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THE UNITY OF HOMER


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THE UNITY OF HOMERBY

JOHN A. SCOTTPROFESSOR OF GREEK IN NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITYSATHER PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 1921

SATHER CLASSICAL LECTURESVOLUME ONE

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESSBERKELEY, CALIFORNIA1921


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CONTENTSPAGE

I. Homer among the Ancient Greeks -. 1II. The Arguments or Wolt 39

III. The Linguistic Arguments 73rv. The Antiquities and Kindred Matters 106v. The (Contradictions ..._ _ 137

VI. The lNT)mDUALi2ATioN or GrODS AND Heboes 172VII. Hector 205VIII. The Iliad and the Odyssey 240


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CHAPTER IHOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS

The great fact of ancient Greece is the poetryof Homer, which was the center of education, thesource of m}i;holog>', the model of literature, theinspiration of artists; kno^vn and quoted by all.Homer was a poet of such authority, even inmatters not poetic, that contending states weresupposed to have settled their claims to territoryon the interpretation of his verses. Passing west-ward the power of Homeric verse transformedthe Latin tongue, making the Romans abandontheir cwm poetic forms and forcing that language,with its long case endings, to march in dactylicrhythms. The oldest Latin literature of whichany fragments have been preserved is a versionof the Odyssey, and the greatest poetic productionof Roman Italy is the Aeneid of Vergil, a literaryamalgamation and adaptation of both the Iliadand the Odyssey. Homer was thus in turn to in-spire the genius of Dante; and the introduction ofMilton's Paradise Lost, **Sijig, heavenly Muse,"shows the kinship of that poem also with Homericpoetry.

Nothing could better illustrate the preeminenceof Homer than the fact that among the papyrus


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2 THE UNITY OF HOMERfragments discovered in Egypt four hundred andseventy are from the works of writers previouslyknown, of which two hundred and seventy, farmore than half, are from Homer. Demosthenescomes second with but thirty, and Plato, with onlytwenty, comes third/

This popularity of Homer in Egypt is in keep-ing with the best opinion of classical Greece, forPlato, who reached manhood during the life ofSophocles and of Euripides, regarded Homer asthe greatest of all the tragic poets; and oddlyenough the genuine works of Plato contain hardlya verse from those mighty dramatists, althoughthey are the most quotable of poets, while Homeris quoted more than one hundred times, manyof these quotations containing several verses.^To the mind of the ancient world Homer stoodquite alone, so that that great judge of literature,the Latin Quintilian, could say that Homer wasto be approached by none and that it was a markof ability to be able to appreciate him (x, 1, 50).Horace, whose own poetry is sufficient guarantyof his literary acumen, refers to Homer as thepoet of perfect taste, qui nil molitur inepte {ArsPoetica 140).

This first and greatest of poets lives only inhis poetry. In that poetry he tells us absolutelynothing about himself, his name, his home, his

1 Kenyon, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1919, 1 ff.2 Howes, ' ' Homeric Quotations in Plato and Aristotle, ' ' Har-vard Studies, VI, 155. Aeschylus is quoted in Bep. II, 362 A;

Euripides, in the spurious Aldbiades II, 151 B.


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 3age, or his ancestors; and we can only surmisehis religious and political ideas as we read theseideas into the actions or descriptions of the poems.Homer was such a master of dramatic narra-tive that each character represents only himself.When once Nestor, Achilles, Helen, Hector, orAgamemnon has been brought into action, eachseems to live his own life, free to act or to speakas he pleases, entirely detached from the mindwhich created him.

The poet seems never to have made an allusionto contemporary events, so that it is impossibleto assign him to a definite age ; and his referencesto rivers, mountains, lands, and seas are so im-personal, so involved in the story he is telling,that it is as difficult to name his home as it is todefine his time.

Not only does he name no contemporaryperson or event, but he, too, is unnamed in anycontemporary source, so that practically everystatement made regarding him is due to the

^ creative imagination of those who had little ornothing on which to build except inferences drawnfrom the poems themselves. It is a significantfact that different traditions in regard to Homer,his life and his work, become fuller and moredefinite as they get farther away from any pos-sible sources of knowledge. My owti belief is thatHomer was born in Smyrna, that he traveled much,that the island of Chios was closelv connectedvrdh. his life, also that he lived at approximately


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4 THE UNITY OF HOMER900 B.C., or about one hundred years after Davidcomposed his Songs, and Solomon his Proverbs.The greatest period of Hebrew literature there-fore would roughly correspond with the age ofHomer.

The name of Smyrna is not mentioned byHomer, but the indications that this was hisnative city are as follows : The language in whichthese poems were composed is the Early Ionicwith very marked survivals of Aeolic forms, aspecies of literary language which could hardlyhave responded to the thrill of creative geniusexcept on the western shores of Asia Minor. Thepoet refers (B 535) to the men of Locris as livingon the other side of Euboea, and since Locris iswest of Euboea this must be viewed from the east.He speaks (B 145) of the waves being raised bythe southwest winds or dashed by these samewinds (B 395) against a jutting promontory, orof fogs forced landward by winds from the west(A 422), or of clouds driven on by Zephyrusmoving over the deep (A 275), and of the massof seaweeds washed ashore by gales from thenorth and west as these gales swept do^vn fromThrace (15). In Homer the west wind, Zephyrus,is regularly a rough and disagreeable wind, whileto most Greek and Latin writers it is the gentleand kindly breeze. Wood made the observationthat only in the regions adjacent to Smyrna andalong the Aegean coast of Asia Minor is the south-west wind a disagreeable one; while on the other


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 5shores of the Mediterranean it is especially thebalmy Zephyrus.^ Vergil's Latin feeling for thisbreeze did not pennit him to follow Homer inmaking Zephyrus a rough and disagreeable wind.All these references imply a knowledge of theeastern shores of the Mediterranean, and themention of the star of autumn (E 5) rising freshfrom its bath in the ocean, and like references tothe sun (H 422, T 1) would imply a view of thestar or the sunrise such as the islands of theAegean might supply.

The verses which furnish the most definiteindication of the poet's nativity are those in whichhe describes the movements of the assemblinghosts and the noises they make (B 459): ''Justas the many flocks of w^inged birds, cranes, orgeese, or long-necked swans in a meadow of Asia,about the streams of the Cayster, fly here andthere sporting on their pinions and alighting withloud cries, while the meadow reechoes." Thisdescription of the lighting of birds seems basedon the impression this sight must have made onthe youthful mind of the poet, and we may safelyassume that Homer had watched with boyishdelight these flocks of geese, cranes, and swansas they settled in the valley of the Cayster. TheCayster was but a few miles from Smyrna, nearenough to be known to a boy of that city, butstill not too near to dull the impressions by thefamiliarity of frequent observance.

3 Essay on the Original Geniv^ an4 Writings of Homer, London,1769.


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6 THE UNITY OF HOMEREvery person who is familiar with the life of

the ancient Greeks knows what a high value theyput upon fish as food, so high indeed that the wordfor dainty is also the word for the meat of fish,6^|rov. The gourmand and the spendthrift werepersons who wasted their substance in buyingfish of fine quality; yet in Homer the heroesspumed fish and the two passages which describethe eating of that food add the pardoning phrase,*'for they were on the verge of starvation."(8 369, p 332.) The reason for this aversion tofish in Homer is very simple, and is as follows:Sir William Ramsay in his book. Impressions ofTurkey, gives a closing chapter which he calls*'Tips to Archaeologists," in which he describesupland trips from Smyrna. Sir William laysstress on the necessity of procuring proper food,especially meat, for such trips, and urges thetraveler to rely on sardines to be taken along, oron kids and lambs to be obtained of the natives,but to avoid fish. His words in regard to fish are :

Fish are rarely found and when found are usuallybad; the natives have a prejudice against fish, and myown experience has been unfavorable. Fish of consider-able size swarm in the Tembris, but are flabby and tastelike mud: two hungry archaeologists, after a mouthfulor two of such a fish, could eat no more. In the clear,sparkling mountain stream that flows through the Taurusa small fish is caught; I had a most violent attack ofsickness after eating some of them, and so had all whopartook.An educated native of Smyrna has assured methat fish from nearby streams are regarded by


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 7the natives with great disfavor and that this foodis eaten onlv bv the verv poor. Evidentlv it wasno accident that made Homer describe his heroesas abstaining from fish except under great com-pulsion, and we have in this a touch of local colorand of local prejudice. It was because fish werein such disfavor as food in the neighborhood ofSmyrna that the poet could not bring himself toserve them to his mighty warriors.*All the lines by which Homeric poetry traveledto the outer world converged at the central andwestern coast of Asia Minor. Hence came thebards who recited Homer and hence originatedthe colonies, such as Sinope and Marseilles, whichfurnished manuscripts for the scholars of Alex-andria. Cynaethus, also, is said to have takenthe knowledge of Homer from Chios to Sicily, andLycurgus that same knowledge from Samos toSparta.

Finally, Smyrna is easily the preferred cityin all the lives of Homer and among all thetraditions of those who laid claim to his place ofbirth ; also the poet was called by a second name,Melesigenes, from the river Melas, near or inSmyrna. Whether he was thus called because hewas regarded as the child of the river or fromsome festival held on its banks cannot now bedetermined.The language employed, the indications of thepoem, the radiation of the knowledge of the poetry

* ' ' Homeric Heroes and Fish, ' ' Classical Journal, XII, 328.


