Homer and His Age Part 6

Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket, is laid in a [Greek: kapetos], a ditch or trench (_Iliad_, XV. 356; XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) [Greek: kapetos] is a chamber covered with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics are later than the Homeric poems. [Footnote: Helbig, op. _laud_., pp.

240, 241.]

If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of another than the _old_ AEolic epic faith, [Footnote: Ibid., p. 253.]

they are also traces of another than the late _Ionic_ epic faith, for no weapons are burned with Hector. In the _Odyssey_ the weapons of Achilles are not burned; in the _Iliad_ the armour of Patroclus is not burned.

No victims of any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the poet was not anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already a very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the burning.

The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the barrow of AEsyetes (_Iliad_, II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family cairn; he may not have had an expensive cremation.

The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the Homeric kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried either in shaft graves or in a stately _tholos_; and in rock chambers, later, in the town cemetery: they did not burn the bodies. The people of the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built no barrow over the dead. [Footnote: _Annal. de l'Inst.,_ 1872, pp. 135, 147, 167. Plausen, _ut supra_.] The Dipylon was a period of early iron swords, made on the lines of not the best type of bronze sword. Now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial "are all late; the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii.

p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing" of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are "perhaps borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that "the oldest parts of the poems" do tell us of cremation.] We shall show, however, that Mr. Leaf's "kernel" alludes to cremation. What is "late"? In this case it is not the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any later period; one or two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The "late" parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of an age not in "the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily, not of any subsequent period. Yet n.o.body dreams of saying that the poets describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own age, we ask, "Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the _tholos_, without cremation?"

Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were "spirit worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial mummification;" the second fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean 'Dipylon' period, we find cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval, therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. [Footnote: All conceivable beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist.

For every conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary Australian modes of dealing with the dead, see Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_; Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_.] It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate point...." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. 622.] In that case the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the original kernel" are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which exhibits a mixture of custom; cremation and inhumation coexisting, without barrows or howes.

We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the case with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the latest expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C. (?). The poem is so early that it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship; or it might be more judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not, officially, practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in folk-custom. The Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it.

_Enfin_, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean period and the ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times can be, unless we are to say, that after the age of shaft graves and spirit worship came an age of cremation and of no spirit worship; and that late poets consciously and conscientiously preserved the tradition of _this_ period into their own ages of hero worship and inhumation, though they did not preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period.

We cannot accept this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical descriptions, nor can any one consistently adopt it in this case.

The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes several successive periods of "expansion." In the first stratum we have the remains of "the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but slight additions." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xi.] In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates cremation as the mode of burial. "Give them my body back again, that the Trojans and Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death."

Perhaps this allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII.

79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But whoever knows the curious economy by way of repet.i.tion that marks early national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII, 342,343) as an example of this practice. Compare _La Chancun de Williame_, lines 1041-1058 with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in pa.s.sages containing many identical lines. The poet, having found his formula, uses it whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in the same epic. [Footnote: _Romania_, x.x.xiv. PP. 245, 246.] Repet.i.tions in Homer need not indicate late additions; the artifice is part of the epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we are right, cremation is the mode of burial even in "the original kernel." Hector, moreover, in the kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his final fight with Achilles, the same proposal as he makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et _seqq_.). The victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his friends, but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say--in this place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343).

In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described, and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the method of cremation had come in as early as the "kernel," The Slaying of Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.

But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the original poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus two removes later than the original "kernel." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. xii.] Now this is the period--the Making of the Shield for Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period--of "the eminently free and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work, in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the daggers and siege fragment). [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p, 606.]

The poet of the age of the second expansions, then,' is at least in touch with the work of the shaft grave and ages. He need not be contemporary with that epoch, but "may well have had in his mind the work of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may have seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired by that. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.]

Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 I 2), the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.] Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion might lead us to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial occurs in a period _PRIOR_ to an age in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the work of two early epochs--the epoch of shaft graves and that of _THOLOS_ graves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in cairns may be nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old as the _THOLOS_ graves, and they endure into the age of the latest expansions.

We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the pa.s.sages concerning burial, from the "kernel" itself, and also from the earliest to the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of a single age--unless we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age must have been brief, indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of _tholos_ graves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been evolved after the cremation age pa.s.sed, on the other. That brief intervening age, however, was the age of the _ILIAD_ and Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed, in Thessaly, "a large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned remains." But the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.C. [Footnote: Ridgeway, _Early Age Of Greece_, vol. i. p. 491; _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies, vol. xx_. pp. 20-25.] It is possible enough that all tumuli of the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich reward for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery--the heroes of the Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe--and the fact is unlucky for the Homeric archaeologist.

