Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/515

Rh The whole of antiquity unanimously vicnved the Iliad and the Odyssey as the productions of a cer- tain individual, called Homer. No doubt of this fact ever entered the mind of any of the ancients ; and even a large number of other poems were attributed to the same author. This opinion continued unshaken down to the year 1795, when F. A, Wolf wrote his famous Prolegomena, in which he endeavoured to show that the Iliad and Odyssey were not two complete poems, but small, separate, independent epic songs, celebrating single exploits of tlie heroes, and that these lays were for ilw. first time written down and united, as the Iliad and Odyssey, by Peisistratus, tlie tyrant of Athens. This opinion, startling and paradoxical as it seemed, was not en- tirely new. Casaubon had already doubted the common opinion regarding Homer, and the great Bentley had said expressly " that Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies. These loose songs were not collected together in the form of an epic poem till about 500 years after." {Letter by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis^ § 7.) Some French writers, Perrault and Hedelin, and the Italian Vico, had made similar conjectures, but all these were forgotten and overborne by the common and general opinion, and the more easily, as these bold conjectures had been thrown out almost at hazard, and without sound arguments to support tliem. When therefore Wolf's Prolegomena ap- peared, the whole literary world was startled by the boldness and novelty of his positions. His book, of course, excited great opposition, but no one has to this day been able to refute the principal arguments of that great critic, and to re-establish the old opinion, which he overthrew. His views, however, have been materially modified by pro- tracted discussions, so that now we can almost venture to say that the question is settled. We will first state Wolf's principal arguments, and the chief objections of his opponents, and will then en- deavour to discover the most probable result of all these inquiries.

In 1770, R. Wood published a book On tite ori- ginal Genius of Horner^ in which he mooted the question whether the Homeric poems had originally been written or not. This idea was caught up by Wolf, and proved the foundation of all his inquiries. But the most important assistance which he ob- fciined was from the discovery and publication of the famous Venetian scholia by Villoison (1788). These valuable scholia, in giving us some insight into the studies of the Alexandrine critics, furnished materials and an historical basis for Wolf's in- quiries. The point from which Wolf started was, as we have said, the idea that the Homeric poems were originally not written. To prove this, he' entered into a minute and accurate discussion con- cerning the age of the art of writing. He set aside, as groundless fables, the traditions which ascribed the invention or introduction of this art to Cadmus, Cecrops, Orpheus, Linus, or Palamedes. Then, allowing that letters were known in Greece at a very early period, he justly insists upon the great difference which exists between the knowledge of the letters and their general use for works of lite- rature. Writing is first applied to public monu- ments, inscriptions, and religious purposes, centuries before it is employed for the common purposes of social life. This is still more certain to be the case when the common ordinary materials for writing are wanting, as they were among the ancient Greeks. Wood, lead, brass, stone, are not proper materials for writing down poems consisting of twenty-four books. Even hides, which were used by the lonians, seem too clumsy for this purpose, and, besides, we do not know when they were first in use. (Herod, v. 58.) It was not before the sixth century B. c. that papyrus became easily accessible to the Greeks, through the king Araa- sis, who first opened Egypt to Greek traders. The laws of Lycurgus were not committed to writing ; those of Zaleucus, in Locri Epizephyrii, in the 29th 01. (b. c. 664), are particularly re- corded as the first laws that were written down. (Scymn. Perieg. 313 ; Strab. vi. p. 259.) The laws of Solon, seventy years later, were written on wood and fiov(XTpo(pT]d6u. Wolf allows that all these con- siderations do not prove that no use at all wai made of the art of writing as early as the seventh and eighth centuries B. c, which would be par- ticularly improbable in the case of the lyric poets, such as Archilochus, Alcman, Pisander, and Arion, but that before the time of the seven sages, that is, the time when prose writing first originated, the art was not so common that we can suppose it to have been employed for such extensive works as the poems of Homer. Wolf (Frol. p. 77) alleges the testimony of Josephus (c. Apion. i. 2) : 'O^'e koX fjLoXis cyvwaav ol "EXkrfves (pvaiv ypa/j./j.dTuv. . . Kai r-qv avrov iroirjtnv KaraAnreiv, dWci 5iafj.vr)/j.uP€vo- fxev-qp 6K Twv q,aiJ.dTwu varepov (Tvt/Tedi]uai. (Be- sides Schol. ap. Villois. Anecd. Gr. ii. p. 182.) But Wolf draws still more convincing arguments from the poems themselves. In //. vii. 175, the Grecian heroes decide by lot who is to fight with Hector. Tiie lots are marked by each respective hero, and all thrown into a helmet, which is shaken till one lot is jerked out. This is iTanded round by the herald till it reaches Ajax, who recognises the mark he had made on it as his own. If this mark had been any thing like writing, the herald would have read it at once, and not have handed it round. In //. vi. 168, we have the story of Bellerophon, whom Proetus sends to Lycia,
 * pacriv ov5e tovtov (i. e. Homerum) ev ypdixixacn

TTopiv S' oye CTT^/j-aTa Kxrypd^ Tpd^as eu irivaKi tttukt'o) ^viJ.o(j)66pa iroWd' Aet^ai S' Tji'a/yei qS inudip^, 6(pp' ottoAozto.

Wolf shows that a-rjjuLaTa Kvypd are a kind of con- ventional marks, and not letters, and that this story is far from proving the existence of witing. Throughout the whole of Homer every thing is cal- culated to be heard, nothing to be read. Not a single epitaph, nor any other inscription, is men- tioned ; the tombs of the heroes are rude mounds of earth ; coins are unknown. In Od. viii. 163, an overseer of a ship is mentioned, who, instead of having a list of the cargo, must remember it ; he is (poprov fivijiLiuu. All this seemed to prove, without the possibility of doubt, that the art of writing was entirely unknown at the time of the Trojan war, and could not have bt;en common at the time when the poems w^ere composed.

Among the opponents of Wolf, there is none superior to Greg. W. Nitzsch, in zeal, perseverance, learning, and acuteness. He wrote a series of maaogTap}iie& (Quaestion. HoTneric. Specim. i. 1824; Indagandae per Odyss. Inteipolationis Praeparatio, 1828 ; De Hist. Homeri, fascic. i. 1830 ; De Aristoiele contra Wolfianos^ 1831 ; Patria et A etas Horn.) to refute Wolf and liis supporters, and he