Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

The question then arises, what was the form of the Shields treated of by Homer? And it is one not easy to answer. Homer compares the light of this very Shield of Achilles in a subsequent passage to that of the moon[635 - Il. xix. 374.]: but he does not say the full moon, and the moon in certain stages might suggest the oval, although when full it would require the circular shape. The epithets which he uses do not solve the question: for some of them appear to agree better with the one supposition, and some with the other. The ἄσπις ἀμφιβρότη, for instance, in Il. xi. 32, suggests a shape adapted in a great degree to that of the human form. The ποδηνεκὴς of Il. xv. 646 appears absolutely to require it. No circular shield, which reached down to the feet, could have been carried on the arm. But, on the other hand, Homer calls the shield εὔκυκλος[636 - Il. v. 433.] and παντόσε ἴση, which certainly at first sight favour the idea of a circular form. Shall we then suppose that both forms prevailed? And if so, which of the two shall we assign to the Shield of Achilles?

It appears that in the military system of historic Greece the round shield chiefly prevailed; but for the time of Homer I cannot help leaning to the supposition that the Shield was oval. For I do not know any explicit testimony, with respect to its primitive form, that can weigh against the lines of Tyrtæus[637 - Tyrt. ii. 24. Also Anthol. Græc.];

μήρους τε, κνήμας τε κάτω, καὶ στέρνα, καὶ ὤμους
ἀσπίδος εὐρείης γαστρὶ καλυψάμενος.

Another strong testimony to the same effect is borne by the ancient custom of bearing the dead warrior upon his shield, whence came the old formula of the Spartan mothers, ἢ τὰν, ἢ ἐπὶ τάν; Bring it, or be brought upon it[638 - Plut. Lacon. Instit. (Opp. vi. 898.) ed. Reiske; Potter’s Greek. Antiq. B. iii. ch. iv.].

With respect to the Homeric epithets, it is impossible to reconcile those which favour the oblong form with the rival sense: but the παντόσε ἴση might apply to any regular figure, and the εὔκυκλος is hardly strained if we understand it of an oval pretty regularly formed.

To a certain extent, the natural form of the hides of animals affords an indication; they were worn as cloaks coming down to the heels, and they would properly cut into the oblong form[639 - Il. x. 24, 178.]. Again, in the expression σάκος σακέϊ προθελύμνῳ[640 - Il. xiii. 130. ix. 537. x. 15.], I understand the epithet to mean that the shields were rested on the ground in front of the bearers of them. The meaning common to it, in the three places where Homer uses it, seems to be ‘from the ground,’ or ‘from the base.’

It would not be satisfactory to assume that the two forms prevailed, but that they had, though different, been confounded by Homer; and on the whole we shall perhaps do best to consider the σάκος as an oval.

It follows that such was, in Homer’s estimation, the form of the world. And this interpretation agrees with the other Homeric indications on the subject.

We must, I think, take Homer to have supposed something like an equal extension of the earth northward and southward from Greece. But, whether we judge from the Tours of the Odyssey or from the general indications of the poems, we have, I think, no sign of an extension correspondingly great either eastward or westward. The flights of migratory birds, and the prevailing winds, are both evidently from the poles or from the quarters near them. The only great positive developments of distance in the Odyssey are those towards Læstrygonia and Ogygia, both of which lie in the north; the latter, as an ὄμφαλος, with a sea stretching far beyond it. All appearances, too, go to show that the Eastern Ocean was in Homer’s view at no great distance; and I apprehend we should consider the Western one as being on his map about equally remote from Greece. Now the oval figure will give us what we thus appear to want, namely a shorter diameter of the earth from east to west, than the diameter from north to south. Some other particulars of evidence will appear as we proceed.

Points of contact with Oceanus.

In conformity with his declaration, that the Ocean-River surrounds the earth, he as it were realizes his belief in it, by giving us instances of actual contact with it at very many points of the compass. Thus the Pigmies in the South are visited by the cranes, on their way to the Ocean in the South[641 - Il. iii. 5.]. The gods feast with the Ethiopians by the Ocean, and this must be in the S. E., as Neptune takes the Solyman mountains (which are in immediate association with Lycia, a point of the inner world) on his way back to the Thalassa[642 - Il. xxiii. 205. i. 423. Od. v. 282, 3.]. Ulysses visits Ocean, as we have seen, in the East. The Great Bear escapes dipping into its waters in the North[643 - Od. v. 275. Il. xviii. 489.]. Menelaus is destined to the Elysian plain beside the Ocean, at the point from which Zephyr blows, therefore between West and North[644 - Od. iv. 561-9.].

The Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf.

This noble conception of a great circumfluent River was doubtless founded upon reports of two classes which had reached Homer. One class would be reports of streams flowing from some great outer water into the Thalassa, and seeming to feed it. The other class might be formed by reports of waters outside the Thalassa, and not known to communicate with it, which Homer would at once very naturally reckon as portions of his great world-embracing Stream. With the former class we have already dealt largely in discussing the Ocean-mouth. To the latter one, Phœnician sailors might contribute reports of the Atlantic and German Oceans. And particularly in the east, I think, we cannot doubt that, along with the rumours and traditions of Arabians, Ethiopians, Persians, and Cimmerians, Homer cannot but have received other vague rumours of waters as well as lands; of waters exterior to his Thalassa (which included the Mediterranean and the Euxine), waters of which two would clearly be the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. On these two I wish to fix attention; and indeed the only other water he was likely to have heard of would probably be the Red Sea. Now it will be observed upon any map, 1. that the Caspian lies north and south; 2. that a line prolonged from N. to S. down the Caspian will strike the Persian Gulf. In conjunction with this, let the reader observe the course of Ulysses. Quitting the Euxine at the Ocean-mouth, or Straits of Yenikalè, he turns round to the right by the Sea of Azof, enlarged so as to join the Caspian. In the interval between them there is still a low salt valley, which may in Homer’s time have been a water-way[645 - Voyages de Pallas, vol. i. p. 320, Paris 1805.]. He is thus in a condition to proceed southward towards the dwelling of Persephone, which I have already shown some cause for placing in the east and to the south. Now the provision of wind, which Homer has made for his hero, is precisely that which this hypothesis requires[646 - Od. x. 507.]:

τὴν δέ κέ τοι πνοιὴ Βορέαο φέρῃσιν.

In other words, from Homer’s use of Boreas in this place it appears that he meant to describe the course of his Ocean-stream at this quarter as from south to north, or thereabouts; and this is the line actually formed by the junction of the Persian gulf and the Caspian, which I submit that we may accordingly with propriety consider as genuine fragments of geography, incorporated into his fabulous conception of the Ocean-stream.

It is indeed true that the vague accounts, which had probably reached Homer of these two waters, must be supposed not to have included the indispensable element of a current. The same remark, however, will apply to whatever he may have heard of the German or Atlantic Oceans. But in dealing with these shadowy distances, his inference would be amply warranted, without the means of complete identification, if he had heard of any waters in positions agreeing with that of his ideal Ocean, capable of communicating easily with its mouth, and, above all, independent of the Thalassa.

One word before we finally quit the subject of the enchanted River; in order to complete the chain of connection between the Persephone of Homer and the waters of the Persian gulf, in the character of a part of Ocean, at that point upon the beach, which so well balances the Elysian plain in the west.

I have already endeavoured to make use of the names Perseus, Perse, and Persephone, as evidences which attach the Persians to the eastern extremity of Homer’s ideal world, and which connect the Greek race with a Persian origin. But here we have a geographical trait, which deserves further consideration. The groves of Persephone are on the shore of Ocean, in the east, and to the south of the sunrise. What is the meaning of these groves? We are compelled, by unvarying analogies of signification, to understand them as both the symbols and the sites of a certain organized worship, which was paid to Persephone. But if paid, then paid by whom? Certainly not by the nations of the dead: for the place, where these groves were, was not within the kingdom of the goddess, but it was on the shore of Ocean. Ulysses, too, was to haul up his ship there, and only then to enter into the abode of king Aidoneus. It therefore seems to follow, that the Poet meant us to understand this as a place where Persephone was habitually worshipped by a portion of the human race, which could only be his Persians or his Ethiopians. I do not say that the two were sharply severed in his mind; but here the race to which he chiefly points appears to be the Persian race[647 - Od. x. 508-12.].

There are even etymological signs, independent of Homer, which deepen the association between the East and the Under-world. Some writers have compared the name Cimmeria with the Arabic word kahm, black, and ra, the mark of the oblique case in Persian: Mæotis with the Hebrew Maweth, meaning death: and have treated the ancient Tartarus as equivalent to the modern Tartary, and as formed by the reduplication of Tar, in Tarik, the Persic word for darkness[648 - Welsford on Engl. Language, pp. 75, 76, 88. Bleek’s Persian Vocabulary, (Grammar, p. 170.)].

Contraction of the Homeric East.

Next let me wind up what relates to the contraction and compression of the Homeric East.

