Myths and Myth-makers - Chapter 6


   
                                   -174-
 
                                    VI.
                              JUVENTUS MUNDI.1
 
      TWELVE years ago, when, in concluding his "Studies on Homer and the
   Homeric Age," Mr. Gladstone applied to himself the warning addressed
   by Agamemnon to the priest of Apollo, "Let not Nemesis catch me by the
   swift ships," he would seem to have intended it as a last farewell to
   classical studies. Yet, whatever his intentions may have been, they
   have yielded to the sweet desire of revisiting familiar ground, -- a
   desire as strong in the breast of the classical scholar as was the
   yearning which led Odysseus to reject the proffered gift of immortality,
   so that he might but once more behold the wreathed smoke curling about
   the roofs of his native Ithaka. In this new treatise, on the "Youth of
   the World," Mr. Gladstone discusses the same questions which were
   treated in his earlier work; and the main conclusions reached in the
   "Studies on Homer" are here so little modified with reference to the
   recent progress of archæological inquiries, that the book can hardly
   be said to have had any other reason for appearing, save the desire of
   loitering by the ships of the Argives, and of returning thither as
   often as possible.
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      The title selected by Mr. Gladstone for his new work is either a
   very appropriate one or a strange misnomer, according to the point of
   view from which it is regarded. Such being the case, we might readily
   acquiesce in its use, and pass it by without comment, trusting that
   the author understood himself when he adopted it, were it not that by
   incidental references, and especially by his allusions to the
   legendary literature of the Jews, Mr. Gladstone shows that he means
   more by the title than it can fairly be made to express. An author who
   seeks to determine prehistoric events by references to Kadmos, and
   Danaos, and Abraham, is at once liable to the suspicion of holding
   very inadequate views as to the character of the epoch which may
   properly be termed the "youth of the world." Often in reading Mr.
   Gladstone we are reminded of Renan's strange suggestion that an
   exploration of the Hindu Kush territory, whence probably came the
   primitive Aryans, might throw some new light on the origin of
   language. Nothing could well be more futile. The primitive Aryan
   language has already been partly reconstructed for us; its grammatical
   forms and syntactic devices are becoming familiar to scholars; one
   great philologist has even composed a tale in it; yet in studying this
   long-buried dialect we are not much nearer the first beginnings of
   human speech than in studying the Greek of Homer, the Sanskrit of the
   Vedas, or the Umbrian of the Igovine Inscriptions. The Aryan
   mother-tongue had passed into the last of the three stages of
   linguistic growth long before the break-up of the tribal communities
   in Aryana-vaëdjo, and at that early date presented a less primitive
   structure than is to be seen in the Chinese or the Mongolian of our
   own times. So the state of society depicted in the Homeric poems, and
   well illustrated by Mr. Gladstone, is many degrees
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                                   -176-
 
   less primitive than that which is revealed to us by the archæological
   researches either of Pictet and Windischmann, or of Tylor, Lubbock,
   and M'Lennan. We shall gather evidences of this as we proceed.
   Meanwhile let us remember that at least eleven thousand years before
   the Homeric age men lived in communities, and manufactured pottery on
   the banks of the Nile; and let us not leave wholly out of sight that
   more distant period, perhaps a million years ago, when sparse tribes
   of savage men, contemporaneous with the mammoths of Siberia and the
   cave-tigers of Britain, struggled against the intense cold of the
   glacial winters.
   
      Nevertheless, though the Homeric age appears to be a late one when
   considered with reference to the whole career of the human race, there
   is a point of view from which it may be justly regarded as the "youth
   of the world." However long man may have existed upon the earth, he
   becomes thoroughly and distinctly human in the eyes of the historian
   only at the epoch at which he began to create for himself a literature.
   As far back as we can trace the progress of the human race continuously
   by means of the written word, so far do we feel a true historical
   interest in its fortunes, and pursue our studies with a sympathy which
   the mere lapse of time is powerless to impair. But the primeval man,
   whose history never has been and never will be written, whose career on
   the earth, dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by
   palæontology, excites in us a very different feeling. Though with the
   keenest interest we ransack every nook and corner of the earth's surface
   for information about him, we are all the while aware that what we are
   studying is human zoölogy and not history. Our Neanderthal man is a
   specimen, not a character. We cannot ask him the Homeric question, what
   is his name,
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                                   -177-
 
   who were his parents, and how did he get where we found him. His
   language has died with him, and he can render no account of himself.
   We can only regard him specifically as Homo Anthropos, a creature of
   bigger brain than his congener Homo Pithekos, and of vastly greater
   promise. But this, we say, is physical science, and not history.
   
      For the historian, therefore, who studies man in his various social
   relations, the youth of the world is the period at which literature
   begins. We regard the history of the western world as beginning about
   the tenth century before the Christian era, because at that date we
   find literature, in Greece and Palestine, beginning to throw direct
   light upon the social and intellectual condition of a portion of
   mankind. That great empires, rich in historical interest and in
   materials for sociological generalizations, had existed for centuries
   before that date, in Egypt and Assyria, we do not doubt, since they
   appear at the dawn of history with all the marks of great antiquity;
   but the only steady historical light thrown upon them shines from the
   pages of Greek and Hebrew authors, and these know them only in their
   latest period. For information concerning their early careers we must
   look, not to history, but to linguistic archæology, a science which
   can help us to general results, but cannot enable us to fix dates,
   save in the crudest manner.
   
      We mention the tenth century before Christ as the earliest period
   at which we can begin to study human society in general and Greek
   society in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly
   speaking, the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with
   accuracy. The earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of
   the Olympiad of Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the
   Homeric poems were written
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                                   -178-
 
   before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly prehistoric.
   Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who have not
   attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might
   have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must be
   learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of
   critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from
   reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence." We do not
   know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all
   probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question
   are not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will ever be
   discovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in an
   obscurity as deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between
   the seven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the
   poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. The
   feebleness of the evidence brought into court may be judged from the
   fact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's blindness
   rest alike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which
   Thukydides (III. 104) accepted as authentic. The majority of modern
   critics have consoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as
   between the two great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at
   least belonged to the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good
   reasons for doubting this opinion. He has pointed out several
   instances in which the poems seem to betray a closer topographical
   acquaintance with European than with Asiatic Greece, and concludes
   that Athens and Argos have at least as good a claim to Homer as Chios
   or Smyrna.
   
      It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion
   as to the date of the Homeric poems, than
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                                   -179-
 
   that we should seek to determine the exact locality in which they
   originated. Yet the one question is hardly less obscure than the
   other. Different writers of antiquity assigned eight different epochs
   to Homer, of which the earliest is separated from the most recent by
   an interval of four hundred and sixty years, -- a period as long as
   that which separates the Black Prince from the Duke of Wellington, or
   the age of Perikles from the Christian era. While Theopompos quite
   preposterously brings him down as late as the twenty-third Olympiad,
   Krates removes him to the twelfth century B. C. The date ordinarily
   accepted by modern critics is the one assigned by Herodotos, 880 B. C.
   Yet Mr. Gladstone shows reasons, which appear to me convincing, for
   doubting or rejecting this date.
   
