Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/68

46 46 HISTORY OF THE in Peloponnesus and in Asia Minor*: in describing Nestor's sacrifice to Poseidon, moreover, the poet doubtless was mindful of those which his successors, the Nelids, were wont to solemnize, as kings of the Ionians. Among the heroes, Ajax, the son of Telamon, is not repre- sented by Homer, as he was by the Dorians of iEgina and most of the Greeks, as being an iEacid and the kinsman of Achilles (otherwise some mention of this relationship must have occurred), but he is considered merely as a hero of Salamis, and is placed in conjunction with Menes- theus the Athenian : hence it must be supposed that he, as well as the Attic logographer Pherecydes t, considered Ajax as being by origin an Attic Salaminian hero. The detailed statement of- the Hellenic descent of the Lycian hero Glaucus in his famous encounter with Diomed, gains a fresh interest, when we bear in mind the Ionic kings of the race of Glaucus mentioned above J. Moreover, with respect to political insti- tutions and political phraseology, there are many symptoms of Ionian usage in Homer: thus the Pkratrias, mentioned in the Iliad, occur else- where only in Ionic states ; the Thetes, as labourers for hire, without land, are the same in Homer as in Solon's time at Athens ; Demon, also, in the sense both of "flat country" and of "common people," appears to be an Ionic expression. A Spartan remarks in Plato §, that Homer represents an Ionic more than a Lacedaemonian mode of life ; and, in truth, many customs and usages may be mentioned, which were spread among the Greeks by the Dorians, and of which no trace appears in Homer. Lastly, besides the proper localities of the two poems, the local knowledge of the poet appears peculiarly accurate and distinct in northern Ionia and the neighbouring Mssonia, where the Asian mea- dow and the river Cayster with its swans, the Gyga?an lake, and Mount Tmolus||, where Sipylon with its Achelous ^[, appear to be known to him, as it were, from youthful recollections. If one may venture, in this dawn of tradition, to follow the faint light of these memorials, and to bring their probable result into connexion with the history of Smyrna, the following may be considered as the sum of the above inquiries. Homer was an Ionian belonging to one of the families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a time when iEolians and A chseans composed the chief part of the population of the city, and when, moreover, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedition of the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest interest ; whence he recon- ciles in his poetical capacity the conflict of the contending races, inas- f Apollod. iii. 12, 6. J Above, p. 31, note §. No use has here been made of the suspicious passages, which might have been interpolated in the age of Pisistratus. Concerning Homer's Attic tendency in mythical points, see also Pseudo-Herod, c. 28. § Leg. iii. p. 680. || Iliad, ii. 8G3 ; xx. 392. ^[ Iliad, xxiv. 615. It is evident from the Scholia that the Homeric Achelous is the brook Achelous which runs from Sipylon to Smyrna,
 * Iliad, viii. 203 ; xx.404 ; with the Scholia. Epigr. Hom.vi. in Pseudo-Herod. 17.