ATTICversusACHAEAN TRADITIONS

[1]Pausanias, vii. i. 11.

[2]"Athenians and Achaean traditions."

[3]Hdt. v. 57, 58, 61. The Cadmeians, till very recently, were regarded as Phoenicians, Semites. Now the name "Phoenicians" ("red men") is understood to mean men of the old Aegean race, and no traces of Semitic import have been discovered in the soil of Boeotia. Thebes itself was "Minoan," not Semitic. Evans,Scripta Minoa,vol. i.

[4]Iliad, ii. 571, and Leaf's note, ii. 560. Hdt. i. 145.

[5]Thucydides, i. 2.

[6]R, G. E. 50-57.

[7]Hogarth.Ionia and the East, p. 12.

[8]Hogarth, p. 34.

[9]Ibid.pp. 34-36.

[10]Chipiez et Perrot,La Grèce de l'Epopée, pp. 235-246.

[11]Hogarth, p. 104.

[12]Mr. Murray, however, writes: "We know that the great mass of the saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from the eighth century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments" (of the Cyclic poems), "that it remained in its semi-savage state" (Anthropology in Greek Epic, 1908, p. 68). This knowledge is far from common. The Cyclic poems are in the highly developed Homeric hexameter; they are not, I venture to say, "semi-savage"; and, where they differ in beliefs, rites, and customs from Homer, they represent the usages of historic Hellas. They are generally believed to have been composed at the date when Mr. Murray says that they "began to be neglected." Far from being neglected, they certainly afforded much of the materials of the Athenian tragedians, and of the vase painters who choose many more subjects from the Cyclics than from our Homer.

[13]R. G. E.p. 134.

The mixed multitude of Ionian settlers in Asia must have had mixed traditions, not the legends of Athens alone, but those of the towns of the Calaurian amphictyony, and of many other regions, Cretan, Boeotian, Euboean, and so on. The dominant legends, however, in poetry, as known to us, were those of Athens, which are comparatively jejune, being often constructed, perhaps out of the competing variants of the Attic demes, to prove the legitimacy of one or another dynastic claim to the kingship of Athens. We are so familiar with the traditions as manipulated by the great tragedians, that we scarcely notice how absolutely Athens lies outside of the heroic myths of the rest of Greece.

Grote has justly observed that "neither the archaeology" (ancient traditions) "of Attica, nor that of its component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece." He might have stated the case much more strongly, for he says, "Theseus is noticed both in theIliadandOdysseyas having carried off from Crete, Ariadne, the daughter of Minos ... and the sons of Theseus take part in the Trojan war." But Demophon and Acamas, as sons of Theseus, appear,not in the Iliad, but onlyin the Ionian Cyclic poems; and if Theseus carries off Ariadne in theOdyssey,[1]not in theIliad, the passage is of the most dubious, and the myth is obscure.

"Homer is," says Mr. Leaf, "of course, ignorant of the Theseus myth in all its branches."[2]"There is no trace," says Mr. Monro, "in Homer of acquaintance with the group of legends to which the story of Aethra" (mother of Theseus) "belongs."[3]No acknowledged fact can more perfectly demonstrate the difference between Attic and Homeric or Achaean tradition than the circumstance that Homer, while he ignores Theseus, takes a view of Minos and of the Cretan empire directly opposed to Attic legend. This was perfectly plain to educated Athenians of Plato's age.

Thus in the Platonic or pseudo-Platonic dialogue,Minos, Socrates points out that to no other hero does Homer give the same praise as to Minos, as not only ason, but a pupil ofZeus(Od. xix. 178-180). Says Socrates, "Minos every ninth year conversed with Zeus, and went to be instructed by his wisdom,"—"this is marvellous praise." It is thus that Socrates understands the Homeric world. Μίνως ἐννέωρος βασίλευε Διὸς μεγάλου ὀαριστής: "Minos was king, who every nine years conversed with Zeus." "Every nine years Minos went to the cave of Zeus to be instructed," adds Socrates; but of the cave of Zeus, Homer says nothing.

The companion of Socrates then asks how Minos got such a bad name as "an uneducated ruffian"? "Because he made war on us of Athens," answered Socrates; "and we are strong in poets, especially in that delight of the populace, tragic poetry, which is very ancient with us; and on the stage we avenged ourselves on Minos."

In truth, while Homer presented Minos as a son and pupil of Zeus, as no god himself, but a mortal man, whose sceptred spirit administered justice to the souls in Hades, it was impossible for educated Athenians not to recognise that their own wild tales (how wild few knew), were partisan fabrications.

Not only Homer, but Hesiod took the favourable view of Minos, as against the hostile Attic legends; "and these two are more worthy of belief than all the tragic poets together," says Socrates (Minos, 318 d).

The Athenians heaped not only Minos, but his wife and his brother Rhadamanthus, under a pile of ordure. Helbig, who emphatically insists on the gulf between Attic and Homeric accounts of Minos, may be consulted for the abominable anti-Minoan stories.[4]

In Homer, Cretan Idomeneus (Iliad, xiii. 450) gives his genealogy as—

Zeus|Minos|Deucalion (Not he of the Deluge)|Idomeneus.

In theOdyssey, xi. 321-325, Minos is named as father of Ariadne, whose tale is alluded to in a puzzling way: the other heroines of the passage are Attic, Phaedra (wife of Theseus) and Procris. In xi. 568571, Minos, "splendid son of Zeus," is seen administering justice to the dead. In a false tale of Odysseus he calls himself a Cretan of the stock of Minos. In xix. 178, Minos is father of Deucalion, and in some way is "the nine years old," or is "at periods of nine years," the companion (ὀαριστής) of Zeus. There is in Homer nothing about the Attic fables of bulls, the Minotaur, or Minoan cruelty. Homeric tradition accepts and glories in the just king Minos: Athenian tradition, in which Attica suffers grievous things at the hands of Crete, heaps hatred and contumely on him, fixing on him the world-wideMärchenof the evil being whose fair daughter befriends the adventurous hero; and adding theMärchenof the black-sailedship which should have borne white sails of good tidings to Aegeus.

