wénjílièbiǎo
ào sài
奥德赛
   luò chéng xià dāo qiāng fēi rén yǎng fān yòu 'è zhàn de kǒng yǒng shì de hǎn shì xuè rǎn de bēi zhuàng tūn shān de zhèn zhànshì zhàn mìng de zhuàng yǒng zài shēng de liè huǒ zhōng jiān 'áofán rén zhōng de jīng yīng zài kuàng shā tān shàng pīn zhàn zhēng yuè měng shì de xīn huáipíng wèi men de chóu duó shā men de shēng mìnggāo men de yīng lièxuè zhàn zhōng tuō 'ěr rào chéng sān juàn 'ā liú qiāng xià 'ā jìn kěn qiúshú huí de 'ér nán。《 zài zàng de bēi 'āi xuè bān nóng liè de jiǔ tānɡ zhōng shōu yǎn chí zhòngchén níng de shī piān
   rán 'érzhàn zhēng méi yòu jié shùrén rén wáng de miàn méi yòu zhōng jié zōng wáng péng sài qiàn lěi shuài jūn bāng yuán 'áng), bèi 'ā liú zhàn shātóng yàng de mìng yùn jiàng luò zài 'āi shǒu lǐng míng shén 'è 'é zhī mén dōng de tóu dǐngā liú gōng luò chéng bèi 'ā zhī jiàn shā zài kāi mén biānāi 'ā bèi huí zhàn yǒu de shī é xiū dǎng zhù zhuī bīng de shā kǎn(《 āi 'é
   》)。 é xiū huò 'ā liú de xiāo jiáāi 'ā fēng zhōng shā shēn wángè péi 'é jiàn zào liǎo é xiū huà zhuāng chéngtóng hǎi lún móu duó chéng de jìhuàā kāi rén yáng zhuāng chè bīngdēng chuán fǎn háng(《 xiǎo 》)。 luò rén mǎn dàn zuì zhōng bān nóng diǎn huǒ wéi hàoā kāi rén huí bīng jìn chōng chū de yǒng shì yìng wài gōng zhàn liǎo 'áng nài láo dài huí hǎi lúné xiū shā liǎo tuō 'ěr de 'ài 'ā 'ā ā liú zhī 'é tuō dài zǒu liǎo tuō 'ěr zhī 'ān luó kāiā kāi rén fàng huǒ shāo chéng(《 luò shī xiàn》)。 hòuā lín mén nóng nài láo jiù huí guī xiàn shēng zhēng zhíé liú zhī 'āi 'ā xiǎo 'āi 'ā fēng bào zhī zhōng nài láo 'āi ā mén nóng huí fǎn kǎi nàibèi hài zhì é ruì bào chóushā liǎo qīn 'āi suǒ nài láo xié lǐng hǎi lúnguī fǎn (《 huí guī》)。
  
  《 ào sài》( Odusseia)
  
   zài shǐ shī liè ,《 ào sàishàng chéng huí guīxià jiē 》, gòng 'èr shí juàn
  12, 110( ±) xíng chuàng zuò huò biān zhì nián dài lüè chí 》, néng zài gōng yuán qián 720 héng 67
  0 nián jiāngēn duō de guān diǎn,《 ào sàide qíng jié yòushuāng xiàng zhǎnde diǎn [ zhù ],
   dàn zhù yào zhí jiē miáo xiě 'é xiū de huó dòng jīng wéi zhùquán shū nèi róng zhì huá zuò fēn
  ( de chū fǎng zhì juàn),( èré xiū de huí guī zhì juàn
   shí sān juàn 1 héng 187 xíng),( sānmàn yóujiǔ zhì shí 'èr juàn),( é xiū zài shí
   sān juàn 187 zhì 'èr shí juàn 548 xíng)。 shī píng shī duō céng gěiào sàide nèi róng zuò guò gāo
   de gài kuò rén jiā duō niánbèi sài dōng 'àn zhōng jǐn dīng fàngbiàn líng shí wàijiā zhōng
   de jìng kuàng shí fēn miàoqiú hūn rén zhèng huī huò de jiā chǎnbìng shì móu hài de 'ér nán zài jīng jiān xīn
   hòu huí dào jiā xiāngshǐ xiē rén rèn chū láirán hòu jìn gōngxiāo miè rénbǎo quán liǎo [ zhù ]。 dāng
   ránzhè zhǐ shìhuò jǐn jǐn shì shì de gěng gài huò gāng”, zuò wéi zhù míng de cháng shīzuò wéi fāng xiàn
   cún zuì zǎo de chuán xìng yóu zuò pǐn,《 ào sàide nèi róng diē dàng lán zhuàng kuòyuǎn shàng shù liáo liáo
   shù suǒ zhǎn shì de qíng jìng jīng shēng dòngduō duō cǎi
  《 ào sàimiáo xiě rén de nánbiǎo xiàn rén shēng de jiān 'èrén shēng huó zài duì miàn de bāo wéi zhī zhōngrén
   deduì miàn yòu wèi shēn cháng de sān zhòng xìng héng héngduì lái sān fāng miànhuái dài
   de shén,( èr duì de rén,( sān rán de chōng”。 rén zài nán zhōng cán chuǎnzài jiāfèng zhōng
   qiú shēngzài nán qiú shēng zhōng,《 ào sài chū qiáng diào liǎo qiú shēng de òu liǎo wéi qiú shēng pīn de
   jīng shénrén huì shòu nánrén dàn rén shēng de jià zhí zài pīn rén zài pīn zhōng jìn bǎi tuō bèi
   dòng de miànrén zài pīn zhōng kàn dào de liàng fēn zhǎng de mìng yùnzhēng lái xiàn zhuàng měi hǎo
   de qián jǐngrén yōng yòu de qián bìng yòu shǐ yòng zhè zhǒng qián de běn néngrén dàn jué xīntóng shí bèi
   yǔn jìn zhǔn bèi xíng dòng de zhuàng tàijiù huì yòu de qián néng biàn zuò gǎi biàn zhuàng tài de dòng néngmái tóu bēi
   de 'é xiū dàn bèi yǔn dǎo suǒ de hǎi dǎohuí jiājiù néng zhǎn làngsuǒ xiàng
   àn zhào de guān diǎnshí jiàn mìng yùn de fán rén kāi shén de zhì dǎoshén de zhù xìn shì chéng gōng shèng
   de bǎo zhàngméi yòu diǎn de guān xīn bāng zhùé xiū jué nán huí jiā xiū xiǎng shā suǒ yòu de qiú hūn
   rén。《 ào sàishì fāng néng zhé xué de yuán tóu miáo shù liǎo shén mìng yùn
  ( )、 rán rén de huó dòng xíng shìnéng liàngxiàn men zhī jiān de xiāng guān biǎo míng liǎo
   shén huò shén shì dòng huò yuán de guān diǎn。《 ào sài shì fāng shēng cún lún xué de yuán tóu
   biǎo míng rén jǐn yīnggāi shànér qiě yīnggāi píng jiè liáng hǎo de yuàn wàng pīn dǒuzài shén de zhù xìn xiàzuì xiàn
   duódì huī rén de cōng míng cái zhìjié jìn quán zhù de tài tóu dǒu zhēng huò jiè jìn de shì
   tàibǎi zhé huízhí dào duó shèng zhè shì diǎn xíng shàng de fāng rén de kàng zhēngé xiū shì fāng
   wén xué zuò pǐn zhōng tǒng zhuózhòng miáo shù dezài shēn rén de jìng kuàng xià réng rán jiān chí zhè zhǒng kàng zhēng de rén
  
