INTRODUCTION.

xxv

"Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung

by himself, for small comings and good cheer, at festivals and
other days of merriment. These loose songs were not collected
together, in the form of an epic poem, till about Peisistratus' time,
about five hundred years after."23
Two French writers—Hedelin and Perrault—avowed a similar
scepticism on the subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of
Battista Vico, that we first meet with the germ of the theory,
subsequently defended by Wolf with so much learning and
acuteness. Indeed, it is with the Wolfian theory that we have
chiefly to deal, and with the following bold hypothesis, which
we will detail in the words of Grote24 —
"Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F.
A. Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then
been recently published, first opened philosophical discussion [xviii]
as to the history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of
that dissertation (though by no means the whole) is employed
in vindicating the position, previously announced by Bentley,
amongst others, that the separate constituent portions of the Iliad
and Odyssey had not been cemented together into any compact
body and unchangeable order, until the days of Peisistratus, in the
sixth century before Christ. As a step towards that conclusion,
Wolf maintained that no written copies of either poem could
be shown to have existed during the earlier times, to which
their composition is referred; and that without writing, neither
the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could have
been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him,
transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and
convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for
long manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the
points in Wolf's case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and
any individual theory.
23
Letters to Phileleuth; Lips.
24
Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.
xxvi The Iliad of Homer

Odyssey. By Nitzsch, and other leading opponents of Wolf, the

connection of the one with the other seems to have been accepted
as he originally put it; and it has been considered incumbent on
those who defended the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad
and Odyssey, to maintain that they were written poems from the
beginning.
"To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed
by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the
Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. But much would
undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if
it could be shown, that, in order to controvert it, we were driven
to the necessity of admitting long written poems, in the ninth
century before the Christian aera. Few things, in my opinion,
can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as
he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf
himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh
century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling. We
have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad,
and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor
can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides
of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early
elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing,
or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. The first
positive ground which authorizes us to presume the existence of
a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous ordinance of Solon, with
regard to the rhapsodies at the Panathenaea: but for what length
of time previously manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say.
"Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written
from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs,
nor yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to
poetry—for they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey
were not read, but recited and heard,—but upon the supposed
necessity that there must have been manuscripts to ensure the
preservation of the poems—the unassisted memory of reciters
INTRODUCTION. xxvii

being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape

a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the existence
of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, 25 is far less [xix]
astonishing than that of long manuscripts, in an age essentially
non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments
and materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover, there is
a strong positive reason for believing that the bard was under no
necessity of refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript;
for if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a
disqualification for the profession, which we know that it was
not, as well from the example of Demodokus, in the Odyssey,
as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in the Hymn to the
Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as the general tenor
of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. The author
of that hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a
blind man as attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had

25
It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory may be
cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that of any first rate
actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to 'rhapsodize,' night after
night, parts which when laid together, would amount to an immense number
of lines. But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting
at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a
distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us
that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly
educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme of Tasso, not
only to recite it consecutively, but also to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance
of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first,
alternately the odd and even lines—in short, whatever the passage required;
the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense,
had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our
informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the
Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful
than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some
twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person
can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually
repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part
of the Bible—even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere
 xxviii The Iliad of Homer

been conscious that the memory of the bard was only maintained
by constant reference to the manuscript in his chest."
The loss of the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand
upon which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems
to prove beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek
language had undergone a considerable change. Now it is
certainly difficult to suppose that the Homeric poems could have
suffered by this change, had written copies been preserved. If
Chaucer's poetry, for instance, had not been written, it could
only have come down to us in a softened form, more like the
effeminate version of Dryden, than the rough, quaint, noble
original.
"At what period," continues Grote, "these poems, or indeed
any other Greek poems, first began to be written, must be matter
of conjecture, though there is ground for assurance that it was
before the time of Solon. If, in the absence of evidence, we
[xx] may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the
question a once suggests itself, What were the purposes which,
in that state of society, a manuscript at its first commencement
must have been intended to answer? For whom was a written
Iliad necessary? Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was
not only planted in the memory, but also interwoven with the
feelings, and conceived in conjunction with all those flexions and
proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the
more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find
so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may
be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless
distracting affairs, fair judges of the perfection to which the invention and
the memory combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single
minded people?—Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 143, sqq.
Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, "The Dschungariade
of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer in length, as much as it
stands beneath them in merit, and yet it exists only in the memory of a people
which is not unacquainted with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably
the last things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that they are
remembered."— Ancient Greece. p. 100.
INTRODUCTION. xxix

