Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/224

 208 HISTORY OF GREECE. that Homer is a teacher of ethical wisdom akin and superior to Chrysippus or Grantor. 1 No didactic purpose is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey; a philosopher may doubtless extract, from the incidents and strongly marked characters which it con- tains, much illustrative matter for his exhortations, but- the ethical doctrine which he applies must emanate from his own reflection. The homeric hero manifests virtues or infirmities, fierceness or compassion, with the same straightforward and eimple-minded vivacity, unconscious of any ideal standard by 1 Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26 : " Sirenum voces, ct Circes pocula nosti : Quae si cum sociis stultus cupidusque bibissct, Vixissct canis immundus, vel arnica luto sus." Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the companions of Ulysses, in accepting the refreshments tendered to them by Circe, with the self-com- mand of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But in the incident as described in the original poem, neither the praise nor the blame, here implied, finds any countenance. The companions of Ulysses follow the universal practice in accepting hospitality tendered to strangers, the fatal consequences of which, in their particular case, they could have no ground for suspecting ; while Ulysses is preserved from a similar fate, not by any self-command of his own, but by a previous divine warning and a special antidote, which had not been vouchsafed to the rest (see Odyss. x. 285). And the incident of the Sirens, if it is to be taken as evidence of anything, indicates rather the absence, than the presence, of self-command on the part of Ulysses. Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the Grammatici or critics tried to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we must remember that many of these men were lecturers to youth), a remarkable specimen is afforded by Venet. Schol. ad Iliad, ix. 453 ; compare Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, p. 95. Phoenix describes the calamitous family tragedy in which he himself had been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that an Homeric hero should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty designs, without any expression of shame or contrition, was insupportable to the feelings of the critics. One of them, Aristodemus, thrust two negative particles into one of the lines ; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense but the metre, his emendation procured for him universal applause, because he had main- tained the innocence of the hero (KOI oi> idvov rjiidoKifirjaev, u/lAu Kal e-ifj.q&ij, tl>f evacfiTj TripT/aaf rbv r/pua). And Aristarchus thought the case so alarm- ing, that he struck out from the text four lines, which have only been pre- served to us by Plutarch ('O fiev 'Aptarap^oc IfetAe T& EITTJ ravra, yopr]* tfetf). See the Fragment of Dioscorides (vepl T&V Trap 1 'Opqpv No/zwvj in Didot'a Fragmenta Historicor. Graecor. rol. ii. p. 193.