It is not merely the Attic myths of Theseus of Crete, and of the character of Minos, that differ from the Homeric. Attic legends are quite un-Homeric in character.[5]Two Attic characteristics may be noted. "The story of the sacrifice of a maiden" (or of several maidens at once) "appears and reappears in Attic tradition.... We have it in Iphigeneia...."[6]But we have it not in Homer. Again, among the royal family of Athens, in Attic tradition, it was chronic to be metamorphosed into birds. The stories were meant, originally, to account for the colours and habits of birds; such tales are numberless in the legends of Australian and other savages, who have a whole mythology of primal fowls, which is restated in theparabasisofThe Birdsof Aristophanes. Homer tells but one such bird myth. InOdyssey, xix. 518, Penelope speaks of the daughter of Pandareus, the brown bright nightingale, lamenting "Itylus, whom she slew with the sword unwittingly; Itylus, son of Zethus the prince." "The story has,as would be expected in a Homeric myth, nothing whatever to do with Athens."[7]The Attic story, much more horrible, is that of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus: it is as bad asTitus Andronicus. The Ionians transferred the scene to Miletus, Colophon, and Ephesus.[8]Homer wholly abstains from Attic myths, except for the mention of their heroines in a dubious passage of the eleventh book of theOdyssey.

Thus the Ionians, though they have adopted Homeric traditions, have counter-Homeric traditions,just as they have and retain the customs and rites of "the conquered race." These are demonstrable facts. On the other side, the Homeric poet ignores Ionian legends, and Ionians and Athenians have been unable to interweave Ionian tradition into theIliadandOdyssey. There is no doubt about this matter; Homer has no Ionian, the Ionians had no Homeric traditions. This abstinence from Attic legends is not peculiar to Homer. The greatest Achaean tradition, after the Tale of Troy, was the Tale of Thebes. The Attic tragedians have so Atticised it, especially in theOedipous Coloncusand theSuppliantsof Euripides, that we think of the hapless Theban king as a patron saint of Athens; and of Theseus as his host and as the heroic friend of Thebes.

But the ancient epos of Thebes knew no more of Athens than did the ancient epos of Troy. The Athenians could not and did not pretend, like the Argives, Arcadians, and other Peloponnesians, to have taken part in the first great collective Achaean attack on Thebes, an attack led by Adrastus, Tydeus, father of Diomede, Polynices, and the rest.[9]Neither did they pretend, though Ionians dwelt near the Theban Cadmeians in Boeotia, to have aided Thebes in her peril. Athens did allege that the useful Theseus led her army to rescue the unburied body of Polynices, or the bodies of him and Eteocles; it was her favourite boast.[10]

But this tale, as Grote says, "seems to have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the Athenians," in their ceaseless efforts to attach themselves to the great traditions that steadily ignore them. Adrastus, chief of the army which failed at Thebes, came, said the Athenians, as a suppliant to the useful Theseus at Eleusis. Then Theseus, with an Athenian force, vanquished the Thebans, and gave due burial to the dead. Euripides and Isocrates boast of this Flower ofChivalry, Theseus;[11]and Pausanias saw the tombs of Eteocles and Polynices—at Eleusis in Attica.[12]The Thebans denied the fable.

In the return match of the Epigonoi against Thebes, the Athenians did not pretend to have played a part. In the lists of heroes who take a share in the Argonautic expedition, and in the hunt of the Calydonian boar, the name of Theseus appears; but he did no more than Menestheus achieved at Troy. The Ionians in Asia made a desperate effort to connect themselves with the Trojan war by borrowing the descendants of Nestor, the Nelidae, who fled from the Dorians to Athens, obtained the throne, and led the Ionian migration into Asia.[13]The very fact that they had to borrow these refugees, in order to connect themselves with Achaean "saga," proves the Athenian lack of genuine mythical connection with the united efforts of the rest of Greece against Troy.

The burial of Oedipous at Colonus, the topic of the noble tragedy of Sophocles, is, poetry apart, mere body-snatching. TheIliadandOdyssey,[14]and even Hesiod,[15]know nothing of a sepulchral connection of Oedipous with Athens. Oedipous's funeral feast was held at Thebes. These sepulchral connections of Athens with the tale of Thebes are necessarily un-Homeric, for they are based on the very fanaticism of hero-worship, and fall into line with the craze of historic Greece for securing the relics of heroes, who will defend a city if duly propitiated.

Remote Aetolia is far more closely connected with the Tales of Thebes and of Troy than is Athens. For some reason, then, Athens, and with her the Ionians, is "not of the centre," is out of the central legends, andher efforts to attach herself to them are late, and are wholly un-Homeric. Naturally the really old Epic poets knew nothing of these Ionian pretensions, which are the work of Ionian Burkes tampering with the Homeric "Peerage." Athens wished to "have it both ways," to appear as a city that had always been held by the same race,[16]that stood apart, and had been the asylum of exiles from the rest of Greece; and also as a city that took a great part in the legendary history of the rest of Greece, whose traditions did not recognise her share.