      I refer to the much-abused legend of the Children of Herakles,
   which seems capable of yielding an item of trustworthy testimony,
   provided it be circumspectly dealt with. I differ from Mr. Gladstone
   in not regarding the legend as historical in its present shape. In my
   apprehension, Hyllos and Oxylos, as historical personages, have no
   value whatever; and I faithfully follow Mr. Grote, in refusing to
   accept any date earlier than the Olympiad of Koroibos. The tale of the
   "Return of the Herakleids" is undoubtedly as unworthy of credit as the
   legend of Hengst and Horsa; yet, like the latter, it doubtless
   embodies a historical occurrence. One cannot approve, as scholarlike
   or philosophical, the scepticism of Mr. Cox, who can see in the whole
   narrative nothing but a solar myth. There certainly was a time when
   the Dorian tribes -- described in the legend as the allies of the
   Children of Herakles -- conquered Peloponnesos; and that time was
   certainly subsequent to the composition of the Homeric poems. It is
   incredible that the Iliad and the
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                                   -180-
 
   Odyssey should ignore the existence of Dorians in Peloponnesos, if
   there were Dorians not only dwelling but ruling there at the time when
   the poems were written. The poems are very accurate and rigorously
   consistent in their use of ethnical appellatives; and their author, in
   speaking of Achaians and Argives, is as evidently alluding to peoples
   directly known to him, as is Shakespeare when he mentions Danes and
   Scotchmen. Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling
   in Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people
   inhabiting Crete. (Odyss. XIX. 175.) With Homer, moreover, the
   Hellenes are not the Greeks in general but only a people dwelling in
   the north, in Thessaly. When these poems were written, Greece was not
   known as Hellas, but as Achaia, -- the whole country taking its name
   from the Achaians, the dominant race in Peloponnesos. Now at the
   beginning of the truly historical period, in the eighth century B. C.,
   all this is changed. The Greeks as a people are called Hellenes; the
   Dorians rule in Peloponnesos, while their lands are tilled by Argive
   Helots; and the Achaians appear only as an insignificant people
   occupying the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf. How this change
   took place we cannot tell. The explanation of it can never be obtained
   from history, though some light may perhaps be thrown upon it by
   linguistic archæology. But at all events it was a great change, and
   could not have taken place in a moment. It is fair to suppose that the
   Helleno-Dorian conquest must have begun at least a century before the
   first Olympiad; for otherwise the geographical limits of the various
   Greek races would not have been so completely established as we find
   them to have been at that date. The Greeks, indeed, supposed it to
   have begun at least three centuries earlier, but it is impossible to
   collect
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                                   -181-
 
   evidence which will either refute or establish that opinion. For our
   purposes it is enough to know that the conquest could not have taken
   place later than 900 B. C.; and if this be the case, the minimum date
   for the composition of the Homeric poems must be the tenth century
   before Christ; which is, in fact, the date assigned by Aristotle. Thus
   far, and no farther, I believe it possible to go with safety. Whether
   the poems were composed in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth century
   cannot be determined. We are justified only in placing them far enough
   back to allow the Helleno-Dorian conquest to intervene between their
   composition and the beginning of recorded history. The tenth century
   B. C. is the latest date which will account for all the phenomena
   involved in the case, and with this result we must be satisfied. Even
   on this showing, the Iliad and Odyssey appear as the oldest existing
   specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the hymns of the Rig-Veda
   and the sacred books of the Avesta.
   
      The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for three or
   four centuries without the aid of writing may seem at first sight to
   justify the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are mere collections of
   ancient ballads, like those which make up the Mahabharata, preserved
   in the memories of a dozen or twenty bards, and first arranged under
   the orders of Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this
   hypothesis is seen to raise more difficulties than it solves. What was
   there in the position of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the
   sixth century B. C., so authoritative as to compel all Greeks to
   recognize the recension then and there made of their revered poet?
   Besides which the celebrated ordinance of Solon respecting the
   rhapsodes at the Panathenaia obliges us to infer the existence of
   written manuscripts of Homer
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                                   -182-
 
   previous to 550 B. C. As Mr. Grote well observes, the interference of
   Peisistratos "presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate,
   the main lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public,
   although many of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated
   from it both by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian
   recitations conformably with such understood general type,
   Peisistratos might hope both to procure respect for Athens and to
   constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of
   'collecting the torn body of sacred Homer' is something generically
   different from the composition of a new Iliad out of pre-existing
   songs: the former is as easy, suitable, and promising as the latter is
   violent and gratuitous."2
   
      As for Wolf's objection, that the Iliad and Odyssey are too long to
   have been preserved by memory, it may be met by a simple denial. It is
   a strange objection indeed, coming from a man of Wolf's retentive
   memory. I do not see how the acquisition of the two poems can be
   regarded as such a very arduous task; and if literature were as scanty
   now as in Greek antiquity, there are doubtless many scholars who would
   long since have had them at their tongues' end. Sir G. C. Lewis, with
   but little conscious effort, managed to carry in his head a very
   considerable portion of Greek and Latin classic literature; and
   Niebuhr (who once restored from recollection a book of accounts which
   had been accidentally destroyed) was in the habit of referring to book
   and chapter of an ancient author without consulting his notes. Nay,
   there is Professor Sophocles, of Harvard University, who, if you
   suddenly stop and interrogate him in the street, will tell you just
   how many times any given Greek word occurs in Thukydides, or in
   Æschylos,
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                                   -183-
 
   or in Plato, and will obligingly rehearse for you the context. If all
   extant copies of the Homeric poems were to be gathered together and
   burnt up to-day, like Don Quixote's library, or like those Arabic
   manuscripts of which Cardinal Ximenes made a bonfire in the streets of
   Granada, the poems could very likely be reproduced and orally
   transmitted for several generations; and much easier must it have been
   for the Greeks to preserve these books, which their imagination
   invested with a quasi-sanctity, and which constituted the greater part
   of the literary furniture of their minds. In Xenophon's time there
   were educated gentlemen at Athens who could repeat both Iliad and
   Odyssey verbatim. (Xenoph. Sympos., III. 5.) Besides this, we know
   that at Chios there was a company of bards, known as Homerids, whose
   business it was to recite these poems from memory; and from the edicts
   of Solon and the Sikyonian Kleisthenes (Herod., V. 67), we may infer
   that the case was the same in other parts of Greece. Passages from the
   Iliad used to be sung at the Pythian festivals, to the accompaniment
   of the harp (Athenæus, XIV. 638), and in at least two of the Ionic
   islands of the Ægæan there were regular competitive exhibitions by
   trained young men, at which prizes were given to the best reciter. The
   difficulty of preserving the poems, under such circumstances, becomes
   very insignificant; and the Wolfian argument quite vanishes when we
   reflect that it would have been no easier to preserve a dozen or
   twenty short poems than two long ones. Nay, the coherent, orderly
   arrangement of the Iliad and Odyssey would make them even easier to
   remember than a group of short rhapsodies not consecutively arranged.
   