Homer’s experience did not supply him with any example of a great expanse of land: but the detail and configuration of the countries, with which he was acquainted, was minute. This probably was the reason why he so readily assumed the existence of that sea to the northward of Thrace, in which he has placed the adventures of Ulysses. To that sea, as we perceive from the terms of days which he has assigned to the passages of Ulysses, he attached his ideas and his epithets for vastness; epithets, which he never bestowed on regions of land; and ideas, which were sure, indeed, to form a prominent feature in the Phœnician reports, that must have supplied him with material. Acting on the same principle, it would appear that he greatly shortens the range of Asia Minor eastwards. Through the medium of the Solymi (Il. vi. 184, 204) he appears to bring the Solyman mountains close upon Lycia. A chain now bearing that name skirts the right bank of the Indus: but it is probable that Homer identified, or rather confounded, them with the great chain of the Caucasus between the Euxine and the Caspian, and with the Taurus joining it, and bordering upon Lycia: for, on the one hand, we cannot but connect them with the Solymi, the warlike neighbours of the Lycians: and on the other, since Neptune, from these mountains, sees Ulysses making his homeward voyage from Ogygia, it follows that they must have been conceived by Homer to command a clear view of the Euxine, and of its westward extension. Thus he at once brings Egypt nearer to Crete (helping us to explain the Boreas of Od. xiv. 253), and Phœnicia nearer to Lycia: and it is in all likelihood immediately behind Phœnicia that he imagined to lie the country of the Persians and the ἄλσεα Περσεφονείης (Od. x. 507), on the shore of that eastern portion of Oceanus, for which the reports both of the Caspian and of the Red Sea, probably, as we have seen, have formed parts of his materials. Thus we find much and varied evidence converging to support the hypothesis, that Homer greatly compressed his East, and brought Persia within moderate distance of the Mediterranean.

In the obscure perspectives of Grecian legend, we seem to find various points of contact between Egypt, Phœnicia, and Persia; and each of these points of contact favours the idea that Persia and Phœnicia were closely associated in Homer’s mind.

Proteus, a Phœnician sea-god, is placed only at a short distance from the Egyptian coast. Helios, strongly associated with Egypt through his oxen, is associated with Phœnicia and with the remoter east by his relationship to Circe, and by his residence, the ἀντολαὶ Ἠελίοιο. And again, from the family of Danaus, a reputed Egyptian, descends Perseus, in whose name we find a note of relationship between the Persians and the Greeks. Lycia, too, is near the Solymi, and the Solyman hills are really Persian. Here is a new ray of light cast on Homer’s passion for the Lycians of the War[649 - See Achæis, sect. iii.].

A few words more will suffice to complete a probable view of the terrestrial system of Homer.

The Ocean surrounds the earth. On its south-eastern beach are the groves of Persephone, and the descent to the Shades: on its north-western, the Elysian plain. The whole southern range between is occupied by the Αἰθίοπες, who stretch from the rising to the setting sun[650 - Od. i. 24.]. The natural counterpart in the cold north to their sun-burnt swarthy faces is to be found in the Cimmerians, Homer’s Children of the Mist[651 - Od. xi. 15.]. Accordingly, they are placed by the Ocean mouth, hard by the island of Circe and the Dawn; nearly in contact, therefore, with the Ethiopians of the extreme east. Two hypotheses seem to be suggested by Homer’s treatment of the north. Perhaps Homer imagined that the Cimmerians occupied the northern portion of the earth from east to west, as the Ethiopians occupied the southern: a very appropriate conjecture for the disposal of the country from the Crimea to the Cwmri. On the other hand, it seems plain that Homer must have received from his Phœnician informants two reports, both ascribed to the North, yet apparently contradictory: the one of countries without day, the other of countries without night. The true solution, could he have known it, was by time; each being true of the same place, but at different seasons of the year. Not aware of the facts, Homer has adopted another method. While preserving the northern locality for both traditions, he has planted the one in the north-west, at the craggy city of Lamus; and the other in the north-east, together with his Cimmerians.

Outline of his terrestrial system.

On the foundation of the conclusions and inferences at which we have thus arrived, I have endeavoured to construct a map of the Homeric World. The materials of this map are of necessity very different. First, there is the inner or Greek world of geography proper, of which the surface is coloured in red.

Next, there are certain forms of sea and land, genuine, but wholly or partially misplaced, which may be recognised by their general likeness to their originals in Nature.

Thirdly, there is the great mass of fabulous and imaginative skiagraphy, which, for the sake of distinction, is drawn in smooth instead of indented outline.

