Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/62

40 40 HISTORY OV THE must have been composed upon Cronus and Japetus, the expelled deities languishing in Tartarus*. In the heroic age, however, every thing great and distinguished must have been celebrated in song, since, according to Homer's notions, glo- rious actions or destinies naturally became the subjects of poetry f- Penelope by her virtues, and Clytsemnestra by her crimes, became respec- tively a tender and a dismal strain for posterity ; the enduring opinion of mankind being identical with the poetry. The existence of epic poems descriptive of the deeds of Hercules, is in particular established by the peculiarity of the circumstances mentioned in Homer with respect to this hero, which seem to have been taken singly from some full and detailed account of his adventures § ; nor would the ship Argo have been distinguished in the Odyssey by the epithet of " interesting to all," had it not been generally well known through the medium of poetry ||. Many events, moreover, of the Trojan war were known to Homer as the subjects of epic poems, especially those which occurred at a late period of the siege, as the contest between Achilles and Ulysses, evidently a real poem, which was not perhaps without influence upon the Iliad % and the poem of the Wooden Horse **. Poems are also men- tioned concerning the return of the Achseans ft, and the revenge of Orestes j. And since the newest song, even at that time, always pleased the audience most§§, we must picture to ourselves a flowing stream of various strains, and a revival of the olden time in song, such as never occurred at any other period. All the Homeric allusions, however, leave the impression that these songs, originally intended to enliven a few hours of a prince's banquet, were confined to the narration of a single event of small compass, or (to borrow an expression from the German epopees) to a single adventure, for the connexion of which they entirely relied upon the general notoriety of the story and on other existing poems. Such was the state of poetry in Greece when the genius of Homer arose. that he reckoned the deities of the water, as Oceanus and Tethys, and those of the light, as Hyperion and Theia, among the Titans, as Hesiod does. t See Iliad, vi.358; Od. iii. 204. J Od. xxiv. 197, 200. § See Midler's Dorians, Append, v. § 14, vol. i. p. 543. ^[ The words are very remarkable : — M«:V ao aoib'ov air,xiv cciti'ifilvai xXicc avogaiv, c'iuv., rn; tot apa. y.Xio; oioanov il^vv ucecvw, Yitxo; 'O1v<rcrr t o; x.a TJnXii^ia'A^iXr,i}S. — Od, Villi 73, Set}.
 * That is to say, it does not, from the intimations given in Homer, seem probable
 * Od. xn. 70 : ' ' Af^yu ■xuffift.iXtivira.
 * Od. viii. 492. ft Od. i. 326. ++ Od. iii. 204. §§ Od. i. 351