are found trading more especially outside Greek waters; that the knowledge of Italy shown in the Odyssey points to a later date; and that local politics in the Egyptian delta fix the date of the raid of Odysseus1 at the end of the eighth or the beginning of the seventh century B.C. Mr. Lang is at his best in demonstrating that the schemes for the dislocation of the Iliad into lays are impracticable and self-contradictory. The Separatist theory, in short, involves at least two serious difficulties: first, that, assuming the Menis or Wrath of Achilles, the "kernel" of the poem, as Mr. Leaf calls it, to be the work of a writer whom we may call Homer, there must have been, in or about the same age, at least two or three equally great poets who were content to merge their personalities in his, or were identified with him; secondly, that if the present arrangement of the epic is the work of a later editor, it is a mystery how a writer of such genius as his must have been could have left the discrepancies and difficulties which at once attract the attention of the modern critic. The result of the whole investigation seems to be that we may provisionally accept the Iliad, with certain later additions, as the work of a single hand, while the Odyssey probably comes from a different and later writer. "The poems," says Professor Campbell, "are a treasure-house of things new and old, preserving some relics of an immemorial past like flies in amber, while bearing on their surface all the gloss of novelty." 2 In studying part of the large mass of literature devoted to this controversy it occurred to me that if arguments for and against the unity of the epics can be based on considerations like those of armour, the use of bronze and iron, customs of disposal of the dead, and similar considerations to which Mr. Lang's recent book is largely devoted, it might be possible to apply a similar test Od. xiv. 259. 2 Op. cit. 54. dependent on the provenience of the Sagas, Märchen, and folk-lore incidents which appear in the poems. If, for instance, the "kernel" of the Iliad was composed on Greek soil, and was subsequently extended by an Ionic poet, we would expect that some indications of this would appear in the folk-lore. So that if taking the scheme of arrangement of the "cantos" in the Iliad, as proposed by Mr. Leaf, and comparing these with the Odyssey we could show that there is anything like a stratification of belief or tradition, and that this corresponds with the suggested divisions of the poems, we should have an argument of some importance in disproof of the unity of authorship. I hope that in making this investigation I shall not lay myself open to the sarcastic comment of a recent writer, who, reviewing the work of the Separatists, remarks that "we feel as if we were assisting at the midnight adulteration of some new brand of sugar behind a grocer's counter." I trust that the reverence in which I hold the poems will save me from such a charge. In considering the folk-lore and folk tales I shall comment occasionally on any result of this scrutiny which seems of any value, leaving the references in the notes to this paper to speak for themselves. may say at once that the investigation, for reasons which I will suggest later on, has led to no definite result.2 I To return to the sources of the poems-attempts have also been made to discriminate the evidence of foreign influence, of the knowledge of savagery and of lands beyond the Hellenic area, which appears in the epics. For instance, in the Iliad alone we find a reference 1 Edinburgh Review, cci. 210. 2 The references follow Leaf's scheme as given in his Iliad, Ist ed. In the 2nd ed. he gives a similar, but less elaborate classification. i. represents the Menis or "kernel" of the poem; ii. A, ii. B, ii. C, the "Earlier Expansions"; iii. the "Later Expansions"; iv. the "Greater Interpolations; v. "Short Interpolated Passages by which the transitions from one piece to another of different ages were managed." to the Pheres, probably some aboriginal race; and the writer seems to display special knowledge of the Thracian tribes.1 The Odyssey is said to show a wider outlook in the direction of Sicily and Italy; but it exhibits no extension of knowledge towards the Propontis and Euxine, while the information possessed by the writer of the Iliad of the Troad and of the peoples of Asia Minor is no longer to be traced.2 On the other hand, the Iliad knows of the Central African Pygmies, and the tale of the Laestrygonians in the Odyssey seems to point to an acquaintance with the Vikings or their predecessors of northern Europe. How far this may be due to the difference of subject in the two poems is a question for careful consideration. 