[150] Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By
the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown,
& Co. 1869.
Twelve years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer
and the Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the
warning addressed by Agamemnon to the priest of Apollo,
"Let not Nemesis catch me by the swift ships."
he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to
classical studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been,
they have yielded to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar
ground,--a desire as strong in the breast of the classical
scholar as was the yearning which led Odysseus to reject the
proffered gift of immortality, so that he might but once more
behold the wreathed smoke curling about the roofs of his
native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of the
World," Mr. Gladstone discusses the same questions which were
treated in his earlier work; and the main conclusions reached
in the "Studies on Homer" are here so little modified with
reference to the recent progress of archaeological inquiries,
that the book can hardly be said to have had any other reason
for appearing, save the desire of loitering by the ships of
the Argives, and of returning thither as often as possible.
The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either
a very appropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the
point of view from which it is regarded. Such being the case,
we might readily acquiesce in its use, and pass it by without
comment, trusting that the author understood himself when he
adopted it, were it not that by incidental references, and
especially by his allusions to the legendary literature of the
Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that he means more by the title than
it can fairly be made to express. An author who seeks to
determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and
Danaos, and Abraham, is at once liable to the suspicion of
holding very inadequate views as to the character of the epoch
which may properly be termed the "youth of the world." Often
in reading Mr. Gladstone we are reminded of Renan's strange
suggestion that an exploration of the Hindu Kush territory,
whence probably came the primitive Aryans, might throw some
new light on the origin of language. Nothing could well be
more futile. The primitive Aryan language has already been
partly reconstructed for us; its grammatical forms and
syntactic devices are becoming familiar to scholars; one great
philologist has even composed a tale in it; yet in studying
this long-buried dialect we are not much nearer the first
beginnings of human speech than in studying the Greek of
Homer, the Sanskrit of the Vedas, or the Umbrian of the
Igovine Inscriptions. The Aryan mother-tongue had passed into
the last of the three stages of linguistic growth long before
the break-up of the tribal communities in Aryana-vaedjo, and
at that early date presented a less primitive structure than
is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our own
times. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems,
and well illustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees less
primitive than that which is revealed to us by the
archaeological researches either of Pictet and Windischmann,
or of Tylor, Lubbock, and M'Lennan. We shall gather evidences
of this as we proceed. Meanwhile let us remember that at least
eleven thousand years before the Homeric age men lived in
communities, and manufactured pottery on the banks of the
Nile; and let us not leave wholly out of sight that more
distant period, perhaps a million years ago, when sparse
tribes of savage men, contemporaneous with the mammoths of
Siberia and the cave-tigers of Britain, struggled against the
intense cold of the glacial winters.
Nevertheless, 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. As
far back as we can trace the progress of the human race
continuously by means of the written word, so far do we feel a
true historical interest in its fortunes, and pursue our
studies with a sympathy which the mere lapse of time is
powerless to impair. But the primeval man, whose history never
has been and never will be written, whose career on the earth,
dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by
palaeontology, excites in us a very different feeling. Though
with the keenest interest we ransack every nook and corner of
the earth's surface for information about him, we are all the
while aware that what we are studying is human zoology and not
history. Our Neanderthal man is a specimen, not a character.
We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what is his name, who
were his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His
language has died with him, and he can render no account of
himself. We can only regard him specifically as Homo
Anthropos, a creature of bigger brain than his congener Homo
Pithekos, and of vastly greater promise. But this, we say, is
physical science, and not history.
For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various
social relations, the youth of the world is the period at
which literature begins. We regard the history of the western
world as beginning about the tenth century before the
Christian era, because at that date we find literature, in
Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw direct light upon the
social and intellectual condition of a portion of mankind.
That great empires, rich in historical interest and in
materials for sociological generalizations, had existed for
centuries before that date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not
doubt, since they appear at the dawn of history with all the
marks of great antiquity; but the only steady historical light
thrown upon them shines from the pages of Greek and Hebrew
authors, and these know them only in their latest period. For
information concerning their early careers we must look, not
to history, but to linguistic archaeology, a science which can
help us to general results, but cannot enable us to fix dates,
save in the crudest manner.
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 Olympiad of
Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems
were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore
strictly prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by
those scholars who have not attempted to deny it, a vast
amount of profitless discussion might have been avoided.
Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must be learnt,
hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of
critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy
from reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of
evidence." We do not know who Homer was; we do not know where
or when he lived; and in all probability we shall never know.
The data for settling the question are not now accessible, and
it is not likely that they will ever be discovered. Even in
early antiquity the question was wrapped in an obscurity as
deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between the
seven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of
the poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be
decided. The feebleness of the evidence brought into court may
be judged from the fact that the claims of Chios and the story
of the poet's blindness rest alike upon a doubtful allusion in
the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides (III. 104) accepted as
authentic. The majority of modern critics have consoled
themselves with the vague conclusion that, as between the two
great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least
belonged to the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good
reasons for doubting this opinion. He has pointed out several
instances in which the poems seem to betray a closer
topographical acquaintance with European than with Asiatic
Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos have at least as
good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna.