intonations of voice, pauses, and other oral artifices which were

required for emphatic delivery, and which the naked manuscript
could never reproduce. Not for the general public—they were
accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic delivery, and with
its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded festival. The only
persons for whom the written Iliad would be suitable would
be a select few; studious and curious men; a class of readers
capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had
experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing
the written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion
of the impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as
the statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in
all early societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when
no such reading class existed. If we could discover at what
time such a class first began to be formed, we should be able
to make a guess at the time when the old epic poems were
first committed to writing. Now the period which may with the
greatest probability be fixed upon as having first witnessed the
formation even of the narrowest reading class in Greece, is the
middle of the seventh century before the Christian aera (B.C.
660 to B.C. 630), the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus,
Simonides of Amorgus, &c. I ground this supposition on the
change then operated in the character and tendencies of Grecian
poetry and music—the elegiac and the iambic measures having
been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter, and poetical
compositions having been transferred from the epical past to the
affairs of present and real life. Such a change was important
at a time when poetry was the only known mode of publication
(to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the nearest
approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at
the old epical treasures of the people as well as a thirst for new
poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it, may well
be considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize,
from their own individual point of view, the written words of the
 xxx The Iliad of Homer

Homeric rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed

and eulogized the Thebais as the production of Homer. There
seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this
newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts
of the Homeric poems and other old epics,—the Thebais and the
Cypria, as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey,—began to be
compiled towards the middle of the seventh century (B.C. 1);
and the opening of Egypt to Grecian commerce, which took
place about the same period, would furnish increased facilities
for obtaining the requisite papyrus to write upon. A reading
class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly increase, and
the number of manuscripts along with it; so that before the time
of Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and manuscripts,
[xxi] though still comparatively few, might have attained a certain
recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference against
the carelessness of individual rhapsodes."26
But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in
possession of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of
the following observations—

"There are several incidental circumstances which, in our

opinion, throw some suspicion over the whole history of
the Peisistratid compilation, at least over the theory, that
the Iliad was cast into its present stately and harmonious
form by the directions of the Athenian ruler. If the great
poets, who flourished at the bright period of Grecian song,
of which, alas! we have inherited little more than the fame,
and the faint echo, if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and Simonides
were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad
and Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to
connect, to harmonize, that it is almost incredible, that stronger
marks of Athenian manufacture should not remain. Whatever
occasional anomalies may be detected, anomalies which no
doubt arise out of our own ignorance of the language of the
26
Vol. II p. 198, sqq.
INTRODUCTION. xxxi

Homeric age, however the irregular use of the digamma may

have perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name of Helen is
said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as the fair one
herself among the heroes of her age, however Mr. Knight may
have failed in reducing the Homeric language to its primitive
form; however, finally, the Attic dialect may not have assumed
all its more marked and distinguishing characteristics—still
it is difficult to suppose that the language, particularly in
the joinings and transitions, and connecting parts, should not
more clearly betray the incongruity between the more ancient
and modern forms of expression. It is not quite in character
with such a period to imitate an antique style, in order to piece
out an imperfect poem in the character of the original, as Sir
Walter Scott has done in his continuation of Sir Tristram.
"If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of
Athenian compilation are discoverable in the language of
the poems, the total absence of Athenian national feeling
is perhaps no less worthy of observation. In later, and it
may fairly be suspected in earlier times, the Athenians were
more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of their ancestors.
But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early Greece
embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate
and insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to
their ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It
is possible, indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may
be true to historic fact, that in the great maritime expedition
of western Greece against the rival and half-kindred empire
of the Laomedontiadae, the chieftain of Thessaly, from his
valour and the number of his forces, may have been the most
important ally of the Peloponnesian sovereign; the preeminent
value of the ancient poetry on the Trojan war may thus have
forced the national feeling of the Athenians to yield to their
taste. The songs which spoke of their own great ancestor
were, no doubt, of far inferior sublimity and popularity, or,
at first sight, a Theseid would have been much more likely
to have emanated from an Athenian synod of compilers of [xxii]
xxxii The Iliad of Homer

ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Olysseid. Could France

have given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero
of the Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they
are sometimes called, which related the wrath of Achilles,
with all its direful consequences, were so far superior to
the rest of the poetic cycle, as to admit no rivalry,—it is
still surprising, that throughout the whole poem the callida
junctura should never betray the workmanship of an Athenian
hand, and that the national spirit of a race, who have at a
later period not inaptly been compared to our self admiring
neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self denial
to the almost total exclusion of their own ancestors—or, at
least, to the questionable dignity of only having produced a
leader tolerably skilled in the military tactics of his age."27

To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed,

that Wolf's objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad
and Odyssey have never been wholly got over, we cannot help
discovering that they have failed to enlighten us as to any
substantial point, and that the difficulties with which the whole
subject is beset, are rather augmented than otherwise, if we
admit his hypothesis. Nor is Lachmann's28 modification of his
theory any better. He divides the first twenty-two books of the
Iliad into sixteen different songs, and treats as ridiculous the
belief that their amalgamation into one regular poem belongs
to a period earlier than the age of Peisistratus. This, as Grote
observes, "explains the gaps and contradictions in the narrative,
but it explains nothing else." Moreover, we find no contradictions
warranting this belief, and the so-called sixteen poets concur in
getting rid of the following leading men in the first battle after
the secession of Achilles: Elphenor, chief of the Euboeans;
Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians; Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odius,
27
Quarterly Review, l. c., p. 131 sq.
28
Betrachtungen uber die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204. Notes and
Queries, vol. v. p. 221.
INTRODUCTION. xxxiii

of the Halizonians; Pirous and Acamas, of the Thracians. None

of these heroes again make their appearance, and we can but
agree with Colonel Mure, that "it seems strange that any number
of independent poets should have so harmoniously dispensed
with the services of all six in the sequel." The discrepancy, by
which Pylaemenes, who is represented as dead in the fifth book,
weeps at his son's funeral in the thirteenth, can only be regarded
as the result of an interpolation.
Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions
on the subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity
of the Wolfian theory, and of Lachmann's modifications with
the character of Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we
think with equal success, that the two questions relative to the
primitive unity of these poems, or, supposing that impossible, the
unison of these parts by Peisistratus, and not before his time, are
essentially distinct. In short, "a man may believe the Iliad to have
been put together out of pre-existing songs, without recognising
the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first compilation." The
friends or literary employes of Peisistratus must have found an
Iliad that was already ancient, and the silence of the Alexandrine
critics respecting the Peisistratic "recension," goes far to prove, [xxiii]
that, among the numerous manuscripts they examined, this was
either wanting, or thought unworthy of attention.
"Moreover," he continues, "the whole tenor of the poems
themselves confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing,
either in the Iliad or Odyssey, which savours of modernism,
applying that term to the age of Peisistratus—nothing which
brings to our view the alterations brought about by two
centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of
writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments,
the close military array, the improved construction of ships,
the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of
religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion,
&c., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus,
xxxiv The Iliad of Homer

and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have

failed to notice, even without design, had they then, for the first
time, undertaken the task of piecing together many self existent
epics into one large aggregate. Everything in the two great
Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to
an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed,
even the interpolations (or those passages which, on the best
grounds, are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the
sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by
Archilochus and Kallinus—in some cases even by Arktinus and
Hesiod—as genuine Homeric matter29 As far as the evidences
on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we
seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were
recited substantially as they now stand (always allowing for
paitial divergences of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our
first trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient date, let
it be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the
most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in
reference to Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into
the anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the
subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive
contrasts between their former and their later condition."30
On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of
Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although, I
must confess, that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent
of his labours. At the same time, so far from believing that
the composition or primary arrangement of these poems, in their
present form, was the work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded
that the fine taste and elegant mind of that Athenian31 would lead
29
Prolegg. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., &c.
30
Vol. ii. p. 214 sqq.
31
"Who," says Cicero, de Orat. iii. 34, "was more learned in that age, or
whose eloquence is reported to have been more perfected by literature than that
of Peisistratus, who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer in the
INTRODUCTION. xxxv

him to preserve an ancient and traditional order of the poems,

rather than to patch and re-construct them according to a fanciful
hypothesis. I will not repeat the many discussions respecting
whether the poems were written or not, or whether the art of
writing was known in the time of their reputed author. Suffice
it to say, that the more we read, the less satisfied we are upon
either subject. [xxiv]
I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes
the preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than
a version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its
historical probability must be measured by that of many others
relating to the Spartan Confucius.
I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories, with
an attempt, made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into
something like consistency. It is as follows:—

