Homer and His Age | Page 7

the poet of ILIAD, Book X., known the Thracians in this condition,
says Helbig, as he was fond of details of costume and arms, he would
have certainly described their fox-skin caps, bows, bucklers, and so
forth. He would not here have followed the Epic tradition, which
represented the Thracians as makers of great swords and as splendidly
armed charioteers. His audience had met the Thracians in peace and
war, and would contradict the poet's description of them as heavily
armed charioteers. It follows, therefore, that the latest poets, such as the
author of Book 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.