      When we come to interrogate the poems themselves, we find in them
   quite convincing evidence that they
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                                   -184-
 
   were originally composed for the ear alone, and without reference to
   manuscript assistance. They abound in catchwords, and in verbal
   repetitions. The "Catalogue of Ships," as Mr. Gladstone has acutely
   observed, is arranged in well-defined sections, in such a way that the
   end of each section suggests the beginning of the next one. It
   resembles the versus memoriales found in old-fashioned grammars. But
   the most convincing proof of all is to be found in the changes which
   Greek pronunciation went through between the ages of Homer and
   Peisistratos. "At the time when these poems were composed, the digamma
   (or w) was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the
   structure of the verse; at the time when they were committed to
   writing, it had ceased to be pronounced, and therefore never found a
   place in any of the manuscripts, -- insomuch that the Alexandrian
   critics, though they knew of its existence in the much later poems of
   Alkaios and Sappho, never recognized it in Homer. The hiatus, and the
   various perplexities of metre, occasioned by the loss of the digamma,
   were corrected by different grammatical stratagems. But the whole
   history of this lost letter is very curious, and is rendered
   intelligible only by the supposition that the Iliad and Odyssey
   belonged for a wide space of time to the memory, the voice, and the
   ear exclusively."3
   
      Many of these facts are of course fully recognized by the Wolfians;
   but the inference drawn from them, that the Homeric poems began to
   exist in a piecemeal condition, is, as we have seen, unnecessary.
   These poems may indeed be compared, in a certain sense, with the early
   sacred and epic literature of the Jews, Indians, and Teutons. But if
   we assign a plurality of composers to the Psalms and Pentateuch, the
   Mahabharata, the Vedas,
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                                   -185-
 
   and the Edda, we do so because of internal evidence furnished by the
   books themselves, and not because these books could not have been
   preserved by oral tradition. Is there, then, in the Homeric poems any
   such internal evidence of dual or plural origin as is furnished by the
   interlaced Elohistic and Jehovistic documents of the Pentateuch? A
   careful investigation will show that there is not. Any scholar who has
   given some attention to the subject can readily distinguish the
   Elohistic from the Jehovistic portions of the Pentateuch; and, save in
   the case of a few sporadic verses, most Biblical critics coincide in
   the separation which they make between the two. But the attempts which
   have been made to break up the Iliad and Odyssey have resulted in no
   such harmonious agreement. There are as many systems as there are
   critics, and naturally enough. For the Iliad and the Odyssey are as
   much alike as two peas, and the resemblance which holds between the
   two holds also between the different parts of each poem. From the
   appearance of the injured Chryses in the Grecian camp down to the
   intervention of Athene on the field of contest at Ithaka, we find in
   each book and in each paragraph the same style, the same peculiarities
   of expression, the same habits of thought, the same quite unique
   manifestations of the faculty of observation. Now if the style were
   commonplace, the observation slovenly, or the thought trivial, as is
   wont to be the case in ballad-literature, this argument from
   similarity might not carry with it much conviction. But when we
   reflect that throughout the whole course of human history no other
   works, save the best tragedies of Shakespeare, have ever been written
   which for combined keenness of observation, elevation of thought, and
   sublimity of style can compare with the Homeric poems, we must admit
   that the argument has very great weight
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                                   -186-
 
   indeed. Let us take, for example, the sixth and twenty-fourth books of
   the Iliad. According to the theory of Lachmann, the most eminent
   champion of the Wolfian hypothesis, these are by different authors.
   Human speech has perhaps never been brought so near to the limit of
   its capacity of expressing deep emotion as in the scene between Priam
   and Achilleus in the twenty-fourth book; while the interview between
   Hektor and Andromache in the sixth similarly wellnigh exhausts the
   power of language. Now, the literary critic has a right to ask whether
   it is probable that two such passages, agreeing perfectly in turn of
   expression, and alike exhibiting the same unapproachable degree of
   excellence, could have been produced by two different authors. And the
   physiologist -- with some inward misgivings suggested by Mr. Galton's
   theory that the Greeks surpassed us in genius even as we surpass the
   negroes -- has a right to ask whether it is in the natural course of
   things for two such wonderful poets, strangely agreeing in their
   minutest psychological characteristics, to be produced at the same
   time. And the difficulty thus raised becomes overwhelming when we
   reflect that it is the coexistence of not two only, but at least
   twenty such geniuses which the Wolfian hypothesis requires us to
   account for. That theory worked very well as long as scholars
   thoughtlessly assumed that the Iliad and Odyssey were analogous to
   ballad poetry. But, except in the simplicity of the primitive diction,
   there is no such analogy. The power and beauty of the Iliad are never
   so hopelessly lost as when it is rendered into the style of a modern
   ballad. One might as well attempt to preserve the grandeur of the
   triumphant close of Milton's Lycidas by turning it into the light
   Anacreontics of the ode to "Eros stung by a Bee." The peculiarity of
   the Homeric poetry, which
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                                   -187-
 
   defies translation, is its union of the simplicity characteristic of
   an early age with a sustained elevation of style, which can be
   explained only as due to individual genius.
   
      The same conclusion is forced upon us when we examine the artistic
   structure of these poems. With regard to the Odyssey in particular,
   Mr. Grote has elaborately shown that its structure is so thoroughly
   integral, that no considerable portion could be subtracted without
   converting the poem into a more or less admirable fragment. The Iliad
   stands in a somewhat different position. There are unmistakable
   peculiarities in its structure, which have led even Mr. Grote, who
   utterly rejects the Wolfian hypothesis, to regard it as made up of two
   poems; although he inclines to the belief that the later poem was
   grafted upon the earlier by its own author, by way of further
   elucidation and expansion; just as Goethe, in his old age, added a new
   part to "Faust." According to Mr. Grote, the Iliad, as originally
   conceived, was properly an Achilleis; its design being, as indicated
   in the opening lines of the poem, to depict the wrath of Achilleus and
   the unutterable woes which it entailed upon the Greeks The plot of this
   primitive Achilleis is entirely contained in Books I., VIII., and
   XI.-XXII.; and, in Mr. Grote's opinion, the remaining books injure the
   symmetry of this plot by unnecessarily prolonging the duration of the
   Wrath, while the embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, unduly
   anticipates the conduct of Agamemnon in the nineteenth, and is
   therefore, as a piece of bungling work, to be referred to the hands of
   an inferior interpolator. Mr. Grote thinks it probable that these books,
   with the exception of the ninth, were subsequently added by the poet,
   with a view to enlarging the original Achilleis into a real Iliad,
   describing the war of the Greeks against Troy. With reference to this
   hypothesis, I gladly admit
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                                   -188-
 