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8 THE UNITY OF HOMERfrom the west and central coast of Asia Minor,the antipathy to fish as food, the fair agreementof tradition, and the name Melesigenes, all unitein warranting the belief that the poetry of Homeroriginated in the neighborhood of Smyrna. Theisland of Chios, long a favored spot for the preser-vation of his poetry, was the home of a guild ofsingers who called themselves the Homeridae.We do not know whether they claimed to be thedescendants or the successors of Homer, but it isprobable that they regarded themselves as pecu-liarly the defenders and interpreters of the poetwhose name they had assumed.

The earliest conjecture we have regardingthe date of Homer is found in Herodotus (ii, 53),where, in contrasting the great antiquity of Egyptwith the recent civilization of Greece, the his-torian says that he would not assign to Homeran earlier date than four hundred years beforehis own time, and this opinion he has not derived

from others, but it is his own conclusion. SinceHerodotus flourished in the middle of the fifthcentury before Christ his estimate would putHomer in the middle of the ninth century, a timein Greek civilization which has left surprisinglyfew evidences on which to make a conjecture.How important the independent opinion of Hero-dotus is we may judge from the fact that eventhis estimate assigns Homer to an age as remotefrom his own as Columbus is from our times.


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 9The matters in the poem on which to base

inferences in regard to the poet's date are ex-tremely slight. The Odyssey (w 89) describes thewrestlers as girding up their loins. But we knowthat wrestlers dispensed with the girdle at thefifteenth Olympiad; hence the presumption thatthis verse is older than 720. The poet in speakingof Phoenicia never mentions Tyre or the Tyrians,but only Sidon and the Sidonians. Sidon wascompletely overthro\\'n in 677, leaving Tyre as thesole heir to the greatness of Phoenicia, so that inthe use of the words Sidon and Sidonians we cansay no more than that Homer was describing acondition which terminated in 677 b.c.^ The factthat Lydia is called only by the older nameMaeonia gives no clue to the date, for we do notknow when the name was changed to Lydia.Even if we knew definitely it must be rememberedthat Homer is a poet and that he might have usedthe old name even after the new name had comeinto general use, just as Milton refers to Alex-ander as the Emathian conqueror at a time whenMacedonia was universally known, and Emathiaonly a learned survival. On the other handHomer speaks of the men who fought at Troyas belonging to a race greatly superior to thoseof his owni day. But even here his referencesare so vague that many early and some latescholars would make Homer a contemporary withthe events he describes.

5 ' ' Sidon and the Sidonians in Homer, ' ' Class. Jour., XIV, 525.


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10 THE UNITY OF HOMERThe discoveries made at Troy, Mycenae, and

elsewhere suffice to show that Troy was destroyedduring the twelfth century, so that Homer mustbe subsequent to that event. The Hiad and theOdyssey seem to have been known to Hesiod,who quoted them, changed or corrected them, butnever mentioned their names or the name of theirauthor. Hesiod can hardly be put later than themiddle of the eighth century. Terpander is saidto have won, about 675 b.c, a victory in a musicalcontest in which he set to new music the wordsof Homer; and the Iliad and the Odyssey seemto furnish the background or the starting pointfor that mass of tradition which was put in verseduring the early Olympiads.

.^ However much Homer may have influencedthe poetry of the ages immediately succeeding hisown, it is a remarkable fact that no mention ofhis name by any writer before the latter half ofthe sixth century has been preserved, and eventhat mention owes its preservation to writersliving after Christ, who quoted it in their ownworks. The first known reference is found in afragment of Xenophanes from Colophon, whocensured Homer for the ignoble traits he assignedto the gods. The language used by Xenophanesargues for great antiquity of the poetry of Homer,especially the phrase: ''From the beginning,according to Homer, for all have learned fromhim." This first preserved reference to Homeris hardly older than 550, while the Iliad and the


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 11Odyssey are first referred to by name in the writ-ings of Herodotus, or about one hundred yearsafter Xenophanes.The night which surrounds Homer is thusboth long and dark, l)ut more wonderful than thesesilences is the fact that these two great poemshave come down to us entire. No gaps are foundin either, no incomplete lines, no half-preservedsentences. Not a single ancient writer has alludedto a single scene of the Iliad or the Odyssey whichis not found in the present text of these poems,even if certain random verses have been pre-served which are not in the Vulgate.

"What the preservation of poems so ancientand so bulky signifies may be grasped by the factthat many early epics, such as the Thebais, theCypria, the Little Iliad, the Destruction of Troy,the Nostoi, poems of the Epic Cycle, have beenentirely lost, or preserved merely by chancequotations or references in late authors. Theadvanced critics of Homer, however, such as Ver-rall, Murray, and Wilamowitz, would draw nodistinction between the Hiad, the Odyssey andthese lost poems ; they assign them all to the samesource. Verrall in an article published in theQuarterly Eevietv for July, 1908 said: ^' Homer,so-called, is a nebulous mass of old poetry reducedinto distinct bodies, such as Iliad, Odyssey,Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Nostoi, and soforth for educational purposes by learned Athen-ians, about 600-500 b.c." Murray in his Rise of


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12 THE UNITY OF HOMERthe Greek Epic tries to prove that all the earlyepics were the slow growth of centuries, thework of numberless bards. On page 200 he says :''The truth is that all these poems or masses oftradition in verse form were growing up side byside for centuries." Wilamowitz constantlyargues that at the beginning of the fifth centuryall epic poetry was assigned to Homer, and evenso clear a thinker as Andrew Lang agreed withthat opinion, for in a lecture published in Anthro-pology and the Classics he said: '*To Homerearly historic Greece attributed the great body ofancient epic poetry."

If these statements be true and early Greecedid regard all this vast cycle as of common originand of equal merit, then little remains to be saidin regard to Homer, the man, the creator of theIliad and the Odyssey, since so many and so bulkypoems could never have originated with any oneman, but must have been the work of guilds orschools cooperating through many ages. A dis-cussion of the assumed ancient belief that Homerwas the author of all these poems deserves firstconsideration in any comprehensive treatment ofthe Homeric Question.

There is not a writer before the death ofAristotle who quotes, naming the poem, a singleverse from any of these poems, except the Iliadand the Odyssey, as the work of Homer ; not onewho writes ''As Homer said in the Thehais, theCypria, or the Little Iliad." Writers of the best


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 13period frequently quote the Iliad or the Odysseywith the introductory words '*as Homer says inthe Hiad," or *'as Homer says in the Odyssey,"and the common method in early writers or gram-marians is to refer to the poems of the Epic Cyclethus: '*as the writer of the Cypria says," or "asthe poet of the Little Iliad wrote," and so withall the Cycle; but I have never seen an earlyexample of such indefinite phrases used concern-ing the Iliad and the Odyssey. As already stated,the regular form is "as Homer says in the Hiad,"or * * as Homer savs in the Odyssev. ' ' The author-ship of these two poems is never referred to someindefinite poet or source.

Every argument which is used to prove theHomeric authorship of the Cycleand by theCycle I mean the poetry connected with Thebesand Troy other than the Iliad and the Odysseyand all the quotations are either from very latewriters, or from the lost works of early writers,fragments accidentally preserved and out of theircontext, where the meaning is largely a matterof interpretation, conjecture, or emendation. Allthese indirect references are to be treated withthe greatest caution, and no unsupported quota-tion from any writer, however good or early thatwriter may be, is to be regarded as absolutelyconclusive.

Literary references by modern writers areoften notoriously inaccurate; for example, in theAmerican Magazine for January, 1920 a list of


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14 THE UNITY OF HOMERquestions is asked, the ability to answer which isto be regarded as the mark of a broad education.One of these questions is, ''For what is Sheridanfamous?" On a later page the answer is given,''Sheridan wrote 'She Stoops to Conquer.' " Theman who wrote that question and answer wasprobably sitting in a room which contained theworks both of Sheridan and of Goldsmith, yet ifthat same writer had lived two thousand yearsago such a statement would be regarded as finalproof. It is impossible to exaggerate the massof false references in our modern journals, orthe number of quotations falsely assigned toShakespeare and the Bible. The scarcity and theexpense of books in early ages must have madeaccurate quotation far more difficult then thannow. Plutarch, Aelian, and Athenaeus, three ofour chief sources for references to older writers,are woefully inexact, as any competent readerof these learned men knows; and Plato in twoplaces quotes the same verse from Hesiod, butin different ways. He repeatedly gives parts oftwo verses as if they were a single verse, and healso has a jumbled form of perfectly good verses,while in the spurious Theages (125b) there isquoted as if from Euripides a verse w^hich onexcellent authority is assigned to Sophocles.Aristotle, the most learned man of antiquity,quotes the words of Odysseus (n 219) as thewords of Calypso {Ethics ii, 9, 3) ; also he repeatsthe speech of Agamemnon (B 393) as if spoken


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 15by Hector {Ethics ni, 11, 4), and in his Rhetoric(hi, 9, p. 1409 b 8) he assigns a verse of Euripidesto Sophocles. Aristophanes {Birds 575) substi-tutes Iris for Hera in quoting Iliad E 778. Thescholia often assign verses to Homer which are inthe extant works of other writers, e.g. the scholiumto Piiidar {0. xni, 12) credits Homer with a versewhich is found in the poetry of Theognis, andanother scholium to Pindar {N. vi, 91) quotesHomer as the source of a verse which is found inHesiod. The outstanding importance of Homermade him a sort of universal source for all kindsof verses. This must never be forgotten in esti-mating the importance of various quotations. Inview of these undoubted errors in primary andsecondary sources we cannot accept quotationsmade bv late and inaccurate writers as finalevidence of authorship, unless that evidence isdefinite, unequivocal, and confirmed by reliabletestimony.