  《 ào sài
  
   zǎo zài gōng yuán qián sān shì zuǒ yòuxué shù jiè jiù yòu rén chorizontes,“ fēn biàn pài”) chū
  《 ào sài shì yóu wèi zuò zhě huò shī rén biān zhì de guān diǎn。 [ zhù ] chéng rán,《 ào
   sàizhōng què yòu zhì de zàiào sàizhòu de xìn shǐ shì
   'ěr ér zài dān rèn zhè juésè de shì zàiào sài
   tuō de shì 'ā luó ér zài de 'ài shì 。《
   zhōng de shén gèng fàng dàng xíng tān de cǎiliǎng shǐ shī zhōng de
   bié rén zài xìng de huà fāng miàn biǎo xiàn chū xiē wēi de chā bié。《 ào sàizhōng de míng
  《 dàizhōng de lái shùn chàng jīng liànzài yòng fāng miàn shǐ zài jìng xiāng shìde qíng kuàng xiàliǎng shǐ
   shī fǎn yìng chū xiē jiào míng xiǎn de chā , aichme( máo tóu zài zhōng chū xiàn
   sān shí liù ér zàiào sàizhōng què zhǎo dào yòng suī rán zài 'èr shí 'èr juàn zuò zhě yòng liǎo
   jiào cháng de piān miáo xiě qiāng zhàn。 Phohas( kuì táozàiào sàizhōng jǐn chū xiàn ér zài
   zhōng de chū xiàn shuài què gāo sān shí jiǔ 。《 ào sàizhōng zhǎo dào yīnggāi chū xiàn dezài
   zhōng yòng duō 'èr shí shàng de helkos( shāng zhū lèi dechā dāng rán
   hái yòu duōyòu piān zhè shù héng
   rán 'ér ào sàizhōng dewèn xiāng men zhōng de xiāng zhī chù héng
   héng men háo kuā zhāng shuō héng héng shìjué duì de”。 gèng wéi liàng deyǒng yuǎn bìng qiě zhǐ néng shì zhàn zhù dǎo
   wèi de。《 ào sàisuī rán cǎi yòngshuāng xiàn zhǎnde xíng shìdàn xíng dòng de zhōng xīn shǐ zhōng wéi rào zhe
   é xiū huò 'é xiū de huí guī chóu shā zhǎn kāié xiū de xíng xiàng zǒng shì suǒ rào zài tīng zhòng zhě de
   xīn tóu de jìng shǐ zhōng shì rén men guān xīn de jiāo diǎn de chū fǎngshén de gān qiú hūn rén de
   è xíngpéi nài luó pèi de xīn jìng zhū rén de huó dòngsuǒ yòu zhè qiēdōu dài yòu péi chèn diàn de cǎi
   zhe jiě shuōzhuǎn zhé qiān yǐn de zuò yòngshì xiē zhǐ zài fēng shì nèi róngxié diào shì jìngkāi tuò shì
   de héng xiàng yán shēn dechuān chāhéng héng huàshì chènhóng huāde ”。 suǒ
   yàng,《 ào sàizhù míng quèzhōng xīn chūmiáo xiě liǎo jǐn còuwán zhěng chéng
   de xíng dòngbólātú zàn de shī cái duō rèn wéi ào sàide gòu
   xiàn liǎo shǐ shī de zuì gāo chéng jiùshì shǐ shī de diǎn fàn。 [ zhù ]
  《 ào sàiduì zhù rén gōng 'é xiū de huà běn shàng dìng shè defāng xiàng”。
   é xiū jiān gāng qiángrěn zhòngbǎi zhé huíbào dìng huí guī jiā yuán de jiān dìng xìn niàn chōng zhòng
   zhòng náo jīng qiān nán wàn xiǎnzuì hòu dāng bǎi shǎo shèng duōpíng kào diǎn de zhù yòu), shā miè
   chǐ de qiú hūn zhěchóngxiàn liǎo dāng nián xuè zhàn luò de shén yǒngměng shì de wēi fēng jiǎn dāng nián wài zhì
   duō móunéng yán shàn biànlín wēi tóu nǎo lěng jìngcháng néng chū zhì shènghuà xiǎn wéi xiàng zài
   dàizhōng zhì qín duō lóng yàng chāo rén de zhì huìshè tǒng xiā péi fěi de yǎn jīng huǒ bàn men
   táo dòng xué(《 ào sài jiǔ juàn 315 héng 461 xíng)。 é xiū xióng cái lüèruì zhì zhōng shāo dài
   fēn jiǎo xiáliǎng shǐ shī zhǔn què fǎn yìng liǎo zhè diǎnliǎng shǐ shī duì 'é xiū diǎn de
   guān de miáo shùgěi rén chū zhé zhī gǎn wài,《 ào sàiduì 'ā jiā mén nóng 'ā liú děng yīng xióng
   de chǔlǐ shǐ shú de zhěbāo kuò zhuān jiāzhǎo chū míng xiǎn de zhànháo wèn
  《 ào sàide zuò zhě shú zhī de jié
  《 ào sàiwén fēng qīng xuàn guī měi zhuāng diǎn yàngyán de miáo shù zhōng
   shí jiā xiē huī xiéyōu dechāqǔ”。 rén cháo nòng shí de kǒu zài liǎng shǐ shī zhōng wán quán zhì
   chā bié zhǐ zài de yòng rén míng diǎnsuī shuō gèng wéi kuò xióng ,《 ào sài
   lüè duō wēn jǐn mián dàn liǎng shǐ shī de zǒng diào běn zhì jiù shì xùn jiémíng kuàishū gāo
   shēng dòngníng liànhuò zhèng xiàng lǎng nuò ( Longinus) suǒ shuō de yàng,《 shì
   shèng nián shí de zuò pǐnérào sài chuàng zuò zài de wǎn nián [ zhù ]。 lǎo nián rén jiào shǎo shī de chōng dòngquè gèng
   liú lián duì rén shēng dào nèi hán de liànjiù shī de pǐn wèi wén 'ér yán men rèn wéi,《
   ào sàichū xiàn liǎo shǐ shī de jīng shénxiǎn chū jiā zhī zuò de mèi zhǎn shì liǎo de fēng
   fàn
  《 ào sài bùchà yán yòng liǎo zhōng de mǒu xiē yòng 。“ ā róu zhī
   zuì gāo guì de wáng zhěquán jūn de tǒng shuài 'ā mén nóngshì liǎng shǐ shī tōng yòng de duì 'ā mén nóng de chēng wèi
  《 》 2·434,《 ào sài》 11·397); ér xiàng zài yàngā mén
   nóng duì 'é xiū de huí shìlāi 'ěr zhī zhòu de hòu zhì duō móu de 'é xiū
  《 ào sài》 11·405)。 zài liǎng shǐ shī yīng xióng dōushìshén yàng de”, hái dōushìnián yòu
   zhī de”, zǒng shìshù yāo jǐn shēn de”( huò shù yāo xiù měi de), huà shìcháng liǎo chì bǎng de”, qiāng
   máo shìtóu yǐng sēn cháng de”, hǎi cháng shìjiǔ lán de”。 shǐ shì de bǎi xìnggēn běn méi yòu
   zhuāng shìjìng jiá jiān de 'ā kāi rén”(《 ào sài》 2·72, 20·146), fǎng men shì
  《 zhōng de shìduì dìng de tào yòngshǐ 'ōu mài 'é chéng liǎojūn duì de shǒu lǐnghuò
  “ mín zhòng de shǒu lǐng”( orchamosandron), suī rán zhǐ shì zhū guānhuò zhě shuō zhū de tóu 'ér”。
   wàiliǎng shǐ shī zhōng gòng yòng de shī xíng hěn duōzhì gòng yòng de piàn děng gèng shì duō nán shù
   zhè diǎn biǎo míng liǎo liǎng shǐ shī bàng jìn demén huòqīn yuánguān
   zōng shàng suǒ shù men qīng xiàng rèn wéi ào sàitóng wéi de zuò pǐnjiàn
   liǎng shǐ shī zhōng de mǒu xiē tóng”, men zuò chū xià shè xiǎng rèn wéi
   shì yóu běn rén běn dìng xíng de zuò pǐnérào sài shì de mǒu huò mǒu chàng shī wéi de
   hòu rén( Homeridae,“ de 'ér men”) gēn chuán gěi men de shuō sòng gāi shī de běn
   zhěng shānzuì hòu běn dìng xíng de zuò pǐn
   yīnggāi kàn dào,《 ào sài yòu de zhù qián zhě miáo shù tuán jūn
   de pīn shāhòu zhě miáo shù rén de huí guīqián zhě jiǎng shù 'ā kāi lián jūn duì zhàn dǒuhòu zhě jiǎng shù 'ā
   kāi rén duì qún 'ā kāi rénqiú hūn zhěde jìn zhù de tóng jué dìng liǎo qíng jié de tóngqíng jié de
   tóng jué dìng liǎo chǎng jìng de tóngér chǎng jìng de tóng yòu fēn jué dìng liǎo jiě jué fāng shì de tóng suǒ yòng
   shì zuò pǐn fēng de tóngsuǒ shǐ shī zhōng de wèn bìng fēi dōushì zhí men guān zhù de xié
   diào zhī chùhuò diaphonai。 zài zhěliǎng shǐ shī zhōng de mǒu xiē tóng huò chū néng shì chū zuò zhě běn
   shēn de wèn huò zhě shuō shì zuò zhě yīnggāi wéi zhī de wèn men zhī dào shì shǐ shī de chéng
   zhě cóng qián rén jiē guò liǎo fēng hòu de chǎn”, bāo kuò chǎnzhōng de wèn mǒu xiē
   zhì de chēng wèimǒu xiē máo dùn dedàn què běn dìng xíng deguǎng wéi rén zhī de děng wài men
   yìng wàng shēng huó zài kǒu sòng de shí dàiduì wèi shí de kǒu sòng shī rén men néng tào yòng duì xiàn dài
   wén gōng zuò zhě de biāo zhǔnduì mǒu xiē shī de chū xiàn jǐn miǎnér qiě héng héng cóng mǒu zhǒng
   shàng lái shuō héng héng gēn běn cún zài miǎn de néng
  
   guān shǐ shī zhōng de míng chēng
  
   shǐ shī zhōng duō rén míng duō míng bān rèn wéishǐ shī zhōng de míng zhì shǎo fēn xià
   lèi。( què yòu zhě diǎn lín suǒ 'é
   āi děng děng duō míng chēng jīn pīn yīn tóngzhè shì míng zhōng de lèi。( èrjīng kǎo
   xiàn zhèng míng què yòu zhě luò kǎi nài mài )、 lún děngyòu xiē míngsuī
   rán wèi jīng kǎo xiàn zhèng shídàn zuò zhě xiǎn rán shì men dàngzuò zhēn shí míng lái duì dài de héng héng huàn yán zhī
   men néng shì shǐ shàng céng jīng yòu guò hòu suí zhe suǒ zhǐ diǎn de xiāo shī 'ér zhú jiàn xiāo wáng de míng chēng
  ( sānshí chún chū gòu huò néng chū gòu zhě lèi míng chēng zhù yào chū xiàn zàiào sài
   zhōng xiàn zài duì 'é xiū huí guī jīng de mǒu xiē mínghuò gòu de míngde chēng shàngbāo kuò
   āi 'ā lāi děng。( shí dàn jīng shén huàchuàng zàobìng dào biàn rèn
   zhě lèi mínghuò míng chēngbāo kuò shén tǒng zhì de míng zhé yīng xióng men de táng luò huán rào
   de 'é kāi 'ā nuò děng shì shī rén shì yán shàng de xué jiāshī rényóu shì chuán
   shǐ shīào sàide zuò zhěchū zēng jiā làng màn xìngméng lóng xìng wèi xìng de yàowán quán biān zào
   huò yán yòng yòu shǐ shī zhōng de jiǎ míngshī rén yòng jiǎ míng zhǐ shí gōng yòng nóng tiān shī bǎo chí
   yuǎn de méng lóngèr miǎn yóu duì shí quē xiáng shí de liǎo jiě 'ér dǎo zhì de miáo xiě shàng de shī zhēncháng
   láixué zhě men gēn yuán wén gōng de xiàn suǒyuǎn shì míng què tǒng de), duì mǒu xiē nán míng jìn xíng liǎo
   kǎo zhèng yán jiū chū liǎo xiē yòu cān kǎo jià zhídàn shìdìng shuōde jié lùn yòu rén rèn wéi chī
   shí luò tuò zǎo de mín men shēng huó zài yán 'àn zhī dào dàn yòng zhè ),
   fěi luò pèi men shēng huó zài 'ā rén huó dòng zài jīn tiān de 'ěr ( Korf
  u huò Korkyre) dàiděng děng
   zài shǐ shī ( lthaka, Ithake,) shì 'é xiū de xiāng,《 ào sài
   duì yòu guò jiào duō de miáo shù shì yáng guāng càn lànde fāngdǎo shàng yòu zuò shānmíng nài
   tuō huò nài tóng), zhōu wéi lìng yòu xiē dǎo 'áng zhā kūn suǒ wèi
   qún dǎo de duān( 9·21 héng 27)。 shì shān shí lín xún de( kranae) de chù( 1·247),
   bìng fēipáo de píng ”, dàn cǎo fēng féishuǐ yuán chōng shèng chǎn táo( 13·242 héng 247)。
   wàidǎo shàng yòu quán ( 17·205 héng 211), hái yòu shān jiǎo biān de gǎng wān( 1·184)。 chuán tǒng guān diǎn rèn
   wéi jīn tiān de 'ā ( Thiaki), jīn tiān de kāi ( Kephallenia),
   'áng néng shì jīn tiān de ( Markri)。 jiào xīn de guān diǎn rèn wéi shì jīn tiān de liú
   ( Leukas), 'áng shì jīn tiān de kāi shì jīn tiān de 'ā zhì zhā kūn
   suǒ de wèi zhì xué shù jiè jīhū yòu dìng lùn jiù shì jīn tiān de zàn ( Zante)。
  
