before his own time, consequently not much before 850 B.C.
From the controversial tone in which he expresses himself it is
evident that others had made Homer more ancient; and accordingly
the dates given by later authorities, though very various,
generally fall within the 10th and 11th centuries B.C. But none
of these statements has any claim to the character of external
evidence.
The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermann’s Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores) are eight in number, including the piece called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. In all probability it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz. the 2nd century of our era.[1] The other lives are certainly not more ancient. Their chief value consists in the curious short poems or fragments of verse which they have preserved—the so-called Epigrams, which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. These are easily recognized as “Popular Rhymes,” a form of folk-lore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of proverbs.[2] In the Homeric epigrams the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities—Smyrna and Cyme (Epigr. iv.), Erythrae (Epigr. vi., vii.), Mt Ida (Epigr. x.). Neon Teichos (Epigr. i.); others relate to certain trades or occupations—potters (Epigr. xiv.), sailors, fishermen, goat herds, &c. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when “Homer” was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse.
Again, comparing the “epigrams” with the legends and anecdotes told in the Lives of Homer, we can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these Lives were derived. Thus in Epigr. iv. we find a blind poet, a native of Aeolian Smyrna, through which flows the water of the sacred Meles. Here is doubtless the source of the chief incident of the Herodotean Life—the birth of Homer “Son of the Meles.” The epithet Aeolian implies high antiquity, inasmuch as according to Herodotus Smyrna became Ionian about 688 B.C. Naturally the Ionians had their own version of the story—a version which made Homer come out with the first Athenian colonists.
The same line of argument may be extended to the Hymns, and even to some of the lost works of the post-Homeric or so-called “Cyclic” poets. Thus:—
1. The hymn to the Delian Apollo ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks who is the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, the “blind man that dwells in rocky Chios; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come.” Thucydides, who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian.
2. The Margites—a humorous poem which kept its ground as the reputed work of Homer down to the time of Aristotle—began with the words, “There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo.” Hence doubtless the claim of Colophon to be the native city of Homer—a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian Antimachus.
3. The poem called the Cypria was said to have been given by Homer to Stasinus of Cyprus as a daughter’s dowry. The connexion with Cyprus appears further in the predominance given in the poem to Aphrodite.
4. The Little Iliad and the Phocaïs, according to the Herodotean life, were composed by Homer when he lived at Phocaea with a certain Thestorides, who carried them off to Chios and there gained fame by reciting them as his own. The name Thestorides occurs in Epigr. v.
5. A similar story was told about the poem called the Taking of Oechalia (Οἰχαλίας Ἅλωσις), the subject of which was one of the exploits of Heracles. It passed under the name of Creophylus, a friend or (as some said) a son-in-law of Homer; but it was generally believed to have been in fact the work of the poet himself.
6. Finally the Thebaid always counted as the work of Homer. As to the Epigoni, which carried on the Theban story, some doubt seems to have been felt.
These indications render it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands grew up after his poems had become known and famous, especially in the new and flourishing colonies of Aeolis and Ionia. The contention for Homer, in short, began at a time when his real history was lost, and he had become a sort of mythical figure, an “eponymous hero,” or personification of a great school of poetry.
An interesting confirmation of this view from the negative side is furnished by the city which ranked as chief among the Asiatic colonies of Greece, viz. Miletus. No legend claims for Miletus even a visit from Homer, or a share in the authorship of any Homeric poem. Yet Arctinus of Miletus was said to have been a “disciple of Homer,” and was certainly one of the earliest and most considerable of the “Cyclic” poets. His Aethiopis was composed as a sequel to the Iliad; and the structure and general character of his poems show that he took the Iliad as his model. Yet in his case we find no trace of the disputed authorship which is so common with other “Cyclic” poems. How has this come about? Why have the works of Arctinus escaped the attraction which drew to the name of Homer such epics as the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Thebaid, the Epigoni, the Taking of Oechalia and the Phocaïs. The most obvious account of the matter is that Arctinus was never so far forgotten that his poems became the subject of dispute. We seem through him to obtain a glimpse of an early post-Homeric age in Ionia, when the immediate disciples and successors of Homer were distinct figures in a trustworthy tradition—when they had not yet merged their individuality in the legendary “Homer” of the Epic Cycle.
Recitation of the Poems.—The recitation of epic poetry was called in historical times “rhapsody” (ῥαψῳδία). The word ῥαψῳδός is post-Homeric, but was known to Pindar, who gives two different explanations of it—“singer of stitched verse” (ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων ἀοιδοί), and “singer with the wand” (ῥαβδός). Of these the first is etymologically correct (except that it should rather be “stitcher of verse”); the second was suggested by the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the reciter was accustomed to hold a wand in his hand—perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a symbol of the right to a hearing.[3]
The first notice of rhapsody meets us at Sicyon, in the reign of Cleisthenes (600–560 B.C.), who “put down the rhapsodists on account of the poems of Homer, because they are all about Argos and the Argives” (Hdt. v. 67). This description applies very well to the Iliad, in which Argos and Argives occur on almost every page. It may have suited the Thebaid still better, but there is no need to understand it only of that poem, as Grote does. The incident shows that the poems of the Ionic Homer had gained in the 6th century B.C., and in the Doric parts of the Peloponnesus, the ascendancy, the national importance and the almost canonical character which they ever afterwards retained.
At Athens there was a law that the Homeric poems should be recited (ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι) on every occasion of the Panathenaea. This law is appealed to as an especial glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus (Leocr. 102). Perhaps therefore the custom of public recitation was exceptional,[4] and unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was introduced. The Platonic dialogue Hipparchus attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus. This, however, is part of the historical romance of
- ↑ See a paper in the Diss. Philol. Halenses, ii. 97-219.
- ↑ Compare the Popular Rhymes of Scotland, published by Robert Chambers.
- ↑ Compare the branch of myrtle at an Athenian feast (Aristoph., Nub., 1364).
- ↑ The Iliad was also recited at the festival of the Brauronia, at Brauron in Attica (Hesych. s.v. βρανρωνίοις).