   that Mr. Grote is, of all men now living, the one best entitled to a
   reverential hearing on almost any point connected with Greek
   antiquity. Nevertheless it seems to me that his theory rests solely
   upon imagined difficulties which have no real existence. I doubt if
   any scholar, reading the Iliad ever so much, would ever be struck by
   these alleged inconsistencies of structure, unless they were suggested
   by some a priori theory. And I fear that the Wolfian theory, in spite
   of Mr. Grote's emphatic rejection of it, is responsible for some of
   these over-refined criticisms. Even as it stands, the Iliad is not an
   account of the war against Troy. It begins in the tenth year of the
   siege, and it does not continue to the capture of the city. It is
   simply occupied with an episode in the war, -- with the wrath of
   Achilleus and its consequences, according to the plan marked out in
   the opening lines. The supposed additions, therefore, though they may
   have given to the poem a somewhat wider scope, have not at any rate
   changed its primitive character of an Achilleis. To my mind they seem
   even called for by the original conception of the consequences of the
   wrath. To have inserted the battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon
   breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately after the occurrences
   of the first book, would have been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after
   his reluctant promise to Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly to
   exhibit such fell determination. And after the long series of books
   describing the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus,
   and Menelaos, the powerful intervention of Achilleus appears in far
   grander proportions than would otherwise be possible. As for the
   embassy to Achilleus, in the ninth book, I am unable to see how the
   final reconciliation with Agamemnon would be complete without it. As
   Mr. Gladstone well observes, what Achilleus
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                                   -189-
 
   wants is not restitution, but apology; and Agamemnon offers no apology
   until the nineteenth book. In his answer to the ambassadors, Achilleus
   scornfully rejects the proposals which imply that the mere return of
   Briseis will satisfy his righteous resentment, unless it be
   accompanied with that public humiliation to which circumstances have
   not yet compelled the leader of the Greeks to subject himself.
   Achilleus is not to be bought or cajoled. Even the extreme distress of
   the Greeks in the thirteenth book does not prevail upon him; nor is
   there anything in the poem to show that he ever would have laid aside
   his wrath, had not the death of Patroklos supplied him with a new and
   wholly unforeseen motive. It seems to me that his entrance into the
   battle after the death of his friend would lose half its poetic
   effect, were it not preceded by some such scene as that in the ninth
   book, in which he is represented as deaf to all ordinary inducements.
   As for the two concluding books, which Mr. Grote is inclined to regard
   as a subsequent addition, not necessitated by the plan of the poem, I
   am at a loss to see how the poem can be considered complete without
   them. To leave the bodies of Patroklos and Hektor unburied would be in
   the highest degree shocking to Greek religious feelings. Remembering
   the sentence incurred, in far less superstitious times, by the
   generals at Arginusai, it is impossible to believe that any conclusion
   which left Patroklos's manes unpropitiated, and the mutilated corpse
   of Hektor unransomed, could have satisfied either the poet or his
   hearers. For further particulars I must refer the reader to the
   excellent criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, and also to the article on
   "Greek History and Legend" in the second volume of Mr. Mill's
   "Dissertations and Discussions." A careful study of the arguments of
   these writers, and, above all, a thorough and independent
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                                   -190-
 
   examination of the Iliad itself, will, I believe, convince the student
   that this great poem is from beginning to end the consistent
   production of a single author.
   
      The arguments of those who would attribute the Iliad and Odyssey,
   taken as wholes, to two different authors, rest chiefly upon some
   apparent discrepancies in the mythology of the two poems; but many of
   these difficulties have been completely solved by the recent progress
   of the science of comparative mythology. Thus, for example, the fact
   that, in the Iliad, Hephaistos is called the husband of Charis, while
   in the Odyssey he is called the husband of Aphrodite, has been cited
   even by Mr. Grote as evidence that the two poems are not by the same
   author. It seems to me that one such discrepancy, in the midst of
   complete general agreement, would be much better explained as
   Cervantes explained his own inconsistency with reference to the
   stealing of Sancho's mule, in the twenty-second chapter of "Don
   Quixote." But there is no discrepancy. Aphrodite, though originally
   the moon-goddess, like the German Horsel, had before Homer's time
   acquired many of the attributes of the dawn-goddess Athene, while her
   lunar characteristics had been to a great extent transferred to
   Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated character, as goddess of the
   dawn, Aphrodite became identified with Charis, who appears in the
   Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess. In the post-Homeric mythology, the two were
   again separated, and Charis, becoming divided in personality, appears
   as the Charites, or Graces, who were supposed to be constant
   attendants of Aphrodite. But in the Homeric poems the two are still
   identical, and either Charis or Aphrodite may be called the wife of
   the fire-god, without inconsistency.
   
      Thus to sum up, I believe that Mr. Gladstone is quite
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -191-
 
   right in maintaining that both the Iliad and Odyssey are, from beginning
   to end, with the exception of a few insignificant interpolations, the
   work of a single author, whom we have no ground for calling by any other
   name than that of Homer. I believe, moreover, that this author lived
   before the beginning of authentic history, and that we can determine
   neither his age nor his country with precision. We can only decide that
   he was a Greek who lived at some time previous to the year 900 B.C.
   
      Here, however, I must begin to part company with Mr. Gladstone, and
   shall henceforth unfortunately have frequent occasion to differ from
   him on points of fundamental importance. For Mr. Gladstone not only
   regards the Homeric age as strictly within the limits of authentic
   history, but he even goes much further than this. He would not only
   fix the date of Homer positively in the twelfth century B. C., but he
   regards the Trojan war as a purely historical event, of which Homer is
   the authentic historian and the probable eye-witness. Nay, he even
   takes the word of the poet as proof conclusive of the historical
   character of events happening several generations before the Troika,
   according to the legendary chronology. He not only regards Agamemnon,
   Achilleus, and Paris as actual personages, but he ascribes the same
   reality to characters like Danaos, Kadmos, and Perseus, and talks of
   the Pelopid and Aiolid dynasties, and the empire of Minos, with as
   much confidence as if he were dealing with Karlings or Capetians, or
   with the epoch of the Crusades.
   