"No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the
common sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified
to 'discourse in excellent music' among them. Many of
these, like those of the negroes in the United States, were
extemporaneous, and allusive to events passing around them.
But what was passing around them? The grand events of a
spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress themselves,
as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon their
memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed
a virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly
in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the
beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with
an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative, probably
with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as it aided the
memory considerably.
"It was at this period, about four hundred years after the
war, that a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or
Moeonides, but most probably the former. He saw that these
order in which we now have them?" Compare Wolf's Prolegomena, Section 33
 xxxvi The Iliad of Homer

ballads might be made of great utility to his purpose of writing

a poem on the social position of Hellas, and, as a collection,
he published these lays, connecting them by a tale of his own.
This poem now exists, under the title of the 'Odyssea.' The
author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem,
which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the
archaic dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were
found by him. He therefore called it the poem of Homeros,
or the Collector; but this is rather a proof of his modesty
and talent, than of his mere drudging arrangement of other
people's ideas; for, as Grote has finely observed, arguing
for the unity of authorship, 'a great poet might have re-cast
pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole;
but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do
so.'
"While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he
met with a ballad, recording the quarrel of Achilles and
Agamemnon. His noble mind seized the hint that there
presented itself, and the Achilleis32 grew under his hand.
Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem
under the same pseudonyme as his former work: and the
disjointed lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like
those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the
Iliad. Melesigenes knew that the poem was destined to be a
lasting one, and so it has proved; but, first, the poems were
destined to undergo many vicissitudes and corruptions, by the
people who took to singing them in the streets, assemblies,
[xxv] and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratus, and
afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and
restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original
integrity in a great measure."33

32
"The first book, together with the eighth, and the books from the eleventh
to the twenty-second inclusive, seems to form the primary organization of the
poem, then properly an Achilleis."—Grote, vol. ii. p. 235
33
K. R. H. Mackenzie, Notes and Queries, p. 222 sqq.
INTRODUCTION. xxxvii

Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories

which have developed themselves respecting this most interesting
subject, I must still express my conviction as to the unity of the
authorship of the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions
and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of
the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more
serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and
captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must
appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In
maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one author,
be he Homer or Melesigenes, quocunque nomine vocari eum
jus fasque sit, I feel conscious that, while the whole weight of
historical evidence is against the hypothesis which would assign
these great works to a plurality of authors, the most powerful
internal evidence, and that which springs from the deepest and
most immediate impulse of the soul, also speaks eloquently to
the contrary.
The minutiae of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to
despise. Indeed, considering the character of some of my own
books, such an attempt would be gross inconsistency. But,
while I appreciate its importance in a philological view, I am
inclined to set little store on its aesthetic value, especially in
poetry. Three parts of the emendations made upon poets are
mere alterations, some of which, had they been suggested to
the author by his Maecenas or Africanus, he would probably
have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in laying
down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often least
competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not
poets by profession, but may be so per accidens. I do not at
this moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated
to substantially improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass
of remarks, from Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the
history of a thousand minute points, without which our Greek
knowledge would be gloomy and jejune.
 xxxviii The Iliad of Homer

But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere

grammarians, will exercise their elaborate and often tiresome
ingenuity. Binding down an heroic or dramatic poet to the
block upon which they have previously dissected his words and
sentences, they proceed to use the axe and the pruning knife
by wholesale, and inconsistent in everything but their wish to
make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book after
book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a
collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed
the works of some great man, find that they have been put off
with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare
the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall
feel better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of
the apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what another
[xxvi] considers the turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed
knot by expunging what another would explain by omitting
something else.
Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be
looked upon as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of
no ordinary skill, seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that
the tragedies attributed to Seneca are by four different authors.34
Now, I will venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform,
not only in their borrowed phraseology—a phraseology with
which writers like Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more
charmed than ourselves—in their freedom from real poetry, and
last, but not least, in an ultra-refined and consistent abandonment
of good taste, that few writers of the present day would question
the capabilities of the same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to
produce not only these, but a great many more equally bad. With
equal sagacity, Father Hardouin astonished the world with the
startling announcement that the Æneid of Virgil, and the satires
of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now, without wishing to say