Thus it seems probable that Attica was the seat of a people standing somewhat apart, and possessing an older stratum of inhabitants than the makers of Achaean saga. But Athens and the Ionians were not content with this respectable antiquity. The Ionians of Asia, first, in the Cyclic poems (750-600 B.C.) tried to prove that they and neighbouring and friendly peoples had their share in the Trojan war; and, next, the tragedians of Athens carried on this pseudo-tradition in regard to Thebes as well as to Troy. Their versions led the world captive for 2000 years. The oldest indications of the Ionian attempts to connect heroes of Athens and of her neighbours and friends with the Trojan affair are to be read in the fragments and summaries of the Cyclic poems.

Next, we find this cause taken up by the Athenian tragedians; and, lastly, we find in later sources the fables which the tragedians handled with poetic freedom; while, in the pseudo-Dictys of Crete, we have legends derived from the Cyclic poets, from other sources, and from the author's own fancy. The Roman poets, like Virgil, also reflect the Ionian and Athenian traditions, and their hostility to Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, and Diomede, with their partiality for Aias, claimed as a neighbour of Athens, and for the ill-used Philoctetes, and the martyr sage, Palamedes of Nauplia. Homer mentions neither him nor his city.[17]

[1]xi. 321-325.

[2]Leaf, Note toIliad, iii. 144.

[3]Monro,Odyssey, vol. ii. p. 370.

[4]Roscher'sLexikon, under "Minos."

[5]See Miss Harrison'sMythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, London, 1890.

[6]Ibid., p. 56, note. For human sacrifice see "The Cyclic Poems," later.

[7]Ibid. p. lxxxvi.

[8]Ibid. p. lxxxvii.

[9]Pausanias, from theThebais, ii. 20. 4, ix. 9. 1.

[10]Hdt. ix. 27.

[11]Suppliants, Isoc.,Oral. Panegyr. p. 196. Auger.

[12]Pausanias, i. 28. 7.

[13]Hdt. v. 65.

[14]Iliad, xxiii. 679;Odyssey, xi. 271-280.

[15]Scholiast.Iliad, xxiii. 679.

[16]Thucydides, i. 2.

[17]See "The Story of Palamedes."

Every reader of theIliadperceives that the poet knows an immense mass of legend and tradition. Thus, like Shakespeare, and our great masters of fiction, Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, he rarely introduces a minor character without marking the individuality in some memorable way. Often he does this by some line or two on the ancestry of the personage, and we are for a moment brought into touch with "old unhappy far-off things," or meet some notable trait of character. Thus Theano, daughter of Kisseus of Thrace, priestess of Athene in Troy, and wife of Antenor, is only introduced to utter the prayer of the women to the relentless goddess (Iliad, vi. 302-310). Yet we know her when we meet her, for (Iliad, v. 69-71) we have already heard of her goodness of heart. She reared Meges, a bastard of Antenor, "kindly, like her own children, to please her lord." Here we have probably no more than a touch of Homer's genial and discriminating art; it is not probable that the poet took this trait from any traditional "saga."

On the other hand, when in a digression he makes Nestor speak of old heroes, Epeians and Lapithae; or when Glaucus tells the tale of Bellerophon and the wife of Proetus; or Phoenix touches on the tragedy of fair-haired Meleager of Aetolia; or Agamemnon speaks of the birth of Heracles, or, in several other references to Theban wars, to the Amazons, and so forth, Homeris clearly drawing from the great legendary store of Achaeans or Pelasgians (to use that term for the earlier people).

All this matter is called "the saga" by the critics. As Homer comes at the crowning period of epic poetry, as his instrument, the hexameter, is delicately tempered by long processes, it seems probable that his mind was full of ancient lays on legendary themes as well, probably, as ofMärchenand traditions told orally in prose. These things are to him what ballads and oral traditions were to Scott. Though he only once, in a suspected passage, touches on the Choice of Paris (Iliad, xxiv, 25-30), he must have known some tale which accounted for the enmity of Hera to Ilios, and the hatred of Athene to the Asian city of which she was patroness. Zeus himself (Iliad, iv. 31-33) seems puzzled by the fury of Hera against Troy.Quo numine laeso? The cause of wrath is, in fact,spretae injuria formae, the spite of neglected beauty. No other reason (setting aside the favour of Ganymede, to whom Homer only refers in the most casual way) has ever been given.

As to the Trojan affairs, Homer knows many things on which he only touches briefly. It is clear that he knew a great saga about Trojan legendary history; for example, about the wall built by the Trojans and Pallas Athene to shelter Heracles when he fought a monster that ravaged the land (Iliad, xx. 146). He also knows that Apollo was made thrall to Laomedon, and built the city wall of Troy, but was defrauded of his reward (xxi. 441-455). That Apollo and Poseidon therefore sent the monster to which Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, was exposed, Homer does not say; he commonly ignores themärchenhaft, the fairy-tale points in a legend, but he knows that Heracles was also defrauded, and avenged himself by sacking Ilios (v. 638641). Manifestly there was a rich growth ofMärchenand legends clustered round Troy, and known to theAchaeans; Homer merely alludes to it, and to events posterior to the death of Hector.

He knows how Achilles fell in the Scaean gate, slain by Paris and Apollo; he knows the Sack of Troy, the wooden horse; the Returns, prosperous, troubled, or fatal, of the heroes; he knows Memnon's part in the war, and the end of Aias; he knows that Philoctetes is to be needed, and that Eurypylus fought and fell, and so forth. Concerning some of these things he may have heard lays; others he may have learned merely through oral tradition in prose.

Now it is at this point, namely, Homer's peculiar treatment of the legendary material which reached him, whether in verse or in proseMärchen, that his art stands especially apart from the art of poets who followed him, whether the authors of the "Cyclic" Ionian Epics, or the Athenian tragedians, or the dim genealogisers in verse of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Homer deliberatelyselectsfrom the "saga," or folk-tale, or bardic tradition, what is noble, heroic, possible, and human. He also, in theIliad, deliberately rejects what ismärchenhaft; the situations which belong to the datelessly old popularMärchen, or "fairy tale." Later poets put these things prominently forward; Homer ignores them. This is to be proved later in detail: meanwhile here is another mark of the aloofness of Homer, of his high aristocratic genius.