We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the _Iliad_ and Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a single and peculiar moment of culture.

The fact, if accepted, is incompatible with the theory that the poets both introduced the peculiar conditions of their own later ages and also, on other occasions, consciously and consistently "archaised." Not only is such archaising inconsistent with the art of an uncritical age, but a careful archaiser, with all the resources of Alexandrian criticism at his command, could not archaise successfully. We refer to Quintus Smyrnaeus, author of the _Post Homerica_, in fourteen books. Quintus does his best; but we never observe in him that _naf_ delight in describing weapons and works of art, and details of law and custom which are so conspicuous in Homer and in other early poets. He does give us Penthesilea's great sword, with a hilt of ivory and silver; but of what metal was the blade? We are not told, and the reader of Quintus will observe that, though he knows [Greek: chalkos], bronze, as a synonym for weapons, he scarcely ever, if ever, says that a sword or spear or arrow-head was of bronze--a point on which Homer constantly insists.

When he names the military metal Quintus usually speaks of iron. He has no interest in the const.i.tutional and legal sides of heroic life, so attractive to Homer.

Yet Quintus consciously archaises, in a critical age, with Homer as his model. Any one who believes that in an uncritical age rhapsodists archaised, with such success as the presumed late poets of the _ILIAD_ must have done, may try his hand in our critical age, at a ballad in the style of the Border ballads. If he succeeds in producing nothing that will at once mark his work as modern, he will be more successful than any poet who has made the experiment, and more successful than the most ingenious modern forgers of gems, jewels, and terra-cottas. They seldom deceive experts, and, when they do, other experts detect the deceit.

CHAPTER VII

HOMERIC ARMOUR

Tested by their ideas, their picture of political society, and their descriptions of burial rites, the presumed authors of the alleged expansions of the _Iliad_ all lived in one and the same period of culture. But, according to the prevalent critical theory, we read in the _Iliad_ not only large "expansions" of many dates, but also briefer interpolations inserted by the strolling reciters or rhapsodists. "Until the final literary redaction had come," says Mr. Leaf--that is about 540 B.C.--"we cannot feel sure that any details, even of the oldest work, were secure from the touch of the latest poet." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. ix.]

Here we are far from Mr. Leaf's own opinion that "the whole scenery of the poems, the details of armour, palaces, dress, decoration ... had become stereotyped, and formed a foundation which the Epic poet dared not intentionally sap...." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. i. p. xv.] We now find [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. ix.] that "the latest poet" saps as much as he pleases down to the middle of the sixth century B.C.

Moreover, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., the supposed editor employed by Hsistratus made "constant additions of transitional pa.s.sages," and added many speeches by Nestor, an ancestor of Pisistratus.

Did these very late interlopers, down to the sixth century, introduce modern details into the picture of life? did they blur the _unus_ color?

We hope to prove that, if they did so at all, it was but slightly. That the poems, however, with a Mycenaean or sub-Mycenaean basis of actual custom and usage, contain numerous contaminations from the usage of centuries as late as the seventh, is the view of Mr. Leaf, and Reichel and his followers. [Footnote: Homerische Waffen. Von Wolfgang Reichel.

Wien, 1901.]

Reichel's hypothesis is that the heroes of the original poet had no defensive armour except the great Mycenaean shields; that the ponderous shield made the use of chariots imperatively necessary; that, after the Mycenaean age, a small buckler and a corslet superseded the unwieldy shield; that chariots were no longer used; that, by the seventh century B.C., a warrior could not be thought of without a breastplate; and that new poets thrust corslets and greaves into songs both new and old.

How the new poets could conceive of warriors as always in chariots, whereas in practice they knew no war chariots, and yet could not conceive of them without corslets which the original poet never saw, is Reichel's secret. The new poets had in the old lays a plain example to follow. They did follow it as to chariots and shields; as to corslets and greaves they reversed it. Such is the Reichelian theory.

THE SHIELD

As regards armour, controversy is waged over the shield, corslet, and bronze greaves. In Homer the shield is of leather, plated with bronze, and of bronze is the corslet. No shields of bronze plating and no bronze corslets have been found in Mycenaean excavations.

