Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/127

115 HOMER 115 somewhat different with the arguments derived from the early epic poems called &quot;cyclic.&quot; The fragments of these poems, indeed, are so scanty that we cannot compare them with Homer iu respect of style or language, but enough is known of their subjects to indicate that they presuppose an Iliad and Odyssey of something like their present form and extent. The jEthiopis of Arctinus (who was of the 1 8th century) took up the story of the Trojan war at the point where the Iliad leaves it, and similarly the Teleyoneia of Eugammon (fl. 568 B.C.) is a mere continuation of the Odyssey. Study of Homer. The Homeric Question. The critical study of Homer began in Greece almost with the beginning of prose writing. The first name is that of Theagenes of Rhegium, contemporary of Cambyses (525 B.C.), who is said to have founded the &quot;new grammar&quot; (the older &quot;grammar&quot; being the art of reading and writing), and to have been the inventor of the allegorical interpreta tions by which it was sought to reconcile the Homeric mythology with the morality and speculative ideas of the 6th century B.C. The same attitude in the &quot;ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy&quot; was soon afterwards taken by Anaxagoras ; and after him by his pupil Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who explained away all the gods, and even the heroes, as elementary substances and forces (Agamem non as the upper air, &c.). The next writers on Homer of the &quot;grammatical&quot; type were Stesimbrotus of Thasos (contemporary with Cimon) and Antimachus of Colophon, himself an epic poet of mark. The Thebaid of Antimachus, however, was not popular, and seems to have been a great storehouse of mythological learning rather than a poem of the Homeric school. Other names of the pre-Socratic and Socratic times are mentioned by Xeuophon, Plato, and Aristotle. These were the &quot;ancient Homerics&quot; (ot a.pxa^oi 0/j.ripiKoi), who busied themselves much with the hidden meanings of Homer ; of whom Aristotle says, with his profound insight, that they see the small likenesses and overlook the great ones (Metaph., xii. ). The text of Homer must have attracted some attention when Antimachus came to be known as the &quot;correcter&quot; (Siopdwr-fis) of a distinct edition (l/cSocns). Aristotle is said himself to have made a recension for the use of Alexander the Great. His remarks on Homer (in the Poetics and elsewhere) show that he had made a careful study of the structure and leading ideas of the poems, but do not throw much light on the text. The real work of criticism became possible only when great collec tions of manuscripts began to be made by the princes of the genera tion after Alexander, and when men of learning were employed to sift and arrange these treasures. In this way the great Alexandrian school of Homeric criticism began with Zenodotus, the first chief of the Museum, and was continued by Aristophanes and Aristarchus. In Aristarchus ancient philology culminated, as philosophy had done in Socrates. All earlier learning either passed into his writings, or was lost ; all subsequent research turned upon his critical and grammatical work. The means of forming a judgment of the criticism of Aristarchus are scanty. The literary form which preserved the works of the great historians was unfortunately wanting, or was not sufficiently valued, in the case of the grammarians. Abridgments and newer treatises soon drove out the writings of Aristarchus and other founders of the science. Moreover, a recension could not be repro duced without new errors soon creeping in. Thus we find that Didymus, writing in the time of Cicero, does not quote the readings of Aristarchus as we should quote a tcxtus rcceptus. Indeed, the object of his work seems to have been to determine what those readings were. Enough, however, remains to show that Aristarchus had a clear notion of the chief problems of philology (except per haps those concerning etymology). He saw, for example, that it was not enough to find a meaning for the archaic words (the yuff(rai, as they were called), but that common words (such as ir6vos, &amp;lt;t&amp;gt;6f)os) had their Homeric uses, which were to be gathered by due induc tion. In the same spirit he looked upon the ideas and beliefs of Homer as a consistent whole, which might be determined from the evidence of the poems. He noticed especially the difference between the stories known to Homer and those given by later poets, and made many comparisons between Homeric and later manners, arts, and institutions. Again, he was sensible of the paramount value of manuscript authority, and appears to have introduced no readings from mere conjecture. The frequent mention in the Scholia of &quot;better&quot; and &quot;inferior&quot; texts may indicate a classification made by him. His use of the &quot;obelus&quot; to distinguish spurious verses, which made so large a part of his fame in antiquity, has rather told against him with modern scholars. 