It seems certain that the Trojan legend, with the legends of the Theban wars and tragedies, of the voyage of Argo, and of the hunt of the Calydonian boar, existed in some consecutive form, and was supposed to be record of historical facts before our Homeric poems were composed. Actual history it was not, any more than theChansons de Geste, the poem ofBeowulf, the two Irish cycles of Cuchullin and of Fian, or theVolsunga Saga, or the romances of Arthur, are records of actual history.

In some of these cycles of western Europe we know that historical personages are involved,—about Charlemagne, of course, there is no doubt; and there really were wars of the Cymri of Strathclyde against the English invaders; and the romances appear to contain fanciful accounts of actual battles of Arthur fought in Cumberland, Lothian, Ettrick Forest, and the Lennox. But when King Loth of Lothian, whose house plays so great a part in the romances, appears, we see that he is only an "eponymous hero," his name being derived by legend from the name of his realm, Lothian. About any real characters whose fame may echo in the ancient Irish bardic traditions nothing can be known.

Homer's heroes are in the same case. There may have been a very early Achaean attempt against the northern Asiatic shore of the Aegean. There may have been wars of several States against Thebes. The voyage of the Argo, on the other hand, is nothing but a tissue of diverseMärchen, adroitly fitted into each other, as most formulae can glide into any otherMärchenformula and be prolonged almost infinitely. The Argo saga, as currently told, begins apparently with the tale of the man who weds a fairy bride or a swan nymph, and later loses her, like the Eskimo Bird Bride, the Sanskrit Urvasi and Pururavas. In the saga the man is Athamas, king of the Minyae of Orchomenos, or of Halos in Thessalian Phthiotis, or of Phthia. The bride is Nephele the Cloud-maiden. The pair have two children, Phrixus and Helle. The king takes another wife, and has another child by her. We now have the stepmother formula. Ino ill-treats Phrixus and Helle. Nephele returns to the house disguised as an old nurse (East Lynneformula). She deceives Ino into slaying her own children in place of her step-children (Hop o' my thumbformula; but this is not the most current version). Ino roasts the seed corn; there is no harvest, she sends messengers to the Delphicoracle to bring back the false answer that Phrixus must be sacrificed. When Athamas is about to sacrifice him, or both him and Helle, Nephele produces as substitute the golden (or white, or purple) ram, a gift of Hermes. On his back Phrixus, or both Helle and Phrixus, escape.

This is merely the formula of the two children flying from cannibal parents by the aid of a friendly animal, often a sheep; in Samoyed a beaver which can speak.[1]In many variants ofCinderellathe helpful sheep is the dead mother in that form. InAsterinos and Pulja, a tale from Epirus,[2]a dog is the helpful animal; but the boy is turned into a sheep, is slain by the girl's jealous mother-in-law, and from his bones grows a wonderful apple-tree. The girl is thrown into the deep water, but revives. In the Greek saga, Helle falls into the Hellespont off the ram's back: her name is eponymous, derived from the Hellespont. In some variants she does not escape on the ram. The later fortunes of Athamas and Ino are variously told.

But the Argo saga is continued by making the heroes of all Hellas join in "the classical Quest of the Grail," the search for the fleece of the Golden Ram. Where it was, Homer, we shall see, clearly did not know: the place was still in fairyland, unlocalised. Jason, as in a very commonMärchenformula, collects companions with marvellous gifts, Keen Eye (Lynceus), the Strong Man (Heracles), the prophet (Orpheus), the winged men, sons of the North Wind, and so on. There is nothing historic here; even thus, in Celtic saga, the miraculously gifted heroes hunted the Twrch Trywyth, the boar. Even thus the miraculously gifted Finnish heroes seek for the mystic Sampo in the Kalewala. The Achaean heroes find the fleece in the hands of King Aietes, who represents the giant of fairy tale, and has a fair daughter (Medea) that aids the young adventurer,and enables him to plough the perilous field with the untamable bulls, like Ilmarinen in the FinnishKalewala(Rune 19), like the hero of Kilwch and Olwen in the WelshMabinogion. She flees, as usual, with her lover from her father. Here this formula ends; the return voyage and the later adventures of the pair were fantastically told as geographical knowledge increased, after the home of Medea had been located at Aia in Colchis, at the east of the Euxine. Other formulae ofMärchenwere introduced, the venomed robe that burned up Glauce, the magic cauldron of youth that, in the wrong hands, is deadly. Medea is taken here and there, to Corinth, to Athens, mixed with the Theseus set ofMärchen, made the eponymous heroine of the Medes.

The Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, again, is of the same character as the mythic boar hunt that ended in upper Ettrick; as the boar hunt of Diarmaid, in Irish; and the hunt of the Welsh Mabinogion, where Keen Eye and the rest reappear, in the Twrch Trywyth.

The growth of "Saga," or bardic tradition, is the same in all countries. First we have theMärchen,told in prose, as they still exist among European peasants and in many "non-Aryan" peoples, from the Samoyeds of the frozen north to the Red Indians, the Huarochiri of Southern America, the Samoans, the Bechuanas, the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the Santhals, and so forth. In theMärchenthe characters are usually anonymous, a boy, a girl, a witch, a king, and the rest; real characters, as Charlemagne, may appear. The events are not localised. The situations are efforts of the primal romantic fancy; like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope, they fall into any number of patterns.