   fáng
  
   zài shǐ shī rén jiā de fáng qián bān yòu wéi qiáng( herkos), qiáng nèi shì yuàn luò
   yuàn nèi shè yòu tánfáng nèi zuì zhòng yào de jiàn zhù huò fēn shì megaroo, tīnghuòtīng táng”。 rén men zài
   tīng táng chī jiāo tánxīn shǎng shī sòngshèn zhì zǎo chuī diàoé xiū jiā zhōng de tīng táng yīnggāi shí fēn kuān
   chǎng rán jiù róng xià bǎi dān qiú hūn rén de láitīng táng bān zhào míng jiā néng méi yòu chuāng kǒu
   zhǐ yòu chū yān de kǒu dàotīng zhōng bān yòu huǒ huò huǒ pén( eschare), zhào míngyòu nuǎn
   hái shāo kǎo shí 。 Eschare shì jiā tíng delíng hún”, shì zhèng zhě cháng huǒ pén zhòu de míng
   shì xìn yòng zhuāng zhòng(《 ào sài》 14·159)。 tīng qián yòu mén láng huò mén tīng( aithousa), gōng lái
   fǎng de rén qǐn (《 ào sài》 3·399)。
   fáng de lìng chéng fēn shì fáng jiān( thalamoi), bāo kuò qǐn shì chǔ cáng shì děngzàiào
   sài shí jiǔ juàn jiāng cóng megaron bān wǎng thalamos( 17)。 péi nài luó pèi
   de thalamos xiǎn rán zàilóu shànghuò gāo céng fēn de kōng jiān(《 ào sài》 19·53)。 é xiū
   péi nài luó pèi de shuì fáng jiào thalamos héng héng(《 ào sài》 23·192)。 wàifáng hái bāo kuò
   zǒu láng( laure)、 fáng zhù( kiones)、 zhōng liáng( melathron)、 mén jiàn( oudos) biān mén( o
  rsothure) děng
  
   shí
  
   yīng xióng men de zhí shì zhàn dǒubāo kuò lüè jié), men de chī shì zhàn dǒu yàng huǒ liè de kǎo ròu měi
   jiǔdāng 'é xiū yīháng 'ā liú de yíng péng shízhù rén yòng dài de shì xiàn chéng de yáng ròu zhū ròu
  (《 》 9·205 héng 214)。 chù ròu shìshén zhōng 'ài de wáng zhě men de shí cān”(《 ào sài
  3·480)。 dāng ránměi wèi de kǎo ròu bān chū xiàn zài huìqìng dài děng chǎng chéng rènfán
   rén cháng yòng de shí shì miàn bāohuò miàn shí), cháng de yǐn liào shì yòng táo niàng zhì de shuǐ jiǔzàiào sài
   xiǎo mài mài shì rén dejīng suǐ”, huò bǎo mìng de shí liáng( 20·108)。 dāng dòng shēn qián
   wǎng luò zhī suǒ bān yùn shàng chuán de shì kuài de zhū ròu huò niú ròuér shì miàn shí yǐn jiǔ(《 ào
   sài》 2·349 héng 355)。 shǐ shī zhōng de rén shí liè de wèi
   shǐ shī zhōng de fán rén hái yǐn yòng zhǒng diǎn xīn bān de shí yòng jiǔ měi jiǔtiáohé nǎi lào
   mài fēng zhì chéng(《 》 11·638 héng 639),《 ào sài》 10·234 héng 235)。
   shǐ shī zhōng céng de shū càidàn què méi liǎo xiē shuǐ guǒyòu táopíng guǒ huā guǒ
   shí liú děng méi yòu zhì zuò gǎn lǎn yóu de guò chénggǎn lǎn yóu bān yòng hòu zhào míng duō yòng
   huǒ shǐ zài wáng gōng guì zhī jiā méi yòu zhuān zhí de chú shīyīng xióng men huò zhù rén men bān bàn cóng
   huò xià shǒu men zhěng zhì shí cān de shén men jìn yòng shàng tiān de xiān shí nài 'ěr zhǒng yǐn liào),
   chī rén jiān de shí (《 》 5·341 héng 342)。
  
   hūn yīn
  
   shǐ shī zhōng miáo shù de hūn chǎng miàn shì lóng zhòng 'ér liè deā liú de zhàn dùn shàng zhù yòu qìng hūn huān
   yàn de qíng jǐngxīn niàn bèi lǐng chū jiā huǒ shǎn zhe guāng mángrén men zài zài bàn suí zhe 'ā luò shù qín
   de shēng xiǎngdāng lái dào wáng zhě de jiā zhōng nài láo zhèng bàn yàn chóu 'ér
   qīn 'ér chū jiàtīng táng shēng xiào bīn péng yúnhǎo fān qìng de jǐng xiàng(《 ào sài》 4·1
   héng 19)。
   bān shuō lái qīn qiánnán fāng huò xīn láng yào gěi xīn niàn de qīn zhì sòng fèn fēng de cái huò pìn [ zhù ]
  ( hedna, cān kǎo 》 16·178, 190;《 ào sài》 11·281 héng 282 děng chù), dàn
   yòu xiāng fǎn de qíng kuàng yóu fāng de qīn chū fèn péi jià(《 》 22·50 héng 51,《 ào
   sài》 2·131 héng 132)。 qián zhǒng zuò néng gèng wéi lǎobāo hán mǎi mài de , [ zhù ] ér hòu zhǒng
   shì gōng yuán qián shì hòu xiāng dāng shèng xíng de zuò 。《 zhōng yòu láo huòzhàn dài
   cái pìn dìng xīn niàn de ( 13·366)。 dāng tuō xiàn 'ā ruì tōng jiān hòushè
   qín huò liǎyáng yán chú fēi qīn tuì huí quán cái fǒu shì fàng(《 ào sài》 8·317 héng
  319)。 chéng rán shì shēng zài shén míng shēn shàngdàn néng tào yòng liǎo fán jiān chǔlǐ lèi 'àn de jiě jué bàn
  
  
   mào
  
   shǐ shī zhōng de rén zhī xiǎo 'āi zhī xiǎo féi bìng xīn shǎng féi rén chuán fàn de shāng pǐn nài láo
   hǎi lún céng jiē shòu 'āi guì de zèng sòng(《 ào sài》 4·128 héng 133), nài láo hái céng jīng shòu
   dōng wáng zhě kuì sòng de duì gāng( 4·615 héng 618)。 féi rén shì háng hǎi mào de hángjiā men céng xíng chuán 'ōu
   mài 'é de xiāngzuò liǎo nián shēng hòuzhuāng huò shàng chuándài zǒu 'ōu mài 'é lián tóng míng (《 ào
   sài》 15·403 héng 84)。 é xiū céng gòu chéng tiáo féi hǎi chuántáo
  (《 ào sài》 5·272278)。 kǎo xiàn zhèng míngzài gōng yuán qián shí zhì shí 'èr shì kǎi nài wáng guó
   tóng bāo kuò féi zài nèi de zhōng hǎi yán 'àn guó jiāyòu zhe xiāng dāng pín fán de mào wǎng lái
   dāng shí de mào zhù yào tōng guò huò huò de fāng shì jìn xíng jūn shì céng yòng qīng tóngtiě zhāngniú
   huàn lāi nuò táo jiǔ(《 》 7·472 héng 475)。 wàizài shǐ shī
   niú yòu shí shì zhǒng yòu dìng duì huàn jià zhí de shū shāng pǐn”。 zài liù juàn
   zuò zhě rèn wéi láo zuò liǎo jiàn chǔn shìyīn yòng tào jīn jiá huàn huí tóng jiáqián zhě zhí bǎi tóu niú
   de huàn jiàér hòu zhě zhǐ yòu jiǔ tóu niú de jià zhí( 235 héng 236)。 lāi 'ěr yòng 'èr shí tóu niú huàn 'ōu
   lěi (《 ào sài》 1·31)。
   mǎi mài zài dāng shí shí fēn shèng xíngshàng wén de 'ōu mài 'é de zāo biàn shì 。《 ào
   sàizhōng cóng shì hǎi dào mǎi mài de fěi rén( 14·452, 15·427, 16·426),
   men chá qīng men delái lóng mài”。 fěi rén cóng shì zhèng cháng de shāng huó dòng,“ yòng
   shǎn liàng de huī tiěhuàn qīng tóng”(《 ào sài》 1·184)。
  
