Homer and His Age | Page 2

be called "sciences"; and they are not exact sciences: they are but skirmishing advances towards the true solution of problems prehistoric and "proto-historic."
Our knowledge shifts from day to day; on every hand, in regard to almost every topic discussed, we find conflict of opinions. There is no certain scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic; economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis on hypothesis.
Nothing can be more hurtful to science than the dogmatic assumption that the hypothesis most in fashion is scientific.
Twenty years ago, the philological theory of the Solar Myth was preached as "scientific" in the books, primers, and lectures of popular science. To-day its place knows it no more. The separatist theories of the Homeric poems are not more secure than the Solar Myth, "like a wave shall they pass and be passed."
When writing on "The Homeric House" (Chapter X.) I was unacquainted with Mr. Percy Gardner's essay, "The Palaces of Homer" (Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iii. pp. 264- 282). Mr. Gardner says that Dasent's plan of the Scandinavian Hall "offers in most respects not likeness, but a striking contrast to the early Greek hall." Mr. Monro, who was not aware of the parallel which I had drawn between the Homeric and Icelandic houses, accepted it on evidence more recent than that of Sir George Dasent. Cf. his Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 490-494.
Mr. R. W. Raper, of Trinity College, Oxford, has read the proof sheets of this work with his habitual kindness, but is in no way responsible for the arguments. Mr. Walter Leaf has also obliged me by mentioning some points as to which I had not completely understood his position, and I have tried as far as possible to represent his ideas correctly. I have also received assistance from the wide and minute Homeric lore of Mr. A. Shewan, of St. Andrews, and have been allowed to consult other scholars on various points.
The first portion of the chapter on "Bronze and Iron" appeared in the Revue Arch��ologique for April 1905, and the editor, Monsieur Salomon Reinach, obliged me with a note on the bad iron swords of the Celts as described by Polybius.
The design of men in three shields of different shapes, from a Dipylon vase, is reproduced, with permission, from the British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Iron Age; and the shielded chessmen from Catalogue of Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Thanks for the two ships with men under shield are offered to the Rev. Mr. Browne, S.J., author of _Handbook of Homeric Studies_ (Longmans). For the Mycenaean gold corslet I thank Mr. John Murray (Schliemann's Mycenae and Tiryns), and for all the other Mycenaean illustrations Messrs. Macmillan and Mr. Leaf, publishers and author of Mr. Leaf's edition of the Iliad.

CONTENTS:
CHAPTER I
: THE HOMERIC AGE
CHAPTER II
: HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
CHAPTER III
: HYPOTHESES OF EPIC COMPOSITION
CHAPTER IV
: LOOSE FEUDALISM: THE OVER-LORD IN "ILIAD," BOOKS I. AND II.
CHAPTER V
: AGAMEMNON IN THE LATER "ILIAD"
CHAPTER VI
: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE "ILIAD"--BURIAL AND CREMATION
CHAPTER VII
: HOMERIC ARMOUR
CHAPTER VIII
: THE BREASTPLATE
CHAPTER IX
: BRONZE AND IRON
CHAPTER X
: THE HOMERIC HOUSE
CHAPTER XI
: NOTES OF CHANGE IN THE "ODYSSEY"
CHAPTER XII
: LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
CHAPTER XIII
: THE "DOLONEIA"--"ILIAD," BOOK X.
CHAPTER XIV
: THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR
CHAPTER XV
: THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
CHAPTER XVI
: HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
CHAPTER XVII
: CONCLUSION

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
ALGONQUINS UNDER SHIELD
THE VASE OF ARISTONOTHOS
DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS
RINGS: SWORDS AND SHIELDS
FRAGMENTS OF WARRIOR VASE
FRAGMENT OF SIEGE VASE
ALGONQUIN CORSLET
GOLD CORSLET
CHAPTER I
THE HOMERIC AGE
The aim of this book is to prove that the Homeric Epics, as wholes, and apart from passages gravely suspected in antiquity, present a perfectly harmonious picture of the entire life and civilisation of one single age. The faint variations in the design are not greater than such as mark every moment of culture, for in all there is some movement; in all, cases are modified by circumstances. If our contention be true, it will follow that the poems themselves, as wholes, are the product of a single age, not a mosaic of the work of several changeful centuries.
This must be the case--if the life drawn is harmonious, the picture must be the work of a single epoch--for it is not in the nature of early uncritical times that later poets should adhere, or even try to adhere, to the minute details of law, custom, opinion, dress, weapons, houses, and so on, as presented in earlier lays or sagas on the same set of subjects. Even less are poets in uncritical times inclined to "archaise," either by attempting to draw fancy pictures of the manners of the past, or by making researches in graves, or among old votive offerings in temples, for the purpose of "preserving local colour." The idea