The inferences that Homer was early regardedas the author of the Epic Cycle are as follows :The Thebais,^ an assumed poem dealing with theArgive expedition against Thebes, is said byWilamowitz, Finsler, and many others to be thefirst poem to be definitely assigned to Homer.This first reference to Homer w^as made by Cal-linus, an elegiac poet, who lived in Ephesus earlyin the seventh century before Christ. The sourceof this statement is a sentence in Pausanias ix, 9, 5.

" Homer as the Poet of the Thebais," Classical Philology,XVI, 20 ff.


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16 THE UNITY OF HOMER''The epic poem, the Thebais, was written inregard to this war, and Calaenus, when he speaksof this poem, said that he regarded the author asHomer. [It may also be translated, he regardedthe author as an Homer.] Many others agreewith Calaenus in this, but while I praise this poemI yet put it after the Iliad and the Odyssey."It seems that all that this passage is intendedto show is the high estimate in which the Thebaiswas held and that even here the author of thatpoem is regarded as an equal with the greatHomer. Not a manuscript has the word Callinusin this place, but all have Calaenus, so that Cal-linus is simply an emendation. The word Callinusis a pure conjecture; but even if all the manu-scripts had the form Callinus, it would be morethan doubtful if the poet of Ephesus was intended,for that early poet was so little known that hisname is not mentioned until Strabo, and whenStrabo mentions the name he adds the phrase,''the poet of the elegy" (xiii, 604) ; and when herefers to him a little later he again adds thewords "the poet of the elegy" (xiii, 627). Therepetition of the phrase shows that the meremention of his name could not be regarded as asufficient indication of the person intended.

Pausanias just a little earlier (viii, 25, 4) hassaid that the story of the expedition againstThebes had been put into verse by Antimachus,who was at the time of Pausanias one of the mostpopular of all the Greek poets, and Dio Cassius


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 17(lxix, 4) is the authority for the statement thatHadrian esteemed Antimachus and his Thebaismore highly than the poetry of Homer. Kinkelgives fifty-six fragments from this Thebais ofAntimachus, while he has but seven from theearlier poem, most of which are doubtful.

The earlier fragments are so few, while thosefrom the poem by Antimachus are so many, thatthe mere mention of the name Thebais is almostcertain to refer to the poem by Antimachus; buthere there can be no reasonable doubt, sincePausanias (viii, 25, 4) says he is referring to thatpoem. Hadrian put Antimachus ahead of Homer,Calaenus made him the equal, and Pausanias,even if he appreciated the greatness of theThebais of Antimachus, put him just behindHomer. Paley, in his Homeri Quae Nunc Extantetc., p. 39, argued that the Antimachus of theThebais was really the poet of the Iliad and theOdyssey. There is nothing in Pausanias to showthat he is not referring to Antimachus ; the read-ing is not Callinus, but Calaenus. And even if thereading were Callinus, there is nothing to connecthim with the poet of Ephesus ; yet this is the soleevidence for the assertion that Homer was re-garded in the seventh century b.c. as the poet ofthe Thebais.

The second writer quoted to prove that Homerwas regarded as the author of the Thebais isHerodotus, from whom the following passage iscited: ''The tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes, when


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18 THE UNITY OF HOMERhe was at war with Argos, banished the Homericbards because the poetry of Homer so constantlypraised Argos and the Argives." (v, 67.)

Grote, History of Greece, II, 174, argued thatit must have been the Thebais which so angeredCleisthenes, and Wilamowitz followed him by say-ing {H. U. 352) : ''This can make sense here onlyif Homer is regarded as the poet of the Thebais.^'Finsler accepts this as an established fact, sayingin his Homer, I, 64: ''The Thebais is meant, whenthe tyrant, Cleisthenes, banished the bards fromSicyoii, since the Homeric poetry gave too littlehonor to Argos." That is, they all assume thatthere is not enough praise of the Argives in theIliad and the Odyssey to arouse either the prideof the men of Argos or the envy of their hostileneighbors ; hence they fly to an assumed Thebais,the contents of which are also assumed. TheArgives or Argos are named in every book of theIliad except book tw^enty, and, despite the fact thatthe Odyssey withdraws to Ithaca or to fairyland,they are named in fifteen books of that poem;hence they are named in thirty-eight books ofour Homer. Hera is "Argive Hera," Helen is' ' Argive Helen, ' ' and Agamemnon with his divinescepter ruled over "many isles and all Argos."Eawlinson, with no thought of this discussion,says in his note to the first chapter of his Herodo-tus: "The ancient superiority of Argos is indi-cated by the position of Agamemnon at the timeof the Trojan War and by the use of Argive in


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 19Homer for Greek generally. No other name ofa single people is used in the same generic way."Here this competent historian bases the claimfor Argive superiority entirely on the campaignbefore Troy, that is, on the Iliad and the Odyssey.

However, this is not a question of probabili-ties, for we know from the men of Argos them-selves the poetry which stirred their pride, sincewe have a copy of the very inscription they setup in honor of Homer. This inscription is addedto the Contest between Homer and Hesiod aspublished in the works of Hesiod. The accountof the inscription and the inscription itself is asfollows :

The leaders of Argos rejoicing greatly in the factthat their own people have been so highly honored bythe most iUustrious of poets have in turn loaded himwith conspicuous honors. They erected a bronze imageand voted him a sacrifice for each day, each month, eachyear, and in addition even.' fifth year sent an offeringfor his glory to Chios. On his image they engraved thefollowing verses: "This is divine Homer, who adornedall proud Hellas with his wonderful poetic skill but mostof all he honored the Argives, who humbled the god-builtcity Troy, as a requital for the wrongs done to the fair-haired Helen, and hence the proud-citied state worshipshim with divine honors."Thus we have from the Argives themselves thething in Homer which they viewed with suchboundless pride, and this was no exploit con-nected with Thebes : it was the expedition againstTroy; that is, they felt exalted because Homerhad honored them in the Iliad and the Odyssey


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20 THE UNITY OF HOMERThebes is not mentioned in tlie inscription. Therecan be no doubt that hostile neighbors would envythem that very thing in which they themselvestook such unbounded pride. The story of thisexpedition is found in no assumed Thebais, butin Homer, our Homer, the Homer of the Iliad andthe Odyssey.

Inasmuch as Thebes went over to the Persiansit would seem natural for the Argives to stresstheir old conflicts at the time of the Persian War,but oddly enough the Argives never lay claim tohonor or favor because of those early exploits.Yet the Athenians at the battle of Plataea claimedas one of the reasons for commanding the wingnot held by the Spartans their own services atthat time, and they said {Her. ix, 27) : ''When theArgives led their troops with Polynices againstThebes and were slain and refused burial, it isour boast that we went out against the Cad-maeans, recovered the bodies and buried them atEleusis in our own territory. ' ' In the face of thisthe critics assume that there was nothing in theIliad and the Odyssey to stir the pride of theArgives or to arouse the envy of jealous neigh-bors ; accordingly they flee to a poem which toldhow these same Argives could not bury their ownslain but depended on the mercies of a foreignrace to bury them in a foreign soil. The love thepeople of Argos had for Homer is also shown bythe fact that Aristarchus quoted readings fromthe Argive state manuscript of both the Iliad and


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 21the Odyssey, but there is not the slightest evidencethat they made any attempt to preserve a copyof the Thebais.

The third proof offered for the Homericauthorship of the Thebais is founded on the Para-doxes of Antigonus of Carystus, chap. 25, in whicha reference is made to the nature of the polyp.The quotation is introduced with the words,"As the poet has written in the much quotedverses." There is nothing to comiect this eitherwith Homer or the Thebais except the fact thatthe author is referred to by the phrase, *'thepoet,"6 7roiJ7TT^,a phrase often used of Homer.The reason that Homer more than anyone elseis called the poet is simply because he is quotedmore than any other. But he has no vested rightin these words. Plato in the Laws (901 a) refersto Hesiod with the unmodified words "the poet,'^o7rot77T779,and we know that Hesiod is the one thusdesignated, since an extant poem of that authoris quoted. There is not the slightest evidence thatAntigonus had Homer in mind as the author ofthese verses. But the fact that Hesiod has beenquoted only a few verses previously, and his well-kno\vn references to the polj^p, make it probablethat Hesiod was the author of this passage.These three references, one in Herodotus, onein Antigonus, and one in Pausanias, all based onunsupported and improbable conjectures, are theonly evidence presented to show that the Greeksof the best period assigned the Thebais to Homer;


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22 THE UNITY OF HOMERyet if one reads Wilamowitz' latest book onHomer he is made to feel that Homer's earliestand greatest reputation is closely connected withthis hypothetical Thehais.