As civilisation advances and a class of professional sennachies appears, they give names to the characters; the anonymous young adventurer becomes Jason orTheseus; the cunning man who plays tricks on Death becomes Sisyphus; the monster, giant or beast, who sets impossible tasks to the adventurer, becomes Minos or Aietes; his wife or fair daughter, who baffles him and helps the hero, becomes Ariadne or Medea. In place of the helpful old woman of fairy tale comes Hera, whom Jason carries across the ford; or it is Athene, who gives Bellerophon the golden bit that tames the magical horse; here he is Pegasus. The rescuer of the girl exposed to a ravening monster is nownamedPerseus or Heracles. The brother and sister who flee from cannibal parents, with the aid of a friendly animal, are named Phrixus and Helle. In place of throwing behind them combs or stones which baffle the pursuer by changing into forests or mountains, Medea and Jason leave the mangled limbs of Medea's brother Absyrtus.

The lad who effects wonders by knowing the language of beasts, is in Greece named Melampus; the giant, whose life-token is a lock of his hair, becomes Nisus of Megara; his daughter, who loves the adventurer, and cuts the giant's lock, purple or golden, so that he is defeated, becomes Scylla; and Minos, who answers to the giant of fairy tale in the Theseus Attic legend, in the Megarian fable is himself the adventurer aided by the giant's daughter.[3]He does not marry the treacherous daughter, but puts her to death; as Achilles, in the Lesbian story, does not marry Pisidice, who for love of him has betrayed her city, but has her slain. The man who, to fulfil a prophecy, unwittingly weds his mother (a favourite character inMärchen, as Comparetti has shown), becomes Oedipous: he is also the answerer of riddles, a character ofMärchenfound everywhere.[4]

Out of these originally anonymous and unlocalisedpersonages and romantic situations ofMärchen, the Greek States made the heroes and events of their legendary history. That history, as of Theseus, Heracles, Perseus, Jason, Sisyphus, even Odysseus, Pelops, Oenomaus, Athamas, Laomedon, is but a series ofMärchenlocalised; while, in place of fairy godmothers, or anonymous benefactors, the old man or old woman ofMärchen, the Olympian gods are introduced, with their fairy gifts, the cap of darkness, the winged shoon, the sword of sharpness (Perseus), the power of taking all animal disguises. Homer knows the attack of Heracles on the father and brothers of Nestor. Hesiod knew the cause of the feud, Neleus refused to purify Heracles who had slain his host under the hospitable roof. Hesiod knows that Poseidon had given to Periclymenus, brother of Nestor, the power to appear in any animal shape, eagle, ant, snake, or bee; and that while Periclymenus lived, Heracles failed in the fight, and could not take Pylos. But when Periclymenus, as a bee, settled on the chariot of Heracles, Athene shot that bee with an arrow (see fragment of theEoiai14 (33), with the scholia).[5]Other examples of the wildest absurdities ofMärchen, retained and rejoiced in by the Ionic epic poets, are given later ("Homer and the Ionian Cyclic Poets"). But Homer, in theIliad, takes his heroes forth from the prison ofMärchen: whether the fairy tales had not yet become attached to Bellerophon, Achilles, and Meleager in his time, or whether his genius ignored such fanciful elements of tradition, Homer does not speak of the invulnerability of Achilles, save on his heel; or tell the wooing by his father, Peleus, of Thetis as she takes a variety of bestial forms. Either these situations had not yet become attached to the story of Achilles, or Homer chooses to ignore them. Such things do not come into the natural objective world of theIliad. In the digression of Bellerophonhe recurs to the human natural side ofMärchen, the story of the woman who, vainly attacking a man's virtue, accuses him falsely; the message or letter of death,[6]his three strange adventures to achieve, that of the Chimaera and others, and his winning of the king's daughter. ThisMärchen, localised, is in a digression; but Homer usually keeps hisMärchenfor theOdyssey,and the incidents occur beyond the bounds of the world he knows.

Now, even when Homer touches on the tale of Meleager, he says nothing of that fairy property the "soul-box" or "life-token," the brand snatched from the burning; or of the visit of the Spaewives, the Fates, and their prophecy. He actually does not seem to know that incident. Althaea, mother of Meleager, in Homer (Iliad, ix. 565-572), prays to the Erinnyes and they hear her. She has not her son's "soul-box" or "life-token" in her hands to burn it, and slay him. In Pausanias (x. 31. 3), Meleager is killed by Apollo, who is fighting for the Curetes against the Aetolians. Meleager died, like Achilles, by Apollo's hand, though Paris was an accomplice of the God in the case of Achilles. Pausanias follows the HesiodicEoiai, which Kuhnert supposes to have known the same story as Homer.[7]

As Kuhnert justly observes, the poetry of Homer isknightly. "An der Hofen wurden die homerische Gedichte versungen ... the hero must find his death at a divine hand in glorious warfare." The Athenian tragedians are our oldest source for the Moirae and the fatal life-token: a property very common inMärchen; but when the incident first attached itself to Meleager we cannot know. This avoidance of the folk-element, theMärchen, in theIliadis one of the things that distinguishes Homer from the IonianCyclic poets, the Hesiodic school, and the Athenian tragedians.

Homer, again, in another way, stands apart from the genealogising poets of the eighth to seventh century (such as the school of "Hesiod," and "Eumelus" of Corinth) by his method of handling tradition or saga. These genealogising poets aimed at constructing history, and preluded to the "logographers" in prose of the sixth century. Both they and the logographers have the same simple method, that of the would-be historic early mediaeval writers on Scotland and Ireland. Their plan is to invent for each town or people an eponymous hero, whose name is simply the name of the city or people (as, in Scotland, Fib for Fife, Loth for Lothian, Scota for the Scoti). The hero, or heroine, founds the city, or is first ancestor of the people. Next follow the legends about heroic characters, as Perseus, Athamas, Pelops, Theseus, Aietes, Phrixus, which are mereMärchenof world-wide diffusion, localised, with named persons for the characters.

