in antiquity, has rather told against him with modern scholars.[1] It is chiefly interesting as a proof of the confusion in which the text must have been before the Alexandrian times; for it is impossible to understand the readiness of Aristarchus to suspect the genuineness of verses unless the state of the copies had pointed to the existence of numerous interpolations. On this matter, however, we are left to conjecture.
Our knowledge of Alexandrian criticism is derived almost wholly from a single document, the famous Iliad of the library of St Mark in Venice (Codex Venetus 454, or Ven. A), first published by the French scholar Villoison in 1788 (Scholia antiquissima ad Homeri Iliadem). This manuscript, written in the 10th century, contains (1) the best text of the Iliad, (2) the critical marks of Aristarchus and (3) Scholia, consisting mainly of extracts from four grammatical works, viz. Didymus (contemporary of Cicero) on the recension of Aristarchus, Aristonicus (fl. 24 B.C.) on the critical marks of Aristarchus, Herodian (fl. A.D. 160) on the accentuation, and Nicanor (fl. A.D. 127) on the punctuation, of the Iliad.
These extracts present themselves in two distinct forms. One series of scholia is written in the usual way, on a margin reserved for the purpose. The other consists of brief scholia, written in very small characters (but of the same period) on the narrow space left vacant round the text. Occasionally a scholium of this kind gives the substance of one of the longer extracts; but as a rule they are distinct. It would seem, therefore, that after the manuscript was finished the “marginal scholia” were discovered to be extremely defective, and a new series of extracts was added in a form which interfered as little as possible with the appearance of the book.[2]
The mention of the Venetian Scholia leads us at once to the Homeric controversy; for the immortal Prolegomena of F. A. Wolf[3] appeared a few years after Villoison’s publication, and was founded in great measure upon the fresh and abundant materials which it furnished. Not that the “Wolfian theory” of the Homeric poems is directly supported by anything in the Scholia; the immediate object of the Prolegomena was not to put forward that theory, but to elucidate the new and remarkable conditions under which the text of Homer had to be settled, viz. the discovery of an apparatus criticus of the 2nd century B.C. The questions regarding the original structure and early history of the poems were raised (forced upon him, it may be said) by the critical problem; but they were really originated by facts and ideas of a wholly different order.
The 18th century, in which the spirit of classical correctness had the most absolute dominion, did not come to an end before a powerful reaction set in, which affected not only literature but also speculation and politics. In this movement the leading ideas were concentrated in the word Nature. The natural condition of society, natural law, natural religion, the poetry of nature, gained a singular hold, first on the English philosophers from Hume onwards, and then (through Rousseau chiefly) on the general drift of thought and action in Europe. In literature the effect of these ideas was to set up a false opposition between nature and art. As political writers imagined a patriarchal innocence prior to codes of law, so men of letters sought in popular unwritten poetry the freshness and simplicity which were wanting in the prevailing styles. The blind minstrel was the counterpart of the noble savage. The supposed discovery of the poems of Ossian fell in with this train of sentiment, and created an enthusiasm for the study of early popular poetry. Homer was soon drawn into the circle of inquiry. Blackwell (Professor of Greek at Aberdeen) had insisted, in a book published in 1735, on the “naturalness” of Homer; and Wood (Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, London, 1769) was the first who maintained that Homer composed without the help of writing, and supported his thesis by ancient authority, and also by the parallel of Ossian. Both these books were translated into German, and their ideas passed into the popular philosophy of the day. Everything in short was ripe for the reception of a book that brought together, with masterly ease and vigour, the old and the new Homeric learning, and drew from it the historical proof that Homer was no single poet, writing according to art and rule, but a name which stood for a golden age of the true spontaneous poetry of genius and nature.
The part of the Prolegomena which deals with the original form of the Homeric poems occupies pp. xl.-clx. (in the first edition). Wolf shows how the question of the date of writing meets us on the threshold of the textual criticism of Homer and accordingly enters into a full discussion, first of the external evidence, then of the indications furnished by the poems. Having satisfied himself that writing was unknown to Homer, he is led to consider the real mode of transmission, and finds this in the Rhapsodists, of whom the Homeridae were an hereditary school. And then comes the conclusion to which all this has been tending: “the die is cast”—the Iliad and Odyssey cannot have been composed in the form in which we know them without the aid of writing. They must therefore have been, as Bentley had said, “a sequel of songs and rhapsodies,” “loose songs not collected together in the form of an epic poem till about 500 years after.” This conclusion he then supports by the character attributed to the “Cyclic” poems (whose want of unity showed that the structure of the Iliad and Odyssey must be the work of a later time), by one or two indications of imperfect connexion, and by the doubts of ancient critics as to the genuineness of certain parts. These, however, are matters of conjecture. “Historia loquitur.” The voice of antiquity is unanimous in declaring that “Peisistratus first committed the poems of Homer to writing, and reduced them to the order in which we now read them.”