It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate
opinion as to the date of the Homeric poems, than that we
should seek to determine the exact locality in which they
originated. Yet the one question is hardly less obscure than
the other. Different writers of antiquity assigned eight
different epochs to Homer, of which the earliest is separated
from the most recent by an interval of four hundred and sixty
years,--a period as long as that which separates the Black
Prince from the Duke of Wellington, or the age of Perikles
from the Christian era. While Theopompos quite preposterously
brings him down as late as the twenty-third Olympiad, Krates
removes him to the twelfth century B. C. The date ordinarily
accepted by modern critics is the one assigned by Herodotos,
880 B. C. Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me
convincing, for doubting or rejecting this date.
I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles,
which seems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy
testimony, provided it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ
from Mr. Gladstone in not regarding the legend as historical
in its present shape. In my apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos,
as historical personages, have no value whatever; and I
faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to accept any date
earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the "Return
of the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the
legend of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless
embodies a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as
scholarlike or philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who
can see in the whole narrative nothing but a solar myth. There
certainly was a time when the Dorian tribes--described in the
legend as the allies of the Children of Herakles--conquered
Peloponnesos; and that time was certainly subsequent to the
composition of the Homeric poems. It is incredible that the
Iliad and the Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians
in Peloponnesos, if there were Dorians not only dwelling but
ruling there at the time when the poems were written. The
poems are very accurate and rigorously consistent in their use
of ethnical appellatives; and their author, in speaking of
Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples
directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions
Danes and Scotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and
Pelasgians dwelling in Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians
also, but only as a people inhabiting Crete. (Odyss. XIX.
175.) With Homer, moreover, the Hellenes are not the Greeks in
general but only a people dwelling in the north, in Thessaly.
When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas,
but as Achaia,--the whole country taking its name from the
Achaians, the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the
beginning of the truly historical period, in the eighth
century B. C., all this is changed. The Greeks as a people are
called Hellenes; the Dorians rule in Peloponnesos, while their
lands are tilled by Argive Helots; and the Achaians appear
only as an insignificant people occupying the southern shore
of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change took place we cannot
tell. The explanation of it can never be obtained from
history, though some light may perhaps be thrown upon it by
linguistic archaeology. But at all events it was a great
change, and could not have taken place in a moment. It is fair
to suppose that the Helleno-Dorian conquest must have begun at
least a century before the first Olympiad; for otherwise the
geographical limits of the various Greek races would not have
been so completely established as we find them to have been at
that date. The Greeks, indeed, supposed it to have begun at
least three centuries earlier, but it is impossible to collect
evidence which will either refute or establish that opinion.
For our purposes it is enough to know that the conquest could
not have taken place later than 900 B. C.; and 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. Thus far, and no
farther, I believe it possible to go with safety. Whether the
poems were composed in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century
cannot be determined. We are justified only in placing them
far enough back to allow the Helleno-Dorian conquest to
intervene between their composition and the beginning of
recorded history. The tenth century B. C. is the latest date
which will account for all the phenomena involved in the case,
and with this result we must be satisfied. Even on this
showing, the Iliad and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing
specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the hymns of the
Rig-Veda and the sacred books of the Avesta.
The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for
three or four centuries without the aid of writing may seem at
first sight to justify the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are
mere collections of ancient ballads, like those which make up
the Mahabharata, preserved in the memories of a dozen or
twenty bards, and first arranged under the orders of
Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is
seen to raise more difficulties than it solves. What was there
in the position of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the
sixth century B. C., so authoritative as to compel all Greeks
to recognize the recension then and there made of their
revered poet? Besides which the celebrated ordinance of Solon
respecting the rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges us to
infer the existence of written manuscripts of Homer previous
to 550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of
Peisistratos "presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient
aggregate, the main lineaments of which were familiar to the
Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their
practice may have deviated from it both by omission and
interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations
conformably with such understood general type, Peisistratos
might hope both to procure respect for Athens and to
constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of
'collecting the torn body of sacred Homer' is something
generically different from the composition of a new Iliad out
of pre-existing songs: the former is as easy, suitable, and
promising as the latter is violent and gratuitous."[151]
[151] Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.
As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too
long to have been preserved by memory, it may be met by a
simple denial. It is a strange objection indeed, coming from a
man of Wolf's retentive memory. I do not see how the
acquisition of the two poems can be regarded as such a very
arduous task; and if literature were as scanty now as in Greek
antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would long
since have had them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis,
with but little conscious effort, managed to carry in his head
a very considerable portion of Greek and Latin classic
literature; and Niebuhr (who once restored from recollection a
book of accounts which had been accidentally destroyed) was in
the habit of referring to book and chapter of an ancient
author without consulting his notes. Nay, there is Professor
Sophocles, of Harvard University, who, if you suddenly stop
and interrogate him in the street, will tell you just how many
times any given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in
AEschylos, or in Plato, and will obligingly rehearse for you
the context. If all extant copies of the Homeric poems were to
be gathered together and burnt up to-day, like Don Quixote's
library, or like those Arabic manuscripts of which Cardinal
Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets of Granada, the poems
could very likely be reproduced and orally transmitted for
several generations; and much easier must it have been for the
Greeks to preserve these books, which their imagination
invested with a quasi-sanctity, and which constituted the
greater part of the literary furniture of their minds. In
Xenophon's time there were educated gentlemen at Athens who
could repeat both Iliad and Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph.
Sympos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know that at Chios there
was a company of bards, known as Homerids, whose business it
was to recite these poems from memory; and from the edicts of
Solon and the Sikyonian Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may
infer that the case was the same in other parts of Greece.