In the Panegyricus 158, Isocrates tells of thesadness the Greeks always feel when told of thewars between the Greeks. Then he adds: '^Ithink that the poetry of Homer has received thegreater glory because he pictures them as fightingforeigners, and it was just because of this thatour ancestors honored him in musical festivalsand in the education of the young." Since theArgive expedition was a war between Greeks, thisremark of Isocrates would have been absurd ifHomer were regarded as the poet of the Thehais,or if there had been any such tradition. Thisspeech of Isocrates was no random productionbut a piece of literary display on which he hadspent long and careful labor, and is a far bettercriterion for the beliefs of his own and the preced-ing generation than the random remark, con-jectural remark at that, of writers coming severalcenturies later. Homer is definitely connectedwith the Thehais in the Contest between Homerand Hesiod, but, since this contains the nameof the Emperor Hadrian, it must be regarded asa late production.The Cyclic poem from which there are pre-served the most verses is the Cypria, the poemwhich tells of the choice of Paris, the rape ofHelen, and in general the events connected with


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 23the Trojan "War as far as the beginning of theIliad. Most of the references assign this poem toStasinus, or they leave the author unnamed andambiguous, as '*the one who created the Ci/pria,"o TO, KuTT/Dia ireTTOi-qKO)^ ^ 6 ra Kvirpca 7roLi]cra


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24 THE UNITY OF HOMERborn in a neighboring town within a few years ofthe birth of Herodotus. The Sophists pridedthemselves on their ability to prove either side ofany question, and even Socrates was accused oftaking the worse side and making it appear thebetter. We have, under the famous name ofGorgias, an essay or speech illustrating howsophistic skill can take the faults of Helen andmake of them a garland of virtues ; and in the writ-ings of Antiphon we have a series of speeches inwhich it is shown how the same facts may be usedas evidence for exactly opposite arguments. Nodoubt a common theme for these sophistic exer-cises would be the question of authorship of poemsof doubtful or unknown origin. This would giveabundant opportunity for paradoxical argumen-tative skill. Herodotus may well be replying toan argument of this sort by calling attention tosomething which had been overlooked. Recentlya modern sophist has written a long treatise forthe purpose of proving that the works of Shakes-peare were written by the Earl of Oxford, justas other earlier sophists tried to prove that theywere written by Bacon. If a modern writer shouldcall attention to some point or fact that madeimpossible either of these theories, would that beaccepted as proof that this scholar stood alone indenying a common belief? In the age when thefaith of all believed in a single Homer, Aristarchusmade many comments in support of that belief.We know that these comments were directed


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 25against the paradoxes of Xenon, and that it wasnot Aristarchus but Xenon who was attacking theconunon belief. "We can assume that Herodotustook a like position and that he, as well as Aris-tarchus, supported the accepted beliefs againstthe sophistic vagaries. The passage in whichHerodotus furnishes proof that the Ci/pria cannotbe by Homer is the main support for the theorythat Homer was regarded as the author of thatpoem.The Cypria is quoted by Plato in theEuthi/phro 12 a in a manner which shows thathe did not assign it to Homer, as the phrase6 7roiT]TT]


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26 THE UNITY OF HOMERcertain either of the matter or the person quoted.This applies to all his writings and most of allto his Varia Historia from which this quotationis taken, since it has been preserved only in ex-tracts and the original was culled from the worksof men many of whom were as little to be trustedas Aelian himself. We seem to be forcing eventhis unreliable witness, when we quote him assaying that Pindar regarded Homer as the authorof the Cypria.A late age which ignorantly referred all earlypoetry to Homer was forced to explain the factthat most of these poems were regarded as theworks of other poets, and so took refuge in theassumption that, even if these poems were notcredited to Homer, he had composed them andthen waived his rights therein by presenting themto the poet who had married his daughter, or thathe had bartered them for sustenance to the menunder whose names they had circulated. Thesetales are no proof that Homer was regarded asthe source of these various poems, but just thereverse; they show that they were regarded asthe creations of the various poets whose namesthey bore. Thus was provided an easy explana-tion for the fact that the names of Arctinus,Stasinus, and the rest were attached to thesepoems, although all the early epics must have beenthe work of Homer.

Perhaps the sentence most quoted to provethat Homer was regarded as the author of the


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 27Epic Cycle is the one in which Aeschylus is re-ported to have said that his own plays were butportions from the great Homeric banquet. Sincevery few of the plays of Aeschylus touch thetraditions given in the Iliad and the Odyssey, theassumption has been generally made that a widermeaning must be given to the word Homer thanmerely the poet of these two poems. The passageis found in Athenaeus viii, 347 e ;

Ulpianus seems to eat nothing befitting a man, butto watch those eating to see if they overlook a bit of bone,of gristle, or of cartilage from tlie pieces served, notheeding the words of the noble and illustrious Aeschylus,who said that his own dramas were portions fromHomer's great feasts.

09 TU'i avTOv rpaycpSia^; rcfid'^^^ri elvai eXeye tcov 'OfirjpovfieydXcov Seiirvwv. Even those who interpret this asthe statement of the poet that he took his playsfrom Homer find it diflScult to explain how thePersians, the Prometheus Bound, the Hiketides,could have thus originated. Those who try torender re^dxv by crumbs or scraps miss the mean-ing entirely, for the word means portions or slicesof fish, the choicest of Athenian foods (Phrynichusxm TO Se T^axo


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28 THE UNITY OF HOMERpoet was not speaking in humility but in pride,and that he is not represented as comparing histragedies to crumbs from the Homeric banquets,but to whole courses or portions which were leftuneaten, or as the poet calls them Te/xaxv-The meaning then is that some small-mindedfellow sat searching for neglected scraps whichthe feasters rejected or overlooked, whileAeschylus was able to secure whole portions ofthe choicest viands from the banquet set beforeHomer. It was the good luck of Aeschylus thatthe Homeric banquet was so lavish that he wasnot reduced to crumbs but could feast on wholecourses which the earlier poet did not use. Ifone will read the context in Athenaeus which justprecedes and immediately follows the quotationfrom Aeschylus, he will see that the poet is notspeaking in self-depreciation" but exultation. Nogood Greek ever spoke with false humility of hisown workUriah Heep was not a native ofAttica. This interpretation makes impossible thepresumption that Aeschylus regarded Homer asthe poet of the entire Cycle. Pindar refers toHomer by name several times, each time a freeadaptation of our present Homer, just the adap-tation needed to change the epic meter anddialect into the lyric strains and dialect of Pindar.Aristophanes in the extant plays refers to Homeror quotes him six times, either in an exact quota-

7 The bearing of the boast of Aeschylus, that "he left thedecision in regard to his tragedies to the verdict of time, ' ' waspointed out to me by Professor Ivan M. Linforth.


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 29tion or in such a way as to show that he isreferring to the Iliad and the Odyssey. In a frag-ment of the earliest play of this comic poet anold man questions a youth on the meaning of twoobscure Homeric words, both of which are in ourpresent text of Homer.

Athenaeus (iv 172 e), says that in a poem ofSimonides the following verses are used in regardto Meleager: **Who surpassed all young men inthe use of the spear, hurling it over the eddyingAnaurus from lolcus, rich in vines. Thus Homerand Stesichorus sang to their people." This quo-tation is so indefinite, so out of all connectionand context, that it is rash to hazard an interpre-tation. The meaning might be clear if the quota-tion were longer. We know that in the story ofthe ninth book of the Iliad, Phoenix tried to im-press Achilles with horror of the ruin wroughtby the unyielding attitude of Meleager. Thisobstinacy of Meleager may be the thing to whichreference is here made, but the fragment is toobrief to give any indication of the use to whichthe tradition was applied. The fragment is purelynegative and yields nothing on which to buildtheories of contents or of authorship.

The last proof which I shall quote fromclassical writers that Homer was regarded as thepoet of the Epic Cycle is furnished by the speechof Aeschines against Timarchus (128 ff.), a speechdelivered in 345 b.c, that is, after the death ofboth Xenophon and Plato and during the prime


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30 THE UNITY OF HOMERof Aristotle. In this speech the orator said thatHomer, in the Iliad, before anything happened,often used the phrase ''rumor came to the army,"^^IMT} B' elf arparbv ^XOe. These exact words arenot found in the present Iliad. The assumptionhas therefore been made that Aeschines must havemeant the Little Iliad; and since the contents ofthat poem are almost unknown it is easy to sup-pose that it had many examples of that phrase.Homer does not use the word i>'nM in this phrase,but does have the exact synonym, the highly poetic6Wa, in several passages, where the meaning isessentially the same as that given by Aeschines:

B 93 : fiTa 8e ct^lv ocrcra SeS'qei.i/orpvvova' levai^ Ato? ayyeXo^;.

CJ 413 : oaaa S ' a/o ' ayyeXo^ 3>Ka Kara tttoXlvoi'yeTO TTcivrr).

So also in a 282, fi 216. In all these sentences themysterious oaaa is used in exactly the same senseas the (f>vM of Aeschines, and it is as unreasonableto look elsewhere for the origin of the phrase usedby the orator as it would be to seek for some othersource than Bishop Berkeley for the commonquotation, "Westward the star of empire takesits way," although he really said "Westward thecourse of empire takes its way." Thus all thedifference between Homer and Aeschines is thatthe orator substituted the prose


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 31writers before the death of Aristotle to show thatHomer was regarded until the middle of the fifthcentury as the poet of the great mass of earlyepic poetr}\ Not one clear and definite proof canbe found ; each is weak, improbable, and dependenton forced interpretations or forced conjecturesand emendations.