The region of legend expands with the expansion of geographical knowledge. Cities hasten, like Athens and Corinth, to attach themselves to sagas, as that of Argo, in which they had no original part. Hesiod extends the old saga, and carries descendants of the old characters, as of Odysseus, to Italy, to Latium and Etruria. "Eumelus" drags Corinth into the cycle of the Argonautic expedition: Athens, we have said, brings Medea to Athens, and into her Theseus fable. Later the logographers, in prose, continue the process and alter the genealogies to suit their historical theories.

From all these processes Homer stands apart. He has not any historical theory to prove. He seldom mentions an eponymous founder of a city, or ancestor of a people. Nausithous founds Phaeacia, his city is not called Nausithoa. Homer names Mykene (Odyssey, ii. 120), but does not say that she foundedMycenae, as "Eumelus" says that Ephyre founded the town of Ephyre (Corinth). You would not gather from Homer that the Achaeans were descendants of Achaeus, or the Danaans of Danaus.

All these things are obvious and undeniable. Homer is a poet: the genealogising writers in verse are aiming at constructing history (somehistory may be present), and at explaining the origins of peoples and cities.

But, according to some of the modern learned, our Homer contains borrowings from the Eumelian verses on Corinth. Thus Mr. Murray says that theIliadandOdyssey"not only refer to other legends as already existing and treated by other poets; that every one admits; but they often in their digressions tell stories in a form which clearly suggests recapitulation or allusion. They imply the existence elsewhere of a completer poetical treatment of the same subject," as in the tale of Bellerophon, told to Diomede by Glaucus inIliad, vi. "Is it not plain that the poet ofIliad, vi., is in the first place referring to an existing legend, and, secondly, one may almost say, quoting from an existing poem?"[8]

Certainly Homer is referring to an existing legend, and not improbably to a lay which in his time existed. But Mr. Murray goes on to suggest that the existing poem referred to is theCorinthiacaof "Eumelus," whom he takes to be a mythical name for the author of Corinthian traditional poetry; von Christ thinks Eumelus of the seventh century.

Mr. Murray's argument seems to be, Homer knew a legend, probably knew a poem, about Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, who dwelt in Ephyre (Corinth). "Eumelus" wrote a poem about Corinthian affairs. Therefore the poet who introduced the tale told by Glaucus intoIliad, vi., took it (textually, it seems to be suggested)from "Eumelus."[9]In the same way the author ofIliad, v. 395-400, and Panyassis, the uncle of Herodotus, presumably adapt from the same source. Mr. Leaf, on the other hand, supposes the poet-uncle to give an "echo" from the passage in the fifth book of theIliad.There may be an echo, in Homer on Heracles, from an older poem on Heracles, but that poem is likely to be long anterior to the end of the sixth century.[10]

In any case the "Eumelus" known to us in Greek literary tradition was atendenzpoet, a poet with a purpose, with a pseudo-historical theory to prove; he used the method of the genealogisers, who turned into heroes and heroines men and women who were constructed out of place-names; and he, in certain places, did not borrow from Homer, nor Homer from him, for he and Homer flatly contradict each other. If all this be not post-Homeric, what is?

Pausanias, in discussing Eumelus's peculiar version of the relations of Medea to Corinth, quotes a "History of Corinth," in prose, by Eumelus, "if he is really the author of it."[11]"Eumelus is also said to have been a poet," and Pausanias avers that the only poem recognised as genuine of Eumelus is a processional ode to Delian Apollo.[12]Therewasa prose version of his other work,and Clemens Alexandrinus regarded Eumelus as a logographer like Acusilaus, who "turned the poems of Hesiod into prose."[13]

But, genuine or not, an "Eumelian"poemon a forged part of Corinthian legendary history did at some time exist, for the scholiast on Pindar (Ol.xiii.) cited eight lines of it; and these lines are manifestly complementary to the part of the prose history by "Eumelus" which Pausanias quotes. Taking the Eumelian verse and prose together, we find that "Eumelus" in hisCorinthiacaappears in Greek literary tradition as a chronicler in verse, a genealogist, a maker of patriotic pseudo-history, and a narrator of a late version of the Argo story.

Now, as "Eumelus" began (as the Ram in the fairy story is requested to do) "at the beginning," at the founding of Ephyre, or Corinth; and as he told the Argonautic tale in full, including the aprocryphal adventures of Medea in what he chose to call her rightful kingdom in Corinth; and as the tale is a very long one, we may infer that this, and not the entire mass of Corinthian legend, was the topic of his book. If so, Bellerophon, though a Corinthian, was "out of the story"; for, by the Eumelian genealogies, he was four generations later than Medea's tenure of the Corinthian throne. She was succeeded by Sisyphus, whose exploits would fill a book; Sisyphus by Glaucus, and Glaucus by Bellerophon. But the aim of "Eumelus" was to glorify Corinth by attributing to her a share in the tale of Argo; its heroine, Medea, must therefore be of the Corinthian Royal House; and, after proving this, and telling the Argo saga, "Eumelus" must give her adventures, after Argo's return to Greece, in Corinth; and these were many and tragical.