The Map represents, without any very important variation, the Homeric World drawn according to the foregoing argument. To facilitate verification, or the detection of error, I have made it carry, as far as possible, its own evidences, in the inscriptions and references upon it.

EXCURSUS I.

ON THE PARENTAGE AND EXTRACTION OF MINOS

In former portions of this work, I have argued from the name and the Phœnician extraction of Minos, both to illustrate the dependent position of the Pelasgian race in the Greek countries[652 - Achæis or Ethnology, sect. iii.], and also to demonstrate the Phœnician origin of the Outer Geography of the Odyssey[653 - Ibid. sect. iv.]. But I have too summarily disposed of the important question, whether Minos was of Phœnician origin, and of the construction of the verse Il. xiv. 321. This verse is capable grammatically of being so construed as to contain an assertion of it; but upon further consideration I am not prepared to maintain that it ought to be so interpreted.

Genuineness of Il. xiv. 317-27.

The Alexandrian critics summarily condemned the whole passage (Il. xiv. 317-27), in which Jupiter details to Juno his various affairs with goddesses and women. ‘This enumeration,’ says the Scholiast (A) on verse 327, ‘is inopportune, for it rather repels Juno than attracts her: and Jupiter, when greedy, through the influence of the Cestus, for the satisfaction of his passion, makes a long harangue.’ Heyne follows up the censure with a yet more sweeping condemnation. Sanè absurdiora, quam hos decem versus, vix unquam ullus commentus est rhapsodus[654 - Obss. in loc.]. And yet he adds a consideration, which might have served to arrest judgment until after further hearing. For he says, that the commentators upon them ought to have taken notice that the description belongs to a period, when the relations of man and wife were not such, as to prevent the open introduction and parading of concubines; and that Juno might be flattered and allured by a declaration, proceeding from Jupiter, of the superiority of her charms to those of so many beautiful persons.

Heyne’s reason appears to me so good, as even to outweigh his authority: but there are other grounds also, on which I decline to bow to the proposed excision. The objections taken seem to me invalid on the following grounds;

1. For the reason stated by Heyne.

2. Because, in the whole character of the Homeric Juno, and in the whole of this proceeding, it is the political spirit, and not the animal tendency, that predominates. Of this Homer has given us distinct warning, where he tells us that Juno just before had looked on Jupiter from afar, and that he was disgusting to her; (v. 158) στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ. It is therefore futile to argue about her, as if she had been under the paramount sway either of animal desire, or even of the feminine love of admiration, when she was really and exclusively governed by another master-passion.

3. As she has artfully persuaded Jupiter, that he has an obstacle to overcome in diverting her from her intention of travelling to a distance, it is not at all unnatural that Jupiter should use what he thinks, and what, as Heyne has shown, he may justly think, to be proper and special means of persuasion.

4. The passage is carefully and skilfully composed; and it ends with a climax, so as to give the greatest force to the compliment of which it is susceptible.

5. All the representations in it harmonize with the manner of handling the same personages elsewhere in Homer.

6. The passage has that strong vein of nationality, which is so eminently characteristic of Homer. No intrigues are mentioned, except such as issued in the birth of children of recognised Hellenic fame. The gross animalism of Jupiter, displayed in the Speech, is in the strictest keeping with the entire context; for it is the basis of the transaction, and gives Juno the opportunity she so adroitly turns to account.

7. Those, who reject the passage as spurious, because the action ought not at this point to be loaded with a speech, do not, I think, bear in mind that a deviation of this kind from the strict poetical order is really in keeping with Homer’s practice on other occasions, particularly in the disquisitions of Nestor and of Phœnix. Such a deviation appears to be accounted for by his historic aims. To comprehend him in a case of this kind, we must set out from his point of departure, according to which, verse was not a mere exercise for pleasure, but was to be the one great vehicle of all knowledge: and a potent instrument in constructing a nationality. Thus, then, what the first aim rejected, the second might in given cases accept and even require. Now in this short passage there is a great deal of important historical information conveyed to us.

We may therefore with considerable confidence employ such evidence as the speech may be found to afford.

Let us, then, observe the forms of expression as they run in series,

οὐδ’ ὁπότ’ ἠρασάμην Ἰξιονίης ἀλόχοιο[655 - Ver. 317.].
οὐδ’ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης[656 - Ver. 319.].
οὐδ’ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλείτοιο[657 - Ver. 321.].

Sense of Il. xiv. 321.

Taken grammatically, I presume the last verse may mean, (1) The daughter of the distinguished Phœnix: or (2) The daughter of a distinguished Phœnician: or (3) A distinguished Phœnician damsel.