34
See his Epistle to Raphelingius, in Schroeder's edition, 4to., Delphis, 1728.
INTRODUCTION. xxxix

one word of disrespect against the industry and learning—nay,

the refined acuteness—which scholars, like Wolf, have bestowed
upon this subject, I must express my fears, that many of our
modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise
and entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. Nor
can I help thinking, that the literary history of more recent times
will account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of
the Iliad and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their
first creation.
I have already expressed my belief that the labours of
Peisistratus were of a purely editorial character; and there seems
no more reason why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer
may not have been abroad in his day, than that the poems of
Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should have given so much trouble
to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after all, the main fault in
all the Homeric theories is, that they demand too great a sacrifice
of those feelings to which poetry most powerfully appeals, and
which are its most fitting judges. The ingenuity which has sought
to rob us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much
violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul
yearn with love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To
believe the author of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade
the powers of human invention; to elevate analytical judgment
at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul; and
to forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. There is a
catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in
the author of the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody
has taught us a better.
While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that
has nature herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old
Ennius in believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron
saint, hovers round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare
gifts from that wealth of imagination which a host of imitators
could not exhaust,—still I am far from wishing to deny that the
 xl The Iliad of Homer

author of these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a

[xxvii] well-stocked mythical storehouse from whence he might derive
both subject and embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing
romances in the embellishment of a poem, another to patch up
the poem itself from such materials. What consistency of style
and execution can be hoped for from such an attempt? or, rather,
what bad taste and tedium will not be the infallible result?
A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the
songs of other bards, are features perfectly consistent with
poetical originality. In fact, the most original writer is still
drawing upon outward impressions—nay, even his own thoughts
are a kind of secondary agents which support and feed the
impulses of imagination. But unless there be some grand
pervading principle—some invisible, yet most distinctly stamped
archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the Iliad can never
come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque, episodes the
most pathetic, local associations teeming with the thoughts of
gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or reveal
themselves in more substantial forms to the mind of the poet; but,
except the power to create a grand whole, to which these shall
be but as details and embellishments, be present, we shall have
nought but a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers and weeds
strangling each other in their wild redundancy: we shall have a
cento of rags and tatters, which will require little acuteness to
detect.
Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and
aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing
my belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one
that is reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained.
We are not by nature intended to know all things; still less,
to compass the powers by which the greatest blessings of life
have been placed at our disposal. Were faith no virtue, then
we might indeed wonder why God willed our ignorance on any
matter. But we are too well taught the contrary lesson; and it
INTRODUCTION. xli

seems as though our faith should be especially tried touching the

men and the events which have wrought most influence upon the
condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached
to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid
us repulse the scepticism which would allegorize their existence
into a pleasing apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by
an homeopathic dynameter.
Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize
our thoughts even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in
a right spirit and with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much
dazzled, too deeply wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell
upon the minute spots which mere analysis can discover. In
reading an heroic poem we must transform ourselves into heroes
of the time being, we in imagination must fight over the same
battles, woo the same loves, burn with the same sense of injury,
as an Achilles or a Hector. And if we can but attain this degree
of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm will scarcely suffice for the
reading of Homer), we shall feel that the poems of Homer are
not only the work of one writer, but of the greatest writer that
ever touched the hearts of men by the power of song.
And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these
poems their powerful influence over the minds of the men of
old. Heeren, who is evidently little disposed in favour of modern [xxviii]
theories, finely observes:—

"It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation.
No poet has ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over
his countrymen. Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed
the character of other nations; it was reserved to a poet to form
that of the Greeks. This is a feature in their character which
was not wholly erased even in the period of their degeneracy.
When lawgivers and sages appeared in Greece, the work of the
poet had already been accomplished; and they paid homage to
his superior genius. He held up before his nation the mirror,
in which they were to behold the world of gods and heroes no
xlii The Iliad of Homer

less than of feeble mortals, and to behold them reflected with

purity and truth. His poems are founded on the first feeling
of human nature; on the love of children, wife, and country;
on that passion which outweighs all others, the love of glory.
His songs were poured forth from a breast which sympathized
with all the feelings of man; and therefore they enter, and
will continue to enter, every breast which cherishes the same
sympathies. If it is granted to his immortal spirit, from another
heaven than any of which he dreamed on earth, to look down
on his race, to see the nations from the fields of Asia to the
forests of Hercynia, performing pilgrimages to the fountain
which his magic wand caused to flow; if it is permitted to him
to view the vast assemblage of grand, of elevated, of glorious
productions, which had been called into being by means of
his songs; wherever his immortal spirit may reside, this alone
would suffice to complete his happiness."35

Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the

"Apotheosis of Homer"36 is depictured, and not feel how much
of pleasing association, how much that appeals most forcibly and
most distinctly to our minds, is lost by the admittance of any
theory but our old tradition? The more we read, and the more
we think—think as becomes the readers of Homer,—the more
rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry gave us
this rich inheritance, whole and entire. Whatever were the means
of its preservation, let us rather be thankful for the treasury of
taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek to make
it a mere centre around which to drive a series of theories, whose
wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with each other.
As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to
Homer, are not included in Pope's translation, I will content
35
Ancient Greece, p. 101.
36
The best description of this monument will be found in Vaux's "Antiquities
of the British Museum," p. 198 sq. The monument itself (Towneley Sculptures,
No. 123) is well known.
INTRODUCTION. xliii

myself with a brief account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice,
from the pen of a writer who has done it full justice37 :—

"This poem," says Coleridge, "is a short mock-heroic of

ancient date. The text varies in different editions, and is
obviously disturbed and corrupt to a great degree; it is
commonly said to have been a juvenile essay of Homer's
genius; others have attributed it to the same Pigrees, [xxix]
mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems to
have invited the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the
author of which was uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before
the age of the Ptolemies, know or care about that department of
criticism employed in determining the genuineness of ancient
writings. As to this little poem being a youthful prolusion
of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that from the beginning
to the end it is a plain and palpable parody, not only of the
general spirit, but of the numerous passages of the Iliad itself;
and even, if no such intention to parody were discernible in
it, the objection would still remain, that to suppose a work
of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of poetry in a
simple age, seems to reverse that order in the development
of national taste, which the history of every other people in
Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be
a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much
more refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad,
that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and
the gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there
having existed three other poems of the same kind attributed,
for aught we can see, with as much reason to Homer, is
a strong inducement to believe that none of them were of
the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word
deltos, "writing tablet," instead of diphthera, "skin," which,
according to Herod. 5, 58, was the material employed by the
Asiatic Greeks for that purpose, that this poem was another
37
Coleridge, Classic Poets, p. 276.
 xliv The Iliad of Homer

offspring of Attic ingenuity; and generally that the familiar

mention of the cock (v. 191) is a strong argument against so
ancient a date for its composition."

Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in

Pope's design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his
translation, and on my own purpose in the present edition.
Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been
irregular, and his earliest acquaintance with the poet was through
the version of Ogilby. It is not too much to say that his whole work
bears the impress of a disposition to be satisfied with the general
sense, rather than to dive deeply into the minute and delicate
features of language. Hence his whole work is to be looked
upon rather as an elegant paraphrase than a translation. There
are, to be sure, certain conventional anecdotes, which prove
that Pope consulted various friends, whose classical attainments
were sounder than his own, during the undertaking; but it is
probable that these examinations were the result rather of the
contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make
a perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is
called literal translation was less cultivated than at present. If
something like the general sense could be decorated with the
easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the charms of metrical
cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made consistent with
a fair interpretation of the poet's meaning, his words were less
jealously sought for, and those who could read so good a poem
as Pope's Iliad had fair reason to be satisfied.
It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope's translation by
our own advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be
[xxx] content to look at it as a most delightful work in itself,—a work
which is as much a part of English literature as Homer himself is
of Greek. We must not be torn from our kindly associations with
the old Iliad, that once was our most cherished companion, or our
most looked-for prize, merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and
INTRODUCTION. xlv

Liddell have made us so much more accurate as to amphikupellon

being an adjective, and not a substantive. Far be it from us to
defend the faults of Pope, especially when we think of Chapman's
fine, bold, rough old English;—far be it from, us to hold up his
translation as what a translation of Homer might be. But we can
still dismiss Pope's Iliad to the hands of our readers, with the
consciousness that they must have read a very great number of
books before they have read its fellow.
As to the Notes accompanying the present volume, they are
drawn up without pretension, and mainly with the view of helping
the general reader. Having some little time since translated all
the works of Homer for another publisher, I might have brought
a large amount of accumulated matter, sometimes of a critical
character, to bear upon the text. But Pope's version was no
field for such a display; and my purpose was to touch briefly
on antiquarian or mythological allusions, to notice occasionally
some departures from the original, and to give a few parallel
passages from our English Homer, Milton. In the latter task I
cannot pretend to novelty, but I trust that my other annotations,
while utterly disclaiming high scholastic views, will be found to
convey as much as is wanted; at least, as far as the necessary
limits of these volumes could be expected to admit. To write
a commentary on Homer is not my present aim; but if I have
made Pope's translation a little more entertaining and instructive
to a mass of miscellaneous readers, I shall consider my wishes
satisfactorily accomplished.
THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.
Christ Church.
 [xxxi]