Wishing, then, to attach Corinth to the Argonauticstory, the genealogiser manages matters thus. Helios, the Sun, he says, had two sonsby Antiope(daughter of the river god Asopus); the sons were Aloeus and Aietes. Homer does not borrow those facts from "Eumelus"; Homer tells a different story, but the historical effort of "Eumelus" constrains him to make his local nymph, Antiope, mother of Aietes. That is the basis of his forgery. Meanwhile Homer tells a contradictory story about this Antiope (Od. xi. 260). Her lover was not Helios, but Zeus. Her sons were not Aietes and Aloeus, but Amphion and Zethus. Homer is not borrowing fromthisgenealogiser! The heroine Ephyre founded Ephyre. (She was daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of Epimetheus, or daughter of Epimetheus, an un-Homeric kind of person.) The river Asopus, father of Antiope (who was mother, says "Eumelus," by the Sun of Aloeus and Aietes), gave his name as "Asopia" to what was later Sicyon. The Sun gave tohisson, Aloeus, "the land held by Asopus, to his son Aietes he gave Ephyre" (Corinth). Aietes goes to Colchis (a place necessarily unnamed by Homer, for it is at the extreme east of the Euxine); but previously had arranged that Bounos is to be regent of Ephyre till Aietes,or a descendant of his,returns and claims it.[14]Medea is to be that descendant.

So far we have Eumelianverse. How the story went on we learn from theproseversion cited by Pausanias. Bounos died as king of Ephyre, and was succeeded by the nephew of Aietes (a son of his brother Aloeus), named Epopeus.[15]Epopeus was harsh tohisson Marathon, and Marathon fled to Attica and founded the famous deme of Marathon. He had two sons, Sicyon, to whom, on the death of his own father, Epopeus, he gave Sicyon; while Ephyre he gave to his son Corinthus; hence Ephyre came to be called Corinth. When Corinthus died childless, the Corinthians sent to Colchis for Medea, in accordance with the entail madeby Aietes (as "Eumelus" has told us in verse), when he left Ephyre for Colchis.[16]Nothing can be less Homeric.

The "Eumelus" of whom we have reports wrote pseudo-history in verse, for he has to make Medea survive Aietes, Bounos, Epopeus, Marathon, and Corinthus, and then, in the prime of beauty, succeed to the realm of Corinthus as Queen of Corinth. Leaving Corinth for Athens under a cloud, Medea gives Corinth to Sisyphus.[17]

"Eumelus," as Seeliger observes,[18]knows the Argo story in the common late expanded form, Colchis and all; but chooses to make Aietes, contrary to all other authorities, a king of Corinth. Attica, too, must needs attach herself to the story of Argo, by making Medea seduce King Aegeus, the father of Theseus, and try to poison Theseus himself: she also made Aegeus send him on the desperate adventure of fighting the Bull of Marathon.[19]This Bull of Marathondonne à penser. In one legend Aegeus, father of Theseus, sent Androgeos, son of Minos, to fight the bull, which killed him. It was therefore but tit-for-tat when Minos sent Athenian tributary boys and girls to fighthisbull, the bullheaded Minotaur.[20]

"Eumelus," as far as our evidence goes, stands for the school who, for every town, supposed an eponymous person as founder, for Ephyre (Corinth) he gives the nymphe Ephyre. Now Homer does not work on these lines. When "Eumelus" had got his pseudo-history and false genealogies to his taste, he must have told at full length the tale of Argo, for we have five lines of his describing the terror caused in Aietes and the Colchians by the throwing of the weight by Jasonamong the armed brood born of the plain, which Jason ploughed with fire-breathing bulls.

These things, then, are what Greek literary tradition reports about a pseudo-historical genealogist, and teller of the tale of Argo with a purpose. That he ever mentioned Bellerophon we have no proof: Pausanias does not cite Eumelus for Bellerophon. Homer, as usual, omits theMärchenof the winged horse Pegasus, whereby, in later poems, Bellerophon accomplishes his feats. Pindar is copious about Pegasus: that noble animal. The peculiarly gifted horse, hard to bridle, is common property of "fairy tales." Usually some friendly person tells the adventurous lad to use a peculiar bridle without which the steed is untamable. The boy can always sell the horse, but keep the bridle; the purchaser returns the nag, and the hero keeps the money. In Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode, Athene is the benevolent person of theMärchen. Bellerophon, wanting to break in Pegasus, sleeps in her temple; she presents him with the magical golden bit and head-stall. Dropping Pegasus, magical bridle and all, Homer only says that the gods "gave Bellerophon friendly convoy to Lycia."[21]Mr. Murray asks, "What blameless guiding of the gods led Bellerophon to Lycia?" Clearly he flew thither through upper air on Pegasus, like Commodore Trunnion leaping a sunken way on the road to the hymeneal altar, "to the unspeakable terror and amazement" of a waggoner below, says Smollett. But Homer is not Smollett, and does not send Bellerophon flying through air on a horse. Pindar saw no objections to the incident.[22]

Here we must try to explain a point on which Mr. Murray remarks, "There has been an extraordinary reluctance among scholars to ... admit the possibility of'Homer,' as the phrase is, borrowing from the supposed later author 'Eumelus,' or even from 'Hesiod.'" The reluctance is natural and justifiable; because when we say "Eumelus" or "Hesiod," we mean just what we have received from antiquity under the names of these men. Their work, as it reaches us, is un-Homeric, is later, we say, than theIliad. But if "Eumelus" be a mythical name for a supposed author of a body of Corinthian heroic poetry: if the Eumelian matter which we have received was not that, then we know nothing about that, and cannot say whether our Homer borrowed from some other Eumelianepêor not. Mr. Murray, as to Homer's debt to "Eumelus," writes: "If anything were needed to make it clearer still, it would be that the Verses of Eumelus are quoted as the earliest authority for the story of the Argo and Medea, and the composer of ourOdysseyspeaks of the Argo as a subject of which 'all minds are full'"[23]The reader naturally gathers that our Homer took his information about Argo from "Eumelus." We can only say, "not from the Eumelus known to us in Greek literary tradition." Thus Hesiod[24]tells of the birth of Circe and Aietes her brother (the father of Medea) in precisely the same terms as Homer does, and as Eumelus does not.[25]Both poets say that Helios, byPerses(Homer), orPerseis(Hesiod), a daughter of Oceanus, was the father of Circe and Aietes. Homer does not mention Medea, but Hesiod says that she was the daughter of Aietes. Now Eumelus, in what we have of him, says nothing of Circe, but makes Aietes the son of Helios and Antiope,notof Perses as in Homer. Manifestly, then, Homer did not take his version fromthisEumelus; while, when Homer and Hesiod precisely agree, if either borrowed from the other, it were quite arbitrary to say that Homer borrowed from Hesiod, who knows Latium and Etruria.

