Homer and His Age | Page 2

Homeric commentators are other and very different things.
Among all the branches of knowledge which the Homeric critic should
have at his command, only philology, archaeology, and anthropology
can 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 Archéologique 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