were included in the three tribes, and as this number is perfectly consistent with a different one for the local division of the capital, it seems preferable to every other that has been proposed. All the information which the ancients have left us, exclusive of scattered facts and allusions, on the Spartan institutions, lies within a very narrow compass. A few chapters of Herodotus (1. 65. vi. 51-60.), the little treatise ascribed to Xenophon De Republica Lacedæmoniorum, the ninth and tenth chapters of the second book of Aristotle's Politics, a few remarks in the sixth book of Polybius (c. 8.), Plutarch's Lives of Lycurgus, Lysander, Agesilaus, Agis, and Cleomenes, and his Apophthegmata Laconica, contain the bulk of it. The modern literature on the subject is the more copious on this account, because its object has been to supply, as far as |