Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/219

 A'JL OF ILIAD AMU ODYSSLf. 208 I feel less convinced about the supposed juniority of the Odyssey. The discrepancies in manners and language in the one and the other, are so little important, that two different persons, in the same age and society, might well be imagined to exhibit as great or even greater. It is to be recollected that the subjects of the two are heterogeneous, so as to conduct the poet, even were he the same man, into totally different veins of imagination and illustration. The pictures of the Odyssey seem to delineate the eame heroic life as the Iliad, though looked at from a distinct point of view : and the circumstances surrounding the residence of Odysseus, in Ithaka, are just such as we may suppose him to have left in order to attack Troy. If the scenes presented to us are for the most part pacific, as contrasted with the incessant fighting of the Iliad, this is not to be ascribed to any greater sociality or civilization in the real hearers of the Odyssey, but to the circumstances of the hero whom the poet undertakes to adorn : nor can we doubt that the poems of Arktinus and Lesches, of a later date than the Odyssey, would have given us as much combat and bloodshed as the Iliad. I am not struck by those proofs of improved civilization which some critics affirm the Odyssey to present : Mr. Knight, who is of this opinion, never- theless admits that the mutilation of Melanthius, and the hanging up of the female slaves by Odysseus, in that poem, indicate greater barbarity than any incidents in the fights before Troy. 1 The more skilful and compact structure of the Odyssey, has been often considered as a proof of its juniority in age : and in the case of two poems by the same author, we might plausibly contend that practice would bring with it improvement in the combining faculty. But in reference to the poems before us, we must rec- ollect, first, that in all probability the Iliad (with which the comparison is taken) is not a primitive but an enlarged poem, and that the primitive Achilleis might well have been quite as coherent as the Odyssey ; secondly, that between different authors, superiority in structure is not a proof of subsequent composition, inasmuch as, on that hypothesis, we should be com- pelled to admit that the later poem of Arktinus would be an improvement upon the Odyssey ; thirdly, that, even if it were so, 1 Knight, Prolegg. 1, c. Odyss. xxii. 465-478.