Passages from the Iliad used to be sung at the Pythian
festivals, to the accompaniment of the harp (Athenaeus, XIV.
638), and in at least two of the Ionic islands of the AEgaean
there were regular competitive exhibitions by trained young
men, at which prizes were given to the best reciter. The
difficulty of preserving the poems, under such circumstances,
becomes very insignificant; and the Wolfian argument quite
vanishes when we reflect that it would have been no easier to
preserve a dozen or twenty short poems than two long ones.
Nay, the coherent, orderly arrangement of the Iliad and
Odyssey would make them even easier to remember than a group
of short rhapsodies not consecutively arranged.
When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in
them quite convincing evidence that they were originally
composed for the ear alone, and without reference to
manuscript assistance. They abound in catchwords, and in
verbal repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships," as Mr. Gladstone
has acutely observed, is arranged in well-defined sections, in
such a way that the end of each section suggests the beginning
of the next one. It resembles the versus memoriales found in
old-fashioned grammars. But the most convincing proof of all
is to be found in the changes which Greek pronunciation went
through between the ages of Homer and Peisistratos. "At the
time when these poems were composed, the digamma (or w) was an
effective consonant, and figured as such in the structure of
the verse; at the time when they were committed to writing, it
had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a place
in any of the manuscripts,--insomuch that the Alexandrian
critics, though they knew of its existence in the much later
poems of Alkaios and Sappho, never recognized it in Homer. The
hiatus, and the various perplexities of metre, occasioned by
the loss of the digamma, were corrected by different
grammatical stratagems. But the whole history of this lost
letter is very curious, and is rendered intelligible only by
the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey belonged for a wide
space of time to the memory, the voice, and the ear
exclusively."[152]
[152] Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.
Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the
Wolfians; but the inference drawn from them, that the Homeric
poems began to exist in a piecemeal condition, is, as we have
seen, unnecessary. These poems may indeed be compared, in a
certain sense, with the early sacred and epic literature of
the Jews, Indians, and Teutons. But if we assign a plurality
of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the Mahabharata,
the Vedas, and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence
furnished by the books themselves, and not because these books
could not have been preserved by oral tradition. Is there,
then, in the Homeric poems any such internal evidence of dual
or plural origin as is furnished by the interlaced Elohistic
and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch? A careful
investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar who has
given some attention to the subject can readily distinguish
the Elohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch;
and, save in the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical
critics coincide in the separation which they make between the
two. But the attempts which have been made to break up the
Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no such harmonious
agreement. There are as many systems as there are critics, and
naturally enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as much
alike as two peas, and the resemblance which holds between the
two holds also between the different parts of each poem. From
the appearance of the injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down
to the intervention of Athene on the field of contest at
Ithaka, we find in each book and in each paragraph the same
style, the same peculiarities of expression, the same habits
of thought, the same quite unique manifestations of the
faculty of observation. Now if the style were commonplace, the
observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is wont to be
the case in ballad-literature, this argument from similarity
might not carry with it much conviction. But when we reflect
that throughout the whole course of human history no other
works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare, have ever been
written which for combined keenness of observation, elevation
of thought, and sublimity of style can compare with the
Homeric poems, we must admit that the argument has very great
weight indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and
twenty-fourth books of the Iliad. According to the theory of
Lachmann, the most eminent champion of the Wolfian hypothesis,
these are by different authors. Human speech has perhaps never
been brought so near to the limit of its capacity of
expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam and
Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview
between Hektor and Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh
exhausts the power of language. Now, the literary critic has a
right to ask whether it is probable that two such passages,
agreeing perfectly in turn of expression, and alike exhibiting
the same unapproachable degree of excellence, could have been
produced by two different authors. And the physiologist--with
some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's theory that
the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass the
negroes--has a right to ask whether it is in the natural
course of things for two such wonderful poets, strangely
agreeing in their minutest psychological characteristics, to
be produced at the same time. And the difficulty thus raised
becomes overwhelming when we reflect that it is the
coexistence of not two only, but at least twenty such geniuses
which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to account for. That
theory worked very well as long as scholars thoughtlessly
assumed that the Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to ballad
poetry. But, except in the simplicity of the primitive
diction, there is no such analogy. The power and beauty of the
Iliad are never so hopelessly lost as when it is rendered into
the style of a modern ballad. One might as well attempt to
preserve the grandeur of the triumphant close of Milton's
Lycidas by turning it into the light Anacreontics of the ode
to "Eros stung by a Bee." The peculiarity of the Homeric
poetry, which defies translation, is its union of the
simplicity characteristic of an early age with a sustained
elevation of style, which can be explained only as due to
individual genius.
The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the
artistic structure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey
in particular, Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its
structure is so thoroughly integral, that no considerable
portion could be subtracted without converting the poem into a
more or less admirable fragment. The Iliad stands in a
somewhat different position. There are unmistakable
peculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote,
who utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as
made up of two poems; although he inclines to the belief that
the later poem was grafted upon the earlier by its own author,
by way of further elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe,
in his old age, added a new part to "Faust." According to Mr.