The reasons for believing that the Greeks ofthe best period did not regard Homer as theauthor of the Trojan and Theban Cycle aredefinite and numerous :

1. Not a single writer of the best period quotesa single verse as Homeric from the entire Cycle;not one example of, for instance, "Homer says inthe Thebais," ''Homer says in the Cypria"; whilehundreds of verses are quoted from the Iliad andthe Odyssey as the words of Homer.

2. A young man who is one of the speakers inXenophon's Symposium (in, 5), the scene of whichis laid at about 420 b.c, says: "My father, eagerto have me become a good man, compelled me tocommit to memory all the poetry of Homer, andthus it happens that, even now, I can repeat frommemory all the Iliad and the Odyssey." Here thewords, "all the poetry of Homer," and "the Iliadand the Odyssey," are interchangeable terms.Antisthenes replies to the young man that this isno great accomplishment, since all the rhapsodistsknow all these poems, too. Not a man in thatgroup, not even the captious Socrates, suggestedthat in using the phrase, "all the poetrj^ of


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32 THE UNITY OF HOMERHomer," he must remember that other poemsthan the Iliad and the Odyssey have been assignedto Homer. Xenophon is the best possible author-ity. He is early, is acquainted with many lands,a man of the world as well as a man of letters.He gives us the unequivocal statement that in histime among educated Athenians Homeric poetrywas regarded as coextensive with the Iliad andthe Odyssey.3. An easy proof that the Greeks of the bestperiod never regarded Homer as the author ofthe Cycle is found in the fact that Homer wasto them the ideal of the best in poetry, to approachhim was the highest praise any work of geniuscould receive, and the poetry of the Cycle wasgenerally despised and neglected, A measure ofthe high esteem felt for the Iliad and the Odysseyand the low regard in which the Cycle was heldis found in the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey,despite their great length, have come down to usentire, and, even if they had been lost, quotationstherefrom and references thereto are so many andso full that we could reconstruct their generaloutline from the material thus furnished, whilethe poems of the Cycle are so utterly and com-pletely lost that we depend on a brief late prosesummary for practically all our knowledge ofthem. Not a single line of some of them hasbeen preserved, and Kinkel and Allen, in theirfull and exhaustive collection of the fragments,can not produce ten verses from all the Cycle


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 33which are found in the works of writers who livedbefore the death of Aristotle. It is a startlingproof of the diiferent regard in which the Iliad,the Odyssey, and the Epic Cycle were held that,according to Kenyon, in the fragments of knovsTiclassical writers discovered in Egy^pt, far morethan half of the total are from the Iliad and theOdyssey, while not a trace of the Cyclic poemshas been found. Allen publishes one doubtfulcyclic papyrus fragment.

The reason for the neglect of these poems inGreece and in Egj^pt is found in their small poeticmerit and in their general lack of constructiveability. As proofs of this I shall furnish onlyfive, but important, witnesses. Proclus, to whomwe are indebted for most of our scanty knowledgeof the Cycle, says, ' ' The poems of the Cycle werenot preserved for their poetic merit, but becauseof the traditions and the mythology they con-tained." Horace, who, although a Roman poet,is earlier than much of the learned literature ofthe Greeks, says of Homer that he is the poet ofperfect taste, qui nil molitur inept e, but he never-theless holds up to ridicule the creative futilityof the Cyclic poets and contrasts that futility withthe unerring judgment of Homer. Callimachus,the learned librarian of Alexandria, refers toHomer as the "divine Homer" {Ep. 61), but healso says "I hate the cyclic poem." {Ep. 29.)

8 Ludwich, De Cyclo Homerica (Konigsberg, 1905), suggeststhat Callimachus may be referring here to an arrangement ofwords, such as appeared on the tomb of Midas, which is discussed


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34 THE UNITY OF HOMERImportant as these witnesses are in regard to

the comparative merits of the Iliad, the Odyssey,and the Cycle, they are as nothing, since we havethe testimony of Aristotle, a man who had theliterature before him and who had the ability to

\1 appreciate it. In all his writings on poetryAristotle regarded Homer as quite alone, the per-fect example of taste, invention, and of execution.In his discussion of the unity of plot {Poetics viii)he says: ''Homer evidently understood that pointperfectly, whether by art or by instinct, in exactlythe same way that he excels the rest in everyrespect." By ''the rest" he means the poets ofthe Epic Cycle, and again he says {Poetics xxiii) :' ' Here then the transcendent excellence of Homeris manifest. He never attempts to make the wholewar of Troy the subject of his poem, although thatwar had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Allother poets took a single period, a single hero,or a single action indeed, but with a multiplicityof parts. Thus did the author of the Cypria andof the Little Iliad." Similar ideas abound in theworks of Aristotle, that the Iliad and the Odysseyin Plato's Phaedrus 264 D, and that he is not considering theEpic Cycle. The words of Proclus, ol iJ.imoi y' dpxo-ioi Kal rhv'K.vkXov ava4povfftv eh airrbv, which are generally made thestarting point for the assumption of Homeric authorship of theCycle and are the first authority thus quoted by Christ-Schmid,are explained by Ludwich as having no sort of connection withthe Epic Cycle, but simply referring to the word-play as givenin the Phaedrus. Just as Homer was regarded as the father oforatory and tragedy, so to him was referred the creation of thisplay on words. This interpretation removes much of the evidencefor the theory that Homer was early credited with the authorshipof the Epic Cycle.


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 35show exactly the same high poetic skill, the sameperfect control of plot, and in all these mattersstand alone and apart from all the poems ofthe Epic Cycle. And in the Panathenaicus ofIsocrates (xii, 263), an assumed speaker says of acertain group of literary productions that **Theyare as inferior to the work of Isocrates as thosewere inferior to Homer who attempted like themeswith those put in verse by that great poet."From these primary proofs it is evident thatthe Iliad and the Odyssey were totally unlike allthe other poems of the Cycle. Yet in the face ofsuch conclusive evidence we are calmly assuredthat all these poems, the Iliad, the Odyssey, theThehais, the Cypria, and all the Cycle were simplyparts of a like mass of poetrj^ all bearing thesame marks and all assigned to the same poet,Homer. I am, however, unable to find any clearand conclusive evidence that a single writer be-fore the death of Aristotle assigned any poemof the Cycle to Homer, or to find any suspicioncast on the Homeric authorship of the Iliad andthe Odyssey.

It is worth the while to set over against every-thing that has been written on the Epic Cyclefrom Welcker to Wilamowitz these two sentences :"My father had me commit to memorj^ all thepoetr}' of Homer and I can now repeat by heartall the Iliad and the Odyssey," and ** Homer,admirable as he is in every other respect, isespecially so in this, that he alone among the epic


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36 THE UNITY OF HOMERpoets is not unaware of the part to be played bythe poet himself in the poem." (Xen. Sym. iii, 5,Aristotle Poetics xxrv.) These two passages donot need to be emended and they need no exegesis ;hence they give no proper sphere for imaginativeand creative scholarship. But they satisfy meand convince me that Homeric studies have noneed to build on airy speculations when they haveas a foundation such solid and unequivocal facts.

The assumption of most critics has been thatin the early literary ages of Greece Homer wasa general name to which was assigned the entiremass of early epic poetry, and that slowly firstone poem was taken from him and then anotheruntil all but the Iliad and the Odyssey had beendenied him, when a period of credulity followedthat lasted until Wolf took up the work whichhad so long lain dormant. Wolf then is a kindredspirit with the great literary leaders of the Ageof Pericles. The exact reverse, however, is thetrue story, for not a single verse, not a singlepoem of the Epic Cycle was definitely quotedas the work of Homer until after the death ofAristotle. The few verses gathered by Allenunder the heading Versus Heroici, which areassigned to Homer and yet are not in the Hiador the Odyssey, are adaptations or misquota-tions of verses in the Vulgate. It cannot be toostrongly emphasized that such quotations are tobe treated with the very greatest caution, for eventhe best writers when they are exercising the


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HOMER AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS 37greatest care make serious mistakes. T wish toadd two illustrations to those already given:When Macaulay wrote for the Edinhurgh Reviewa review of Gleig's Warren Hastings he referredwith great scorn to the literary inferiority of TheVicar of Wakefield, yet thought he had said TheHistory of Greece. And he could never explainhow he had written one thing when he believedhe had written another. The most remarkableerror of this sort with which I am familiar isMoore's quotation of Byron's Don Juan, IV, 4 asthe words of Shakespeare, after he had alreadycorrectly quoted them in his o^vn Life of Byron.^The first poem to be clearly assigned to Homerby a reliable author, except the two great epics,is the Hymn to Apollo, which is quoted as Homericby Thucydides (iii, 104). The Margites, a lam-poon or literary caricature, was regarded asHomeric by Aristotle, who was probably voicingan inherited tradition, although the evidence thatArchilochus and Aristophanes regarded this poemas Homeric is extremely weak. The first poemsto be attached to the author of the Hiad and theOdyssey were these little poems of unkno^\^lorigin, then others were assigned to that greatname until, in the intellectual darkness which fol-lowed. Homer was regarded as the source of allearly poetr}'. A comparison of the poems listedas Homeric by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotlewith those so given by Suidas will show which

Table Talk of Samuel Sogers, London, 1903, 223.


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38 THE UNITY OF HOMERway the current was running, and will clearlyindicate whether poems were being taken fromor added to the name of Homer. We cannotby taking the ignorant assertions of these latewriters and by setting aside the explicit state-ments of the ablest thinkers of Alexandria andof Athens arrive at earlier truth. Suidas, Tzetzes,and Aelian are not such safe witnesses for Hellasof the fifth century as are Isocrates, Xenophon,Plato, and Aristotle.