The appeal of Wolf to the “voice of all antiquity” is by no means borne out by the different statements on the subject. According to Heraclides Ponticus (pupil of Plato), the poetry of Homer was first brought to the Peloponnesus by Lycurgus, who obtained it from the descendants of Creophylus (Polit. fr. 2). Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus (c. 4) repeats this story, with the addition that there was already a faint report of the poems in Greece, and that certain detached fragments were in the possession of a few persons. Again, the Platonic dialogue Hipparchus (which though not genuine is probably earlier than the Alexandrian times) asserts that Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, first brought the poems to Athens, and obliged the rhapsodists at the Panathenaea to follow the order of the text, “as they still do,” instead of reciting portions chosen at will. The earliest authority for attributing any work of the kind to Peisistratus is the well-known passage of Cicero (De Orat. 3. 34: “Quis doctior eisdem temporibus illis, aut cujus eloquentia litteris instructior fuisse traditur quam Pisistrati? qui primus Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic disposuisse dicitur ut nunc habemus”). To the same effect Pausanias (vii. p. 594) says that the change of the name Donoessa to Gonoessa (in Il. ii. 573) was thought to have been made by “Peisistratus or one of his companions,” when he collected the poems, which were then in a fragmentary condition. Finally, Diogenes Laertius (i. 57) says that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited with the help of a prompter so that each rhapsodist should begin where the last left off; and he argues from this that Solon did more than Peisistratus to make Homer known. The argument is directed against a certain Dieuchidas of Megara, who appears to have maintained that the verses about Athens in the Catalogue (Il. ii. 546-556) were interpolated by Peisistratus. The passage is unfortunately corrupt, but it is at least clear that in the time of Solon, according to Diogenes, there were complete copies of the poems, such as could be used to control the recitations. Hence the account of Diogenes is quite irreconcilable with the notices on which Wolf relied.
It is needless to examine the attempts which have been made to harmonize these accounts. Such attempts usually start with the tacit assumption that each of the persons concerned—Lycurgus, Solon, Peisistratus, Hipparchus—must have done something for the text of Homer, or for the regulation of the rhapsodists. But we have first to consider whether any of the accounts come to us on such evidence that we are bound to consider them as containing a nucleus of truth.
In the first place, the statement that Lycurgus obtained the poems from descendants of Creophylus must be admitted to be purely mythical. But if we reject it, have we any better reason for believing the parallel assertion in the Platonic Hipparchus? It is true that Hipparchus is undoubtedly a real person. On the other hand it is evident that the Peisistratidae soon became the subject of many fables. Thucydides notices as a popular mistake the belief that Hipparchus was the eldest son of Peisistratus, and that consequently he was the reigning “tyrant” when he was killed by Aristogiton. The Platonic Hipparchus follows this erroneous version, and may therefore be regarded as representing (at best) mere local tradition. We may reasonably go further, and see in this part of the dialogue a piece of historical romance, designed to put the “tyrant” family in a favourable light, as patrons of literature and learning.
Again, the account of the Hipparchus is contradicted by Diogenes Laërtius, who says that Solon provided for the due recitation of the Homeric poems. The only good authorities as to this point are the orators Lycurgus and Isocrates, who mention the law prescribing the recitation, but do not say when or by whom it was enacted. The inference seems a fair one, that the author of the law was really unknown.
With regard to the statements which attribute some work in connexion with Homer to Peisistratus, it was noticed by Wolf that Cicero, Pausanias and the others who mention the matter do so nearly in the same words, and, therefore, appear to have drawn from a common source. This source was in all probability an epigram quoted in two of the short lives of Homer, and there said to have been inscribed on the statue of Peisistratus at Athens. In it Peisistratus is made to say of himself that he “collected Homer, who was formerly sung
- ↑ See the chapter in Cobet’s Miscellanea critica, pp. 225-239.
- ↑ The existence of two groups of the Venetian Scholia was first noticed by Jacob La Roche, and they were first distinguished in the edition of W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1875). There is also a group of Scholia, chiefly exegetical, a collection of which was published by Villoison from a MS. Ven. 453 (s. xi.) in his edition of 1788, and has been again edited by W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1877). The most important collection of this group is contained in the Codex Townleianus (Burney 86 s. xi.) of the British Museum, edited by E. Maass, (Oxford, 1887–1888). The vast commentary of Eustathius (of the 12th century) marks a third stage in the progress of ancient Homeric learning.
- ↑ Prolegomena ad Homerum, sive de operum Homericorum prisca et genuina forma variisque mutationibus et probabili ratione emendandi, scripsit Frid. Aug. Wolfius, volumen i. (1795).