Grote, the Iliad, as originally conceived, was properly an
Achilleis; its design being, as indicated in the opening lines
of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and the
unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot of
this primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I.,
VIII., and XI.-XXII.; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the
remaining books injure the symmetry of this plot by
unnecessarily prolonging the duration of the Wrath, while the
embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly anticipates
the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is therefore,
as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of an
inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these
books, with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently
added by the poet, with a view to enlarging the original
Achilleis into a real Iliad, describing the war of the Greeks
against Troy. With reference to this hypothesis, I gladly
admit that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the one best
entitled to a reverential hearing on almost any point
connected with Greek antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me
that his theory rests solely upon imagined difficulties which
have no real existence. I doubt if any scholar, reading the
Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by these alleged
inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested by
some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in
spite of Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible
for some of these over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands,
the Iliad is not an account of the war against Troy. It begins
in the tenth year of the siege, and it does not continue to
the capture of the city. It is simply occupied with an episode
in the war,--with the wrath of Achilleus and its consequences,
according to the plan marked out in the opening lines. The
supposed additions, therefore, though they may have given to
the poem a somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate changed
its primitive character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem
even called for by the original conception of the consequences
of the wrath. To have inserted the battle at the ships, in
which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately
after the occurrences of the first book, would have been too
abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to
Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell
determination. And after the long series of books describing
the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and
Menelaos, the powerful intervention of Achilleus appears in
far grander proportions than would otherwise be possible. As
for the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, I am unable
to see how the final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be
complete without it. As Mr. Gladstone well observes, what
Achilleus wants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon
offers no apology until the nineteenth book. In his answer to
the ambassadors, Achilleus scornfully rejects the proposals
which imply that the mere return of Briseis will satisfy his
righteous resentment, unless it be accompanied with that
public humiliation to which circumstances have not yet
compelled the leader of the Greeks to subject himself.
Achilleus is not to be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme
distress of the Greeks in the thirteenth book does not prevail
upon him; nor is there anything in the poem to show that he
ever would have laid aside his wrath, had not the death of
Patroklos supplied him with a new and wholly unforeseen
motive. It seems to me that his entrance into the battle after
the death of his friend would lose half its poetic effect,
were it not preceded by some such scene as that in the ninth
book, in which he is represented as deaf to all ordinary
inducements. As for the two concluding books, which Mr. Grote
is inclined to regard as a subsequent addition, not
necessitated by the plan of the poem, I am at a loss to see
how the poem can be considered complete without them. To leave
the bodies of Patroklos and Hektor unburied would be in the
highest degree shocking to Greek religious feelings.
Remembering the sentence incurred, in far less superstitious
times, by the generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to
believe that any conclusion which left Patroklos's manes
unpropitiated, and the mutilated corpse of Hektor unransomed,
could have satisfied either the poet or his hearers. For
further particulars I must refer the reader to the excellent
criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to the article on "Greek
History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's
"Dissertations and Discussions." A careful study of the
arguments of these writers, and, above all, a thorough and
independent examination of the Iliad itself, will, I believe,
convince the student that this great poem is from beginning to
end the consistent production of a single author.
The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and
Odyssey, taken as wholes, to two different authors, rest
chiefly upon some apparent discrepancies in the mythology of
the two poems; but many of these difficulties have been
completely solved by the recent progress of the science of
comparative mythology. Thus, for example, the fact that, in
the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while
in the Odyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been
cited even by Mr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are not
by the same author. It seems to me that one such discrepancy,
in the midst of complete general agreement, would be much
better explained as Cervantes explained his own inconsistency
with reference to the stealing of Sancho's mule, in the
twenty-second chapter of "Don Quixote." But there is no
discrepancy. Aphrodite, though originally the moon-goddess,
like the German Horsel, had before Homer's time acquired many
of the attributes of the dawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar
characteristics had been to a great extent transferred to
Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated character, as goddess
of the dawn, Aphrodite became identified with Charis, who
appears in the Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-Homeric
mythology, the two were again separated, and Charis, becoming
divided in personality, appears as the Charites, or Graces,
who were supposed to be constant attendants of Aphrodite. But
in the Homeric poems the two are still identical, and either
Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife of the fire-god,
without inconsistency.
Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite right in
maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are, from
beginning to end, with the exception of a few insignificant
interpolations, the work of a single author, whom we have no
ground for calling by any other name than that of Homer. I
believe, moreover, that this author lived before the beginning
of authentic history, and that we can determine neither his
age nor his country with precision. We can only decide that he
was a Greek who lived at some time previous to the year 900
B.C.
Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr.
Gladstone, and shall henceforth unfortunately have frequent
occasion to differ from him on points of fundamental
importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only regards the Homeric age
as strictly within the limits of authentic history, but he
even goes much further than this. He would not only fix the
date of Homer positively in the twelfth century B. C., but he
regards the Trojan war as a purely historical event, of which
Homer is the authentic historian and the probable eye-witness.
Nay, he even takes the word of the poet as proof conclusive of
the historical character of events happening several
generations before the Troika, according to the legendary
chronology. He not only regards Agamemnon, Achilleus, and
Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same reality
to characters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of
the Pelopid and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos,
with as much confidence as if he were dealing with Karlings or
Capetians, or with the epoch of the Crusades.
