Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/84

62 G2 HISTORY OF THE himself, of Nestor and Menelaiis, stands in the closest affinity with the Iliad ; that it always presupposes the existence of the earlier poem, and silently refers to it; which also serves to explain the remarkable fact, that the Odyssey mentions many occurrences in the life of Ulysses, which lie out of the compass of the action, but not one which is celebrated in the Iliad*. If the completion of the Iliad and the Odyssey seems too vast a work for the lifetime of one man, we may, perhaps, have recourse to the supposition, that Homer, after having sung the iliad in the vigour of his youthful years, in his old age communicated to some devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey, which had long been working in his mind, and left it to him for completion. § 14. It is certain that we are perpetually met with difficulties in en- deavouring to form a notion of the manner in which these great epic poems were composed, at a time anterior to the use of writing. But these difficulties arise much more from our ignorance of the period, and our incapability of conceiving a creation of the mind without those appli- ances of which the use has become to us a second nature, than in the general laws of the human intellect. Who can determine how many thousand verses a person, thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and con- fide to the faithful memory of disciples, devoted to their master and his art ? Wherever a creative genius has appeared it has met with persons of congenial taste, and has found assistants, by whose means it has completed astonishing works in a comparatively short time. Thus the old bard may have been followed by a number of younger minstrels, to whom it was both a pleasure and a duty to collect and diffuse the honey which flowed from his lips. But it is, at least, certain, that it would be unintelligible how these great epics were composed, unless there had been occasions, on which they actually appeared in their integrity, and could charm an attentive hearer with the full force and effect of a com- plete poem. Without a connected and continuous recitation they were not finished works ; they were mere disjointed fragments, which might by possibility form a whole. But where were there meals or festivals long enough for such recitations? What attention, it has been asked, could be sufficiently sustained, in order to follow so many thousand verses? If, however, the Athenians could at one festival hear in suc- cession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies, the expedition against Troy in Delos, Od. vi. 162 ; in Lesbos, iv. 341 ; in a contest with Achilles, viii. 75; near the corpse and at the burial of Achilles, v. 308; xxiv. 39; contending for the arms of Achilles, xi. 544; contending with Philoctetts in shooting with the how, viii. 219; secretly in Troy, iv. 242 ; in the Trojan horse, iv. 270 (comp. viii. 492; xi. 522); at the beginning of the return, iii. 130; and, lastly, going to the men who know not the use of salt, xi. 120. But nothing is said of Ulysses' acts in the Iliad: his punishment of Thersites; the horses of Rhesus; the battle over the body of Patroclus, &c. In like manner the Odyssey intentionally records different exploits and adventures of Agamemnon, Achilles, Menelaus, and Nestor, from those celebrated in the Iliad.
 * We find Ulysses, in his youth, with Autolycus (Otl. xix. 394 ; xxiv. 331 ) during