      It is disheartening, at the present day, and after so much has been
   finally settled by writers like Grote, Mommsen, and Sir G. C. Lewis,
   to come upon such views in the work of a man of scholarship and
   intelligence. One begins to wonder how many more times it will be
   necessary
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -192-
 
   to prove that dates and events are of no historical value, unless
   attested by nearly contemporary evidence. Pausanias and Plutarch were
   able men no doubt, and Thukydides was a profound historian; but what
   these writers thought of the Herakleid invasion, the age of Homer, and
   the war of Troy, can have no great weight with the critical historian,
   since even in the time of Thukydides these events were as completely
   obscured by lapse of time as they are now. There is no literary Greek
   history before the age of Hekataios and Herodotos, three centuries
   subsequent to the first recorded Olympiad. A portion of this period is
   satisfactorily covered by inscriptions, but even these fail us before
   we get within a century of this earliest ascertainable date. Even the
   career of the lawgiver Lykourgos, which seems to belong to the
   commencement of the eighth century B. C., presents us, from lack of
   anything like contemporary records, with many insoluble problems. The
   Helleno-Dorian conquest, as we have seen, must have occurred at some
   time or other; but it evidently did not occur within two centuries of
   the earliest known inscription, and it is therefore folly to imagine
   that we can determine its date or ascertain the circumstances which
   attended it. Anterior to this event there is but one fact in Greek
   antiquity directly known to us, -- the existence of the Homeric poems.
   The belief that there was a Trojan war rests exclusively upon the
   contents of those poems: there is no other independent testimony to it
   whatever. But the Homeric poems are of no value as testimony to the
   truth of the statements contained in them, unless it can be proved
   that their author was either contemporary with the Troika, or else
   derived his information from contemporary witnesses. This can never be
   proved. To assume, as Mr. Gladstone does, that Homer lived within
   fifty
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -193-
 
   years after the Troika, is to make a purely gratuitous assumption. For
   aught the wisest historian can tell, the interval may have been five
   hundred years, or a thousand. Indeed the Iliad itself expressly
   declares that it is dealing with an ancient state of things which no
   longer exists. It is difficult to see what else can be meant by the
   statement that the heroes of the Troika belong to an order of men no
   longer seen upon the earth. (Iliad, V. 304.) Most assuredly Achilleus
   the son of Thetis, and Sarpedon the son of Zeus, and Helena the
   daughter of Zeus, are no ordinary mortals, such as might have been
   seen and conversed with by the poet's grandfather. They belong to an
   inferior order of gods, according to the peculiar anthropomorphism of
   the Greeks, in which deity and humanity are so closely mingled that it
   is difficult to tell where the one begins and the other ends.
   Diomedes, single-handed, vanquishes not only the gentle Aphrodite, but
   even the god of battles himself, the terrible Ares. Nestor quaffs
   lightly from a goblet which, we are told, not two men among the poet's
   contemporaries could by their united exertions raise and place upon a
   table. Aias and Hektor and Aineias hurl enormous masses of rock as
   easily as an ordinary man would throw a pebble. All this shows that
   the poet, in his naïve way, conceiving of these heroes as personages
   of a remote past, was endeavouring as far as possible to ascribe to
   them the attributes of superior beings. If all that were divine,
   marvellous, or superhuman were to be left out of the poems, the
   supposed historical residue would hardly be worth the trouble of
   saving. As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the
   narrative that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream
   Kebren, and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as
   claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -194-
 
   beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned
   together for no other purpose than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that
   Achilleus, the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible
   weapons and the lord of undying horses, goes to fight in a quarrel
   which is not his own; that his wrath is roused because he is robbed of
   the maiden Briseis, and that henceforth he takes no part in the strife
   until his friend Patroklos has been slain; that then he puts on the
   new armour which Thetis brings to him from the anvil of Hephaistos,
   and goes forth to win the victory. The details are throughout of the
   same nature. Achilleus sees and converses with Athene; Aphrodite is
   wounded by Diomedes, and Sleep and Death bear away the lifeless
   Sarpedon on their noiseless wings to the far-off land of light." In
   view of all this it is evident that Homer was not describing, like a
   salaried historiographer, the state of things which existed in the
   time of his father or grandfather. To his mind the occurrences which
   he described were those of a remote, a wonderful, a semi-divine past.
   
      This conclusion, which I have thus far supported merely by
   reference to the Iliad itself, becomes irresistible as soon as we take
   into account the results obtained during the past thirty years by the
   science of comparative mythology. As long as our view was restricted
   to Greece, it was perhaps excusable that Achilleus and Paris should be
   taken for exaggerated copies of actual persons. Since the day when
   Grimm laid the foundations of the science of mythology, all this has
   been changed. It is now held that Achilleus and Paris and Helena are
   to be found, not only in the Iliad, but also in the Rig-Veda, and
   therefore, as mythical conceptions, date, not from Homer, but from a
   period preceding the dispersion of the Aryan nations. The tale of the
   Wrath
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -195-
 
   of Achilleus, far from originating with Homer, far from being recorded
   by the author of the Iliad as by an eye-witness, must have been known
   in its essential features in Aryana-vaëdjo, at that remote epoch when
   the Indian, the Greek, and the Teuton were as yet one and the same.
   For the story has been retained by the three races alike, in all its
   principal features; though the Veda has left it in the sky where it
   originally belonged, while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have
   brought it down to earth, the one locating it in Asia Minor, and the
   other in Northwestern Europe.4
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -196-
 
      In the Rig-Veda the Panis are the genii of night and winter,
   corresponding to the Nibelungs, or "Children of the Mist," in the
   Teutonic legend, and to the children of Nephele (cloud) in the Greek
   myth of the Golden Fleece. The Panis steal the cattle of the Sun
   (Indra, Helios, Herakles), and carry them by an unknown route to a
   dark cave eastward. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to
   find and recover them. The Panis then tamper with Sarama, and try
   their best to induce her to betray her solar lord. For a while she is
   prevailed upon to dally with them; yet she ultimately returns to give
   Indra the information needful in order that he might conquer the
   Panis, just as Helena, in the slightly altered version, ultimately
   returns to her western home, carrying with her the treasures (Iliad,
   II. 285) of which Paris had robbed Menelaos. But, before the bright
   Indra and his solar heroes can reconquer their treasures they must
   take captive the offspring of Brisaya, the violet light of morning.
   Thus Achilleus, answering to the solar champion Aharyu, takes
   captive the daughter of Brises. But as the sun must always be parted
   from the morning-light, to return to it again just before setting, so
   Achilleus loses Briseis, and regains her only just before his final
   struggle. In similar wise Herakles is parted from Iole ("the violet
   one"), and Sigurd from Brynhild. In sullen wrath the hero retires from
   the conflict, and his Myrmidons are no longer seen on the
   battle-field, as the sun hides behind the dark cloud and his rays no
   longer appear about him. Yet toward the
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -197-
 
   evening, as Briseis returns, he appears in his might, clothed in the
   dazzling armour wrought for him by the fire-god Hephaistos, and with
   his invincible spear slays the great storm-cloud, which during his
   absence had wellnigh prevailed over the champions of the daylight. But
   his triumph is short-lived; for having trampled on the clouds that had
   opposed him, while yet crimsoned with the fierce carnage, the sharp
   arrow of the night-demon Paris slays him at the Western Gates. We have
   not space to go into further details. In Mr. Cox's "Mythology of the
   Aryan Nations," and "Tales of Ancient Greece," the reader will find
   the entire contents of the Iliad and Odyssey thus minutely illustrated
   by comparison with the Veda, the Edda, and the Lay of the Nibelungs.
   
