Homer and His Age | Page 4

our day," as regards archaeological precision; at least we are
acquainted with no example of such accuracy.
Let us take another instance of the critical fallacy. The age of the
Achaean warriors, who dwelt in the glorious halls of Mycenae, was
followed, at an interval, by the age represented in the relics found in the
older tombs outside the Dipylon gate of Athens, an age beginning,
probably, about 900-850 B.C. The culture of this "Dipylon age," a time
of geometrical ornaments on vases, and of human figures drawn in
geometrical forms, lines, and triangles, was quite unlike that of the
Achaean age in many ways, for example, in mode of burial and in the
use of iron for weapons. Mr. H. R. Hall, in his learned book, _The
Oldest Civilisation of Greece_ (1901), supposes the culture described
in the Homeric poems to be contemporary in Asia with that of this
Dipylon period in Greece. [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 49, 222.] He says,
"The Homeric culture is evidently the culture of the poet's own days;
there is no attempt to archaise here...." They do not archaise as to the
details of life, but "the Homeric poets consciously and consistently
archaised, in regard to the political conditions of continental Greece,"
in the Achaean times. They give "in all probability a pretty accurate
description" of the loose feudalism of Mycenaean Greece. [Footnote:
Op. cit., pp. 223, 225.]

We shall later show that this Homeric picture of a past political and
social condition of Greece is of vivid and delicate accuracy, that it is
drawn from the life, not constructed out of historical materials. Mr.
Hall explains the fact by "the conscious and consistent" archaeological
precision of the Asiatic poets of the ninth century. Now to any one who
knows early national poetry, early uncritical art of any kind, this theory
seems not easily tenable. The difficulty of the theory is increased, if we
suppose that the Achaeans were the recent conquerors of the
Mycenaeans. Whether we regard the Achaeans as "Celts," with Mr.
Ridgeway, victors over an Aryan people, the Pelasgic Mycenaeans; or
whether, with Mr. Hall, we think that the Achaeans were the Aryan
conquerors of a non-Aryan people, the makers of the Mycenaean
civilisation; in the stress of a conquest, followed at no long interval by
an expulsion at the hands of Dorian invaders, there would be little
thought of archaising among Achaean poets. [Footnote: Mr. Hall
informs me that he no longer holds the opinion that the poets
archaised.]
A distinction has been made, it is true, between the poet and other
artists in this respect. Monsieur Perrot says, "The vase- painter
reproduces what he sees; while the epic poets endeavoured to represent
a distant past. If Homer gives swords of bronze to his heroes of times
gone by, it is because he knows that such were the weapons of these
heroes of long ago. In arming them with bronze he makes use, in his
way, of what we call "local colour...." Thus the Homeric poet is a more
conscientious historian than Virgil!" [Footnote: La Grète de l'Epopée,
Perrot et Chipiez, p. 230.]
Now we contend that old uncritical poets no more sought for antique
"local colour" than any other artists did. M. Perrot himself says with
truth, "the CHANSON DE ROLAND, and all the Gestes of the same
cycle explain for us the Iliad and the Odyssey." [Footnote: op. cit., p. 5.]
But the poet of the CHANSON DE ROLAND accoutres his heroes of
old time in the costume and armour of his own age, and the later poets
of the same cycle introduce the innovations of their time; they do not
hunt for "local colour" in the CHANSON DE ROLAND. The very
words "local colour" are a modern phrase for an idea that never

occurred to the artists of ancient uncritical ages. The Homeric poets,
like the painters of the Dipylon period, describe the details of life as
they see them with their own eyes. Such poets and artists never have
the fear of "anachronisms" before them. This, indeed, is plain to the
critics themselves, for they, detect anachronisms as to land tenure,
burial, the construction of houses, marriage customs, weapons, and
armour in the Iliad and Odyssey. These supposed anachronisms we
examine later: if they really exist they show that the poets were
indifferent to local colour and archaeological precision, or were
incapable of attaining to archaeological accuracy. In fact, such artistic
revival of the past in its habit as it lived is a purely modern ideal.
We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from such
inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details of life as
uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of the one age which
they represent. This is the