HOMER THE HOMERIC QUESTION AND THE HOMERIC THEOLOGY I HOMER'S "Iliad" has been called "the most famous among poems." Bryant speaks of its author as "the greatest of epic poets," and says that "the common consent of the civilized world places the Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' at an unapproachable height of poetical excellence." Shelley declares that "as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakespeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images." Keats, ignorant of Greek, looks into Chapman's translation and describes his impressions in one of the finest of English sonnets: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies Cuique in sua arte credendum-we may trust the poets in matters pertaining to their own art. And the popular verdict bears out that of the poets. Homer is translated into every tongue that makes pretension to be civilized. The rector of the German Gymnasium tells his pupils that there are two things which they are expected to learn thoroughly: the first is the Bible, and the second is Homer. He speaks wisely, for these are the two great records of the early world; Homer gives us the secular record, as the Bible gives us the sacred. Matthew Arnold has summed up for us the general characteristics of Homer's poetry. He makes them to be: first, rapidity of movement; secondly, plainness of thought; thirdly, simplicity of expression; fourthly, nobility. Ballad poetry lacks the last of these--nobility. As the writer of the article in the "Britannica" has said: "The old English balladist can stir Sir Philip Sidney's heart like a trumpet; but Homer can do more -he can refine and transmute the raw natural man." Virgil, Dante, Milton, lack the first three of the elements of Homer's greatness-rapidity, plainness, simplicity. They seem artificial and self-conscious beside Homer. Virgil has always for his underlying motive the exaltation of Rome; Dante is bent upon expounding the political and religious philosophy of his time; even Milton, in the "Paradise Lost," is the Arian and the Puritan. But Homer seems free from subjective motive. antipathy of race or of religion moves him. self absorbed, and he absorbs us, in life. peare and Browning, he can say: Humani nihil a me alienum puto-everything human delights me. With wonderful ease and simplicity he depicts to us, in noble metrical form, the whole world of human action and feeling. No strong He is himLike Shakes Homer reigns by right of possession, and both the poets and the people recognize his authority. But the critics are a peculiar race, and for a century past they THE CRITICAL THEORY 5 have been suggesting serious doubts whether the "Iliad " and the "Odyssey" are by the same author; whether either one was as a whole composed by Homer; whether in fact such a man as Homer ever lived at all. Before we attempt to form a judgment for ourselves, it may be well to have before us a brief sketch of the history of what is known as "the Homeric Question." Antiquity has often been called uncritical. Yet antiquity was critical enough to separate the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" from the other so-called Homeric productions, and to recognize these two as the genuine work of Homer, while it attributed the Hymns and the Cyclic poems to other authors. There were but two exceptions to the unanimity of this judgment. About the year 225 B. C., Xeno and Hellanicus of Alexandria detached the "Iliad" from the "Odyssey," and held to a dual authorship. For this reason these two otherwise obscure Alexandrian writers were called Chorizontes, or Separatists. They never went so far as to suggest that the "Iliad" might be a congeries of poems by different authors, or that the "Odyssey" was a composite production. That was left for the skepticism of a far later time. The close of the last century was an era of disintegration, of revolt against settled beliefs and institutions. Then "a man was famous, according as he lifted up axes upon the thick trees." Wolf, in Germany, published his "Prolegomena to Homer" in 1795. He held that the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, about the middle of the sixth century B. C., finding current in his time many separate and independent lays which had for their common subject the siege of Troy, compiled these into |