Homer certainly did not borrow here from ourEumelus, for he differs from Eumelus; nor is Eumelus quoted, as far as I am aware, "as the earliest authority for" the story of Argo. The scholiast on Pindar, as I, for one, understand him, quotes Eumelus for something quite different, namely, for his peculiar account (adopted by Pindar when praising a Corinthian athlete) of Medea as rightful Queen of Corinth; a point on which no Greeks agreed with the patriotic chronicler, the Corinthian Eumelus, as Pausanias observes.

Homer knows about the ship Argo, and her escape from the clash of the Rocks Wandering, through the favour of Hera.[26]The dangers of these rocks are described by Circe to Odysseus, for he must pass by that perilous path of the sea; and Circe ought to know, for she is sister of King Aietes, from whose land Argo was sailing when she met the rocks. But where did Aietes dwell? On that point Homer says nothing and knew nothing.

It is manifest that Homer neither knows where Aiaie, the isle of Circe, is, nor where the home of King Aietes is. To him Aiaie is "an unsubstantial fairy place." In theOdyssey(xii. 3, 4), Circe's isle is "near the home and dancing-places of the Dawn, and the land of sunrising." You cannot go farther east in a black ship. But in Hesiod,[27]Circe's Aia must be in the west, for her sons by Odysseus (unheard of by Homer) rule over Latins and Tyrsenians. Later poets placed the Aia of Circe's brother, Aietes, in the east, in Colchis, at the eastern limit of the Euxine; and Circe's Aia they located in the west, at the promontory of Circeei in Italy. Homer himself shows no knowledge of Italy, on one side, or of the extremity of the Euxine on the other.[28]Even Mimnermus places the city of Aietes vaguely "at the limit of Oceanus."[29]By way of finding reason where there is none, Apollonius Rhodiusexplains that Circe originally lived in the Aia of the east, as in theOdyssey, but was transported by Helios to the Aia in the west.[30]Homer being so vague, we do not say he is borrowing from our Eumelus, who locates Aietes in Colchis, under Caucasus, which Homer, if pre-Ionian, never knew. Had Homer, or any of the supposed late contributors to theIliadandOdyssey, lived in the eighth to seventh centuries, and studied our Eumelus, or even our Hesiod, theIliadandOdysseywould have had much more extensive geographical knowledge than they possess. No one will say that our Homer borrows from a genealogiser like our Eumelus, when Eumelus does not even agree with Homer about the mother of Aietes.

TheIliaddoes know that Jason, in the isle of Lemnos, had a son by Hypsipyle;[31]and the adventures of the Argonauts in Lemnos are part of the story of Argo. But Lemnos is well within Homer's geographical knowledge, while the homes of Aietes and Circe are far beyond its limits.

The confusion of early mythical geography is inextricable. In theOdysseythe ship Argo met the Rocks Wandering on her way home from Aietes. Odysseus meets the rocks on his way home from Circe. She dwells in the farthest east; so then, it seems, did Aietes. In Pindar,[32]Argo encounters the rocks on her outward and eastward way, before she enters the Euxine. Homer knows that Jason loved Hypsipyle in Lemnos, whether on his way to or his return from Aietes. Pindar says on his return westward to Greece, after he has visited Oceanus, the Red Sea, and Africa. The common story, as in Apollonius Rhodius, makes Jason love Hypsipyle in Lemnos as he sails eastwards and outward bound to Colchis. If he wooed her thus, onhis way home,with Medea,as Pindar tells, one can only say that he was a brave man.

Let us next, before going deeper into the "Saga," examine the case of Thersites, the impudent demagogue ofIliad, ii., never again mentioned by Homer. Mr. Murray is rather surprised "to find that Thersites is really an independent saga-figure with a life of his own, and very distinguished relations. He was a son of Agrios, the savage Aetolian king, and first cousin once removed of the great Diomedes. His mother was Dia, a palpable goddess." He was killed by Achilles for jeering at his grief over the slain Amazon, Penthesilea. Achilles was purified by Odysseus, but Diomede took up his feud.[33]

In Pherecydes (fr. 82), Thersites is an Aetolian, thrown over a rock by Meleager for his cowardice in the boar hunt, but not killed.[34]

All this about Thersites is really "saga" stuff,—invented about the date of theAethiopis. But Thersites was no hero of "saga" in the time of Homer. Had he been the son of a goddess (otherwise unknown) and of "a savage Aetolian king" (Homer's Aetolians are as civilised as his other peoples), the poet would have said so. He is most careful, we saw, to tell us who his heroes are (except the Athenians), even when they only appear for the purpose of being slain. But he says not a word about the genealogy and antecedents of Thersites, who is only a man of the λαός or host, food for bronze. "The savage king of the Aetolians," Agrios, has beenpicked out by some one suffering from la manie cyclique, who was anxious to tell "what became of them all," fromIliad, xiv. 114-125: "no doubt an interpolation," says Mr. Leaf, "like many others, of the genealogical school connected with the name of Hesiod."

Here, at all events, whether the genealogy be late and Hesiodic or not, Diomede gives to Agamemnon his genealogy, in Aetolia.

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