Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/519

Rh Ulysses from Calypso, and his arrival and reception in Scheria ; the second the narration of his wan- derings, 3. The song of Ulysses meditatiufj revenge (book xiii. 92 — xix). Here the two threads of the story are united ; Ulysses is conveyed to Ithaca, and is met in the cottage of Eumaeus by his son, who has just returned from Sparta. 4. Tlic song of the revenging and reconciled Ulysses (xx. — xxiv.) brings all the manifold wrongs of the suitors and the sufferings of Ulysses to the desired and long-expected conclusion. Although we main- tain the unity of both the Homeric poems, we can- nit deny that they have suffered greatly from in- terpolations, omissions, and alterations ; and it is only by admitting some original poetical whole, that we are able to discover those parts which do not belong to this whole. Wolf, therefore, in pointing out some parts as spurious, has been led into an inconsistency in his demonstration, since he is obliged to acknowledge something as the genuine centre of the two poems, which he must suppose to have been spun out more and more by subsequent rliapsodists. This altered view, which is distinctly pronounced in the preface to his edition of Homer (■2nd edit, of 1795, towards the end of the pref',), appears already in the Prolegomena (p, 123), and has been subsequently embraced by Hermann and other critics. It is, as we have said, a necessary consequence from the discovery of interpolations. 1'hese interpolations are particularly apparent' in the first part of the Iliad. The catalogue of the ships has long been recognised as a later addition, .and can be omitted v/ithout leaving the slightest gap. The battles from the third to the seventh book seem almost entirely foreign to the plan of the Iliad, Zeus appears to have quite forgotten his promise to Thetis, that he would honour her son by letting Agamemnon feel his absence. The Greeks are far from feeling this. Diomede fights successfully even against gods ; the Trojans are driven back to the town. In an assembly of the gods (iv. init.), the glory of Achilles is no motive to deliver Troy from her fate ; it is not till the eighth book that Zeus all at once seems mind- ful of his promise to Thetis. The preceding five books are not only loosely connected with the whole of the poem, but even with one another. The single combat between Menelaus and Paris (book iii.), in which the former was on the point of despatching the seducer of his wife, is inter- rupted by the treacherous shot of Pandarus, In the next book all this is forgotten. The Greeks neither claim Helen as the prize of the victory of Menelaus, nor do they complain of a breach of the oath : no god revenges the perjury. Paris in the sixth book sits quietly at home, where Hector severely upbraids him for his cowardice and retire- ment from war ; to which Paris makes no reply, and does not plead that he had only just encoun- tered Menelaus in deadly fight. The tenth book, containing the nocturnal expedition of Ulysses and Diomede, in which they kill the Thracian king Rhesus and take his horses, is avowedly of later origin. (Schol. Ven. ad II. x. 1.) No reference is subsequently made by any of the Greeks or Trojans to this gallant deed. The two heroes were sent as spies, but they never narrate the result of their expedition ; not to speak of many other im- probabilities. To enumerate all those passages wiiich are reasonably suspected as interpolated, would lead us too far. MuUcr (lOid. p. oU) very judiciously assigns " two principal motives for this extension of the poem beyond its original plan, which might have exercised an influence on the mind of Homer himself, but had still more power- ful effects upon his successors, the later Homerids. In the first place, it is clear that a design mani- fested itself at an early period to make this poem complete in itself, so that all the subjects, descrip- tions, and actions which could alone give an inte- rest to a poem on the entire war, might find a place within the limits of this composition. For this pur- pose, it is not improbable that many lays of earlier bards, who had sung single adventures of the Trojan war, were laid under contribution, and that the finest parts of them were adopted into the new poem, it being the natural course of popular poetry propagated by oral tradition, to treat the best thoughts of previous poets as common property, and to give them a new life by working them up in a different context." Thus it would be ex- plained why it is not before the ninth year of the war that the Greeks build a wall round their camp, and think of deciding the war by single combat. For the same reason the catalogue of the ships could find a place in the Iliad, as well as the view of Helen and Priam from the walls (TcixocKOTr/a), by which we become acquainted with the chief heroes among the Greeks, who were certainly not unknown to Priam till so late a period of the war. " The other motive for the great extension of the preparatory part of the catastrophe may, it appears, be traced to a certain conflict between the jjlan of the poet and his own patriotic feelings. An atten- tive reader cannot fail to observe that, while Homer intends that the Greeks should be made to suffer severely from the anger of Achilles, he is yet, as it were, retarded in his progress towards that end by a natural endeavour to avenge the death of each Greek by that of a yet more illustrious Trojan, and thus to increase the glory of the numerous Achaean heroes, so that even on the days in which the Greeks are defeated, more Trojans than Greeks are described as being slain."

The Odyssey has experienced similar exten- sions, which, far from inducing us to believe in an atomistical origin of the poem, only show that the original plan has been here and there ob- scured. The poem opens with an assembly of the gods, in which Athene complains of the long detention of Ulysses in Ogygia ; Zeus is of her opinion. She demands to send Hermes to Calypso with an order from Zeus to dismiss Ulysses,. whilst she herself goes to Ithaca to incite young Telemachus to determined steps. But in the begin- ning of the fifth book we have almost the same pro- ceedings, the same assembly of the gods, the same complaints of Athene, the same assent of Zeus, who now at last sends his messenger to the island of Calypso. Telemachus refuses to stay with Me- nelaus ; he is anxious to return home ; and still, without our knowing how and why, he remains at Sparta for a time which seems disproportionably long ; for on his return to Ithaca he meets Ulysses, who had in the meantime built his ship, passed twenty days on the sea, and three days with the Phaeacians.

Nitzsch {Anmerh. z. Odyssey, vol. ii. pref. p. xlii. ) has tried to remove these difficulties, but he does not deny extensive interpolations, particularly in the eighth book, where the song of Demo- docos concerning Ares and Aphrodite is very sue-