Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/516

502 has done a great deal towards establishing a solid ^ and well-founded view of this complicated question. Nitzsch opposed Wolfs conclusions concerning the later date of written documents. He denies that the laws of Lycurgus were transmitted by oral tradition alone, and were for this purpose set to music by Terpander and Thaletas, as is generally believed, on the authority of Plutarch {de Mus. 3). The Spartan v6iioi, which those two musicians are said to have composed, Nitzsch declares to have been hymns and not laws, although Strabo calls Thaletas a vofModeTiKos avrip (by a mistake, as Nitzsch ventures to say). Writing materials were, according to Nitzsch, not wanting at a very early period. He maintains that wooden tablets, and the hides (Sicpdepat) of the lonians were employed, and that even papyrus was known and used by the Greeks long before the time of Amasis, and brought into Greece by Phoenician merchants. Amasis, according to Nitzsch, only rendered the use of papyrus more general (6th century b. c), whereas formerly its use had been confined to a few. Thus Nitzsch arrives at the conclusion that writing was common in Greece full one hundred years before the time which Wolf had supposed, namely, about the beginning of the Olympiads (8th century B. c), and that this is the time in which the Homeric poems were committed to writing. If this is granted, it does not follow that the poems were also composed at this time. Nitzsch cannot prove that the age of Homer was so late as the eighth century. The best authorities, as we have seen, place Homer much earlier, so that we again come to the conclusion that the Homeric poems were composed and handed down for a long time without the assistance of writing. In fact, this point seems indisputable. The nature of the Ho- meric language is almie a sufficient argiunent, but into this consideration Nitzsch never entered. (Hermann, Opusc. vi. 1, 75 ; Giese, d. Aeol. Dia- lect, p. 154.) The Homeric dialect could never have attained that softness and flexibility, which render it so well adapted for versification — that variety of longer and shorter forms, which existed together — that freedom in contracting and resolving vowels, and of fonning .the contractions into two syllables — if the practice of writing had at that time exercised the power, which it necessarily pos- sesses, of fixing the forms of a language. (Muller, Hist, of Gr. Lit. p. 38.) The strongest proof is the Aeolic Diganima, a sound which existed at the time of the composition of the poems, and had en- tirely vanished from the language when the first copies were made.

It is necessary therefore to admit Wolf's first position, that the Homeric poems were originally not committed to writing. We proceed to examine the conclusions which he draws from these premises.

However great the genius of Homer may have been, says Wolf, it is quite incredible that, without the assistance of writing, he could have conceived in his mind and executed such extensive works. This assertion is very bold. " Who can determine," says Miiller ( Hist, of Greek Lit. p. 62), "how many thou85viid verses a person thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and confide to the faithful memory of disciples devoted to their master and his art ? " We have instances of modern poets, who have composed long poems without writing down a single syllable, and have preserved them faithfully in their memory, before committing them to writing. And how much more easily could this have been done in the time anterior to the use of writing, when all those faculties of the mind, which had to dispense with this artificial assistance, were powerfully developed, trained, and exercised. We must not look upon the old bards as amateurs, who amused themselves in leisure hours with poetical compositions, as is the fashion now-a-days. Com- position was their profession. All their thoughts were concentrated on this one point, in which and for which they lived. Their composition was, moreover, facilitated by their having no occasion to invent complicated plots and wonderful stories ; the simple traditions, on which they founded their songs, were handed down to them in a form already adapted to poetical purposes. If now, in spite of all these advantages, the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey was no easy task, we must attribute some superiority to the genius of Homer, which caused his name and his works to acquire eternal glory, and covered all his innumerable predecessors, contemporaries, and followers, with oblivion.

The second conclusion of Wolf is of more weight and importance. When people neither wrote nor read, the only way of publishing poems was by oral recitation. The bards therefore of the heroic age, as we see from Homer himself, used to entertain their hearers at banquets, festivals, and similar occasions. On such occasions the}^ certainly could not recite more than one or two rhapsodies. Now Wolf asks what could have in- duced any one to compose a poem of such a length, that it could not be heard at once ? All the charms of an artificial and poetical unity, varied by epi- sodes, but strictly observed through many books, must certainly be lost, if only fragments of the poem could be heard at once. To refute this argument, the opponents of Wolf were obliged to seek for occasions which afforded at least a possibility of reciting the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey. Ban- quets and small festivals were not sufficient ; but there were musical contests (^ayoivis)^ connected with great national festivals, at which thousands assem- bled, anxious to hear and patient to listen. " If," says Muller {Hist, of Greek Lit. p. 62), " the Athe- nians could at one festival hear in succession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many co- medies, without ever thinking that it might be better to distribute this enjoyment over the whole year, why should not the Greeks of earlier times have been able to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey, and perhaps other poems, at the same festival ? Let us beware of measuring by our loose and desultory reading the intention of mind with which a people enthusiastically devoted to such enjoyments, hung with delight on the flowing strains of the minstrel. In short, there was a time whcyi the Greek people, not indeed at meals, but at festivals, and under the patronage of their heieditary princes, heard and enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as they were intended to be heard and enjoyed, viz. as complete wholes. This is credible enough, but it is not quite so easy to prove it. We know that, in the historical times, the Homeric poems were recited at Athens at the festival of the Panathenaea (Lycurg. c. Leocr. p. 161) ; and that there were likewise contests of rhapsodists at Sicyon in the time of the tyrant Cleisthenes (Herod, v. 67), in Syracuse, Epidaurus, Orchomenus,Thespiae, Acrae*