Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/241

 2i8 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. either intentionally discarded by Homer or composed after his death, was clumsily enough embodied in the Iliad, under the Pisistradae, by the editors of the poem. A right understanding of the true origin of these several tales forbids us to regard seriously the work of M. Nicolaidis, entitled, Topographic et stratdgie de I'lliade, implying as it does the notion that the poet has described the phases of the strife between the besiegers and the besieged much after the fashion of a staff-officer who had been an eye-witness of the war operations which he sets forth, or had learned them from official documents, in the marching orders daily issued by the commanding officer. It is assuredly somewhat childish to tell the story of Troy as M. Nicolaidis does, precisely as an authority on military topics might write of the Allies before Sebastopol. To return. Very similar observations are suggested by look- ing narrowly at the chief personages of the drama. One and all are the mythical ancestors of the ^Eacidae, Atridae, Nelidae, Pelidae, etc., those great reigning families which provided rulers with- out ceasing for the rising townships of Asiatic Greece during the whole period of Epic poetry. In all this there is nothing which in the least resembles our notion of history ; yet several centuries separated Homer from that far-off age when bands led by adventurous Achaean chiefs had swept all over the eastern portion of the Mediterranean, founded states such as that of Mycenae, and carried the strength of their arms as far as the Delta. Tradition had kept no record of that distant period, save a few names and the vague remembrance of expeditions to far-off lands, of treasures accumulated in fastnesses and seized therefrom ; but it knew nothing of the personal character and disposition of the captains of that era. The heroes and heroines of the Iliad and Odyssey are but the reflex of the poet's own imaginings, of his ideas in regard to obstinate, reckless, or deliberate courage, the wisdom of old age and the passions of youth, of conjugal, filial, and maternal love ; all his types are derived from personal observation, be their names Ajax or Achylles, Diomedes or Odysseus, Paris, Nestor or Priam, Helen or Andromache, Penelope or Thetis. What then remains in the poem which has any right to be considered as having a foundation in reality, as presenting a more or less decided historical character ? The setting first of all.