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strength of memory which he attributes to the Greeks in the period APPENDIX when it was not weakened by reliance on artificial aids, and had represented it as no great matter to have all Homer by heart. (Stupes fortasse ad tantam capacitatem memoriæ quæ totum Homerum complecti potuerit? Mihi vero id etiam parum videtur, multoque plura nonnunquam bonos rhapsodos tenuisse suspicor.) And reference is often made to a Calmuck epic, of most colossal dimensions three hundred and sixty cantos, as long on an average as those of the Iliad of which it is said the Tartar troubadours will repeat a score. The fact is not so accessible to investigation, but, if admitted as sufficiently attested, may be thought to counterbalance the force of Fauriel's remarks. (See Heeren, Ideen, iii. 1. p. 141.; W. Mueller, Homerische Vorschule, p. 49.; Ulrici, i. p. 223.) And if there should appear to be a peculiar difficulty in the oral transmission of such bulky works, it may be observed, that there is no need to suppose that the whole was produced at once. The composition of the Iliad might have occupied a period of many years, during which the parts, of moderate length, may have been successively committed to memory: a supposition perfectly consistent with that of an original unity of plan.

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Thus Wolf's conclusion as to the original form of the poems seems to be severed from the premisses with which he had himself connected it his view of the history of the Greek alphabet and is left to depend on other grounds, which occupied but a subordinate place in his argument: on the indications to be found in the poems themselves, or elsewhere, of the previous condition of Greek epic poetry. If however his assumptions on this subject were well founded; if Homer had no examples before him of poems exceeding a few hundred lines in length (si priora iπŋ omnia breviora fuerunt); if he had no opportunities for the recitation of such works as our Iliad and Odyssey, so as to enable his hearers to comprehend their poetical unity (ut magnitudo et summa eorum non dicam comprehenderetur, sed ad extremum audiretur), then it might seem difficult to say how the thought of such a work could have suggested itself to his mind, (quid tandem eum impellere potuisset in consilium et cogitationem tam longorum et continuo partium nexu consertorum carminum).

On the other hand it may be observed, that the poet's own genius might be a sufficient impulse, the satisfaction of his own mind an adequate motive, without any ulterior object, any calculation of the means he possessed of communicating his ideas in their full extent. (So Ulrici, i. p. 220.: The bard's interest in his subject, his poetical instinct, gave birth to his works in the first instance, without any farther aim or purpose.) And certainly it would be rash to deny this possibility, even if no method could

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APPENDIX be pointed out by which the poet might hope to make his great conceptions known, within, at least, such a circle as would have satisfied Milton's ambition. But it is by no means clear that the ordinary opportunities of public recitation in the Homeric age were not sufficient to answer this purpose. It would be nothing incredible in itself, or inconsistent with all that we know as to the state of society in the Ionian cities, that hearers should have resorted, day after day, to the same public place, to listen to the sequel of an interesting story. (Such is the picture of Ionian life drawn by Ulrici, i. p. 221.) Whether there were other extraordinary occasions, as religious festivals, better adapted to this end, and the contest of Thamyris with the Muses may be considered as an allusion to an ancient custom of enlivening such solemnities by poetical competition, and thus affording opportunity for a long series of recitations as Welcker suggests, Ep. Cycl., p. 341., must always remain doubtful; but it rests with those who adopt Wolf's position on this point to show, not only that there is no evidence of the fact, but that there is something absurd and inconceivable in the notion of it.