   guān shǐ shī běn de xíng chéngjiàodìng liú chuán
  
   bān rèn wéi shēng huó zài gōng yuán qián shì zhì qián shì chū)。 shì yín sòng shī rén
  ( aoidoo), píng xīn kǒu sòng jiǎng shuō shì dài xiāng chuán de shì kǎi nàimài wén ( LinearB)
   suí zhe duō rén de qīndiū shī”, xīn de féi zài gōng yuán qián shì fāng shǐ zài rén zhù
   de huǎn huǎn liú chuán shì fǒu zhǎng wén zhè shì nán huí de wèn yuán yīn zhù yào shì yīn wéi
   liào de kuì quējìn guǎn běn rén néng tōng guò mǒu zhǒng xíng shìbāo kuò yóu kǒu sòngbié rén xià
   de shǐ shījìn guǎn de ( Homeridae) zhōng néng yòu rén xià xiān de zuò pǐn men què
   duàn dìng zài gōng yuán qián zhì shì zhōng shì fǒu yòu chéng wén de shǐ shī
   chuán diǎndàng zhèng zhěhuò cái zhěpéi tuō yuē gōng yuán qián 600 héng 527 niánzuì xiān
   shǐ shī zhěng chéng wénhuò gēn yòu de guī fàn de wén běn xiào biān chéng wén piān zuò gōng yuán qián
   shì de bólātúduì huàjìzǎi 'ěr shì chéng wén de shǐ shī dài rén 'ā kāi de
   rén。 [ zhù ] shēng huó zài gōng yuán qián sān shì de wén rén ruì 'ā ( Hereas) céng zhǐ péi tuō
   zēng shī xíngào sài》 11·431), yòng zàn měi diǎn yīng xióng sài xiū 。 [ zhù ] shí yòu rén huái
   suǒ lóng huò péi tuō zài 'èr juàn tiān liǎo 558 xíngwéi diǎn rén zēng guāng
   diǎn wén běnhuò péi tuō wén běnshìfàn diǎn sài huì”( Panathenaea) cǎi yòng de biāo zhǔn
   wén běnzài gōng yuán qián shì bólātú duō liàng yǐn yòng liǎo de shī yòu xiē wén
   dāng jīn wén běn zhōng de shī xíng chū
   zhì gōng yuán qián sān shì suǒ wèi de shān shí dài shè huì shàng liú chuán de zhì yòu xià zhǒng
   wén běn:( chuán chāo jiào wéi yán jǐnshòu dào biàn jiē shòu de wén běn,( èrzhǒng lèi jiào duō de huòbāng
   wén běn,( sānmǒu xiē yóu rén jiàodìng zhēn cáng de wén běn,( yín yóu shī rén men( rhapsoidoi)
   gǎi yòng cún de wén běnzài suǒ yòu zhè lèi wén běn de chǔ shàngzhù yào néng shì jiè yòng shàng shù lèi
   chāo běnè fěi suǒ de nuò duō tuō ( Zenodotos) zhěng xiū dìng jiàogǎi chū shǐ shī
   ào sàide guī fàn běnbài zhàn tíng de 'ā tuō fēn nài ( Aristophanes)
   kǎi de 'ā 'ěr ( Aristarchos) děng shān xué zhě zuò liǎo liàng de gōng zuòduì
   shǐ shī de dìng xíng píng zhù zuò chū liǎo gòng xiàngěi shǐ shī fēn juàn 'èr shí juàn shì shān
   xué zhě de gōng bān rèn wéijīng shān xué zhě xiào shěn jiàn dìng de shǐ shī shì jìn dài
   ào sàide zhí jiē qián shēn men de fēn zhù shì píng lùn zhù yào tōng guò xià shù liǎng zhǒng jìng chuán hòu shì
  ( shí 'èr shì shí sài luò zhù jiào 'ōu xiū ( Eustathius) duì shǐ shī de píng lùn
   zhōng yòng liǎo men de lùn shù,( èrjīng yuàn zhé xué jiā men de yǐn shùxiě suō cǎo zhǐ biān chāo běn
   liú cún
  VenetusMarcianusA shì xiàn cún zuì zǎo de chāo běnchéng wén gōng yuán shí shì xiàn
   cún zuì zǎo deào sàiquán běn shì láo lún ( Laurentianus), chéng wén gōng yuán shí huò shí
   shì lìng yòu duō cháng duǎn de shǐ shī piàn duàn chuán shìyòu de néng chéng wén gōng yuán qián sān shì
  
  ( chén zhōng méi
   fán gōng shū guǎn sǎo xiào )


  The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Odyssey of Homer, trans. by Alexander Pope #6 in our series by Homer
  
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  Title: The Odyssey of Homer
  
  Author: Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
  
  Release Date: April, 2002 [EBook #3160]
  [This 11th edition first posted on June 1, 2003]
  
  Edition: 11
  
  Language: English
  
  Character set encoding: ASCII
  
  *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER ***
  
  
  
  
  This etext was prepared by Jim Tinsley   
  with much help from the early members of Distributed Proofers.
  
  
  
  
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of
  scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the
  most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very
  gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and
  emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set
  aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must
  be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour
  and anxiety to acquire.
  
  And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which
  progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which
  persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu
  of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept
  away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the
  revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from
  attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in
  society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another,
  finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the
  healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams
  of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the
  Church. History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively
  recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that
  which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere
  statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form
  as important an ingredient in the analysis or his history, as the
  facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and
  it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical
  evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting
  in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than
  mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an introduction of extended
  experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history.
  Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which
  human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To
  form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming
  parts of a great whole--we must measure them by their relation to the
  mass of beings by whom they are surrounded; and, in contemplating the
  incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down
  to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole
  narrative, than the respective probability of its details.
  
  It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know
  least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere have, perhaps,
  contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than
  any other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of
  all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which
  has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or
  theories we will follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps,
  the only thing in which critics will allow us to believe without
  controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the authorship of
  plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we
  know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow
  us to know. He was one of the dramatis personae in two dramas as
  unlike in principles as in style. He appears as the enunciator of
  opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have
  handed them down. When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we
  know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined
  both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant.
  
  It has been an easy, and a popular expedient of late years, to deny
  the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and
  condition were too much for our belief. This system--which has often
  comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of
  Strauss for those of the New Testament--has been of incalculable
  value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries.
  To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more
  excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact
  related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory
  developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in
  the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured
  old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized--Numa
  Pompilius.
  
  Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer,
  and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free
  permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all
  written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and
  Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily
  dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. "This
  cannot be true, because it is not true; and that is not true, because
  it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which testimony
  upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and
  oblivion.
  
  It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer
  are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in
  which truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief
  review of the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice
  must be taken of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been
  attributed to Herodotus.
  
  According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia was, at an
  early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of
  Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.
  Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl
  named Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under
  the guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of
  this maiden that we "are indebted for so much happiness." Homer was
  the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of
  Melesigenes from having been born near the river Meles in Boeotia,
  whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her
  reputation.
  
  "At this time," continues our narrative, "there lived at Smyrna a man
  named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being
  married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax
  he received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory
  was her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he
  made proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further
  inducement, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become
  a clever man, if he were carefully brought up."
  
  They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which
  nature had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows
  in every attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in
  wisdom. Phemius died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his
  mother soon followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father's
  school with great success, exciting the admiration not only of the
  inhabitants of Smyrna, but also of the strangers whom the trade
  carried on there, especially in the exportation of corn, attracted to
  that city. Among these visitors, one Mentes, from Leucadia, the
  modern Santa Maura, who evinced a knowledge and intelligence rarely
  found in those times, persuaded Melesigenes to close his school, and
  accompany him on his travels. He promised not only to pay his
  expenses, but to furnish him with a further stipend, urging, that,
  "While he was yet young, it was fitting that he should see with his
  own eyes the countries and cities which might hereafter be the
  subjects of his discourses." Melesigenes consented, and set out with
  his patron, "examining all the curiosities of the countries they
  visited, and informing himself of everything by interrogating those
  whom he met." We may also suppose, that he wrote memoirs of all that
  he deemed worthy of preservation. Having set sail from Tyrrhenia and
  Iberia, they reached Ithaca. Here Melesigenes, who had already
  suffered in his eyes, became much worse; and Mentes, who was about to
  leave for Leucadia, left him to the medical superintendence of a
  friend of his, named Mentor, the son of Alcinor. Under his hospitable
  and intelligent host, Melesigenes rapidly became acquainted with the
  legends respecting Ulysses, which afterwards formed the subject of
  the Odyssey. The inhabitants of Ithaca assert, that it was here that
  Melesigenes became blind, but the Colophonians make their city the
  seat of that misfortune. He then returned to Smyrna, where he
  applied himself to the study of poetry.
  
  But poverty soon drove him to Cumae. Having passed over the Hermaean
  plain, he arrived at Neon Teichos, the New Wall, a colony of Cumae.
  Here his misfortunes and poetical talent gained him the friendship of
  one Tychias, an armourer. "And up to my time," continues the author,
  "the inhabitants showed the place where he used to sit when giving a
  recitation of his verses; and they greatly honoured the spot. Here
  also a poplar grew, which they said had sprung up ever since
  Melesigenes arrived."
  
  But poverty still drove him on, and he went by way of Larissa, as
  being the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an
  epitaph on Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with
  greater probability, been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.
  
  Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the conversaziones of the old men,
  and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this
  favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a
  public maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously
  renowned. They avowed their willingness to support him in the measure
  he proposed, and procured him an audience in the council. Having made
  the speech, with the purport of which our author has forgotten to
  acquaint us, he retired, and left them to debate respecting the
  answer to be given to his proposal.
  
  The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's
  demand, but one man "observed that if they were to feed Homers, they
  would be encumbered with a multitude of useless people." "From this
  circumstance," says the writer, "Melesigenes acquired the name of
  Homer, for the Cumans call blind men Homers." With a love of economy,
  which shows how similar the world has always been in its treatment of
  literary men, the pension was denied, and the poet vented his
  disappointment in a wish that Cumae might never produce a poet
  capable of giving it renown and glory.
  