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CHAPTER IITHE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF

With Aristotle the works of creative geniusfor the most part ceased, and the year of hisdeath, 322 b.c, closed that long and brilliant erawhich is commonly kno^^^l as Classical Greece.Not a trace of proof has ever been found thatduring the classical period anyone questioned theunity of the Iliad and the Odyssey or that theywere both the work of one poet, and that poet,Homer. During the following years the Greekslost their independence and by reason of their lackof political power and of the productive influencewhich that power called forth, they turned eitherto problems of scholarship or to the exercise oftheir great talents for subtle argumentation.One of these subtle exercises of the power toreason was the attempt to prove that the Iliadand the Odyssey were by different authors. Theyseem to have made no effort to find who theseauthors were, but to have been satisfied in pro-ducing arguments for diversity. Whether thesearguments were meant seriously or were simplyan attempt to apply to Homer that vaunted skillof proving either side of any question we donot know. But the greatest of the Alexandrian


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40 THE UNITY OF HOMERscholars, Aristarchus, wrote replies which henamed Answers to the paradox of Xenon, as if heregarded the so-called chorizontic arguments asmerely sophistic attempts to prove the improb-able or the impossible.

These arguments seem to have been regardedsolely as an exercise in argumentation and theywere without any kno^vn effect on the study ofHomer. Seneca De Brev. Vitae 13, refers to thatvice clinging to the Greeks of questioning, "Howmany men did Ulysses have?" "Which waswritten earlier, the Hiad or the Odyssey!" "Didthe same poet write both poems?" Lucian, theleading Greek writer of the second century of ourera, unagines that he had been admitted into thesacred presence of Homer, whom he questioned inregard to the disputed facts of the poet 's life andwritings. Lucian learns from the poet himselfhis origin, and the reason for beginning his poemwith the Wrath; learns that the verses rejectedby the Alexandrians are genuine, and that theIliad was written before the Odyssey, and fromobservation he saw that the poet had not beenblind.^ There is no reference in Lucian to anydoubts cast on the authorship of the Iliad and theOdyssey. The author of the piece of literary criti-cism, De Suhlimitate, formerly supposed to beLonginus, in an elaborate discussion of the char-acteristics of Homeric poetry gives no trace ofany opinion which assigns the Iliad and theOdyssey to different authors.

1 Lucian, Vera Historia u, 20.


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 41The entire lack of any following and also the

fact that the separatist arguments were calledparadoxes by Aristarchus and referred to bySeneca as an example of that Greek perversityin seeking absurd themes for arguing, as well asthe silences of Lucian and Longinus, convince methat the so-called chorizontic movement of theearly Alexandrian period was simply a pieceof argumentation, an exercise in dialectics, andhad nothing in conunon with literary criticism.Except for this utterly vain and ineffectual para-doxical reasoning of Xenon and Hellanicus wehear of no arguments advanced by either Greekor Latin writers to show that Homer was not thecreator of both the Iliad and the Odvssev.

Others may have anticipated him in many orin all of his theories, but the Homeric Questionwas definitely and scientifically launched by Fried-rich August Wolf in his famous Prolegomena,Volumen I, published in 1795, the influence ofwhich has permeated all fields of classical andBiblical literature. Two circumstances have con-tributed to the great importance of this work ofWolf: first, it came at a time when the FrenchRevolution had filled the earth with generalskepticism and with distrust in inherited beliefsand existing institutions. Everything went intothe caldron of doubt. The leaders in this move-ment, with its glorification of the common man,the mass, felt called upon to challenge the claimsof genius and to assert that what had been


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42 THE UNITY OF HOMERregarded as the work of the superman was, in fact,the production of the people, the fruit of whoseachievements had been wrested from them. TheIliad and the Odyssey were but folk-poetry, thepoetic expression of the entire people, and notthe creation of any single superior genius. Marx,under the same spell, later argued that all wealthis produced by labor, by the common man, andthat a few have taken to themselves or exploitedthe work of the many; so in a somewhat similarway it was assumed that epic poetry was the pro-duction of the entire people and that a real orhypothetical Homer had exploited the people ofits poetry.The second reason contributing to the enor-mous popularity of the Homeric Question lies inthe fact that for about a century and a quartercertain types of universities and certain types ofscholarship have dominated the learning of theworld. In these universities promotions havegenerally been in exact ratio to the number ofpages of articles, pamphlets, or books published.It has almost been an actionable offense to say ofa professor, "He is an inspiring teacher," whichwould be like saying of a woman, * ' She has a goodheart" or "She means well." The real praiseis to say of him, "He is a productive scholar, ' ' a"productive scholar" being one who publishes acertain number of pages per year, pages whichare always counted and are rarely weighed. TheHomeric Question furnished inexhaustible mater-


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 43ial for numberless pages ; you did not need to readwhat others had written, since you could alwayscreate a new theory of your owni. You did noteven need to read Homer. All vou needed waspaper, ink, and audacity. Here anyone could bea millionaire and required no capital to start inbusiness. The field was unlimited, you couldeither discuss what Homer had said, or, if youdid not care to read Homer, you could write abook on what he should have said. Wilamowitz,the most radical of critics, practically throwsaway all the present Iliad and reconstructs a newHiad, '*an Hiad worthy of a great poet." Theimmense popularity of the Homeric Question haslargely consisted in the fact that it put no re-straint on imaginative or creative and productivescholarship. It did not demand as a prerequisitea knowledge of the thing discussed, for one couldalways escape the charge of ignorance of Homerby pointing out that the verses quoted againsthim had been rejected by a whole set of critics.As every verse in Homer has been pronouncedlate by some high authority, the answer wasalways ready and always complete. If the ques-tion of Homeric authorshi]) were as settled asthat of Sophocles or Milton, then a real knowledgeof the subject must precede all articles or bookson Homer and the field would thus be immeasur-ably reduced.

The main argument advanced by Wolf fordoubting the unity of the Iliad rested on the


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44 THE UNITY OF HOMERassumption that writing was unknown at the timethe Iliad originated, or so little known that itcould not be used for literary purposes, and with-out writing Wolf regarded it as impossible thata poem of such bulk as the Iliad should eitherhave been composed or preserved. He arguedalso that even if poems of the size of the Iliadand the Odyssey had been composed there wouldhave been no occasion for their delivery, since noaudience could have been found willing or capableof listening to poems of such magnitude. Heassumed that the Iliad must have been composedof a mass of songs, more or less independent,songs undergoing constant alterations until theywere collected into one poem under the orders ofPeisistratus, who appointed a commission for thatpurpose. Homer by this process was eliminatedand, whoever may have composed the differentsongs, the Iliad itself is a learned creationmechanically put together about the middle ofthe sixth century b.c. That great argument ofWolf in regard to writing, around which theHomeric Question so long revolved, has now beenabandoned, so that it is hardly worth the effortto storm a position which has long been desertedand which no one today would care to defend.

The second argument was that, even if suchpoems had been composed, their bulk would be sogreat that they could not be recited, and also therecould have been no occasion for their delivery.It was not necessary that either poem be repeated


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 45entire at one time. It must be remembered thatmany of our best literary productions appearedin serial form in magazines having only monthlyor quarterly issues. It is quite as easy to supposethat an audience could receive the Iliad in install-ments as it could a Sartor Resarins or a VanityFair. We must not forget, however, that there isone great difference between an ancient and amodem audience and that is the immense diver-sity of the claims on the modem reader in com-parison with the ancient hearer. We know thatthe Greeks would assemble from da\\Ti to darkfor several consecutive days in order that theymight listen with rapture to the productions ofa dramatic festival. It is very doubtful if thislong literary festival of the drama was a completeinnovation. The conservative Greek may wellhave followed, in listening to Aeschylus, Sopho-cles, and the other dramatic poets, the same habitwhich had for ages made him familiar withliterary recitals covering several days. Duringthe last three davs of the Citv Dionvsia in Athensnine tragedies, three satyric plays, and at leastthree comedies were presented, or not less thanfifteen dramas, hence at least five on each day.Some of the existing dramas contain over seven-teen hundred verses, but the average is not farfrom fourteen hundred. Each day, therefore,would see about seven thousand verses presentedby actor or chorus. In all the plays the move-ments of the chorus, the pauses in action, and


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46 THE UNITY OF HOMERthe dramatic silences no doubt so prolongedthe time of delivery that these seven thousanddramatic verses must have occupied as much timeas would be taken by ten thousand epic verses,recited by single bards. It is therefore clear thatthe last three days of the City Dionysia involvedquite as much strain on the hearer as did therecital of the entire Iliad and Odyssey. But thelast three days of the City Dionysia followedanother day or days just as strenuous, since thedramas came after the audience had alreadylistened to ten dithyrambic choruses.^ Even Greektragedy had no such grasp on the Greek mindand Greek enthusiasm as that held by Homer, sothat it is far easier to picture them listening tothe entire Iliad and Odyssey than to fifteen ormore dramas in three consecutive days. Theassumption, then, that there was no occasion onwhich the Iliad and the Odyssey could have beenpresented collapses under the consideration of theundoubted facts of Greek dramatic production.