Again, it has been too hastily assumed by Wolf and others, that the transition from the earlier epic poetry to our Iliad or Odyssey, if they have been preserved in anything like the original form and volume, would be violently abrupt. This must of course depend on the character of that early poetry: and there is reason to believe that Wolf had formed a very inadequate and erroneous estimate of it. Later inquiries have rendered it highly probable, that its productions were not so short and simple as he represented them to himself. A considerable portion of Welcker's work on the Epic Cyclus is devoted to the illustration and establishment of this opinion; and it would be doing injury to his argument, if any attempt were here made to convey an idea of the learning and ingenuity with which it is maintained. The reader who feels an interest in the Homeric poems can hardly be directed to a work which will so richly repay his study. Welcker discovers in the Odyssey abundant intimations that epic poetry had long before advanced beyond that primitive stage in which it was confined to short independent lays or ballads, such as Achilles may be imagined to have sung to his lyre. It had already become usual to collect and combine the matter of these lays (the κλέα ἀνδρῶν) in an δίμη —a course or range of song, embracing a variety of subjects, in other words, a regular epic poem of considerable length, with beginning, middle, and end. A poet who so worked up these poetical elements, or fitted them together into a whole, was a öμnpos (óμoũ, άpw), and so, before the author of the Iliad or Odyssey, there were many HOMERS: that is, Arrangers, Composers, Compilers. Such were Phemius and Demodocus. The poem with

which Demodocus entertained the court of Alcinous appears to have comprised all the outlines of an 'IXíov IIépois, such as was afterwards composed by Arctinus and Lesches, and affords a specimen of the manner in which a work too long for a single recitation might be exhibited at intervals, by the same bard to the same audience. Welcker believes Demodocus to have been a real poet, though under a fictitious name, and no other than the blind bard of Chios. In like manner he discerns traces of an ancient Nóσro (a poem on the adventures of the heroes on their return from Troy), and an Orestea. But for our present purpose it is enough simply to state the general aim and tendency of his argument. If his conclusions are valid, there was no sudden transition from the primitive form of Greek epic poetry to that which it assumes in our Iliad and Odyssey, but on the contrary ample preparation, and a continuous, easy, and natural developement. It must however be evident at the first glance, that no higher value than that of a probable conjecture can ever be imparted, by any degree of learning and ingenuity, to reasoning which rests upon such premisses, and which relates to so early a period in the history of Greek literature.

On the other hand, it seems to be almost universally admitted, that the fragments and accounts which have been preserved of the poems which composed the Epic Cycle, afford most satisfactory proof, that before the appearance of the earliest of those poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least already reached their present compass, and were regarded each as a complete, well-defined whole, not as a fluctuating aggregate of fugitive pieces. They are recognised and presupposed by the epics of the Cycle, which are all either introductory or supplemental to them, — serving as a comment or a continuation; and this with a remarkable acknowledgment of their superior authority: so that the subjects of the Homeric poems were treated by the authors of the Cycle as sacred ground, on which they never ventured to encroach, however closely they might border on it. So the Cypria of Stasinus embraced the causes and the earlier events of the Trojan War. The Ethiopis of Arctinus took up the theme immediately at the close of the Iliad, and the same poet carried it on in another work to the fall of Troy. So the Nóσro of Hagias, and the Telegonia of Eugamon, were complements of the Odyssesy. And the abstinence of the Cyclic poets, when they approached the domain of their great predecessor, was the more significant, because they did not observe it with regard to one another. Lesches, in his Lesser Iliad, treated the same subject which Arctinus had before occupied in his Destruction of Troy (Ilii Persis). (See K. O. Mueller, Hist. of Gr.

APPENDIX

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APPENDIX Lit. c. 6.; Ulrici, i. p. 236.; Nitzsch, De Hist. Hom. ii. p. 24.; Bode, i. p. 364, foll.; Welcker, Ep. Cycl. p. 329, foll.)