  At Phocaea Homer was destined to experience another literary
  distress. One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical
  genius, kept Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on
  condition of the verses of the poet passing in his name. Having
  collected sufficient poetry to be profitable, Thestorides, like some
  would-be literary publishers, neglected the man whose brains he had
  sucked, and left him. At his departure, Homer is said to have
  observed: "O Thestorides, of the many things hidden from the
  knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible than the human
  heart."
  
  Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some
  Chian merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard
  him recite, acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was
  pursuing a profitable livelihood by the recital of the very same
  poems. This at once determined him to set out for Chios. No vessel
  happened then to be setting sail thither, but he found one ready to
  start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he
  prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having
  embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be
  able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of
  hospitality, had drawn down the wrath of Jove the Hospitable.
  
  At Erythrae, Homer fortunately met with a person who had known him in
  Phocaea, by whose assistance he at length, after some difficulty,
  reached the little hamlet of Pithys. Here he met with an adventure,
  which we will continue in the words of our author. "Having set out
  from Pithys, Homer went on, attracted by the cries of some goats that
  were pasturing. The dogs barked on his approach, and he cried out.
  Glaucus (for that was the name of the goat-herd) heard his voice, ran
  up quickly, called off his dogs, and drove them away from Homer. For
  some time he stood wondering how a blind man should have reached such
  a place alone, and what could be his design in coming. He then went
  up to him and inquired who he was, and how he had come to desolate
  places and untrodden spots, and of what he stood in need. Homer, by
  recounting to him the whole history of his misfortunes, moved him
  with compassion; and he took him and led him to his cot, and, having
  lit a fire, bade him sup.
  
  "The dogs, instead of eating, kept barking at the stranger, according
  to their usual habit. Whereupon Homer addressed Glaucus thus: O
  Glaucus, my friend, prythee attend to my behest. First give the dogs
  their supper at the doors of the hut: for so it is better, since,
  whilst they watch, nor thief nor wild beast will approach the fold.
  
  "Glaucus was pleased with the advice and marvelled at its author.
  Having finished supper, they banqueted afresh on conversation, Homer
  narrating his wanderings, and telling of the cities he had visited.
  
  "At length they retired to rest; but on the following morning,
  Glaucus resolved to go to his master, and acquaint him with his
  meeting with Homer. Having left the goats in charge of a
  fellow-servant, he left Homer at home, promising to return quickly.
  Having arrived at Bolissus, a place near the farm, and finding his
  mate, he told him the whole story respecting Homer and his journey.
  He paid little attention to what he said, and blamed Glaucus for his
  stupidity in taking in and feeding maimed and enfeebled persons.
  However, he bade him bring the stranger to him.
  
  "Glaucus told Homer what had taken place, and bade him follow him,
  assuring him that good fortune would be the result. Conversation soon
  showed that the stranger was a man of much cleverness and general
  knowledge, and the Chian persuaded him to remain, and to undertake
  the charge of his children."
  
  Besides the satisfaction of driving the impostor Thestorides from the
  island, Homer enjoyed considerable success as a teacher. In the town
  of Chios he established a school, where he taught the precepts of
  poetry. "To this day," says Chandler, "the most curious remain is
  that which has been named, without reason, the School of Homer. It is
  on the coast, at some distance from the city, northward, and appears
  to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock.
  The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the
  head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The
  chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is
  bounded by a low rim, or seat, and about five yards over. The whole
  is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the
  most remote antiquity."
  
  So successful was this school, that Homer realised a considerable
  fortune. He married, and had two daughters, one of whom died single,
  the other married a Chian.
  
  The following passage betrays the same tendency to connect the
  personages of the poems with the history of the poet, which has
  already been mentioned:--
  
  "In his poetical compositions Homer displays great gratitude towards
  Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssey, whose name he has ___insert___ed in his
  poem as the companion of Ulysses, in return for the care taken of him
  when afflicted with blindness. He also testifies his gratitude to
  Phemius, who had given him both sustenance and instruction."
  
  His celebrity continued to increase, and many persons advised him to
  visit Greece whither his reputation had now extended. Having, it is
  said, made some additions to his poems calculated to please the
  vanity of the Athenians, of whose city he had hitherto made no
  mention, he set out for Samos. Here, being recognized by a Samian,
  who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and
  invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited
  some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the
  Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence,
  visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was very
  popular.
  
  In the spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios,
  now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his
  death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an
  enigma proposed by some fishermen's children.
  
  Such is, in brief, the substance of the earliest life of Homer we
  possess, and so broad are the evidences of its historical
  worthlessness, that it is scarcely necessary to point them out in
  detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a
  persevering, patient, and learned--but by no means consistent--series
  of investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward
  statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability.
  
  "Homer appeared. The history of this poet and his works is lost in
  doubtful obscurity, as is the history of many of the first minds who
  have done honour to humanity, because they rose amidst darkness. The
  majestic stream of his song, blessing and fertilizing, flows like the
  Nile, through many lands and nations; and, like the sources of the
  Nile, its fountains will ever remain concealed."
  
  Such are the words in which one of the most judicious German critics
  has eloquently described the uncertainty in which the whole of the
  Homeric question is involved. With no less truth and feeling he
  proceeds:--
  
  "It seems here of chief importance to expect no more than the nature
  of things makes possible. If the period of tradition in history is
  the region of twilight, we should not expect in it perfect light. The
  creations of genius always seem like miracles, because they are, for
  the most part, created far out of the reach of observation. If we
  were in possession of all the historical testimonies, we never could
  wholly explain the origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey; for their
  origin, in all essential points, must have remained the secret of the
  poet."
  
  From this criticism, which shows as much insight into the depths of
  human nature as into the minute wire-drawings of scholastic
  investigation, let us pass on to the main question at issue. Was
  Homer an individual? or were the Iliad and Odyssey the result of an
  ingenious arrangement of fragments by earlier poets?
  
  Well has Landor remarked: "Some tell us there were twenty Homers;
  some deny that there was ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake
  the contents of a vase, in order to let them settle at last. We are
  perpetually labouring to destroy our delights, our composure, our
  devotion to superior power. Of all the animals on earth we least know
  what is good for us. My opinion is, that what is best for us is our
  admiration of good. No man living venerates Homer more than I do."
  
  But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests
  contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been
  nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of
  first impressions by minute analysis, our editorial office compels us
  to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the
  Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief
  period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend
  to dry details. Before, however, entering into particulars respecting
  the question of this unity of the Homeric poems, (at least of the
  Iliad,) I must express my sympathy with the sentiments expressed in
  the following remarks:--
  
  "We cannot but think the universal admiration of its unity by the
  better, the poetic age of Greece, almost conclusive testimony to its
  original composition. It was not till the age of the grammarians that
  its primitive integrity was called in question; nor is it injustice
  to assert, that the minute and analytical spirit of a grammarian is
  not the best qualification for the profound feeling, the
  comprehensive conception of an harmonious whole. The most exquisite
  anatomist may be no judge of the symmetry of the human frame; and we
  would take the opinion of Chantrey or Westmacott on the proportions
  and general beauty of a form, rather than that of Mr. Brodie or Sir
  Astley Cooper.
  
  "There is some truth, though some malicious exaggeration, in the lines
  of Pope:--
  
   "'The critic eye--that microscope of wit--
   Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
   How parts relate to parts, or they to whole.
   The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
   Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse, shall see,
   When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.'"
  
  Long was the time which elapsed before any one dreamt of questioning
  the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. The grave and
  cautious Thucydides quoted without hesitation the Hymn to Apollo, the
  authenticity of which has been already disclaimed by modern critics.
  Longinus, in an oft-quoted passage, merely expressed an opinion
  touching the comparative inferiority of the Odyssey to the Iliad;
  and, among a mass of ancient authors, whose very names it would be
  tedious to detail, no suspicion of the personal non-existence of
  Homer ever arose. So far, the voice of antiquity seems to be in
  favour of our early ideas on the subject: let us now see what are the
  discoveries to which more modern investigations lay claim.
  
  At the end of the seventeenth century, doubts had begun to awaken on
  the subject, and we find Bentley remarking that "Homer wrote a sequel
  of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself, for small comings and
  good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment. These loose
  songs were not collected together, in the form of an epic poem, till
  about Peisistratus' time, about five hundred years after."
  
  Two French writers--Hedelin and Perrault--avowed a similar scepticism
  on the subject; but it is in the "Scienza Nuova" of Battista Vico,
  that we first meet with the germ of the theory, subsequently defended
  by Wolf with so much learning and acuteness. Indeed, it is with the
  Wolfian theory that we have chiefly to deal, and with the following
  bold hypothesis, which we will detail in the words of Grote:--
  
  "Half a century ago, the acute and valuable Prolegomena of F. A.
  Wolf, turning to account the Venetian Scholia, which had then been
  recently published, first opened philosophical discussion as to the
  history of the Homeric text. A considerable part of that dissertation
  (though by no means the whole) is employed in vindicating the
  position, previously announced by Bentley, amongst others, that the
  separate constituent portions of the Iliad and Odyssey had not been
  cemented together into any compact body and unchangeable order, until
  the days of Peisistratus, in the sixth century before Christ. As a
  step towards that conclusion, Wolf maintained that no written copies
  of either poem could be shown to have existed during the earlier
  times, to which their composition is referred; and that without
  writing, neither the perfect symmetry of so complicated a work could
  have been originally conceived by any poet, nor, if realized by him,
  transmitted with assurance to posterity. The absence of easy and
  convenient writing, such as must be indispensably supposed for long
  manuscripts, among the early Greeks, was thus one of the points in
  Wolf's case against the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey.
  By Nitzsch, and other leading opponents of Wolf, the connection of
  the one with the other seems to have been accepted as he originally
  put it; and it has been considered incumbent on those who defended
  the ancient aggregate character of the Iliad and Odyssey, to maintain
  that they were written poems from the beginning.
  
