Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/222

 206 HISTORY OF GREECE. not have lived so 1 ag in the mouth of the rhapsodej, and the ear and memory of tlie people : and it was then that their influ- ence was first acquired, never afterwards to be shaken. Their beauties belong to the parts taken separately, which revealed themselves spontaneously to the listening crowd at the festival, far more than to the whole poem taken together, which could hardly be appreciated unless the parts were dwelt upon and suf- fered to expand in the mind. The most unlettered hearer of those times could readily seize, while the most instructed reader can still recognize, the characteristic excellence of Homeric nar- rative, its straightforward, unconscious, unstudied simplicity, its concrete forms of speech 1 and happy alternation of action 1 The Kivovpeva ovo/tara of Homer were extolled by Aristotle ; see Schol. ad Iliad, i. 481 ; compare Dionys. Halicarn. De Compos. Vcrbor. c. 20. wore firjtiev rjjuv dtaQspeiv yivftptva ra 7Tpay//nra ?} Aeyopeva opav. Respect- ing the undisguised bursts of feeling by the heroes, the Scholiast ad Iliad, i. 349 tells us, eroiftov rd rjpuiKov Kpbf 6aicpvi, compare Enripid. Helen. 959, and the severe censures of Plato, Republ. ii. p. 388. The Homeric poems were the best understood, and the most widely popular of all Grecian composition, even among the least instructed per- sons, such (for example) as the semibarbarians who had acquired the Greek language in addition to their own mother tongue. (Dio Chrysost. Or. xviii. vol. i. p. 478; Or. liii. vol. ii. p. 277, Reisk.) Respecting the simplicity and perspicuity of the narrative style, implied in this extensive popularity, Por- phyry made a singular remark : he said, that the sentences of Homer really presented much difficulty and obscurity, but that ordinary readers fancied they understood him, " because of the general clearness which appeared to run through -the poems." (See the Prolegomena of Villoison's edition of the Iliad, p. xli.) This remark affords the key to a good deal of the Homeric criticism. There doubtless were real obscurities in the poems, arising from altered associations, customs, religion, language, etc., as well as from cor- rupt text ; but while the critics did good service in elucidating these diffi- culties, they also introduced artificially many others, altogether of their own creating. Refusing to be satisfied with the plain and obvious meaning, they sought in Homer hidden purposes, elaborate innuendo, recondite motives even with regard to petty details, deep-laid rhetorical artifices (see a speci- men in Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor, c. 15, p. 316, Reiske; nor is even Aristotle exempt from similar tendencies, Schol. ad Iliad, iii. 441, x. 198), or a sub- stratum of philosophy allegorized. No wonder that passages, quite perspic- uous to the vulgar reader, seemed difficult to them. There could not be so sure a way of missing the real Homer as by search- ing for him in these devious recesses. He is essentially the poet of th