The final argument was that these poems tookon their epic form in Athens under the leadershipof Peisistratus, hence the theory that under thisdespot not only were the detached poems ofHomer united into epic wholes, but changes weremade in the text to glorify Athens and Peisis-tratus himself. These will be discussed in reverseorder, first, the probability that interpolationswere made in the interest of Athens, and, second,

2 Flickinger, The Greelc Theater and Its Drama, 196 fE.


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 47the part taken by Athens and Peisistratus in thecreation or preservation of the Iliad and theOdyssey.The first writer to refer to interpolations inthe interest of Athens is Diogenes Laertius, awriter presumably of the second century of ourera, who in his Life of Solon, chap. 48, says: "Itis reported that Solon wrote in the Cataloguethe verse which makes Ajax draw up his shipsnext to the Athenians." In chapter 57 this sameDiogenes Laertius gives Dieuchidas, a writer of^legara, as the source for this statement. Tradi-tion varies between Solon and Peisistratus as theforger of that verse, but the theory of Athenianinterpolation is not supported by any good earlyliterary or historical authority. It rests chieflyon the evidence furnished by the poems them-selves. AVe have all the facts a Megarian or aDiogenes Laertius had and we can test for our-selves the probability of interpolations in theinterest of Athens.

Attica and Athens must have existed longbefore Homer. Excavations show that in thevicinity of Athens was an important center ofMycenaean culture, so that any poem dealing ina large way with a general expedition undertakenby the Greeks of that age must assign a i^art,presumably a large part, to Athens.How prominent in Homer are the warriorsfrom this Mycenaean center? In the first bookof the Iliad the poet introduces Achilles, Aga-


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48 THE UNITY OF HOMERmemnon, Ajax, Idomeneus, Menelaus, Nestor,Odysseus, and Patroclus; and Diomede appearsearly in the second book. It is not until theCatalogue of the Ships that a single Athenian isnamed, and then only in a sort of geographicalsurvey, where the poet, having described theforces from Bceotia and the intervening or adjoin-ing regions, passes to Athens and to Salamis, thenon to Argos and to Tiryns. The bitterest enemyof Athens could hardly have omitted Attica inthis general survey. Athens is there representedby a single leader, Menestheus, a leader in whomthe Athenians took no pride, so little pride indeedthat Euripides, when telling the story, despiteHomer, substituted another leader, whose memorywould arouse the interest and the enthusiasm ofhis own countrymen.^

This Menestheus next appears in A 338, whenAgamemnon sternly rebukes him for his listlessinactivity in a time of danger, while Menestheusin silence listens to the reproof. His next appear-ance is at M 331, when, terrified by the approachof the Lycian leaders, he sends for the help ofAjax, who comes and rescues him. It seems oddthat the Athenians, who are assumed to have laidclaim to the island of Salamis because of theirrelations with Ajax, should have either interpo-lated or preserved these verses in which their owntimid champion was rescued by the leader of thevery island over which they claimed control. "Why

^Iph. in Aulis, 247.


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 49did they not reverse it, and have Ajax rescued byMenestheus ? They could then support their ownchaim by an epic obligation. In N 685 is picturedthe failure of Menestheus and his men to keepHector from the ships, and in 329 Menestheusis utterly unable to save Stichius, an Athenian,from Hector, and lasus, also an Athenian, fromAeneas. Menestheus is not mentioned again inHomer, not even reappearing at the final reviewof the Greeks to take part in the games heldin honor of Patroclus. These three generals,Stichius, lasus, and Menestheus, are the solerepresentatives of Athens named in Homer, thefirst two being introduced only to be slain, andhaving no voice nor part in the poem. Menes-theus, the Athenian leader, is never consulted, isspoken to but once, and then in severest rebuke,speaks but a single time and that in a plea forhelp, sees his companions fall at his side, helplessto save them, does no act of valor, however slight,and passes from notice early in the course ofthe poem. If such a hero was created to exaltAthenian pride, then that pride was easily exaltedand easily satisfied.

The verses selected as proof of forgerj^ in theinterest of Athens are B 557 f., "Ajax broughttwelve ships from Salamis and bringing themmoored them where the hosts of the Atheniansstood." The second verse is referred to as ifgenuine by Aristotle {RJiet. i, 15), but Megariansources claimed it w^as a forgery inserted to


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50 THE UNITY OF HOMERdecide or strengthen the claims of the Atheniansto the island of Salamis in their contest withMegara. Zenodotus and Aristarchus appear tohave passed in silence the charge of Athenianinterpolation, even though they did not admitthis verse into their text.

Homer consistently keeps Ajax near theAthenians ; Menestheus and his men were rescuedby Ajax from the Lycians in M 339 ff. In thefierce fight between Hector and Ajax (N 185 ff.),Amphimachus is slain, and his body is rescued andcarried back to the line of the Achaeans by twoAthenians, Menestheus and Stichius. These sameAthenians (N 865 ff.) try in vain to restrain Hec-tor in his attack on Ajax. In the great strugglebetween Ajax and Hector (0 329 if.), Stichius andlasus, the two Athenian companions of Menes-theus, are slain. Once only is Menestheus appar-ently away from Ajax, and that is in the reviewof the army made by the king in A, where Agamem-non upbraids him and Odysseus, but soon after(A 489) Antiphus hurls at Ajax, misses him, andhits a companion of Odysseus; now Menestheusand Odysseus entered the fight as companions,hence even here Ajax was fighting near theAthenians, and Ajax, Odysseus, and Menestheusmust have stood close together.

This hidden proof of the intimate relationsexisting between Ajax and the Athenians can notbe due to an interpolator, but must come fromthe original poet. This subtle harmony is not


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 51an addition, it is the hidden harmony of thewhole. The poet who wrote the suspected linehad the same idea whenever he referred to Ajaxand the Athenians.

This suspected verse is the only one in theIliad which gives a home to Ajax, and it seemsmost unlikely that this mighty chieftain, secondonly to Achilles, should be a warrior without ahome and without a country. It has long beenobserved that most of the Homeric heroes movedto and from the battle in a chariot, but sweatingAjax, loaded with his ponderous shield, movedalwavs on foot and had neither a driver nor achariot. This trait he shared with Odysseus, whocame from the little island of Ithaca, and it is fairevidence that he, too, came from some islandtoo small to train its inhabitants in the use ofthe chariot. This small island is named in thesuspected verse and in none other in the Iliad.Inasmuch as Ajax is homeless without this verse,since the absence of a chariot marks him as anislander, since he is regularly near the Athenians,and since Aristotle refers without questioning tothis verse as Homeric, I regard it as genuine andas a part of the original conception of the Iliad.

The references to Athens in the Odyssey arefew and vague, never joined to any praise of thatcity: once Sunium is named as the promontory ofAthens ; once Odysseus tells how he saw Ariadnewhom Artemis slew as she was going from Creteto Athens; once it is said that Orestes returned


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52 THE UNITY OF HOMERfrom Athens to slay the murderer of his father;and once it is said that Athena came to Marathonand Athens of wide streets. These are all thedirect references to Athens in the Odyssey. Buttwo of them are highly significant, for the simplestatement that "Orestes returned from Athens"is at complete variance with Athenian tradition,since it was one of the commonplaces of the Attictraditions that Orestes came from Phocis. IfAthenian pride inserted Athens here in Homer,why did that same pride retain Phocis in tragedy?If Athens ever controlled Homeric tradition, whywas the word Athens not changed to Phocis?The answer seems simple : The word was in Homerin spite of Athenian traditions, and no one inAthens had power to change it. The other sig-nificant passage is y] 80, where it is said that'^Athena left Scheria and came to Marathon andto Athens." This has been regarded as the sureproof of tampering with the text of Homer, andSeeck, who sees many defects on many pages ofHomer, says : ''That the goddess should have comefrom Phaeacia, that is from the west, and pass overthe east coast of Attica before coming to Athens ishighly unreasonable. If the poet in spite of thisnames Marathon, it could only be from personalgrounds. In all probability Marathon was hishome. "^ The last sentence he puts in italics.That is to say, the poem contains a seriousblunder in the matter of the geography of Athens,

4 Seeck, Quellen der Od., 335.


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 53a blunder self-evident to anv Athenian, hence thepassage must have been due to an inhabitant ofAttica, an inhabitant who knew better, so thathe might delight his o^v^l fellow-countrymen, whoalso knew better. This verv inaccuracv showsthat the verses were composed by a poet with onlya vague idea of the relative positions of Athensand Marathon, composed also for an audiencewith the same indefinite ideas. Homer had nomaps or charts before him and would be expectedto have this indefinite grasp of direction in regardto lands somewhat remote. This vagueness is ofa piece \Wth the belief of Nestor that birds ofpassage could not cross the Mediterranean in asingle year (y 321) or the statement of Menelausthat Pharos is a long day's sail from the mouthof the Nile (S 355). Also, in general connectionwith the influence of Athens on Homeric poetry,the fact must not be forgotten that the wordAthens is found in but a single passage in theIliad and that in the general geographical surveyof the Catalogue.

It has been a common presumption of thecritics that the men who collected or created theIliad and the Odyssey for Peisistratus added tothe Odvssev a son of Nestor, whom thev namedPeisistratus in order to flatter the tyrant. Thisyouthful Peisistratus is one of the least importantactors of the poem. He was created to accompanyTelemachus to Sparta, and when that is done he iscompletely ignored. After he and Telemachus


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54 THE UNITY OF HOMERpart company (o 215), he is forgotten, even hiscompanion does not bid him any farewells, forhe simply leaves him. The poet makes no men-tion of his reception by his father, and he doesnot allow him to tell the story of the trip toSparta. The significant fact, however, is thatwhen Telemachus narrates to his mother the taleof that journey he never mentions Peisistratusnor refers to him in any way ; clear proof that hewas a person in whom, the poet and the hearer hadonly a secondarv interest. Such a character isthe creation of the original poet and has no marksof the flatterer, for there is nothing in it to flatteranyone, certainly not the tyrant of Athens.