1 It is chiefly interesting as a proof of the confusion in which the text must have been before the 1 See the chapter in Cobet s Miscellanea Critica, pp. 225-239. Alexandrian times ; for it is impossible to understand the readine.f of Aristarchus to suspect the genuineness of verses unless the state, of the copies had pointed to the existence of numerous interpolations. On this matter, however, we are left to mere conjecture. The quota tions from Homer in pre-Alexandriau authors are so inaccurate as to throw little or 110 light on the text which they used. It is at least clear that our manuscripts are much more trustworthy than the recollection of these ancient writers. 2 Our knowledge of Alexandrian criticism is derived almost wholly from a single document, the famous Iliad of the library of St Mark in Venice (Codex Venetus, or Ven. A), first published by the French scholar Villoison in 1788 (Scholia antiquissima ad Homeri Iliadem). This manuscript, written in the 10th century, contains (1) the best text of the Iliad, (2) the critical marks of Aristarchus, and (3) Scholia, consisting mainly of extracts from four grammatical works, viz., Didymus (contemporary of Cicero) on the recension of Aristarchus, Aristonicus (fl. 24 B.C.) on the critical marks of Aris tarchus, Herodian (fl. 16 A.D. ) on the accentuation, and Nicanor (fl. 127 A.D.) on the punctuation, of the Iliad. These extracts present themselves in two distinct forms. One series of scholia is written in the usual way, on a margin reserved for the purpose. The other consists of brief scholia, written in very small characters (but of the same period) on the narrow space left vacant round the text. Occasionally a scholium of this kind gives tiie substance of one of the longer extracts ; but as a rule they are distinct. It would seem, therefore, that after the manuscript was finished the &quot;marginal scholia&quot; were discovered to be ex tremely defective, and a new series of extracts was added in a form which interfered as little as possible with the appearance of the book. 3 The mention of the Venetian Scholia leads us at once to the Homeric controversy ; for the immortal Prolegomena of Wolf 4 appeared a few years after A T illoison s publication, and was founded in great measure upon the fresh and abundant materials which it furnished. Not that the &quot;Woifian theory&quot; of the Homeric poems is directly supported by anything in the Scholia ; the immediate object of the Prolegomena was not to put forward that theory, but to elucidate the new and remarkable conditions under which the text of Homer had to be settled, viz., the discovery of an apparatus criticus of the 2d century B.C. The questions regarding the original structure and early history of the poems were raised (forced upon him, it may be said) by the critical problem ; but they were really originated by facts and ideas of a wholly different order. The 18th century, in which the spirit of classical correctness had the most absolute dominion, did not come to an end before a powerful reaction set in, which affected not only literature but also speculation and politics. In this movement the leading ideas were concentrated in the word Nature. The natural condition of society, natural law, natural religion, the morality of feeling, the poetry of nature, gained a singular hold, first on the English philosophers from Hume onwards, and then (through Rousseau chiefly) on the general drift of thought and action in Europe. In literature the ! effect of these ideas was to set up a false opposition between nature to codes of law, so men of letters sought in popular unwritten poetry the freshness and simplicity which were wanting in the prevailing styles. The blind minstrel was the counterpart of the noble savage. The supposed discovery of the poems of Ossiau fell in with this train of sentiment, and created an enthusiasm for the study of early popular poetry. Homer was soon drawn into the circle of inquiry. Blackwell (Professor of Greek at Aberdeen) had insisted, in a book published in 1735, on the &quot;naturalness&quot; of Homer; and Wood (Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, London, 1769) was the first who maintained that Homer composed without the help of writing, 2 For example, yEschiues says that the words (/&amp;gt;T)/UTJ 5 cs o-rparbv fixQe occur repeatedly in the Iliad, whereas they never occur there. Had ^Eschines lived two centuries earlier, how decisive tins would have seemed against the antiquity of &quot;our Homer!&quot; As it is, it only proves the weakness of all such arguments. On the Homeric quotations in Aristotle, see Cope s edition of Aristotle s Rhetoric, vol. iii. p. 48. 3 The existence of two groups of the Venetian Scholia was first noticed by Professor La Roche, and they were first distinguished in the edition of W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1875). There is also a group of .Scholia, chiefly exegetical, a collection of which was published by Villoisou from a second Venetian MS. in his edition of 1788, and lias been again edited by W. Dindorf (Oxford, 1877). The most im portant collection of this group is contained in the Codex Tcwmleianus of the British Museum, which is still unedited, though a MS. pro bably copied from it, the Codex Victorianus at Munich, was used by Bekker for his edition of the Scholia (Berlin, 1825). The vast com mentary of Eustathius (of the 12th century) marks a third stage in the progress of ancient Homeric learning. 4 Prolegomena ad Home-rum, sive deoperum Ilomericorum pnsca et genuina forma variisque mutationibus et probabili rationc emcndandi, scripsit Frid. Aug. Woltius. Volumeu i.
 * and art. As political writers imagined a patriarchal innocence prior