  "To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf
  to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric
  poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained
  towards that view of the question, if it could be shown, that, in
  order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting
  long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera.
  Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne
  Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no
  less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the
  seventh century before the Christian aera, are exceedingly trifling.
  We have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad,
  and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can
  we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus,
  Kallinus Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric
  poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the
  practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which
  authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is
  in the famous ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at
  the Panathenaea: but for what length of time previously manuscripts
  had existed, we are unable to say.
  
  "Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the
  beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the
  existing habits of society with regard to poetry--for they admit
  generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and
  heard,--but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been
  manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems--the unassisted
  memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. But here
  we only escape a smaller difficulty by running into a greater; for the
  existence of trained bards, gifted with extraordinary memory, is far
  less astonishing than that of long manuscripts, in an age essentially
  non-reading and non-writing, and when even suitable instruments and
  materials for the process are not obvious. Moreover, there is a strong
  positive reason for believing that the bard was under no necessity of
  refreshing his memory by consulting a manuscript; for if such had been
  the fact, blindness would have been a disqualification for the
  profession, which we know that it was not, as well from the example of
  Demodokus, in the Odyssey, as from that of the blind bard of Chios, in
  the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom Thucydides, as well as the general
  tenor of Grecian legend, identifies with Homer himself. The author of
  that hymn, be he who he may, could never have described a blind man as
  attaining the utmost perfection in his art, if he had been conscious
  that the memory of the bard was only maintained by constant reference
  to the manuscript in his chest."
  
  The loss of the digamma, that crux of critics, that quicksand upon
  which even the acumen of Bentley was shipwrecked, seems to prove
  beyond a doubt, that the pronunciation of the Greek language had
  undergone a considerable change. Now it is certainly difficult to
  suppose that the Homeric poems could have suffered by this change,
  had written copies been preserved. If Chaucer's poetry, for instance,
  had not been written, it could only have come down to us in a
  softened form, more like the effeminate version of Dryden, than the
  rough, quaint, noble original. "At what period," continues Grote,
  "these poems, or indeed any other Greek poems, first began to be
  written, must be matter of conjecture, though there is ground for
  assurance that it was before the time of Solon. If, in the absence of
  evidence, we may venture upon naming any more determinate period, the
  question at once suggests itself, What were the purposes which, in
  that state of society, a manuscript at its first commencement must
  have been intended to answer? For whom was a written Iliad necessary?
  Not for the rhapsodes; for with them it was not only planted in the
  memory, but also interwoven with the feelings, and conceived in
  conjunction with all those flexions and intonations of voice, pauses,
  and other oral artifices which were required for emphatic delivery,
  and which the naked manuscript could never reproduce. Not for the
  general public--they were accustomed to receive it with its rhapsodic
  delivery, and with its accompaniments of a solemn and crowded
  festival. The only persons for whom the written Iliad would be
  suitable would be a ___select___ few; studious and curious men; a class of
  readers capable of analyzing the complicated emotions which they had
  experienced as hearers in the crowd, and who would, on perusing the
  written words, realize in their imaginations a sensible portion of
  the impression communicated by the reciter. Incredible as the
  statement may seem in an age like the present, there is in all early
  societies, and there was in early Greece, a time when no such reading
  class existed. If we could discover at what time such a class first
  began to be formed, we should be able to make a guess at the time
  when the old epic poems were first committed to writing. Now the
  period which may with the greatest probability be fixed upon as
  having first witnessed the formation even of the narrowest reading
  class in Greece, is the middle of the seventh century before the
  Christian aera (B.C. 660 to B.C. 630), the age of Terpander,
  Kallinus, Archilochus, Simenides of Amorgus, &c. I ground this
  supposition on the change then operated in the character and
  tendencies of Grecian poetry and music--the elegiac and the iambic
  measures having been introduced as rivals to the primitive hexameter,
  and poetical compositions having been transferred from the epical
  past to the affairs of present and real life. Such a change was
  important at a time when poetry was the only known mode of
  publication (to use a modern phrase not altogether suitable, yet the
  nearest approaching to the sense). It argued a new way of looking at
  the old epical treasures of the people, as well as a thirst for new
  poetical effect; and the men who stood forward in it may well be
  considered as desirous to study, and competent to criticize, from
  their own individual point of view, the written words of the Homeric
  rhapsodies, just as we are told that Kallinus both noticed and
  eulogized the Thebais as the production of Homer. There seems,
  therefore, ground for conjecturing that (for the use of this
  newly-formed and important, but very narrow class), manuscripts of
  the Homeric poems and other old epics,--the Thebais and the Cypria,
  as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey,--began to be compiled towards
  the middle of the seventh century B.C. I; and the opening of Egypt to
  Grecian commerce, which took place about the same period, would
  furnish increased facilities for obtaining the requisite papyrus to
  write upon. A reading class, when once formed, would doubtless slowly
  increase, and the number of manuscripts along with it: so that before
  the time of Solon, fifty years afterwards, both readers and
  manuscripts, though still comparatively few, might have attained a
  certain recognized authority, and formed a tribunal of reference
  against the carelessness of individual rhapsodies."
  
  But even Peisistratus has not been suffered to remain in possession
  of the credit, and we cannot help feeling the force of the following
  observations:--
  
  "There are several incidental circumstances which, in our opinion,
  throw some suspicion over the whole history of the Peisistratid
  compilation, at least over the theory that the Iliad was cast into
  its present stately and harmonious form by the directions of the
  Athenian ruler. If the great poets, who flourished at the bright
  period of Grecian song, of which, alas! we have inherited little more
  than the fame, and the faint echo; if Stesichorus, Anacreon, and
  Simonides were employed in the noble task of compiling the Iliad and
  Odyssey, so much must have been done to arrange, to connect, to
  harmonize, that it is almost incredible that stronger marks of
  Athenian manufacture should not remain. Whatever occasional anomalies
  may be detected, anomalies which no doubt arise out of our own
  ignorance of the language of the Homeric age; however the irregular
  use of the digamma may have perplexed our Bentleys, to whom the name
  of Helen is said to have caused as much disquiet and distress as the
  fair one herself among the heroes of her age; however Mr. Knight may
  have failed in reducing the Homeric language to its primitive form;
  however, finally, the Attic dialect may not have assumed all its more
  marked and distinguishing characteristics:--still it is difficult to
  suppose that the language, particularly in the joinings and
  transitions, and connecting parts, should not more clearly betray the
  incongruity between the more ancient and modern forms of expression.
  It is not quite in character with such a period to imitate an antique
  style, in order to piece out an imperfect poem in the character of
  the original, as Sir Walter Scott has done in his continuation of Sir
  Tristram.
  
  "If, however, not even such faint and indistinct traces of Athenian
  compilation are discoverable in the language of the poems, the total
  absence of Athenian national feeling is perhaps no less worthy of
  observation. In later, and it may fairly be suspected in earlier
  times, the Athenians were more than ordinarily jealous of the fame of
  their ancestors. But, amid all the traditions of the glories of early
  Greece embodied in the Iliad, the Athenians play a most subordinate
  and insignificant part. Even the few passages which relate to their
  ancestors, Mr. Knight suspects to be interpolations. It is possible,
  indeed, that in its leading outline, the Iliad may be true to
  historic fact; that in the great maritime expedition of western
  Greece against the rival and half-kindred empire of the
  Laomedontiadae, the chieftain of Thessaly, from his valour and the
  number of his forces, may have been the most important ally of the
  Peloponnesian sovereign: the pre-eminent value of the ancient poetry
  on the Trojan war may thus have forced the national feeling of the
  Athenians to yield to their taste. The songs which spoke of their own
  great ancestor were, no doubt, of far inferior sublimity and
  popularity, or, at first sight, a Theseid would have been much more
  likely to have emanated from an Athenian synod of compilers of
  ancient song, than an Achilleid or an Odysseid. Could France have
  given birth to a Tasso, Tancred would have been the hero of the
  Jerusalem. If, however, the Homeric ballads, as they are sometimes
  called, which related the wrath of Achilles, with all its direful
  consequences, were so far superior to the rest of the poetic cycle,
  as to admit no rivalry,--it is still surprising, that throughout the
  whole poem the callida junctura should never betray the workmanship
  of an Athenian hand; and that the national spirit of a race, who have
  at a later period not inaptly been compared to our self-admiring
  neighbours, the French, should submit with lofty self-denial to the
  almost total exclusion of their own ancestors--or, at least, to the
  questionable dignity of only having produced a leader tolerably
  skilled in the military tactics of his age."
  
  To return to the Wolfian theory. While it is to be confessed, that
  Wolf's objections to the primitive integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey
  have never been wholly got over, we cannot help discovering that they
  have failed to enlighten us as to any substantial point, and that the
  difficulties with which the whole subject is beset, are rather
  augmented than otherwise, if we admit his hypothesis. Nor is
  Lachmann's modification of his theory any better. He divides the
  first twenty-two books of the Iliad into sixteen different songs, and
  treats as ridiculous the belief that their amalgamation into one
  regular poem belongs to a period earlier than the age of
  Peisistratus. This as Grote observes, "ex-plains the gaps and
  contradictions in the narrative, but it explains nothing else."
  Moreover, we find no contradictions warranting this belief, and the
  so-called sixteen poets concur in getting rid of the following
  leading men in the first battle after the secession of Achilles:
  Elphenor, chief of the Euboeans; Tlepolemus, of the Rhodians;
  Pandarus, of the Lycians; Odins, of the Halizonians: Pirous and
  Acamas, of the Thracians. None of these heroes again make their
  appearance, and we can but agree with Colonel Mure, that "it seems
  strange that any number of independent poets should have so
  harmoniously dispensed with the services of all six in the sequel."
  The discrepancy, by which Pylaemenes, who is represented as dead in
  the fifth book, weeps at his son's funeral in the thirteenth, can
  only be regarded as the result of an interpolation.
  
