Homer and His Age | Page 7

X., did not introduce recent details, those of their own time, but we have just previously been told that to do so was their custom in the description of details.
Now Studniczka [Footnote: Homerische Epos, pp. 7-11, cf. Note I; Zeitschrift fur die Oestern Gymnasien, 1886, p. 195.] explains the picture of the Thracians in Iliad, Book X., on Helbig's other principle, namely, that the very late author of the Tenth Book merely conforms to the conventional tradition of the Epic, adheres to the model set in ancient Achaean, or rather ancient Ionian times, and scrupulously preserved by the latest poets--that is, when the latest poets do not bring in the new details of their own age. But Helbig will not accept his own theory in this case, whence does it follow that the author of the Tenth Book must, in his opinion, have lived in Achaean times, and described the Thracians as they then were, charioteers, heavily armed, not light-clad archers? If this is so, we ask how Helbig can aver that the Tenth Book is one of the latest parts of the Iliad?
In studying the critics who hold that the Iliad is the growth of four centuries--say from the eleventh to the seventh century B.C.--no consistency is to be discovered; the earth is never solid beneath our feet. We find now that the poets are true to tradition in the details of ancient life--now that the poets introduce whatever modern details they please. The late poets have now a very exact knowledge of the past; now, the late poets know nothing about the past, or, again, some of the poets are fond of actual and very minute archaeological research! The theory shifts its position as may suit the point to be made at the moment by the critic. All is arbitrary, and it is certain that logic demands a very different method of inquiry. If Helbig and other critics of his way of thinking mean that in the Iliad (1) there are parts of genuine antiquity; other parts (2) by poets who, with stern accuracy, copied the old modes; other parts (3) by poets who tried to copy but failed; with passages (4) by poets who deliberately innovated; and passages (5) by poets who drew fanciful pictures of the past "from their inner consciousness," while, finally (6), some poets made minute antiquarian researches; and if the argument be that the critics can detect these six elements, then we are asked to repose unlimited confidence in critical powers of discrimination. The critical standard becomes arbitrary and subjective.
It is our effort, then, in the following pages to show that the unus color of Wolf does pervade the Epics, that recent details are not often, if ever, interpolated, that the poems harmoniously represent one age, and that a brief age, of culture; that this effect cannot, in a thoroughly uncritical period, have been deliberately aimed at and produced by archaeological learning, or by sedulous copying of poetic tradition, or by the scientific labours of an editor of the sixth century B.C. We shall endeavour to prove, what we have already indicated, that the hypotheses of expansion are not self-consistent, or in accordance with what is known of the evolution of early national poetry. The strongest part, perhaps, of our argument is to rest on our interpretation of archaeological evidence, though we shall not neglect the more disputable or less convincing contentions of literary criticism.
CHAPTER II
HYPOTHESES AS TO THE GROWTH OF THE EPICS
A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of four changeful centuries, must present a definite working hypothesis as to how they escaped from certain influences of the late age in which much of them is said to have been composed. We must first ask to what manner of audiences did the poets sing, in the alleged four centuries of the evolution of the Epics. Mr. Leaf, as a champion of the theory of ages of "expansion," answers that "the Iliad and Odyssey are essentially, and above all, Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the palaces of a ruling aristocracy ... the poems are aristocratic and courtly, not popular." [Footnote: Companion to the Iliad, pp. 2,8. 1892.] They are not Volkspoesie; they are not ballads. "It is now generally recognised that this conception is radically false."
These opinions, in which we heartily agree--there never was such a thing as a "popular" Epic--were published fourteen years ago. Mr. Leaf, however, would not express them with regard to "our" Iliad and Odyssey, because, in his view, a considerable part of the Iliad, as it stands, was made, not by Court bards in the Achaean courts of Europe, not for an audience of noble warriors and dames, but by wandering minstrels in the later Ionian colonies of Asia. They