      Ancient as the Homeric poems undoubtedly are, they are modern in
   comparison with the tale of Achilleus and Helena, as here unfolded.
   The date of the entrance of the Greeks into Europe will perhaps never
   be determined; but I do not see how any competent scholar can well
   place it at less than eight hundred or a thousand years before the
   time of Homer. Between the two epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and
   Keltic lauguages had time to acquire distinct individualities. Far
   earlier, therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth
   of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no abstract
   terms, and possessing no philosophy but fetichism, deliberately spoke
   of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds, as persons or as animals.
   The Veda, though composed much later than this, -- perhaps as late as
   the Iliad, -- nevertheless preserves the record of the mental life of
   this period. The Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the
   fickle twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -198-
 
   to coax her from her allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of
   action in the sky. But the Homeric Greek had long since forgotten that
   Helena and Paris were anything more than semi-divine mortals, the
   daughter of Zeus and the son of the Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu
   understood that Dyaus ("the bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama
   ("the creeping one") the dawn, and spoke significantly when he called
   the latter the daughter of the former. But the Greek could not know
   that Zeus was derived from a root div, "to shine," or that Helena
   belonged to a root sar, "to creep." Phonetic change thus helped him to
   rise from fetichism to polytheism. His nature-gods became thoroughly
   anthropomorphic; and he probably no more remembered that Achilleus
   originally signified the sun, than we remember that the word God,
   which we use to denote the most vast of conceptions, originally meant
   simply the Storm-wind. Indeed, when the fetichistic tendency led the
   Greek again to personify the powers of nature, he had recourse to new
   names formed from his own language. Thus, beside Apollo we have
   Helios; Selene beside Artemis and Persephone; Eos beside Athene; Gaia
   beside Demeter. As a further consequence of this decomposition and new
   development of the old Aryan mythology, we find, as might be expected,
   that the Homeric poems are not always consistent in their use of their
   mythic materials. Thus, Paris, the night-demon, is -- to Max Müller's
   perplexity -- invested with many of the attributes of the bright solar
   heroes. "Like Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus, and Cyrus, he is doomed to
   bring ruin on his parents; like them he is exposed in his infancy on
   the hillside, and rescued by a shepherd." All the solar heroes begin
   life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto),
   or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -199-
 
   (Iokaste), they are alike destined to bring destruction on their
   parents, as the night and the dawn are both destroyed by the sun. The
   exposure of the child in infancy represents the long rays of the
   morning-sun resting on the hillside. Then Paris forsakes Oinone ("the
   wine-coloured one"), but meets her again at the gloaming when she lays
   herself by his side amid the crimson flames of the funeral pyre.
   Sarpedon also, a solar hero, is made to fight on the side of the
   Niblungs or Trojans, attended by his friend Glaukos ("the brilliant
   one"). They command the Lykians, or "children of light"; and with them
   comes also Memnon, son of the Dawn, from the fiery land of the
   Aithiopes, the favourite haunt of Zeus and the gods of Olympos.
   
      The Iliad-myth must therefore have been current many ages before
   the Greeks inhabited Greece, long before there was any Ilion to be
   conquered. Nevertheless, this does not forbid the supposition that the
   legend, as we have it, may have been formed by the crystallization of
   mythical conceptions about a nucleus of genuine tradition. In this
   view I am upheld by a most sagacious and accurate scholar, Mr. E. A.
   Freeman, who finds in Carlovingian romance an excellent illustration
   of the problem before us.
   
      The Charlemagne of romance is a mythical personage. He is supposed
   to have been a Frenchman, at a time when neither the French nation nor
   the French language can properly be said to have existed; and he is
   represented as a doughty crusader, although crusading was not thought
   of until long after the Karolingian era. The legendary deeds of
   Charlemagne are not conformed to the ordinary rules of geography and
   chronology. He is a myth, and, what is more, he is a solar myth, -- an
   avatar, or at least a representative, of Odin in his solar
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -200-
 
   capacity. If in his case legend were not controlled and rectified by
   history, he would be for us as unreal as Agamemnon.
   
      History, however, tells us that there was an Emperor Karl, German
   in race, name, and language, who was one of the two or three greatest
   men of action that the world has ever seen, and who in the ninth
   century ruled over all Western Europe. To the historic Karl
   corresponds in many particulars the mythical Charlemagne. The legend
   has preserved the fact, which without the information supplied by
   history we might perhaps set down as a fiction, that there was a time
   when Germany, Gaul, Italy, and part of Spain formed a single empire.
   And, as Mr. Freeman has well observed, the mythical crusades of
   Charlemagne are good evidence that there were crusades, although the
   real Karl had nothing whatever to do with one.
   
      Now the case of Agamemnon may be much like that of Charlemagne,
   except that we no longer have history to help us in rectifying the
   legend. The Iliad preserves the tradition of a time when a large
   portion of the islands and mainland of Greece were at least partially
   subject to a common suzerain; and, as Mr. Freeman has again shrewdly
   suggested, the assignment of a place like Mykenai, instead of Athens
   or Sparta or Argos, as the seat of the suzerainty, is strong evidence
   of the trustworthiness of the tradition. It appears to show that the
   legend was constrained by some remembered fact, instead of being
   guided by general probability. Charlemagne's seat of government has
   been transferred in romance from Aachen to Paris; had it really been
   at Paris, says Mr. Freeman, no one would have thought of transferring
   it to Aachen. Moreover, the story of Agamemnon, though uncontrolled by
   historic records, is here at least supported
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -201-
 
   by archæologic remains, which prove Mykenai to have been at some time
   or other a place of great consequence. Then, as to the Trojan war, we
   know that the Greeks several times crossed the Ægæan and colonized a
   large part of the seacoast of Asia Minor. In order to do this it was
   necessary to oust from their homes many warlike communities of Lydians
   and Bithynians, and we may be sure that this was not done without
   prolonged fighting. There may very probably have been now and then a
   levy en masse in prehistoric Greece, as there was in mediæval Europe;
   and whether the great suzerain at Mykenai ever attended one or not,
   legend would be sure to send him on such an expedition, as it
   afterwards sent Charlemagne on a crusade.
   