  Grote, although not very distinct in stating his own opinions on the
  subject, has done much to clearly show the incongruity of the Wolfian
  theory, and of Lachmann's modifications, with the character of
  Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success,
  that the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these
  poems, or, supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by
  Peisistratus, and not before his time, are essentially distinct. In
  short, "a man may believe the Iliad to have been put together out of
  pre-existing songs, without recognising the age of Peisistratus as
  the period of its first compilation." The friends or literary
  /employes/ of Peisistratus must have found an Iliad that was already
  ancient, and the silence of the Alexandrine critics respecting the
  Peisistratic "recension," goes far to prove, that, among the numerous
  manuscripts they examined, this was either wanting, or thought
  unworthy of attention.
  
  "Moreover," he continues, "the whole tenor of the poems themselves
  confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad
  or Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age
  of Peisistratus--nothing which brings to our view the alterations
  brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined
  money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and
  republican governments, the close military array, the improved
  construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual
  frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins
  of religion, &c., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations
  Onomakritus, and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could
  hardly have failed to notice, even without design, had they then, for
  the first time, undertaken the task of piecing together many
  self-existent epics into one large aggregate. Everything in the two
  great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an
  age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even
  the interpolations (or those passages which, on the best grounds, are
  pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before
  Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus--in
  some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod--as genuine Homeric matter. As
  far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external,
  enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and
  Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand (always allowing
  for partial divergences of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our
  first trustworthy mark of Grecian time; and this ancient date, let it
  be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the
  most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in
  reference to Grecian history; for they thus afford us an insight into
  the anti-historical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the
  subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive
  contrasts between their former and their later condition."
  
  On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of
  Peisistratus were wholly of an editorial character, although I must
  confess that I can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his
  labours. At the same time, so far from believing that the composition
  or primary arrangement of these poems, in their present form, was the
  work of Peisistratus, I am rather persuaded that the fine taste and
  elegant, mind of that Athenian would lead him to preserve an ancient
  and traditional order of the poems, rather than to patch and
  reconstruct them according to a fanciful hypothesis. I will not
  repeat the many discussions respecting whether the poems were written
  or not, or whether the art of writing was known in the time of their
  reputed author. Suffice it to say, that the more we read, the less
  satisfied we are upon either subject.
  
  I cannot, however, help thinking, that the story which attributes the
  preservation of these poems to Lycurgus, is little else than a
  version of the same story as that of Peisistratus, while its
  historical probability must be measured by that of many others
  relating to the Spartan Confucius.
  
  I will conclude this sketch of the Homeric theories with an attempt,
  made by an ingenious friend, to unite them into something like
  consistency. It is as follows:--
  
  "No doubt the common soldiers of that age had, like the common
  sailors of some fifty years ago, some one qualified to 'discourse in
  excellent music' among them. Many of these, like those of the negroes
  in the United States, were extemporaneous, and allusive to events
  passing around them. But what was passing around them? The grand
  events of a spirit-stirring war; occurrences likely to impress
  themselves, as the mystical legends of former times had done, upon
  their memory; besides which, a retentive memory was deemed a virtue
  of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient
  times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with
  Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a
  species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. Tune next
  followed, as it aided the memory considerably.
  
  "It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that
  a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Moeonides, but most
  probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great
  utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of
  Hellas, and, as a collection, he published these lays connecting them
  by a tale of his own. This poem now exists, under the title of the
  'Odyssea.' The author, however, did not affix his own name to the
  poem, which, in fact, was, great part of it, remodelled from the
  archaic dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by
  him. He therefore called it the poem of Homeros, or the Collector;
  but this is rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his
  mere drudging arrangement of other people's ideas; for, as Grote has
  finely observed, arguing for the unity of authorship, 'a great poet
  might have re-cast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive
  whole; but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do
  so.'
  
  "While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad,
  recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon. His noble mind
  seized the hint that there presented itself, and the Achilleis grew
  under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the
  poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work; and the disjointed
  lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating
  to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the Iliad. Melesigenes
  knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one, and so it has
  proved; but, first, the poems were destined to undergo many
  vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them
  in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and
  then Peisistratus, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the
  poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their
  original integrity in a great measure."
  
  Having thus given some general notion of the strange theories which
  have developed themselves respecting this most interesting subject, I
  must still express my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of
  the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations
  disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may
  here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the
  negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious
  assumption; but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if
  we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In maintaining the
  authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or
  Melesigenes, /quocunque nomine vocari eum jus fasque sit/, I feel
  conscious that, while the whole weight of historical evidence is
  against the hypothesis which would assign these great works to a
  plurality of authors, the most powerful internal evidence, and that
  which springs from the deepest and most immediate impulse of the
  soul, also speaks eloquently to the contrary.
  
  The minutiae of verbal criticism I am far from seeking to despise.
  Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an
  attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its
  importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store
  on its aesthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the
  emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had
  they been suggested to the author by his Maecenas or Africanus, he
  would probably have adopted. Moreover, those who are most exact in
  laying down rules of verbal criticism and interpretation, are often
  least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not
  poets by profession, but may be so per accidens. I do not at this
  moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially
  improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from
  Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand
  minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be gloomy and
  jejune.
  
  But it is not on words only that grammarians, mere grammarians, will
  exercise their elaborate and often tiresome ingenuity. Binding down
  an heroic or dramatic poet to the block upon which they have
  previously dissected his words and sentences, they proceed to use the
  axe and the pruning knife by wholesale; and, inconsistent in
  everything but their wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation,
  they cut out book after book, passage after passage, till the author
  is reduced to a collection of fragments, or till those who fancied
  they possessed the works of some great man, find that they have been
  put off with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare
  the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann; and others, we shall feel
  better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the
  apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what another considers the
  turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging
  what another would explain by omitting something else.
  
  Nor is this morbid species of sagacity by any means to be looked upon
  as a literary novelty. Justus Lipsius, a scholar of no ordinary
  skill, seems to revel in the imaginary discovery, that the tragedies
  attributed to Seneca are by four different authors. Now, I will
  venture to assert, that these tragedies are so uniform, not only in
  their borrowed phraseology--a phraseology with which writers like
  Boethius and Saxo Grammaticus were more charmed than ourselves--in
  their freedom from real poetry, and last, but not least, in an
  ultra-refined and consistent abandonment of good taste, that few
  writers of the present day would question the capabilities of the
  same gentleman, be he Seneca or not, to produce not only these, but a
  great many more equally bad. With equal sagacity, Father Hardouin
  astonished the world with the startling announcement that the AEneid
  of Virgil, and the satires of Horace, were literary deceptions. Now,
  without wishing to say one word of disrespect against the industry
  and learning--nay, the refined acuteness--which scholars like Wolf
  have bestowed upon this subject, I must express my fears, that many
  of our modern Homeric theories will become matter for the surprise
  and entertainment, rather than the instruction, of posterity. Nor can
  I help thinking that the literary history of more recent times will
  account for many points of difficulty in the transmission of the
  Iliad and Odyssey to a period so remote from that of their first
  creation.
  
  I have already expressed my belief that the labours of Peisistratus
  were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason
  why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad
  in his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus
  should have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others.
  But, after all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that
  they demand too great a sacrifice of those feelings to which poetry
  most powerfully appeals, and which are its most fitting judges. The
  ingenuity which has sought to rob us of the name and existence of
  Homer, does too much violence to that inward emotion, which makes our
  whole soul yearn with love and admiration for the blind bard of
  Chios. To believe the author of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to
  degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate analytical judgment
  at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul; and to
  forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. There is a
  catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in the
  author of the Iliad may be a mistaken one, but as yet nobody has
  taught us a better.
  
  While, however, I look upon the belief in Homer as one that has
  nature herself for its mainspring; while I can join with old Ennius
  in believing in Homer as the ghost, who, like some patron saint,
  hovers round the bed of the poet, and even bestows rare gifts from
  that wealth of imagination which a host of imitators could not
  exhaust,--still I am far from wishing to deny that the author of
  these great poems found a rich fund of tradition, a well-stocked
  mythical storehouse, from whence he might derive both subject and
  embellishment. But it is one thing to use existing romances in the
  embellishment of a poem, another to patch up the poem itself from
  such materials. What consistency of style and execution can be hoped
  for from such an attempt? or, rather, what bad taste and tedium will
  not be the infallible result?
  
  A blending of popular legends, and a free use of the songs of other
  bards, are features perfectly consistent with poetical originality.
  In fact, the most original writer is still drawing upon outward
  impressions--nay, even his own thoughts are a kind of secondary
  agents which support and feed the impulses of imagination. But unless
  there be some grand pervading principle--some invisible, yet most
  distinctly stamped archetypus of the great whole, a poem like the
  Iliad can never come to the birth. Traditions the most picturesque,
  episodes the most pathetic, local associations teeming with the
  thoughts of gods and great men, may crowd in one mighty vision, or
  reveal themselves in more substantial forms to the mind of the poet;
  but, except the power to create a grand whole, to which these shall
  be but as details and embellishments, be present, we shall have
  nought but a scrap-book, a parterre filled with flowers and weeds
  strangling each other in their wild redundancy; we shall have a cento
  of rags and tatters, which will require little acuteness to detect.
  
  Sensible as I am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and
  aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my
  belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is
  reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are
  not by nature intended to know all things; still less, to compass the
  powers by which the greatest blessings of life have been placed at
  our disposal. Were faith no virtue, then we might indeed wonder why
  God willed our ignorance on any matter. But we are too well taught
  the contrary lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be
  especially tried, touching the men and the events which have wrought
  most influence upon the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of
  sacredness attached to the memory of the great and the good, which
  seems to bid us repulse the scepticism which would allegorize their
  existence into a pleasing apologue, and measure the giants of
  intellect by an homaeopathic dynameter.
  
