Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/523

Rh were gradually attributed to the same author, and continued to be so regarded more or less generally, till critics, and particularly those of Alexandria, discovered the differences between their style and that of Homer. At Alexandria they were never reckoned genuine, which accounts for the circum- stance that none of the great critics of that school is known to have made a regular collection of them. (Wolf, Proleg. p. 266.) Of the hymns now extant five deserve particular attention on account of their greater length and mythological contents ; they are those addressed to the Delian and Pythian Apollo, to Hermes, Demeter, and Aphrodite. The hymn to the Delian Apollo, formerly regai-ded as part of the one to the Pythian Apollo, is the work of a Homerid of Chios, and approaches so nearly to the true Homeric tone, that the author, who calls him- self the blind poet, who lived in the rocky Chios, was held even by Thucydides to be Homer himself. It narrates the birth of Apollo in Delos, but a great part of it is lost. The hymn to the Pythian Apollo contained the foundation of the Pythian sanctuary by the god himself, who slays the dragon, and, in the form of a dolphin, leads Cretan men to (Jrissa, whom he established as priests of his temple. The hymn to Hermes, which, on account of its mentioning the seven-stringed lyre, the invention of Terpander, cannot have been composed before the 30th olympiad, relates the tricks of the new- born Hermes, who, having left his cradle, drove away the cattle of Apollo from their pastures in Pieria to Pylos, there killed them, and then in- vented the lyre, made of a tortoise-shell, with which he pacified the anger of Apollo. The hymn to Aphrodite celebrates the birth of Aeneas in a style not very different from that of Homer. The hymn to Demeter, first discovered 1778, in Mos- cow, by Mathaei, and first published by Ruhnken, 1 780, gives an account of Demeter's search after her daughter, Persephone, who had been carried away by Hades. The goddess obtains from Zeus, that her daughter should pass only one third part of the year with Hades, and return to her for the rest of the year. With this symbolical description of the corn, which, when sown, remains for some time under ground, and then springs up, the poet has connected the mythology of the Eleusinians, who hospitably received the goddess on her wan- derings, afterwards built her a temple, and were rewarded by instruction in the mysterious rites of Demeter.

Beside the cyclic epics and the hymns, we find poems of quite a different nature erroneously ascribed to Homer. Such was the case with the Maryiles^ a poem, which Aristotle regarded as the ^' source of comedy, just as he called the Iliad and jB; Odyssey the fountain of all tragic poetry. From ^^ this view of Aristotle, we may judge of the nature of the poem. It ridiculed a man who was said " to know many things, and to know all badly." The subject was nearly related to the scurrilous and satirical poetry of Archilochus and other contem- porary iambographers, although in versification, epic tone, and language, it imitated the Iliad. The iambic verses which are quoted from it by gram- marians were most likely interspersed by Pigres, brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author of this poem, and who interpolated the Iliad with pentameters in a similar manner.

The same Pigres was perhaps the author of the BuirachomyomacMa, the Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Suid. s. v. ; Plut. de Malign. Herod. 43), a poem frequently ascribed by the ancients to Homer. It is a harmless playful tale, without a marked tendency to sarcasm and satire, amusing as a parody, but without any great poetical merit which could justify its being ascribed to Homer.

Besides these poems, there are a great -many more, most of which we know only by name, and which we find attributed to Homer with more or less confidence. But we have good reasons for doubting all such statements concerning lost poems, whose claims we cannot examine, when we see that even Thucydides and Aristotle considered as genuine not only such poems as the Margites and some of the hymns, but also all those passages of the Iliad and Odyssey which are evidently inter- polated, and which at the present day nobody would dream of ascribing to their reputed author. (Nitzsch, Anm. z. Od. vol. ii. p. 40.) The time in which Greek literature flourished was not adapted for tracing out the poems which were spurious and interpolated. People enjoyed all that was beautiful, without caring who was the author. The task of sifting and correcting tlie works of literature was left to the age in which the faculties of the Greek mind had ceased to produce original works, and had turned to scrutinise and preserve former pro- ductions. Then it was not onl}' discovered that the cyclic poems and the hymns had no title to be styled " Homeric," but the question was mooted and warmly discussed, whether the Odyssey was to be attributed to the author of the Iliad. Of the existence of this interesting controversy we had only a slight indication in Seneca {de Brevit. VUae., 13) before the publication of the Venetian Scholia. From these we know now that there was a regular party of critics, who assigned the Iliad and Odyssey to two different authors, and were therefore called Chorizontes^xwpi^ovT^s), the Separaters. (Grauert, ub d. Horn. Choriz. Rhein. Mus. vol. i.) Their arguments were probably not very convincing, and might fairly be considered to be entirely refuted by such reasonings as Longinus made use of, who affirmed (just as if he had heard it from Homer himself) that the Iliad was composed by Homer in the vigour of life, and the Odyssey in his old age. With this decision all critics were satisfied for centuries, till, in modern times, the question has been opened again. Traces have been discovered in the Odyssey which seemed to indicate a later time ; and although this is a difficult and doubtful point, because we do not know in many cases whether the discrepancies in the two poems are to be considered as genuine parts or as interpolations, yet there is so much in the one poem which cannot be reconciled with the whole tenor of the other, that a later origin of the Odyssey seems very pro- bable. (Nitzsch in Hall. Encycl. p. 405 a.) We cannot lay much stress on the observation, that the state of social life in the Odyssey appears more ad- vanced in refinement, comfort, and art, than in the Iliad, because this may be regarded as the result of the different nature of the subjects. The magnifi- cent palaces of Menelaus and Alcinous, and the peaceful enjoyments of the Phaeacians, could find no place in the rough camp of the heroes before Troy. But a great and essential difference, which per- vades the whole of the two poems, is observable in the notions that are entertained respecting the gods. In the Iliad the men are better than the gods ; in the Odyssey it is the reverse. In the latter poem