It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has
been finally settled by writers like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir
G. C. Lewis, to come upon such views in the work of a man of
scholarship and intelligence. One begins to wonder how many
more times it will be necessary to prove that dates and events
are of no historical value, unless attested by nearly
contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch were able men no
doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; but what these
writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of Homer,
and the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the
critical historian, since even in the time of Thukydides these
events were as completely obscured by lapse of time as they
are now. There is no literary Greek history before the age of
Hekataios and Herodotos, three centuries subsequent to the
first recorded Olympiad. A portion of this period is
satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these fail us
before we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable
date. Even the career of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems
to belong to the commencement of the eighth century B. C.,
presents us, from lack of anything like contemporary records,
with many insoluble problems. The Helleno-Dorian conquest, as
we have seen, must have occurred at some time or other; but it
evidently did not occur within two centuries of the earliest
known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imagine that
we can determine its date or ascertain the circumstances which
attended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in
Greek antiquity directly known to us,--the existence of the
Homeric poems. The belief that there was a Trojan war rests
exclusively upon the contents of those poems: there is no
other independent testimony to it whatever. But the Homeric
poems are of no value as testimony to the truth of the
statements contained in them, unless it can be proved that
their author was either contemporary with the Troika, or else
derived his information from contemporary witnesses. This can
never be proved. To assume, as Mr. Gladstone does, that Homer
lived within fifty years after the Troika, is to make a purely
gratuitous assumption. For aught the wisest historian can
tell, the interval may have been five hundred years, or a
thousand. Indeed the Iliad itself expressly declares that it
is dealing with an ancient state of things which no longer
exists. It is difficult to see what else can be meant by the
statement that the heroes of the Troika belong to an order of
men no longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. 304.) Most
assuredly Achilleus the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son of
Zeus, and Helena the daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary
mortals, such as might have been seen and conversed with by
the poet's grandfather. They belong to an inferior order of
gods, according to the peculiar anthropomorphism of the
Greeks, in which deity and humanity are so closely mingled
that it is difficult to tell where the one begins and the
other ends. Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the
gentle Aphrodite, but even the god of battles himself, the
terrible Ares. Nestor quaffs lightly from a goblet which, we
are told, not two men among the poet's contemporaries could by
their united exertions raise and place upon a table. Aias and
Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses of rock as easily as
an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All this shows that the
poet, in his naive way, conceiving of these heroes as
personages of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as
possible to ascribe to them the attributes of superior beings.
If all that were divine, marvellous, or superhuman were to be
left out of the poems, the supposed historical residue would
hardly be worth the trouble of saving. As Mr. Cox well
observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative that
Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream
Kebren, and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had
appeared as claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta
the beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are
summoned together for no other purpose than to avenge her woes
and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the sea-nymph Thetis,
the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord of undying
horses, goes to fight in a quarrel which is not his own; that
his wrath is roused because he is robbed of the maiden
Briseis, and that henceforth he takes no part in the strife
until his friend Patroklos has been slain; that then he puts
on the new armour which Thetis brings to him from the anvil of
Hephaistos, and goes forth to win the victory. The details are
throughout of the same nature. Achilleus sees and converses
with Athene; Aphrodite is wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and
Death bear away the lifeless Sarpedon on their noiseless wings
to the far-off land of light." In view of all this it is
evident that Homer was not describing, like a salaried
historiographer, the state of things which existed in the time
of his father or grandfather. To his mind the occurrences
which he described were those of a remote, a wonderful, a
semi-divine past.
This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by
reference to the Iliad itself, becomes irresistible as soon as
we take into account the results obtained during the past
thirty years by the science of comparative mythology. As long
as our view was restricted to Greece, it was perhaps excusable
that Achilleus and Paris should be taken for exaggerated
copies of actual persons. Since the day when Grimm laid the
foundations of the science of mythology, all this has been
changed. It is now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena
are to be found, not only in the Iliad, but also in the
Rig-Veda, and therefore, as mythical conceptions, date, not
from Homer, but from a period preceding the dispersion of the
Aryan nations. The tale of the Wrath of Achilleus, far from
originating with Homer, far from being recorded by the author
of the Iliad as by an eyewitness, must have been known in its
essential features in Aryana-vaedjo, at that remote epoch when
the Indian, the Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the
same. For the story has been retained by the three races
alike, in all its principal features; though the Veda has left
it in the sky where it originally belonged, while the Iliad
and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth, the one
locating it in Asia Minor, and the other in Northwestern
Europe.[153]
[153] For the precise extent to which I would indorse the
theory that the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of
light over darkness, let me refer to what I have said above on
p. 134. I do not suppose that the struggle between light and
darkness was Homer's subject in the Iliad any more than it was
Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet." Homer's subject was the
wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's subject was the
vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the story of
Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is
unmistakably the story of the quarrel between summer and
winter; and the moody prince is as much a solar hero as Odin
himself. See Simrock, Die Quellen des Shakespeare, I. 127-133.
Of course Shakespeare knew nothing of this, as Homer knew
nothing of the origin of his Achilleus. The two stories,
therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their present
form. They are the offspring of other stories which were
sun-myths; they are stories which conform to the sun-myth type
after the manner above illustrated in the paper on Light and
Darkness. [Hence there is nothing unintelligible in the
inconsistency--which seems to puzzle Max Muller (Science of
Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p. 516, note 20)--of investing
Paris with many of the characteristics of the children of
light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive sense of the
Iliad-myth had as entirely disappeared in the Homeric age, as
the primitive sense of the Hamlet-myth had disappeared in the
times of Elizabeth, the fit ground for wonder is that such
inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The physical theory of
myths will be properly presented and comprehended, only when
it is understood that we accept the physical derivation of
such stories as the Iliad-myth in much the same way that we
are bound to accept the physical etymologies of such words as
soul, consider, truth, convince, deliberate, and the like. The
late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, in his "Philological
Studies,"--a little book which I used to read with delight
when a boy,--describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors."