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While some of the chief supports of Wolf's hypothesis were withdrawn from it by the result of these investigations, another eminent critic, G. Hermann, though agreeing in the main with Wolf's views, considered them as liable to objections of a different kind, which however he held to be equally applicable to those of Wolf's opponents, so as to render it necessary to take a middle course, and to devise a new explanation of the phenomena, which, as having something in common with the opinions of both parties, might adjust their differences. To Wolf the name of Homer represented a school of poets, who for many generations were exercising their powers on some portions of the subjects which fill our Iliad and Odyssey, and whose originally independent productions were at length combined so as to assume an appearance of poetical unity. Hermann, while he maintains that this supposition is absolutely required to account for the character which the extant poems present to a critical inspection, regards it nevertheless as defective, inasmuch as it neither assigns any motive which should have induced these poets to confine themselves so long within this range of subjects, nor-if they should be imagined to have celebrated any other events of the Trojan story—attempts, to explain the utter loss and total disappearance of their other works. On the other hand, the hypothesis of an original unity of design in each of the present poems, while it escapes from this difficulty, is involved in another. The name of Homer denotes the earliest period of Greek heroic song,— one which must have been separated by a wide interval from that of the Cyclic poets: for in their age the paramount authority of Homer was already universally recognised, and yet appears to have been grounded, not on his superiority in poetical excellence, but on his high antiquity. Yet if, notwithstanding the high degree of poetical refinement which they display, the Homeric poems should be referred to a very remote epoch, neither Wolf's hypothesis nor any other affords a solution of the difficulty, that their appearance would seem to have been followed by a long interval of silence and barrenness, which did not produce a single work or name that found its way to posterity. Homer, whether an individual or a school, would have left no imitators or successors behind him. The stream of epic poetry, so broad and full and rapid near its source, would have been suddenly lost under ground, only to break forth again in the scantier and less sparkling vein of the later Cycle. The hypothesis which to Hermann appeared the only one capable of satisfying all conditions, and meeting all objections, is that stated in the text (p. 279.) of two short poems, the germs of our Iliad and

Odyssey, which were variously expanded by the labours of sub- APPENDIX sequent generations.

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This hypothesis was not altogether new. In substance it did not differ much from that which Wolf himself had thrown out in the Preface to his edition of the Iliad, p. xxviii. (Quoniam certum est, tam in Iliade quam in Odyssea orsam telam et deducta aliquatenus fila esse a vate qui princeps ad canendum accesserat . . . . forsitan ne probabiliter quidem demonstrari poterit, a quibus locis potissimum nova subtemina et limbi procedant: at id tamen, ni fallor, poterit effici, ut liquido appareat Homero NIHIL PRÆTER MAJOREM PARTEM CARMINUM tribuendum esse, reliqua Homeridis, præscripta lineamenta persequentibus.) If there is any difference between this and Hermann's supposition, it seems to consist merely in the dimensions ascribed to the original poems. The general idea that the Iliad and Odyssey grew out of comparatively small beginnings, has been adopted by several other writers. (See especially the ingenious developement of this theory in Gruppe's Ariadne, p. 645.) Hermann himself observes (Op. vi. 86.) that Nitzsch's view of their composition, as stated in his Hist. Hom. i. p. 112., is not unlike his own, though there Nitzsch only supposes that Homer profited largely by various smaller works of more ancient poets relating to the Trojan war. (Homerum interpretor eum qui ex variis antiquiorum carminibus quæ de rebus Trojanis fuerint minora, multum profecerit, et qui Iliadem quæ antea de sola Jovis Bovλn fuisset conformaverit in hanc quam legimus de ira Achillis primum Græcis gravi deinde in ipsum vertente: donec Priami maxime admonitione in temperantiam humanæque sortis conscientiam vocatur. In hoc carmine plurima ex antiquioribus retenta suspicor, Odysseam vero ab eodem fortasse poeta, simili quidem antiquiorum usu, sed tamen ita compositam, ut non solum hanc operis descriptionem primus invenerit, sed etiam singula ipse exornaverit pleraque omnia.) According to Hermann's view, Homer is the author of the earliest sketches of the Iliad and Odyssey as with Wolf, vates qui primus ad canendum accesserat. But Wolf, as he did not perceive the difficulty by which Hermann found himself driven to this hypothesis, seems to have regarded it as an immaterial variation of that which he had proposed in his Prolegomena. And what belongs properly to Hermann, is the peculiar form by which he adapts it to the purpose for which it was contrived. Unluckily however the details which constitute this peculiarity in its form, are just the points which seem to be open to the gravest objections.

Hermann has to explain how it happened that his Homer acquired such an ascendancy over the succeeding races of poets, that they were induced to confine themselves within the range of subjects prescribed or indicated by his works. For this purpose

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