Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/124

112 HOMER fore stands in almost as much need of oratory as of warlike skill and prowess. Even the division of the spoil is not made in the Iliad by Agamemnon, but by &quot;the Achasans&quot; (II. i. 162, 368). The taking of Briseis from Achilles was an arbitrary act, and against all rule and custom. The council is more difficult to understand. The &quot; elders &quot; (ye povres) of the Iliad are the same as the subordinate &quot; kings &quot; ; they are summoned by Agamemnon to his tent, and form a small council of nine or ten persons. In Troy we hear of elders of the people (S^oyepovre?) who are with Priam, and are men past the military age. So in Ithaca there are elders who have not gone to Troy with the army. It would seem therefore that the meeting in Agamemnon s tent was only a copy or adaptation of the true constitu tional &quot; council of elders,&quot; which indeed was essentially unfitted for the purposes of military service. Priesthood in Homer is found in the case of particular temples, where an officer is naturally wanted to take charge of the sacred inclosure and the sacrifices offered within it. It is perhaps an accident that we do not hear of priests in Ithaca. Agamemnon performs sacrifice himself, not be cause a priestly character was attached to the kingly office, but simply because he was &quot;master in his own house.&quot; The conception of &quot; law &quot; is foreign to Homer. The later words for it (vo /xo?, p^rpa) are unknown, and the terms which he uses (81/07 and $e/zts) mean merely &quot; custom.&quot; Judicial functions are in the hands of the elders, who &quot; have to do with suits&quot; (SiKao-Trd/W), and &quot; uphold judg ments &quot; (^e/xicrras etpt arat). On such matters as the com pensation in cases of homicide, it is evident that there were no rules, but merely a feeling, created by use and wont, that the relatives of the slain man should be willing to accept payment. The sense of anger which follows a viola tion of custom has the name of &quot; Nemesis &quot; righteous displeasure. As there is no law in Homer, so there is no morality. That is to say, there are no general principles of action, and no words which indicate that acts have been classified as good or bad, right or wrong. Moral feeling, indeed, existed, and was deneted by &quot;Aidos&quot;; but the numerous meanings of this word shame, veneration, pity show how rudimentary the idea was. And when we look to practice we find that cruel and even treacherous deeds are spoken of without the least sense that they deserve censure. The heroes of Homer are hardly more moral agents than the giants and enchanters of a fairy tale. 1 The religious ideas of Homer differ in some important points from those of later Greece. The Apollo of the Iliad has the character of a local deity &quot; ruler of Chryse and goodly Cilia and Tenedos.&quot; He may be compared with the Clarian and the Lycian god, but he is unlike the Apollo of Dorian times, the &quot; deliverer &quot; and giver of oracles. Again, the worship of Dionysus, and of Demeter and Persephone, is mainly or wholly post-Homeric. The greatest difference, however, lies in the absence of hero-worship from the Homeric order of things. Castor and Polydeuces, for instance, are simply brothers of Helen who died before the expedition to Troy (//. iii. 243). The military tactics of Homer belong to the age when the chariot was the principal engine of warfare. Cavalry is unknown, and the battles are mainly decided by the prowess of the chiefs. The use of the trumpet is also later. It has been supposed indeed that the art of riding was known in Homer s own time, because it occurs in compari sons. But the riding which he describes (//. xv. 679) is a mere exhibition of skill, such as we may see in a modern circus. And though he mentions the trumpet (//. xviii. 219), 1 &quot;The incidents which, as we read them in Homer, touch us as we are touched by a fairy tale&quot; (Conington s Virgil, ii. p. 11). This subject is well treated by Mr Mahaffy in his Social Life of Greece, eh. ii. there is nothing to show that it was used, as in historical times, to give the signal for the charge. The chief in dustries of Homeric times are those of the carpenter (reVrcov), the worker in leather (O-KVTOTO/X.OS), the smith or worker in metal (xaA/cevs),- whose implements are the hammer and pincers, and the potter (Kepa/xevs) ; also spinning and weaving, which were carried on by the women. The fine arts are represented by sculpture in relief, carving in wood and ivory, embroidery. Statuary is later ; it appears to have come into existence in the 7th century, about the time when casting in metal was invented by Rhoecus of Samos. In general, as has been well shown by Mr A. S. Murray, 2 Homeric art does not rise above the stage of decoration, applied to objects in common use ; while in point of style it is characterized by a richness and variety of ornament which is in the strongest contrast to the simplicity of the best periods. It is the work, in short, not of artists but of skilled workmen ; the ideal artist is &quot; Dredalus,&quot; a name which implies mechanical skill and intricate workmanship, not beauty of design. Mr Murray further shows (following Professor Brunn of Munich) that the Greek art of the Homeric period is identical in origin with contemporary Assyrian work. The sculptures on the shield of Achilles, in particular, are quite Assyrian in type ; and the same may be said of the work which has the best claim to equal antiquity with the Homeric poems the lions sculptured in flat relief over the gate of Mycenas. One art of the highest importance remains. The ques tion whether writing was known in the time of Homer was raised in antiquity, and has been debated with especial eagerness ever since the appearance of Wolf s Prolegomena. In this case we have to consider not merely the indications of the poems, but also the external evidence which we possess regarding the use of writing in Greece. This latter kind of evidence is much more considerable now than it was in Wolf s time. It will be found in a very convenient form in A. Kirchoff s Stndien zur Geschichte des griechischcn Alphabets (Berlin, 1877). The oldest known stage of the Greek alphabet appears to be represented by ir;criptions of the islands of Thera, Melos, and Crete, which are referred to the 40th Olympiad (620 B.C.). The oldest specimen of a distinctively Ionian alphabet is the famous inscription of the mercenaries of Psammetichus, in Upper Egypt, as to which the only doubt is whether the Psammetichus in question is the first or the second, and consequently whether the inscription is to be dated Ol. 40 or 01. 47. Considering that the divergence of two alphabets (like the difference of two dialects) requires both time and familiar use, we may gather from these facts that writing was well known in Greece early in the 7th century B.C. 3 The rise of prose composition in the 6th century B.C. has been thought to mark the time when memory was prac tically superseded by writing as a means of preserving literature, the earlier use of letters being confined to short documents, such as lists of names, treaties, laws, &c. This conclusion, however, is by no means necessary. It may be that down to comparatively late times poetry was not com monly read, but was recited from memory. But the ques tion is From what time are we to suppose that the preser vation of long poems was generally secured by the existence of written copies ? Now, without counting the Homeric 2 Contemporary Review, vol. xxiii. p. 3 The fact that the Phoenician Van (/) was retained in the Greek alphabets, and the vowel v added, shows that when the alphabet was introduced the sound denoted by / was still in full vigour. Other wise f would have been used for the vowel v, just as the Phoenician consonant Yod became the vowel i. But in the Ionic dialect the sound of / died out soon after Homer s time, if indeed it was still pronounced then. It seems probable therefore that the introduction of the alphabet is not later than the composition of the Homeric poems.