We have to ask, do the Homeric descriptions of shields tally with the representations of shields in works of art, discovered in the graves of Mycenae, Spata in Attica, Vaphio in Sparta, and elsewhere? If the descriptions in Homer vary from these relics, to what extent do they vary? and do the differences arise from the fact that the poet describes consistently what he sees in his own age, or are the variations caused by late rhapsodists in the Iron Age, who keep the great obsolete shields and bronze weapons, yet introduce the other military gear of their day, say 800-600 B.C.--gear unknown to the early singers?

It may be best to inquire, first, what does the poet, or what do the poets, say about shields? and, next, to examine the evidence of representations of shields in Mycenaean art; always remembering that the poet does not pretend to live, and beyond all doubt does not live, in the Mycenaean prime, and that the testimony of the tombs is liable to be altered by fresh discoveries.

In _Iliad_, II. 388, the shield (_aspis_) is spoken of as "covering a man about" ([Greek: _amphibrotae_]), while, in the heat of battle, the baldric (_telamon_), or belt of the shield, "shall be wet with sweat."

The shield, then, is not an Ionian buckler worn on the left arm, but is suspended by a belt, and covers a man, or most of him, just as Mycenaean shields are suspended by belts shown in works of art, and cover the body and legs. This (II. 388) is a general description applying to the shields of all men who fight from chariots. Their great shield answers to the great mediaeval shield of the knights of the twelfth century, the "double targe," worn suspended from the neck by a belt. Such a shield covers a mounted knight's body from mouth to stirrup in an ivory chessman of the eleventh to twelfth century A.D., [Footnote: _Catalogue of Scottish National Antiquities_, p. 375.] so also in the Bayeux tapestry, [Footnote: Gautier, _Chanson de Roland_. Seventh edition, pp.

393, 394.] and on seals. Dismounted men have the same shield (p. 132).

The shield of Menelaus (III. 348) is "equal in all directions," which we might conceive to mean, mathematically "circular," as the words do mean that. A shield is said to have "circles," and a spear which grazes a shield--a shield which was _[Greek: panton eesae]_, "every way equal"--rends both circles, the outer circle of bronze, and the inner circle of leather (_Iliad_, XX. 273-281). But the pa.s.sage is not unjustly believed to be late; and we cannot rely on it as proof that Homer knew circular shields among others. The epithet _[Greek: eukuklykos]_, "of good circle," is commonly given to the shields, but does not mean that the shield was circular, we are told, but merely that it was "made of circular plates." [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p.

573.] As for the shield of Menelaus, and other shields described in the same words, "every way equal," the epithet is not now allowed to mean "circular." Mr. Leaf, annotating _Iliad_, I. 306, says that this sense is "intolerably mathematical and prosaic," and translates _[Greek: panton eesae]_ as "well balanced on every side." Helbig renders the epithets in the natural sense, as "circular." [Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos_, p. 315; cf., on the other hand, p. 317, Note I.]

To the rendering "circular" it is objected that a circular shield of, say, four feet and a half in diameter, would be intolerably heavy and superfluously wide, while the shields represented in Mycenaean art are not circles, but rather resemble a figure of eight, in some cases, or a section of a cylinder, in others, or, again, a door (Fig. 5, p. 130).

What Homer really meant by such epithets as "equal every way," "very circular," "of a good circle," cannot be ascertained, since Homeric epithets of the shield, which were previously rendered "circular," "of good circle," and so on, are now translated in quite other senses, in order that Homeric descriptions may be made to tally with Mycenaean representations of shields, which are never circular as represented in works of art. In this position of affairs we are unable to determine the shape, or shapes, of the shields known to Homer.

A scholar's rendering of Homer's epithets applied to the shield is obliged to vary with the variations of his theory about the shield.

Thus, in 1883, Mr. Leaf wrote, "The poet often calls the shield by names which seem to imply that it was round, and yet indicates that it was large enough to cover the whole body of a man.... In descriptions the round shape is always implied." The words which indicated that the shield (or one shield) "really looked like a tower, and really reached from neck to ankles" (in two or three cases), were "received by the poet from the earlier Achaean lays." "But to Homer the warriors appeared as using the later small round shield. His belief in the heroic strength of the men of old time made it quite natural to speak of them as bearing a shield which at once combined the later circular shape and the old heroic expanse...." [Footnote: _Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies, iv. pp._ 283-285.]

Here the Homeric words which naturally mean "circular" or "round" are accepted as meaning "round" or "circular." Homer, it is supposed, in practice only knows the round shields of the later age, 700 B.C., so he calls shields "round," but, obedient to tradition, he conceives of them as very large.

