barism, but has not yet taken on the conventional refinements of an advanced civilization, nothing so stirs the blood and rouses enthusiasm as the story of martial deeds. In "Ivanhoe," Sir Walter Scott has given us a glimpse of such entertainment in the rude halls of our Anglo-Saxon ancestry. So it was among the Greeks. Evening after evening the singer was assured of one constant audience. Instead of being compelled to tell his whole story in a single night, he was the best poet who could longest spin his tale. Provided only that part was connected with part, that there was development of plot, and all tended to a fitting climax, he might sing on for a thousand and one nights, like Queen Scheherezade.

The genuine epic, then, being only a metrical kind of story-telling, naturally has its place at the beginnings of civilization. It is history and mythology and poetry and music all in one. As the incentives to its cultivation. are then the greatest, and as original genius is then most free from the fetters of precedent, it is only natural that we should find in these primitive times some of the greatest masters of spontaneous song. spontaneous song. Patriarchal monarchy and family life afford the typical field for the development of epic poetry.

Lyric poetry just as naturally belongs to the later day of aristocracies, when a privileged class takes the place of the large family life we have described. Now, the one great house and gathering place is replaced by many and smaller mansions; meetings are of the few; we find the exclusiveness of good society; there are other means of entertainment as well; the song must be elegant, conventional, and brief.

Last of all comes the time of democracy, when power

THERE WAS A HEARING PUBLIC

33

has gotten into the hands of the people. Then the whole free population of a city must be amused. It is an audience that does not long hold together; it is the time of the rhapsodists or reciters of select portions of the old songs; the new poetry is all dramatic, suited to the entertainment in the open air of large numbers at once. This progress from epic to lyric and from lyric to dramatic poetry was a matter of actual history in Greece. When Paley tells us, then, that a reading public did not exist in Greece before the year 430 B. C., we do not simply content ourselves with denying the fact, we claim that it makes no difference to our thesis whether there was or not. There certainly was a hearing public, and precisely such a one existed in the two centuries after the Trojan war as might furnish the best opportunity and incentive to the epic genius of a Homer.

The reader has doubtless concluded long since that this argument is endless, and I am myself pretty nearly of his opinion. There are a score of points, all of them important and interesting, which I might have embraced in my treatment. I have confined myself to a few which can be popularly stated. The result of the investigation may well remind us of that not too learned English student, who, being required on examination to give the present state of the Homeric question, said: "The old view was that both the poems were written by Homer, but it is now concluded that they were written by another man of the same name." However learned and plausible the theories of a later putting together of ancient poetical fragments may be, they all suffer shipwreck on this single rock-the necessity of finding in the early time of the petty kings some commanding

genius capable of gathering the traditional material, organizing it about one central theme, and determining its poetical form. This genius must have been one, not many; and it is not credulity, but simple common sense, to take for our own the well-nigh unanimous consent of antiquity, and to call that genius by the name of Homer.

II

I have been treating of the Homeric Question. But I have not been

Presenting Thebes and Pelops' line,

Or the tale of Troy divine,

entirely for its own sake. I have intended it to prepare the way for a succinct account of the Homeric Theology. To this latter theme I now address myself. I wish I could relieve my reader's fears by assuring him that the temple to which I introduce him is, like the temple at Jerusalem, far smaller than the portico at its entrance. But I cannot so easily part company with the principles of rhetoric. The Homeric Theology is as noble a subject, and it requires as long a treatment, as the Homeric unity. This latter question, indeed, derives much of its importance from its connection with the former. If Homer is only a name for many bards scattered in space and time, then the Homeric theology can hardly be expected to have consistency and unity. If, on the contrary, there was one Homer, and the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were both his work, then from the poems of this great genius of the early world we may hope to learn something about that early world's religious doctrines and beliefs. That there was one

HOMER HAD HIS THEOLOGY

35

Homer, and that he composed both of the poems which after times have ascribed to him, with the possible exception of unimportant interpolations, I propose henceforth to take for granted, and I would now ask only about his theology.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say, and yet to prevent any possible misconception it may be well distinctly to declare, that I do not profess to find in Homer a characteristically religious poet. Homer never heard of the word "theology," nor did he ever write the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey" with the conscious aim of setting forth theological ideas. Not the epic poets, but the tragedians, were the religious teachers of the Greeks. The tragic stage, upon which Æschylus produced his "Prometheus Bound," and Sophocles brought out his "Antigone," was the Greek pulpit, and there we are to look for appeals to conscience and threats of the gods. The Athenian archon, under whose charge these plays were represented, was clothed for the purpose with priestly dignity, and the whole office was an office of religion. The epic, on the other hand, was more nearly a means of amusement, when instruction and amusement went hand in hand. Its place was the court of the petty king, its time the hours that followed the games and the banquet. If we could conceivably have a tragedy from the time of Homer, we should doubtless have more of religion and more of theology than Homer has given us.

Yet Homer had his theology, notwithstanding; for every poet puts together in more or less complete form. the facts which he has apprehended about Deity and the relations of Deity to the universe. Se moquer de la philosophie, c'est vraiment philosopher-to mock at

philosophy is to philosophize; and even when Homer satirizes the gods he shows that he has ideas about them. Theology may popularly be defined as the doctrine of God, of man, and of their mutual relations. I propose simply to ask what are Homer's ideas about God and what are his ideas about man's relations to God. God, sin, atonement, a future life-these are the determining elements of every theological system; if we can learn what Homer thinks of these, we shall have the substance of his theology.

Perhaps the first thing that strikes the thoughtful reader of the Homeric poems is their undertone of monotheism. This may surprise some who have regarded Homer only as a polytheistic poet, yet it is nevertheless true. Though there are many gods in the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," yet they constitute a hierarchy in which Zeus is supreme. Very often we read of "the god," in the singular number, without the mention of any definite name, and in connections which seem to show that it should be translated simply "God"; in other words, it is an expression of an ineradicable belief that deity is one.

Of this god, whose name is Zeus when any name is given him, the other gods are in some sense manifestations. Some of them are his children and derive their life from him. Two of them, Athene and Apollo, are hardly more than hypostases, or personifications, of his energy; with Zeus these two constitute an inner circle and faintly remind us of the biblical Trinity-Athene being the divine wisdom and Apollo the executor of the divine will. Here, Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes, Artemis, and Aphrodite had a second rank. Then, thirdly, come