In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the
Iliad or the tragedy of Hamlet--any more than I would
characterize Le Juif Errant by Sue, or La Maison Forestiere by
Erckmann-Chatrian--as nature-myths, I would at the same time
consider these poems well described as embodying "faded
nature-myths."
In the Rig-Veda the Panis are the genii of night and winter,
corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of the Mist," in
the Teutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in
the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece. The Panis steal the
cattle of the Sun (Indra, Helios, Herakles), and carry them by
an unknown route to a dark cave eastward. Sarama, the creeping
Dawn, is sent by Indra to find and recover them. The Panis
then tamper with Sarama, and try their best to induce her to
betray her solar lord. For a while she is prevailed upon to
dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give Indra the
information needful in order that he might conquer the Panis,
just as Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately
returns to her western home, carrying with her the treasures
(ktemata, Iliad, II. 285) of which Paris had robbed Menelaos.
But, before the bright Indra and his solar heroes can
reconquer their treasures they must take captive the offspring
of Brisaya, the violet light of morning. Thus Achilleus,
answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes captive the
daughter of Brises. But as the sun must always be parted from
the morning-light, to return to it again just before setting,
so Achilleus loses Briseis, and regains her only just before
his final struggle. In similar wise Herakles is parted from
Iole ("the violet one"), and Sigurd from Brynhild. In sullen
wrath the hero retires from the conflict, and his Myrmidons
are no longer seen on the battle-field, as the sun hides
behind the dark cloud and his rays no longer appear about him.
Yet toward the evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his
might, clothed in the dazzling armour wrought for him by the
fire-god Hephaistos, and with his invincible spear slays the
great storm-cloud, which during his absence had wellnigh
prevailed over the champions of the daylight. But his triumph
is short-lived; for having trampled on the clouds that had
opposed him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the
sharp arrow of the night-demon Paris slays him at the Western
Gates. We have not space to go into further details. In Mr.
Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," and "Tales of Ancient
Greece," the reader will find the entire contents of the Iliad
and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated by comparison with the
Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs.
Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern
in comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here
unfolded. The date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe
will perhaps never be determined; but I do not see how any
competent scholar can well place it at less than eight hundred
or a thousand years before the time of Homer. Between the two
epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages had
time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier,
therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth
of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no
abstract terms, and possessing no philosophy but fetichism,
deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds,
as persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later
than this,--perhaps as late as the Iliad,--nevertheless
preserves the record of the mental life of this period. The
Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the fickle
twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive to coax
her from her allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of
action in the sky. But the Homeric Greek had long since
forgotten that Helena and Paris were anything more than
semi-divine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the son of the
Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the
bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one")
the dawn, and spoke significantly when he called the latter
the daughter of the former. But the Greek could not know that
Zeus was derived from a root div, "to shine," or that Helena
belonged to a root sar, "to creep." Phonetic change thus
helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism. His
nature-gods became thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably
no more remembered that Achilleus originally signified the
sun, than we remember that the word God, which we use to
denote the most vast of conceptions, originally meant simply
the Storm-wind. Indeed, when the fetichistic tendency led the
Greek again to personify the powers of nature, he had recourse
to new names formed from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo
we have Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos
beside Athene; Gaia beside Demeter. As a further consequence
of this decomposition and new development of the old Aryan
mythology, we find, as might be expected, that the Homeric
poems are not always consistent in their use of their mythic
materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is--to Max Muller's
perplexity--invested with many of the attributes of the
bright solar heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and
Cyrus, he is doomed to bring ruin on his parents; like them he
is exposed in his infancy on the hillside, and rescued by a
shepherd." All the solar heroes begin life in this way.
Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto), or like
Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they are alike
destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the night
and the dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The exposure of
the child in infancy represents the long rays of the
morning-sun resting on the hillside. Then Paris forsakes
Oinone ("the wine-coloured one"), but meets her again at the
gloaming when she lays herself by his side amid the crimson
flames of the funeral pyre. Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is
made to fight on the side of the Niblungs or Trojans, attended
by his friend Glaukos ("the brilliant one"). They command the
Lykians, or "children of light"; and with them comes also
Memnon, son of the Dawn, from the fiery land of the Aithiopes,
the favourite haunt of Zeus and the gods of Olympos.
The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages
before the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any
Ilion to be conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the
supposition that the legend, as we have it, may have been
formed by the crystallization of mythical conceptions about a
nucleus of genuine tradition. In this view I am upheld by a
most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A. Freeman, who
finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration of the
problem before us.
The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is
supposed to have been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the
French nation nor the French language can properly be said to
have existed; and he is represented as a doughty crusader,
although crusading was not thought of until long after the
Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of Charlemagne are not
conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and chronology.
He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth,--an
avatar, or at least a representative, of Odin in his solar
capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled and
rectified by history, he would be for us as unreal as
Agamemnon.