POPE'S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD

OF HOMER
Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention
of any writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly
contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to
particular excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled.
Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest
of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of
poetry. It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes
all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning,
and industry, which masters everything besides, can never attain
to this. It furnishes art with all her materials, and without it
judgment itself can at best but "steal wisely:" for art is only like
a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature.
Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is
not even a single beauty in them to which the invention must not
contribute: as in the most regular gardens, art can only reduce
beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure, which
the common eye may better take in, and is, therefore, more
entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why common critics
are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great
and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to
pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded walk
of art, than to comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.
Our author's work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see
all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only
because the number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a
 xlviii The Iliad of Homer

copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions

of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but
selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to
cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is
owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to
perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and
oppressed by those of a stronger nature.
It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute
that unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer,
that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while
he reads him. What he writes is of the most animated nature
imaginable; every thing moves, every thing lives, and is put in
action. If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not
[xxxii] coldly informed of what was said or done as from a third person;
the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the poet's
imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a
spectator. The course of his verses resembles that of the army he
describes,

Hoid' ar' isan hosei te puri chthon pasa nemoito.

"They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth
before it." It is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which
is everywhere vigorous, is not discovered immediately at the
beginning of his poem in its fullest splendour: it grows in the
progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on fire,
like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact disposition, just
thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been
found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this "vivida vis animi,"
in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect or
neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even
while we disapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended
with absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see
nothing but its own splendour. This fire is discerned in Virgil,
but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more
POPE'S PREFACE TO THE ILIAD OF HOMER xlix

shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan

and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes:
In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour
by the force of art: in Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware,
like an accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him
only, it burns everywhere clearly and everywhere irresistibly.
I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts
itself in a manner superior to that of any poet through all the
main constituent parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar
characteristic which distinguishes him from all other authors.
This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which,
in the violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex.
It seemed not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts,
and the whole compass of nature, to supply his maxims and
reflections; all the inward passions and affections of mankind,
to furnish his characters: and all the outward forms and images
of things for his descriptions: but wanting yet an ampler sphere
to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundless walk for his
imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of
fable. That which Aristotle calls "the soul of poetry," was first
breathed into it by Homer, I shall begin with considering him in
his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak of it both as it
means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for fiction.
Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and
the marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions
as, though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course
of nature; or of such as, though they did, became fables by the
additional episodes and manner of telling them. Of this sort
is the main story of an epic poem, "The return of Ulysses, the
settlement of the Trojans in Italy," or the like. That of the Iliad
is the "anger of Achilles," the most short and single subject that
ever was chosen by any poet. Yet this he has supplied with a
vaster variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater [xxxiii]
number of councils, speeches, battles, and episodes of all kinds,
l The Iliad of Homer

than are to be found even in those poems whose schemes are of

the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is hurried on with
the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration employs not so
much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of so warm a genius, aided
himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as well as a greater
length of time, and contracting the design of both Homer's poems
into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The other
epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it
so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity
of action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of
time. Nor is it only in the main design that they have been unable
to add to his invention, but they have followed him in every
episode and part of story. If he has given a regular catalogue of
an army, they all draw up their forces in the same order. If he has
funeral games for Patroclus, Virgil has the same for Anchises,
and Statius (rather than omit them) destroys the unity of his
actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses visit the shades, the
Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent after him. If he
be detained from his return by the allurements of Calypso, so is
Æneas by Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be absent
from the army on the score of a quarrel through half the poem,
Rinaldo must absent himself just as long on the like account. If he
gives his hero a suit of celestial armour, Virgil and Tasso make
the same present to theirs. Virgil has not only observed this close
imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the way, supplied
the want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon, and
the taking of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for
word from Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken
from those of Medea and Jason in Apollonius, and several others
in the same manner.
To proceed to the allegorical fable—If we reflect upon those
innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical
philosophy which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped
up in his allegories, what a new and ample scene of wonder may