      It is therefore quite possible that Agamemnon and Menelaos may
   represent dimly remembered sovereigns or heroes, with their characters
   and actions distorted to suit the exigencies of a narrative founded
   upon a solar myth. The character of the Nibelungenlied here well
   illustrates that of the Iliad. Siegfried and Brunhild, Hagen and
   Gunther, seem to be mere personifications of physical phenomena; but
   Etzel and Dietrich are none other than Attila and Theodoric surrounded
   with mythical attributes; and even the conception of Brunhild has been
   supposed to contain elements derived from the traditional recollection
   of the historical Brunehault. When, therefore, Achilleus is said, like
   a true sun-god, to have died by a wound from a sharp instrument in the
   only vulnerable part of his body, we may reply that the legendary
   Charlemagne conducts himself in many respects like a solar deity. If
   Odysseus detained by Kalypso represents the sun ensnared and held
   captive by the pale goddess of night, the legend of Frederic
   Barbarossa asleep in a Thuringian mountain embodies a portion of a
   kindred
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -202-
 
   conception. We know that Charlemagne and Frederic have been substituted
   for Odin; we may suspect that with the mythical impersonations of
   Achilleus and Odysseus some traditional figures may be blended. We
   should remember that in early times the solar-myth was a sort of type
   after which all wonderful stories would be patterned, and that to such
   a type tradition also would be made to conform.
   
      In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism.
   If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which the
   labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have
   satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history
   can be obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting
   out the mythical element. Even if the poems contain the faint
   reminiscence of an actual event, that event is inextricably wrapped up
   in mythical phraseology, so that by no cunning of the scholar can it
   be construed into history. In view of this it is quite useless for Mr.
   Gladstone to attempt to base historical conclusions upon the fact that
   Helena is always called "Argive Helen," or to draw ethnological
   inferences from the circumstances that Menelaos, Achilleus, and the
   rest of the Greek heroes, have yellow hair, while the Trojans are
   never so described. The Argos of the myth is not the city of
   Peloponnesos, though doubtless so construed even in Homer's time. It
   is "the bright land" where Zeus resides, and the epithet is applied to
   his wife Here and his daughter Helena, as well as to the dog of
   Odysseus, who reappears with Sarameyas in the Veda. As for yellow
   hair, there is no evidence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed
   it; but no other colour would do for a solar hero, and it accordingly
   characterizes the entire company of them, wherever found, while for
   the Trojans, or children of night, it is not required.
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -203-
 
      A wider acquaintance with the results which have been obtained
   during the past thirty years by the comparative study of languages and
   mythologies would have led Mr. Gladstone to reconsider many of his
   views concerning the Homeric poems, and might perhaps have led him to
   cut out half or two thirds of his book as hopelessly antiquated. The
   chapter on the divinities of Olympos would certainly have had to be
   rewritten, and the ridiculous theory of a primeval revelation
   abandoned. One can hardly preserve one's gravity when Mr. Gladstone
   derives Apollo from the Hebrew Messiah, and Athene from the Logos. To
   accredit Homer with an acquaintance with the doctrine of the Logos,
   which did not exist until the time of Philo, and did not receive its
   authorized Christian form until the middle of the second century after
   Christ, is certainly a strange proceeding. We shall next perhaps be
   invited to believe that the authors of the Völsunga Saga obtained the
   conception of Sigurd from the "Thirty-Nine Articles." It is true that
   these deities, Athene and Apollo, are wiser, purer, and more
   dignified, on the whole, than any of the other divinities of the
   Homeric Olympos. They alone, as Mr. Gladstone truly observes, are
   never deceived or frustrated. For all Hellas, Apollo was the
   interpreter of futurity, and in the maid Athene we have perhaps the
   highest conception of deity to which the Greek mind had attained in
   the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the dawn; but in
   the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories of daybreak are
   assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the impersonation of the illuminating
   and knowledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she is daughter of
   Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from his forehead; but,
   according to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies that she
   shares, more than any
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -204-
 
   other deity, in the boundless wisdom of Zeus. The knowledge of Apollo,
   on the other hand, is the peculiar privilege of the sun, who, from his
   lofty position, sees everything that takes place upon the earth. Even
   the secondary divinity Helios possesses this prerogative to a certain
   extent.
   
      Next to a Hebrew, Mr. Gladstone prefers a Phoenician ancestry for
   the Greek divinities. But the same lack of acquaintance with the old
   Aryan mythology vitiates all his conclusions. No doubt the Greek
   mythology is in some particulars tinged with Phoenician conceptions.
   Aphrodite was originally a purely Greek divinity, but in course of
   time she acquired some of the attributes of the Semitic Astarte, and
   was hardly improved by the change. Adonis is simply a Semitic
   divinity, imported into Greece. But the same cannot be proved of
   Poseidon;5 far less of Hermes, who is identical with the Vedic
   Sarameyas, the rising wind, the son of Sarama the dawn, the lying,
   tricksome wind-god, who invented music, and conducts the souls of dead
   men to the house of Hades, even as his counterpart the Norse Odin
   rushes over the tree-tops leading the host of the departed. When one
   sees Iris, the messenger of Zeus, referred to a Hebrew original,
   because of Jehovah's promise to Noah, one is at a loss to understand
   the relationship between the two conceptions. Nothing could be more
   natural to the Greeks than to call
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -205-
 
   the rainbow the messenger of the sky-god to earth-dwelling men; to
   call it a token set in the sky by Jehovah, as the Hebrews did, was a
   very different thing. We may admit the very close resemblance between
   the myth of Bellerophon and Anteia, and that of Joseph and Zuleikha;
   but the fact that the Greek story is explicable from Aryan
   antecedents, while the Hebrew story is isolated, might perhaps suggest
   the inference that the Hebrews were the borrowers, as they undoubtedly
   were in the case of the myth of Eden. Lastly, to conclude that Helios
   is an Eastern deity, because he reigns in the East over Thrinakia, is
   wholly unwarranted. Is not Helios pure Greek for the sun? and where
   should his sacred island be placed, if not in the East? As for his
   oxen, which wrought such dire destruction to the comrades of Odysseus,
   and which seem to Mr. Gladstone so anomalous, they are those very same
   unhappy cattle, the clouds, which were stolen by the storm-demon Cacus
   and the wind-deity Hermes, and which furnished endless material for
   legends to the poets of the Veda.
   
      But the whole subject of comparative mythology seems to be terra
   incognita to Mr. Gladstone. He pursues the even tenour of his way in
   utter disregard of Grimm, and Kuhn, and Bréal, and Dasent, and Burnouf.
   He takes no note of the Rig-Veda, nor does he seem to realize that there
   was ever a time when the ancestors of the Greeks and Hindus worshipped
   the same gods. Two or three times he cites Max Müller, but makes no use
   of the copious data which might be gathered from him. The only work
   which seems really to have attracted his attention is M. Jacolliot's
   very discreditable performance called "The Bible in India." Mr.
   Gladstone does not, indeed, unreservedly approve of this book; but
   neither does he appear to suspect that it is a disgraceful piece of
                      --------------------------------
   
                                   -206-
 
   charlatanry, written by a man ignorant of the very rudiments of the
   subject which he professes to handle.
   
