THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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But while the full enjoyment of the flavor of his style is reserved for the scholar, in keenness of wit, in tenderness of pathos, in fitness of epithet, in loveliness of sentiment, in grandeur of simile, Homer appeals to the unlearned as well as to the scholar.
I wish that I had the time to read to you such passages as the parting of Hector and Andromache; the meeting of Odysseus with his old father, or with his neglected dog, who moans and dies upon once more beholding his beloved master; or that I might show you the glorious Hector bursting through the Achaean gate, his face like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail, with two spears in his hands.
Would that I might take you to the shore of the unharvested sea, where the dark wave singeth about thestorm,and roareth on the long beach, while the main resoundeth. And again to this same echoing beach, where the sea-wave lifteth up itself in close array before the driving of the west wind; out on the deep doth it first raise its head, and then it breaketh upon the land, and belloweth aloud, and goeth with arching crest about the promontories, and speweth the foaming brine afar. I would show to you the assembling of the people like thronging bees from a hollow rock, ever in fresh procession, flying among the flowers of spring, some on this hand and some on that.
So much for Homer and the poems ascribed to him — so much for Homer, the poet, as he appeals to a lover of poetry. His value to the student of comparative religions and folk-lore, to the archaeologist and ethnologist, to the historian and sociologist, we shall not even touch upon. For we have set our faces toward the long vista of Homeric criticism, and of this criticism Seneca said in his day, that life was too short to enable one to arrive at a just conclusion. But we will pause for a passing glance and be not tempted to consider too curiously.
The first authentic point in the literary history is the fact that the poems were publicly recited by the rhapsodists at the festivals of Athene in the sixth century, B. C. Of the manner of their perpetuation from the prehistoric days of Homer, nothing positive is known. A tradition tells that Homer left a school of disciples, and there seems to have existed a society or guild called the Homeridae in Chios. But whether these were a literary society, or descendants of Homer by blood, or really custodians of his verse, does not appear. When the rhapsodists come upon the historic stage as the authorized reciters of Homer, Solon orders that they should “ proceed with promptings,” thus implying that the prompter held a recognized text.
Pisistratus, the enlightened tyrant of Athens who followed Solon, is generally credited with having caused a commission of learned men to collect and put in proper order the songs of Homer. On the one hand, it is claimed that this commission merely gave forth what would be termed in our time a correct edition. On the other side,it is contended that the commission collected “stray songs,” vaguely known as Homer’s, making additions and subtractions which they deemed suitable to the construction of a harmonious work of art; in fact, that Pisistratus made our Homer. The latter view is weakened by the recorded custom of promptings in Solon’s time before cited, and by the statement of Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, in a Platonic dialogue. Hipparchus there tells us that the rhapsodists took up each other in order “ as they still do.” This leaves no doubt as to Plato’s opinion, and to the current opinion in Plato’s day concerning the traditional character of the text.
The first study of Homer that can really be called critical was made in the Alexandrian Age. Then arose a school of Separatists (about 170 B. C.) who believed that the Iliad and the Odyssey were by different authors. Zenodotus, the first chief of the great museum, was also the first critic of the Homeric text, and he was soon followed by Aristarchus, the greatest of ancient critics, to whom is ascribed the present division of Homer into books. Aristarchus discovered a number of spurious passages in the poems, but he had no doubt that Homer was virtually their author.
At the end of the eighteenth century there was found in Venice, in the library of St. Mark, a manuscript of the Iliad, dating from the tenth century. Around this transcription were marginal notes, called “scholia.” These were textual criticisms by