Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/517

Rh phia, Chios, Teos, Ol3'rapia. (See the authors cited by Miiller, Ilnd. p. 3"2.) Ilesiod mentions musical contests {Op. 652, and Frag. 456), at which he gained a tripod. Such contests seem to have been even anterior to the time of Homer, and are alluded to in the Homeric description of the Thracian bard Thamyris {11. ii. 594 ), who on his road from Eurytus, the powerful ruler of Oechalia, was struck blind at Dorium by the Muses, and deprived of his entire art, because he had boasted of his ability to contend even with the Muses. (Comp. Diog. Laert. ix. 1.) It is very likely that at the great festival of Panionium in Asia Minor such contests took place (Heyne, Eocc. ad II. vol. viii. p. 796; Welcker, Ep. Cy'el. p.371 ; Heinrich, Epimetiides, p. 1 42) ; but still, in order to form an idea of the possible manner in which such poems as tlie Iliad and Odyssey were recited, we must have recourse to hypotheses, which have at best only internal probability, but no external authority. Such is the inference drawn from the later custom at Athens, that several rhapsodists followed one another in the recitation of the same poem (Welcker, Ep. Cycl.^. 371), and the still bolder hypothesis of Nitzsch, that the recitation lasted more than one day. ( Vorr. z. Anm. z. Od. vol. ii. p. 21.) But, although the obscurity of those times prevents us from obtaining a certain and positive result as to the way in which such long poems were recited, yet we cannot be induced by this circumstance to doubt that the Iliad and Odyssey, and other poems of equal length, were recited as complete wholes, because they certainly existed at a time anterior to the use of writing. That such was the case follows of necessity from what we know of the Cyclic poets. (See Proclus, Chreslomathia in Gaisford's HepUaes- tion.) The Iliad and Odyssey contained only a small part of the copious traditions concerning the Trojan war. A great number of poets undertook to fill up by separate poems the whole cycle of the events of this war, from which circumstance they are commonly styled the Ci/clic poets. The poem Cypria, most probably by Stasinus, related all the events which preceded the beginning of the Iliad from the birth of Helen to the ninth year of the war. The Aethiopis and Iliupersis of Arctinus continued the narrative after the death of Hector, and related the arrival of the Amazons, whose queen, Penthesileia, is slain by Achilles, the death and burial of Thersites, the arrival of Memnon with the Aethiopians, who kills Antilochus, and is killed in return by Achilles, the death of Achilles himself by Paris, and the quarrel between Ajax and Ulysses about his arms. The poem of Arc- tinus then related the death of Ajax, and all that intervened between this and the taking of Troy, which formed the subject of his second poem, the Iliupersis. These same events were likewise partly treated by Lesches, in his Little Ilias, with some differences in tone and form. In this was told the arrival of Philoctetes, who kills Paris, that of Neoptolemus, the building of the wooden horse, the capture of the palladium by Ulysses and Diomede, and, finally, the taking of Troy itself. The interval between the war and the subject of the Odyssey is filled up by the return of the different heroes. This furnished the subject for the Nostoi by Agias, a poem distinguished by great excellencies of com- position. The misfortunes of the two Atreidae formed the main part, and with this were artfully interwoven the adventures of all the other heroes, except Ulysses. The last adventures of Ulysses after his return to Ithaca were treated in the Tele- gonia of Eugammon. All these poems were grouped round those of Homer, as their common centre. " It is credible," says Muller {Ibid. p. 64) "that their authors were Homeric rhapsodists by pro- fession (so also Nitzsch, Hall. Encycl. s. v. Odyss. pp. 400, 401), to whom the constant recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally suggest the notion of continuing them by essays of their own in a similar tone. Hence too it would be more likely to occur that these poems, when they were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually acquire themselves the name of Homeric epics." Their object of completing and spinning out the poems of Homer is obvious. It is necessary there- fore to suppose that the Iliad and Odj'ssey existed entire, i. e. comprehending the same series of events which they now comprehend, at least in the time from the first to the tenth Olympiad, when Arcti- nus, Agias (Thiersch, Act. Monac. ii. 583), and probably Stasinus, lived. This was a time when nobody yet thought of reading such poems. There- iox^ there must have been an opportunity of reciting in some way or another, not only the Homeric poems, but those of the Cyclic poets also, which were of about equal length. (Nitzsch, Vorr.z. An- merk.xol. ii. p. 24.) The same result is obtained from comparing the manner in which Homer and these Cyclic poets treat and view mythical objects. A Avide difference is observable on this point, which justifies the conclusion, that as early as the period of the composition of the first of the Cyclic poems, viz. before the tenth Olympiad, the Homeric poems had attained a fixed form, and were no longer, as Wolf supposes, in a state of growth and development, dr else they would have been exposed to the influence of the different opinions which then prevailed respecting mythical subjects. This is the only inference we can draw from an inquiry into the Cyclic poets. Wolf, however, who denied the existence of long epic poets previous to the use of writing, because he thought they could not be re- cited as wholes, and who consequently denied that the Iliad and Odyssey possessed an artificial or poetical unity, thought to find a proof of this pro- position in the Cyclic poems, in which he professed to see no other unity than that which is afforded by the natural sequence of events. Now we are almost unable to form an accurate opinion of the poetical merits of those poems, of which we pos- sess only dry prosaic extracts ; but, granting that they did not attain a high degree of poetical per- fection, and particularly, that they were destitute of poetical unity, still we are not on this account at liberty to infer that the poems of Homer, their great example, are likewise destitute of this unity. But this is the next proposition of Wolf, which therefore we must now proceed to discuss. Wolf observes that Aristotle first derived the laws of epic poetry from the examples which he found laid down in the Iliad and Odyssey. It was for this reason, says Wolf, that people never thought of suspecting that those examples themselves were destitute of that poetical unity which Aristotle, from a contemplation of them, drew up as a principal requisite for this kind of poetry. It was transmitted, says Wolf, by old traditions, how once Achilles withdrew from the battle ; how, in consequence of the absence of the great hero, who alone awed the Trojans, the Greeks