      Mr. Gladstone is equally out of his depth when he comes to treat
   purely philological questions. Of the science of philology, as based
   upon established laws of phonetic change, he seems to have no
   knowledge whatever. He seems to think that two words are sufficiently
   proved to be connected when they are seen to resemble each other in
   spelling or in sound. Thus he quotes approvingly a derivation of the
   name Themis from an assumed verb them, "to speak," whereas it is
   notoriously derived from, as statute comes ultimately from stare. His
   reference of hieros, "a priest," and geron, "an old man," to the same
   root, is utterly baseless; the one is the Sanskrit ishiras, "a powerful
   man," the other is the Sanskrit jaran, "an old man." The lists of words
   on pages 96-100 are disfigured by many such errors; and indeed the whole
   purpose for which they are given shows how sadly Mr. Gladstone's
   philology is in arrears. The theory of Niebuhr -- that the words common
   to Greek and Latin, mostly descriptive of peaceful occupations, are
   Pelasgian -- was serviceable enough in its day, but is now rendered
   wholly antiquated by the discovery that such words are Aryan, in the
   widest sense. The Pelasgian theory works very smoothly so long as we
   only compare the Greek with the Latin words, -- as, for instance, with
   jugum; but when we add the English yoke and the Sanskrit yugam, it is
   evident that we have got far out of the range of the Pelasgoi. But
   what shall we say when we find Mr. Gladstone citing the Latin thalamus
   in support of this antiquated theory? Doubtless the word thalamus is,
   or should be, significative of peaceful occupations; but it is not a
   Latin word at all, except by adoption. One might as well cite the word
   ensemble to
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                                   -207-
 
   prove the original identity or kinship between English and French.
   
      When Mr. Gladstone, leaving the dangerous ground of pure and
   applied philology, confines himself to illustrating the contents of
   the Homeric poems, he is always excellent. His chapter on the "Outer
   Geography" of the Odyssey is exceedingly interesting; showing as it
   does how much may be obtained from the patient and attentive study of
   even a single author. Mr. Gladstone's knowledge of the surface
   of the Iliad and Odyssey, so to speak, is extensive and accurate. It
   is when he attempts to penetrate beneath the surface and survey the
   treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, that he shows himself
   unprovided with the talisman of the wise dervise, which alone can
   unlock those mysteries. But modern philology is an exacting science:
   to approach its higher problems requires an amount of preparation
   sufficient to terrify at the outset all but the boldest; and a man who
   has had to regulate taxation, and make out financial statements, and
   lead a political party in a great nation, may well be excused for
   ignorance of philology. It is difficult enough for those who have
   little else to do but to pore over treatises on phonetics, and thumb
   their lexicons, to keep fully abreast with the latest views in
   linguistics. In matters of detail one can hardly ever broach a new
   hypothesis without misgivings lest somebody, in some weekly journal
   published in Germany, may just have anticipated and refuted it. Yet
   while Mr. Gladstone may be excused for being unsound in philology, it
   is far less excusable that he should sit down to write a book about
   Homer, abounding in philological statements, without the slightest
   knowledge of what has been achieved in that science for several years
   past. In spite of all drawbacks, however, his book shows an abiding
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                                   -208-
 
   taste for scholarly pursuits, and therefore deserves a certain kind of
   praise. I hope, -- though just now the idea savours of the ludicrous,
   -- that the day may some time arrive when our Congressmen and
   Secretaries of the Treasury will spend their vacations in writing
   books about Greek antiquities, or in illustrating the meaning of
   Homeric phrases.
   
   [1] Juventus Mundi. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. By the Rt.
   Hon. William Ewart Gladstone. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1869.
   
   [2] Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 208.
   
   [3] Grote, Hist. Greece, Vol. II. p. 198.
   
   [4] For the precise extent to which I would indorse the theory that
   the Iliad-myth is an account of the victory of light over darkness,
   let me refer to what I have said above on p. 134. I do not suppose
   that the struggle between light and darkness was Homer's subject in
   the Iliad any more than it was Shakespeare's subject in "Hamlet."
   Homer's subject was the wrath of the Greek hero, as Shakespeare's
   subject was the vengeance of the Danish prince. Nevertheless, the
   story of Hamlet, when traced back to its Norse original, is
   unmistakably the story of the quarrel between summer and winter; and
   the moody prince is as much a solar hero as Odin himself. See Simrock,
   Die Quellen des Shakespeare, I. 127-133. Of course Shakespeare knew
   nothing of this, as Homer knew nothing of the origin of his Achilleus.
   The two stories, therefore, are not to be taken as sun-myths in their
   present form. They are the offspring of other stories which were
   sun-myths; they are stories which conform to the sun-myth type after
   the manner above illustrated in the paper on Light and Darkness.
   [Hence there is nothing unintelligible in the inconsistency -- which
   seems to puzzle Max Müller (Science of Language, 6th ed. Vol. II. p.
   516, note 20) -- of investing Paris with many of the characteristics
   of the children of light. Supposing, as we must, that the primitive
   sense of the Iliad-myth had as entirely disappeared in the Homeric
   age, as the primitive sense of the Hamlet-myth had disappeared in the
   times of Elizabeth, the fit ground for wonder is that such
   inconsistencies are not more numerous.] The physical theory of myths
   will be properly presented and comprehended, only when it is understood
   that we accept the physical derivation of such stories as the Iliad-myth
   in much the same way that we are bound to accept the physical
   etymologies of such words as soul, consider, truth, convince,
   deliberate, and the like. The late Dr. Gibbs of Yale College, in his
   "Philological Studies," -- a little book which I used to read with
   delight when a boy, -- describes such etymologies as "faded metaphors."
   In similar wise, while refraining from characterizing the Iliad or the
   tragedy of Hamlet -- any more than I would characterize Le Juif Errant
   by Sue, or La Maison Forestière by Erckmann-Chatrian -- as nature-myths,
   I would at the same time consider these poems well described as
   embodying "faded nature-myths."
   
   [5] I have no opinion as to the nationality of the Earth-shaker, and,
   regarding the etymology of his name, I believe we can hardly do better
   than acknowledge, with Mr. Cox, that it is unknown. It may well be
   doubted, however, whether much good is likely to come of comparisons
   between Poseidon, Dagon, Oannes, and Noah, or of distinctions between
   the children of Shem and the children of Ham. See Brown's Poseidon; a
   Link between Semite, Hamite, and Aryan, London, 1872, -- a book which
   is open to several of the criticisms here directed against Mr.
   Gladstone's manner of theorizing. July, 1870.