4 3 Marks of Semitic influence, again, have been traced in the epics. An instance of this will be suggested later on in connexion with the Saga of Bellerophon. To this source has also been attributed the reference to the rainbow as a sign; that to Iris as a winged goddess, unique in the poems; the mention of a flood as a punishment for wickedness; 5 and of the palm tree at Delos. It has been the habit to attribute Homer's knowledge of Western Mediterranean folk-tales, like those of the Cyclops and Atlas, to Phoenician influence. But it is now certain that the Mycenaean culture was of home growth, and that it cannot be assigned to a non-Greek race, like the Phoenicians. The connexion of the Phoenicians with the Persian Gulf is now generally discredited; and from the Tel-el-Amarna records it is clear that as early as 1400 B.C. Babylon was the dominant power in Western Asia, and that its civilisation passed 1II. i. 268 [i.]; ii. 743 [iv.]; Geddes, Problem of the Homeric Poems, 69, 244. 2 Monro, Odyssey, ii. 337. Il. viii. 398 [iii. B]. 3 II. xi. 28; xvii. 548: [both in v.]. 7 Hogarth, Journal Anthropological Institute, xxxii. 349. into the Aegean independent of Phoenician agency. The discoveries in Crete, again, imply the existence of a great sea power in the Aegean as early perhaps as the second millennium before Christ; and in this way the sites which, according to M. Bérard, were associated with the Märchen of the Odyssey-the city of Alcinous in a west Corfiote site, the island of Calypso in that of Peregil near Ceuta, the cave of the Cyclops at Cumae-must have become known to the Greeks at a period much earlier than is usually supposed, and independently of information from Phoenician mariners. Again, in dealing with the question of Semitic influence on early Greek beliefs, it must not be forgotten that, as Mr. A. J. Evans points out, while it may be admitted that it may have left traces, as Egypt certainly did, on the externals of Mycenaean worship, there was an underlying race-connexion between the pre-Hellenic population of Greece and its islands and the Anatolian region. "The pure Semite is, in fact, difficult to find in Anatolia or Palestine," and "in Cilicia and northern Syria he has largely assimilated elements belonging to that old Anatolian stock of which the Carians and the Cilicians stand out as the leading representatives, and which was itself linked on by island by island stepping-stones to pre-historic Greece." The suggestion, then, of direct borrowing from oriental sources must be reconsidered in the light of recent historical and ethnographical research. In dealing with folk-tradition in the epics nothing is perhaps more remarkable than what may be called the reticence of the poet. A singer of lays before a courtly audience, he knows that his hearers will take little interest in the rude peasant cults. Dionysus he regards as an outsider, received with hostility, and if he was the successor of a village god the poet makes no mention of him. If Homer was a native of the Greek mainland he must have 1Journal Hellenic Studies, xxi. 131. been familiar with the coarse archaic cults, which are embalmed for us in the pages of Pausanias, but he carefully avoids all mention of them. Demeter is referred to in the Iliad, but she hardly ranks as an Olympian goddess. She is spoken of as the wife or mistress of Zeus; but there is no mention of a child born to the pair, and only once, in the Odyssey, is a personal legend told of her, when she yields to her love of Iason, and lies with him in the thriceploughed field1-" one of the lovely earth-born myths that crop up now and again in Homer, telling of an older simpler world, of gods who had only half emerged from the natural things they are, real earth-born flesh-and-blood creatures, not splendid phantoms of an imagined Olympian pageant." As the Indian Sītā sprang from a furrow, we recognise in the myth the familiar story of the Sacred Marriage, which attributed to the union of the Earth goddess with her male partner, the fertility of the soil. The representation of this in dramatic form was an important incident in the Mysteries, and was described in a passage of splendid poetical imagination, where Hera beguiles Zeus to couch with her on the crest of Gargaros.3 2 It is equally remarkable that we have no mention of the serpent cult. We have two snake portents, the snake devouring the sparrows and the bird bearing a snake;1 a snake of cyanus adorns the breastplate of Agamemnon ; 5 we hear of a dragon fed on poisonous herbs, of a deadly water-snake, and Alexandros starts back as one who sees a serpent in a mountain glade. But of a snake cult we hear nothing, and this in spite of the fact that it might have been connected with two personages to whom the 1 Od. v. 125. 2 Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 566. 3 Il. xiv. 296 ff. [iii.]; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 184 ff. 5 Il. xi. 26 f. [v.]. Il. xxii. 93 f. [i.]; ii. 723 [iv.]; iii. 33 f. [ii. B]. |