Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/518

504 were worsted ; how Achilles at last allowed his friend Patroclus to protect the Greeks ; and how, finally, he revenged the death of Patroclus by kill- ing Hector. This simple course of the story Wolf thinks would have been treated by any other poet in verj"^ much the same manner as we now read it in the Iliad ; and he maintains that there is no unity in it except a chronological one, in so far as we have a narration of the events of several days in succession. Nay, he continues, if we ex- amine closely the six last books, we shall find that they have nothing to do with what is stated in the introduction as the object of the poem, — namely, the tcraih of Achilles. This wrath subsides with the death of Patroclus, and what follows js a wrath of a different kind, which does not belong to the former. The composition of the Odyssey is not viewed with greater favour by Wolf The journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, the sojourn of Ulysses in the island of Calypso, the stories of his wanderings, were originally inde- pendent songs, which, as they hapvened to fit into one another, were afterwards connected into one whole, at a time when literature, the arts, and a general cultivation of the mind began to flourish in Greece, supported by the important art of writing.

These bold propositions have met with almost universal disapprobation. Still this is a subject on which reasoning and demonstration are very preca- rious and almost impossible. The feelings and tastes of every individual must determine the matter. But to oppose to Wolf's sceptical views the judgment of a man whose authority on matters of taste is as great as on those of learning, we copy what Muller says on this subject : — " All the laws which reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed (in Homer) with the most refined taste ; all the means are employed by which the general effect can be heightened." — " The anger of Achilles is an event which did not long precede the final destruction of Troy, inasmuch as it produced the death of Hector, who was the de- fender of the city. It was doubtless the ancient tradition, established long before Homer's time, that Hector had been slain by Achilles in revenge for the slaughter of his friend Patroclus, whose fall in b.attle, unprotected by the son of Thetis, was explained by the tradition to have arisen from the anger of Achilles against the other Greeks for an affront offered to him, and his consequent retire- ment from the contest. Now the poet seizes, as the most critical and momentous period of the action, the conversion of Achilles from the foe of the Greeks into that of the Trojans • for as on the one hand the sudden revolution in the fortunes of war, thus occasioned, places the prowess of Achilles in the strongest light, so, on the other hand, the change of his firm and resolute mind must have been the more touching to the feelings of the hear- ers. From this centre of interest there springs a long preparation and gradual developement, since not only the cause of the anger of Achilles, but also the defeats of the Greeks occasioned by that anger, were to be narrated ; and the display of the insufficiency of all the other heroes at the same time offered the best opportunity for exhibiting their several excellencies. It is in the arrangement of this preparatory part and its connection with the catastrophe, that the poet displays his peifect ac- quaintance with all the mysteries of poetical com- position ; and in his continual postponement of the crisis of the action, and his scanty revelations with respect to the plan of the entire work, he shows a maturity of knowledge which is astonishing for so early an age. To all appearance, the poet, after certain obstacles have been first overcome, tends only to one point, viz. to increase perpetually the disasters of the Greeks, which they have drawn on themselves by the injury offered to Achilles ; and Zeus himself, at the beginning, is made to pro- nounce, as coming from himself, the vengeance and consequent exaltation of the son of Thetis. At the same time, however, the poet plainly shows his wish to excite, in the feelings of an attentive hejirer, an anxious and perpetually increasing desire not only to see the Greeks saved from destiiiction, but also that the unbearable and more than human haughtiness and pride of Achilles should be broken. Both these ends are attained through the fulfil- ment of the secret counsel of Zeus^ which he did not communicate to Thetis, and through her to Achilles (who, if he had known it, would have given up all enmity against the Achaeans), but only to Hera, and to her not till the middle of the poem ; and Achilles, through the loss of his dearest friend, whom he had sent to battle not to save the Greeks, but /or his own glory^ suddenly' changes his hostile attitude towards the Greeks, and is overpowered by entirely opposite feelings. In this manner the exaltation of the son of Thetis is imited to that almost imperceptible operation of destiny, which the Greeks were required to observe in all human affairs. To remove from this collection of various actions, conditions, and feelings any substantial part, as not necessarily belonging to it, would in fact be to dismember a living whole, the parts of which would necessarily lose their vitality. As in an organic body life does not dwell in one single point, but requires a union of certain systems and members, so the internal connection of the Iliad rests on the union of certain parts ; and neither the interesting introduction describing the defeat of the Greeks up to the burning of the ship of Pro- tesilaus, nor the turn of affairs brought about by the death of Patroclus, nor the final pacification of the anger of Achilles, could be spared from the Iliad, when the fruitful seed of such a poem had once been sown in the soul of Homer, and had begun to develop its growth." {Hist, of Gr. Lit, p. 4», &c.)

If we yield our assent to these convincing re- flections, we shall hardly need to defend the unity of the Odyssey, which has always been admired as one of the gre.itest masterpieces of Greek genius, against the aggressions of Wolf, who could more easily believe that chance and learned compilers had produced this poem, by connecting loose inde- pendent pieces, than that it should have sprung from the mind of a single man. Nitzsch {Hall. Encyclop. s. v. Oilyssee, and Anmerk. z. Odyss. vol. ii. pref.) has endeavoured to exhibit the unity of the plan of this poem. He has divided the whole into four large sections, in each of which there are again subdivisions facilitating the distribution of the recital for several rhapsodists and several days. 1. The first part treats of tlie alisent Ulysses (books i. — iv.). Here we are introduced to the state of affairs in Ithaca during the absence of Ulysses. Telemachus goes to Pylos and Spartii to ascertain the fate of his father. 2. The song of tlie returning Ulysses (books v. — xiii. O'J) is naturally divided into two parts ; the first contains the departure of