History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl,
German in race, name, and language, who was one of the two or
three greatest men of action that the world has ever seen, and
who in the ninth century ruled over all Western Europe. To the
historic Karl corresponds in many particulars the mythical
Charlemagne. The legend has preserved the fact, which without
the information supplied by history we might perhaps set down
as a fiction, that there was a time when Germany, Gaul, Italy,
and part of Spain formed a single empire. And, as Mr. Freeman
has well observed, the mythical crusades of Charlemagne are
good evidence that there were crusades, although the real Karl
had nothing whatever to do with one.
Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of
Charlemagne, except that we no longer have history to help us
in rectifying the legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of
a time when a large portion of the islands and mainland of
Greece were at least partially subject to a common suzerain;
and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly suggested, the
assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens or
Sparta or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong
evidence of the trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears
to show that the legend was constrained by some remembered
fact, instead of being guided by general probability.
Charlemagne's seat of government has been transferred in
romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been at Paris,
says Mr. Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring it
to Aachen. Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though
uncontrolled by historic records, is here at least supported
by archaeologic remains, which prove Mykenai to have been at
some time or other a place of great consequence. Then, as to
the Trojan war, we know that the Greeks several times crossed
the AEgaean and colonized a large part of the seacoast of Asia
Minor. In order to do this it was necessary to oust from their
homes many warlike communities of Lydians and Bithynians, and
we may be sure that this was not done without prolonged
fighting. There may very probably have been now and then a
levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was in mediaeval
Europe; and whether the great suzerain at Mykenai ever
attended one or not, legend would be sure to send him on such
an expedition, as it afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade.
It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may
represent dimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their
characters and actions distorted to suit the exigencies of a
narrative founded upon a solar myth. The character of the
Nibelungenlied here well illustrates that of the Iliad.
Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and Gunther, seem to be mere
personifications of physical phenomena; but Etzel and Dietrich
are none other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded with
mythical attributes; and even the conception of Brunhild has
been supposed to contain elements derived from the traditional
recollection of the historical Brunehault. When, therefore,
Achilleus is said, like a true sun-god, to have died by a
wound from a sharp instrument in the only vulnerable part of
his body, we may reply that the legendary Charlemagne conducts
himself in many respects like a solar deity. If Odysseus
detained by Kalypso represents the sun ensnared and held
captive by the pale goddess of night, the legend of Frederic
Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies a portion
of a kindred conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic
have been substituted for Odin; we may suspect that with the
mythical impersonations of Achilleus and Odysseus some
traditional figures may be blended. We should remember that in
early times the solar-myth was a sort of type after which all
wonderful stories would be patterned, and that to such a type
tradition also would be made to conform.
In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to
Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion concerning the
Homeric poems which the labours of a whole generation of
scholars may be said to have satisfactorily established, it is
this, that no trustworthy history can be obtained from either
the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out the mythical
element. Even if the poems contain the faint reminiscence of
an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up in
mythical phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can
it be construed into history. In view of this it is quite
useless for Mr. Gladstone to attempt to base historical
conclusions upon the fact that Helena is always called "Argive
Helen," or to draw ethnological inferences from the
circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the rest of the
Greek heroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are never so
described. The Argos of the myth is not the city of
Peloponnesos, though doubtless so construed even in Homer's
time. It is "the bright land" where Zeus resides, and the
epithet is applied to his wife Here and his daughter Helena,
as well as to the dog of Odysseus, who reappears with
Sarameyas in the Veda. As for yellow hair, there is no
evidence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed it; but no
other colour would do for a solar hero, and it accordingly
characterizes the entire company of them, wherever found,
while for the Trojans, or children of night, it is not
required.
A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained
during the past thirty years by the comparative study of
languages and mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to
reconsider many of his views concerning the Homeric poems, and
might perhaps have led him to cut out half or two thirds of
his book as hopelessly antiquated. The chapter on the
divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be
rewritten, and the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation
abandoned. One can hardly preserve one's gravity when Mr.
Gladstone derives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and Athene
from the Logos. To accredit Homer with an acquaintance with
the doctrine of the Logos, which did not exist until the time
of Philo, and did not receive its authorized Christian form
until the middle of the second century after Christ, is
certainly a strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be
invited to believe that the authors of the Volsunga Saga
obtained the conception of Sigurd from the "Thirty-Nine
Articles." It is true that these deities, Athene and Apollo,
are wiser, purer, and more dignified, on the whole, than any
of the other divinities of the Homeric Olympos. They alone, as
Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are never deceived or
frustrated. For all Hellas, Apollo was the interpreter of
futurity, and in the maid Athene we have perhaps the highest
conception of deity to which the Greek mind had attained in
the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the dawn;
but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories
of daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the
impersonation of the illuminating and knowledge-giving light
of the sky. As the dawn, she is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and
in mythic language springs from his forehead; but, according
to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies that she
shares, more than any other deity, in the boundless wisdom of
Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo, on the other hand, is the
peculiar privilege of the sun, who, from his lofty position,
sees everything that takes place upon the earth. Even the
secondary divinity Helios possesses this prerogative to a
certain extent.
Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry
for the Greek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance
with the old Aryan mythology vitiates all his conclusions. No
doubt the Greek mythology is in some particulars tinged with
Phoenician conceptions. Aphrodite was originally a purely
Greek divinity, but in course of time she acquired some of the
attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and was hardly improved by
the change. Adonis is simply a Semitic divinity, imported into
Greece. But the same cannot be proved of Poseidon;[154] far
less of Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic Sarameyas, the
rising wind, the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying, tricksome
wind-god, who invented music, and conducts the souls of dead
men to the house of Hades, even as his counterpart the Norse
Odin rushes over the tree-tops leading the host of the
departed. When one sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred
to a Hebrew original, because of Jehovah's promise to Noah,
one is at a loss to understand the relationship between the
two conceptions. Nothing could be more natural to the Greeks
than to call the rainbow the messenger of the sky-god to
earth-dwelling men; to call it a token set in the sky by
Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a very different thing. We
may admit the very close resemblance between the myth of
Bellerophon and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha; but
the fact that the Greek story is explicable from Aryan
antecedents, while the Hebrew story is isolated, might perhaps
suggest the inference that the Hebrews were the borrowers, as
they undoubtedly were in the case of the myth of Eden. Lastly,
to conclude that Helios is an Eastern deity, because he reigns
in the East over Thrinakia, is wholly unwarranted. Is not
Helios pure Greek for the sun? and where should his sacred
island be placed, if not in the East? As for his oxen, which
wrought such dire destruction to the comrades of Odysseus, and
which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they are those very
same unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by the
storm-demon Cacus and the wind-deity Hermes, and which
furnished endless material for legends to the poets of the
Veda.
[154] I have no opinion as to the nationality of the
Earth-shaker, and, regarding the etymology of his name, I
believe we can hardly do better than acknowledge, with Mr.
Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be doubted, however,
whether much good is likely to come of comparisons between
Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between
the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's
Poseidon; a Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London,
1872,--a book which is open to several of the criticisms here
directed against Mr. Gladstone's manner of theorizing.
But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be
terra incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the even tenour
of his way in utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Breal,
and Dasent, and Burnouf. He takes no note of the Rig-Veda, nor
does he seem to realize that there was ever a time when the
ancestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshipped the same gods.
Two or three times he cites Max Muller, but makes no use of
the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only
work which seems really to have attracted his attention is M.
Jacolliot's very discreditable performance called "The Bible
in India." Mr. Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly
approve of this book; but neither does he appear to suspect
that it is a disgraceful piece of charlatanry, written by a
man ignorant of the very rudiments of the subject which he
professes to handle.
Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to
treat purely philological questions. Of the science of
philology, as based upon established laws of phonetic change,
he seems to have no knowledge whatever. He seems to think that
two words are sufficiently proved to be connected when they
are seen to resemble each other in spelling or in sound. Thus
he quotes approvingly a derivation of the name Themis from an
assumed verb them, "to speak," whereas it is notoriously
derived from tiqhmi, as statute comes ultimately from stare.
His reference of hieros, "a priest," and geron, "an old man,"
to the same root, is utterly baseless; the one is the Sanskrit
ishiras, "a powerful man," the other is the Sanskrit jaran,
"an old man." The lists of words on pages 96-100 are
disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole purpose
for which they are given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's
philology is in arrears. The theory of Niebuhr--that the words
common to Greek and Latin, mostly descriptive of peaceful
occupations, are Pelasgian--was serviceable enough in its day,
but is now rendered wholly antiquated by the discovery that
such words are Aryan, in the widest sense. The Pelasgian
theory works very smoothly so long as we only compare the
Greek with the Latin words,--as, for instance, sugon with
jugum; but when we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit
yugam, it is evident that we have got far out of the range of
the Pelasgoi. But what shall we say when we find Mr. Gladstone
citing the Latin thalamus in support of this antiquated
theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is, or should be,
significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a Latin
word at all, except by adoption. One might as well cite the
word ensemble to prove the original identity or kinship
between English and French.
When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and
applied philology, confines himself to illustrating the
contents of the Homeric poems, he is always excellent. His
chapter on the "Outer Geography" of the Odyssey is exceedingly
interesting; showing as it does how much may be obtained from
the patient and attentive study of even a single author. Mr.
Gladstone's knowledge of the SURFACE of the Iliad and Odyssey,
so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It is when he attempts
to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the treasures
hidden in the bowels of the earth, that he shows himself
unprovided with the talisman of the wise dervise, which alone
can unlock those mysteries. But modern philology is an
exacting science: to approach its higher problems requires an
amount of preparation sufficient to terrify at the outset all
but the boldest; and a man who has had to regulate taxation,
and make out financial statements, and lead a political party
in a great nation, may well be excused for ignorance of
philology. It is difficult enough for those who have little
else to do but to pore over treatises on phonetics, and thumb
their lexicons, to keep fully abreast with the latest views in
linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever broach a
new hypothesis without misgivings lest somebody, in some
weekly journal published in Germany, may just have anticipated
and refuted it. Yet while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for
being unsound in philology, it is far less excusable that he
should sit down to write a book about Homer, abounding in
philological statements, without the slightest knowledge of
what has been achieved in that science for several years past.
In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abiding
taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain
kind of praise. I hope,--though just now the idea savours of
the ludicrous,--that the day may some time arrive when OUR
Congressmen and Secretaries of the Treasury will spend their
vacations in writing books about Greek antiquities, or in
illustrating the meaning of Homeric phrases.