The positive proofs that the Homeric poemswere never under Attic control are many. InHomer Oedipus died in Thebes (^ 679), althoughone of the greatest plays of Sophocles is foundedon the story of his death in Colonus, a suburb ofAthens; Tydeus was buried in Thebes (H 114),yet the Athenians prided themselves on his burialat Eleusis; Philomela is the daughter of Pan-dareus (x 518), not of the Athenian Pandion;Hecuba is the daughter of Dymas (H 718), butin Attic traditions she was the daughter ofCisseus ; Orestes returns to his home from Athens(y 307), not from Phocis; Agamemnon's daugh-ters have names utterly unlike the names giventhem by the Athenians (I 145). How easily anAthenian could have substituted the Attic Iphi-geneia for the Homeric Iphianassa! The hero


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 55of the Odyssey reappears as the villain of Attictragedy ; the kindly, gentle host and friend, Mene-laus, becomes almost inhuman; and Minos, theCretan tyrant, who demanded the annual sacrificeof fourteen Athenian youths to the Minotaur, is, inHomer, the wise judge, the friend and companionof Zeus. It is beyond belief that the Atheniansever had such control of these poems as to insertPeisistratus into the story of the Odyssey and toreshape them at w^ill, yet never took the pains torewrite these traditions which could have beenso easily changed. To see how an Athenian whoreally had a free hand dealt with Homeric tradi-tions, we need only turn to Euripides, who, in hisIphigeneia in Aulis, substituted another leaderfor Homer's Menestheus and, in spite of thedefinite number of fifty ships named in the Cata-logue, increased the Athenian contingent to sixty,while Argos is made inferior by reducing its shipsfrom eighty to fifty. The internal evidence fur-nishes no proof that any changes were made inthe text of Homer in the interest of Athens.Moreover, if Athens had absolute control of thesepoems, the failure to bring them into harmonywith Athenian pride and Athenian traditions isone of the most inexplicable things in literature.What external proofs are there that Athensor Peisistratus ever controlled this poetry! Thestory of Peisistratus and Homer seems to haveoriginated in the hostile state of Megara, wherepolitical enmity sought to console itself by claim-


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56 THE UNITY OF HOMERing it had lost by fraud what it could not gainby force. No admirer of Peisistratus has beenable to show that any intellectual life was calledinto being by him or by his sons. It is true thatOnomacritus was detected in forging a prophecyfor these superstitious despots, and Herodotustells of their great interest in signs, omens, andoracles, but neither he nor any early writer givesthe slightest indication that any creative intellect-ual or literary impulse came from that family.The Peisistratidae might have had the wealth toemploy and the taste to appreciate the praisesor the songs of an Anacreon or a Simonides, butthe literary barrenness of Athens during theirlives and during the years immediately followinggives no indication that they furnished any stim-ulus to literary activity. The story that Peisis-tratus founded a great library and was the patronof letters seems pure fiction, for Aristotle in hisrecently discovered Athenian Constitution, chap.16, describes in great detail the work done byPeisistratus, his criminal laws, and the fact thathe recognized therein extenuating circumstances,his efforts to assist the poor farmers, and alsohis democratic and philanthropic spirit, but hemakes no reference to his library or to his literarypursuits. When we consider Aristotle's immenseenthusiasm for literature and for the gatheringof books, we are certain that he would neverhave passed over in silence the great intellectualachievements which the advocates of Peisistratus


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 57as the creator of Homer so confidently assume.No ^\Titer, whose works have survived, connectsPeisistratus with Homer until Cicero, and Cicerolived almost five hundred years after the time ofPeisistratus. Xo later writer atlds any detailwhich proves a new source of knowledge, hencethe multiplication of the names of later writersreferring to Peisistratus adds no strength to theargument.There is not to be found in Herodotus, Plato,Aristotle, nor in any early Athenian writer a ref-erence connecting the tyrant with Homer, nor isthere a single allusion in all the great mass oflearning referred to the scholars of Alexandria."Wolf's statement that the united voice of all an-tiquity consistently assigned to Peisistratus thehonor of collecting, arranging, and putting intowriting the poetry of Homer looks dangerouslynear intentional deception. Even more to thepoint is the fact that Herodotus says the Athen-ians used that passage in the Catalogue, which isnow most suspected, to explain their unwillingnessto yield the command of the fleet, at the time ofthe invasion of Xerxes, to any but Sparta, and hemakes no comment. No one familiar with themethod of Herodotus could suppose that he knewthe Athenians were using a forged passage andyet concealed that knowledge. Again, when he de-scribed Onomacritus as one who had been exiledfor interpolating a verse into the poetry ofMusaeus, there can be no reasonable doubt that


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58 THE UNITY OF HOMERhe would have added that formerly this Onoma-critus had been intrusted by Peisistratus withi thetask of collecting the poetry of Homer and he hadalso added verses thereto. It is incredible thata public sentiment which exiled a man for inter-polating a verse in so insignificant a poem as thatof Musaeus should have been indifferent to whole-sale additions to the almost sacred poetry ofHomer.In regard to the Megarian charge that theSpartan arbitrators were tricked in awardingSalamis to Athens because of an interpolatedverse, one of two things is true : either the poetryof Homer was well-kno^vn at that time or it wasnot. If well-known, an interpolation would havebeen immediately detected ; and if it was not well-known, it would not have been accepted as theultimate authority. In all the attacks made lateron Athenian duplicity, no Spartan ever complainsof this deception, and no Athenian is ever quotedas defending a proposed injustice by referringto this clever imposture of the fathers.

There is no evidence for this Homeric recen-sion under the supervision of Peisistratus but theevidence of probabilities. What are the probabili-ties that in the second half of the sixth centuryHomer came so completely under the control ofAthens that in a few years Athenian legates atSyracuse could quote Athenian interpolations asgenuine and neither the speakers betray nor thehearers suspect that the quoted verses were


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 59spurious? In order to compel this complete andrapid acceptance the Athenians must have had aunique and commanding position both in govern-ment and in literature, so that all Hellas wouldwithout questioning regard them as leaders. Butjust the opposite is true, for in the years immedi-ately following the fall of the family of Peisistra-tus, Athens was unable to settle her own domesticaffairs without the help or intervention of Sparta,and in 480, ten years after Marathon, Athensaccepted her own inferiority as an establishedfact and yielded to Sparta the right to commandboth the naval and land forces in the struggle withXerxes. Weak as Athens was in a military andpolitical sense in the years before the PersianWars, her literary fame was even more feeble.It is hard for us, with the glory of the fifth andfourth centuries in our minds, to grasp how farAthens lay outside the currents of literature untilthe rise of the drama. The Muses were connectedwith Helicon, Olympia, and Pieria, but there wasno mount of the Muses in Attica. Such earlyfabled bards as Linus, Thamyris, and Musaeuswere from other parts of Greece. No poem of theEpic Cycle was ever assigned to an Attic poet andwe are told that Hesiod of Boeotia, Peisander ofRhodes, Panyasis of Samos or of Halicarnassus,and Antimachus of Colophon were regarded as thegreatest epic poets after Homer. No Athenian inthat list ! Peisistratus lived in the age of the lyricpoets, yet not one of all the illustrious nine lyric


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60 THE UNITY OF HOMERpoets was born in Athens. What district adjacentto the Aegean Sea was so destitute of literary fameas Attica in 500 b.c. ? If poetry was to be recitedat the great festivals, the Athenians were obligedto adopt the works of a foreign poet, who sang thepraises of rival nations, and if a living poet wasdesired, it was necessary to send abroad for anAnacreon or a Simonides. It could not have beeneither the political or literary position of Athenswhich compelled an early acceptance of an Atticversion of Homer. Schools of Homeric enthusi-asts flourished before the time of Peisistratus inmany cities of Ionia and in the islands of theAegean, from which a knowledge of Homer radi-ated to all parts of the Greek world. We have along list of the names of those who busied them-selves with investigations in regard to Homerand Homeric poetry, but not one of these earlyinvestigators was from Athens. Homeric poetrymust have been known throughout Greece at thebeginning of the sixth century, since it seems tobe assumed as the setting or background for mostof the earliest poetry. The exact condition ofthat- age has been pictured by Xenophanes ofColophon, an early and a competent authority,born at about the time of the usurpation of Peisis-tratus, and therefore trained in Ionia in the ver-sion then current, before any recension by thetyrant was possible. He regarded the familiaritywith Homer as universal, something all hadknown from earliest childhood. This Xenophanes


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THE ARGUMENTS OF WOLF 61was much offended by the immorality of theHomeric gods and severely criticised the poet forhis descriptions of divine baseness. To hiraHiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, is assumed to havereplied, "This Homer whom you revile, althoughdead, continues to support ten thousand servants,while vou with difficultv can maintain but two."Even if this story be apocryphal, it gives someindication of the great popularity of Homericpoetry. We know that the recitation of Homericpoetr>^ was early established as a custom inSicyon, for Cleisthenes in jealousy of

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