But, after the appearance of Reichel's speculations, the Homeric words for "round" and "circular" have been explained as meaning something else, and Mr. Leaf, in place of maintaining that Homer knew no shields but round shields, now writes (1900), "The small circular shield of later times...is equally unknown to Homer, with a very few curious exceptions," which Reichel discovered--erroneously, as we shall later try to show. [Footnote: Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 575.]

Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how did small round bucklers come to be unknown to late poets who saw them constantly?

Some scholars, then, believe that the old original poet always described Mycenaean shields, which are of various shapes, but never circular in Mycenaean art. If there are any circular shields in the poems, these, they say, must have been introduced by poets accustomed, in a much later age, to seeing circular bucklers. Therefore Homeric words, hitherto understood as meaning "circular," must now mean something else--even if the reasoning seems circular.

Other scholars believe that the poet in real life saw various types of shields in use, and that some of them were survivals of the Mycenaean shields, semi-cylindrical, or shaped like figures of 8, or like a door; others were circular; and these scholars presume that Homer meant "circular" when he said "circular." Neither school will convert the other, and we cannot decide between them. We do not pretend to be certain as to whether the original poet saw shields of various types, including the round shape, in use, though that is possible, or whether he saw only the Mycenaean types.

As regards size, Homer certainly describes, in several cases, shields very much larger than most which we know for certain to have been common after, say, 700 B.C. He speaks of shields reaching from neck to ankles, and "covering the body of a man about." Whether he was also familiar with smaller shields of various types is uncertain; he does not explicitly say that any small bucklers were used by the chiefs, nor does he explicitly say that all shields were of the largest type. It is possible that at the time when the Epic was composed various types of shield were being tried, while the vast ancient shield was far from obsolete.

To return to the _size_ of the shield. In a feigned tale of Odysseus (Odyssey, XIV. 474-477), men in a wintry ambush place their shields over their shoulders, as they lie on the ground, to be a protection against snow. But any sort of shield, large or small, would protect the shoulders of men in a rec.u.mbent position. Quite a large shield may seem to be indicated in _Iliad_, XIII. 400-405, where Idomeneus curls up his whole person behind his shield; he was "hidden" by it. Yet, as any one can see by experiment, a man who crouched low would be protected entirely by a Highland targe of less than thirty inches in diameter, so nothing about the size of the shield is ascertained in this pa.s.sage. On a black-figured vase in the British Museum (B, 325) the entire body of a crouching warrior is defended by a large Boeotian buckler, oval, and with _echancrures_ in the sides. The same remark applies to _Z&ad_[sic], XXII. 273-275. Hector watches the spear of Achilles as it flies; he crouches, and the spear flies over him. Robert takes this as an "old Mycenaean" dodge--to duck down to the bottom of the shield. [Footnote: _Studien zur Ilias_, p. 21.] The avoidance by ducking can be managed with no shield, or with a common Highland targe, which would cover a man in a crouching posture, as when Glenbucket's targe was peppered by bullets at Clifton (746), and Cluny shouted "What the devil is this?"

the a.s.sailants firing unexpectedly from a ditch. A few moments of experiment, we repeat, prove that a round targe can protect a man in Hector's att.i.tude, and that the Homeric texts here throw no light on the _size_ of the shield.

The shield of Hector was of black bull's-hide, and as large and long as any represented in Mycenaean art, so that, as he walked, the rim knocked against his neck and ankles. The shape is not mentioned. Despite its size, he _walked_ under it from the plain and field of battle into Troy (_Iliad_, VI. 116-118). This must be remembered, as Reichel [Footnote: Reichel, 38, 39. Father Browne (_Handbook_, p. 230) writes, "In _Odyssey_, XIV 475, Odysseus says he slept within the shield." He says "under arms" (_Odyssey_, XIV. 474, but _cf_. XIV. 479).] maintains that a man could not walk under shield, or only for a short way; wherefore the war chariot was invented, he says, to carry the fighting man from point to point (Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573). Mr. Leaf elaborates these points: "Why did not the Homeric heroes ride? Because no man could carry such a shield on horseback." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 573.]

We reply that men could and did carry such shields on horseback, as we know on the evidence of works of art and poetry of the eleventh to twelfth centuries A.D. Mr. Ridgeway has explained the introduction of chariots as the result of horses too small to carry a heavy and heavily-armed man as a cavalier.