  Long and habitual reading of Homer appears to familiarize our
  thoughts even to his incongruities; or rather, if we read in a right
  spirit and with a heartfelt appreciation, we are too much dazzled,
  too deeply wrapped in admiration of the whole, to dwell upon the
  minute spots which mere analysis can discover. In reading an heroic
  poem, we must transform ourselves into heroes of the time being, we
  in imagination must fight over the same battles, woo the same loves,
  burn with the same sense of injury, as an Achilles or a Hector. And
  if we can but attain this degree of enthusiasm (and less enthusiasm
  will scarcely suffice for the reading of Homer), we shall feel that
  the poems of Homer are not only the work of one writer, but of the
  greatest writer that ever touched the hearts of men by the power of
  song.
  
  And it was this supposed unity of authorship which gave these poems
  their powerful influence over the minds of the men of old. Heeren,
  who is evidently little disposed in favour of modern theories, finely
  observes:--
  
  "It was Homer who formed the character of the Greek nation. No poet
  has ever, as a poet, exercised a similar influence over his
  countrymen. Prophets, lawgivers, and sages have formed the character
  of other nations; it was reserved to a poet to form that of the
  Greeks. This is a feature in their character which was not wholly
  erased even in the period of their degeneracy. When lawgivers and
  sages appeared in Greece, the work of the poet had already been
  accomplished; and they paid homage to his superior genius. He held up
  before his nation the mirror in which they were to behold the world
  of gods and heroes, no less than of feeble mortals, and to behold
  them reflected with purity and truth. His poems are founded on the
  first feeling of human nature; on the love of children, wife, and
  country; on that passion which outweighs all others, the love of
  glory. His songs were poured forth from a breast which sympathized
  with all the feelings of man; and therefore they enter, and will
  continue to enter, every breast which cherishes the same sympathies.
  If it is granted to his immortal spirit, from another heaven than any
  of which he dreamed on earth, to look down on his race, to see the
  nations from the fields of Asia, to the forests of Hercynia,
  performing pilgrimages to the fountain which his magic wand caused to
  flow; if it is permitted to him to view the vast assemblage of grand,
  of elevated, of glorious productions, which had been called into
  being by means of his songs; wherever his immortal spirit may reside,
  this alone would suffice to complete his happiness."
  
  Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the "Apotheosis of
  Homer" is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing association,
  how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds,
  is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old tradition? The
  more we read, and the more we think--think as becomes the readers of
  Homer,--the more rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of
  Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire. Whatever were
  the means of its preservation, let us rather be thankful for the
  treasury of taste and eloquence thus laid open to our use, than seek
  to make it a mere centre around which to drive a series of theories,
  whose wildness is only equalled by their inconsistency with each
  other.
  
  As the hymns, and some other poems usually ascribed to Homer, are not
  included in Pope's translation, I will content myself with a brief
  account of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from the pen of a writer
  who has done it full justice:--
  
  "This poem," says Coleridge, "is a short mock-heroic of ancient date.
  The text varies in different editions, and is obviously disturbed and
  corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to have been a
  juvenile essay of Homer's genius; others have attributed it to the
  same Pigrees mentioned above, and whose reputation for humour seems
  to have invited the appropriation of any piece of ancient wit, the
  author of which was uncertain; so little did the Greeks, before the
  age of the Ptolemies, know or care about that department of criticism
  employed in determining the genuineness of ancient writings. As to
  this little poem being a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems
  sufficient to say that from the beginning to the end, it is a plain
  and palpable parody, not only of the general spirit, but of numerous
  passages of the Iliad itself; and, even if no such intention to
  parody were discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that
  to suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of
  poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the
  development of national taste, which the history of every other
  people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to be a
  law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much more refined
  and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any popularity
  would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is contained in
  this poem; and the fact of there having existed three other poems of
  the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as much reason
  to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were of
  the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word /deltoz/,
  'writing tablet,' instead of /diphthera/, 'skin,' which, according to
  Herod 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for that
  purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity; and
  generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a strong
  argument against so ancient a date for its composition."
  
  Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope's
  design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation,
  and on my own purpose in the present edition.
  
  Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and
  his earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of
  Ogilby. It is not too much to say that his whole work bears the
  impress of a disposition to be satisfied with the general sense,
  rather than to dive deeply into the minute and delicate features of
  language. Hence his whole work is to be looked upon rather as an
  elegant paraphrase than a translation. There are, to be sure, certain
  conventional anecdotes, which prove that Pope consulted various
  friends, whose classical attainments were sounder than his own,
  during the undertaking; but it is probable that these examinations
  were the result rather of the contradictory versions already
  existing, than of a desire to make a perfect transcript of the
  original. And in those days, what is called literal translation was
  less cultivated than at present. If something like the general sense
  could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if
  the charms of metrical cadence and a pleasing fluency could be made
  consistent with a fair interpretation of the poet's meaning, his
  words were less jealously sought for, and those who could read so
  good a poem as Pope's Iliad had fair reason to be satisfied.
  
  It would be absurd, therefore, to test Pope's translation by our own
  advancing knowledge of the original text. We must be content to look
  at it as a most delightful work in itself,--a work which is as much a
  part of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek. We must not
  be torn from our kindly associations with the old Iliad, that once
  was our most cherished companion, or our most looked-for prize,
  merely because Buttmann, Loewe, and Liddell have made us so much more
  accurate as to /amphikipellon/ being an adjective, and not a
  substantive. Far be it from us to defend the faults of Pope,
  especially when we think of Chapman's fine, bold, rough old
  English;--far be it from us to hold up his translation as what a
  translation of Homer might be. But we can still dismiss Pope's Iliad
  to the hands of our readers, with the consciousness that they must
  have read a very great number of books before they have read its
  fellow.
  
   THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.
  
  Christ Church.

pínglún (1)

hepingdao xièdào (2008-03-31 13:40:15):

The Odyssey (Greek: Οδύσσεια or Odússeia) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The poem was probably written near the end of the eighth century BC, somewhere along the Greek-controlled western Turkey seaside, Ionia.[1] The poem is, in part, a sequel to Homer's Iliad and mainly centers on the Greek hero Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home to Ithaca following the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War.[2] During this absence, his son Telemachus and wife Penelope must deal with a group of unruly suitors to compete for Penelope's hand in marriage, since most have assumed that Odysseus has died. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon and is indeed the second—the Iliad is the first—extant work of Western literature. It continues to be read in Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. The original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos perhaps a rhapsode, and was intended more to be sung than read.[3] The details of the ancient oral performance, and the story's conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a regionless poetic dialect of Greek and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. Among the most impressive elements of the text are its strikingly modern non-linear plot, and the fact that events are shown to depend as much on the choices made by women and serfs as on the actions of fighting men. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.
Character of Odysseus Odysseus' heroic trait is his mētis, or "cunning intelligence"; he is often described as the "Peer of Zeus in Counsel." This intelligence is most often manifested by his use of disguise and deceptive speech. His disguises take forms both physical (altering his appearance) and verbal, such as telling the Cyclops (Polyphemus) that his name is Ουτις, "Nobody", then escaping after blinding Polyphemus. When queried by other Cyclopes about why he is screaming, Polyphemus replies that "Nobody" is hurting him, and with that, it sounds as if nobody is hurting him. The most evident flaw that Odysseus sports is that of his arrogance and his pride, or hubris. As he sails away from the Cyclops's island, he shouts his name and boasts that no one can defeat the "Great Odysseus". The Cyclops then throws the top half of a mountain at him, and tells his father, Poseidon, that Odysseus blinded him, which enrages Poseidon and causes the god to thwart Odysseus' homecoming for a very long time.
Structure The Odyssey begins in medias res, meaning that the action begins in the middle of the plot, and that prior events are described through flashbacks or storytelling. This device is imitated by later authors of literary epics, for example, Virgil in the Aeneid, as well as modern poets such as Alexander Pope in the mock-epic, or mock-heroic, "The Rape of the Lock". In the first episodes, we trace Telemachus' efforts to assert control of the household, and then, at Athena’s advice, to search for news of his long-lost father. Then the scene shifts: Odysseus has been a captive of the beautiful nymph Calypso, with whom he has spent seven of his ten lost years. Released by the intercession of his patroness Athena, he departs, but his raft is destroyed by his divine enemy Poseidon, who is angry because Odysseus blinded his son, Polyphemus. When Odysseus washes up on Scherie, home to the Phaeacians, he is assisted by the young Nausicaa and is treated hospitably. In return he satisfies the Phaeacians' curiosity, telling them, and the reader, of all his adventures since departing from Troy. This renowned, extended "flashback" leads Odysseus back to where he stands, his tale told. The shipbuilding Phaeacians finally loan him a ship to return to Ithaca, where he is aided by the swineherd Eumaeus, meets Telemachus, regains his household, kills the suitors, and is reunited with his faithful wife, Penelope. Nearly all modern editions and translations of the Odyssey are divided into 24 books. This division is convenient but not original; it was developed by Alexandrian editors of the 3rd century BC. In the Classical period, moreover, several of the books (individually and in groups) were given their own titles: the first four books, focusing on Telemachus, are commonly known as the Telemachy; Odysseus' narrative, Book 9, featuring his encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus, is traditionally called the Cyclopeia; and Book 11, the section describing his meeting with the spirits of the dead is known as the Nekuia. Books 9 through 12, wherein Odysseus recalls his adventures for his Phaeacian hosts, are collectively referred to as the Apologoi: Odysseus' "stories". Book 22, wherein Odysseus kills all the suitors, has been given the title Mnesterophonia: "slaughter of the suitors". The last 548 lines of the Odyssey, corresponding to Book 24, are believed by many scholars to have been added by a slightly later poet. Several passages in earlier books seem to be setting up the events of Book 24, so if it is indeed a later addition, the offending editor would seem to have changed earlier text as well. For more about varying views on the origin, authorship and unity of the poem see Homeric scholarship.
Outline of the plot Telemachus, Odysseus' son, was only one day old when Odysseus set out for Troy. At the point where the Odyssey begins, ten further years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, Telemachus is twenty and is sharing his missing father’s house on the island of Ithaca with his mother, Penelope, and with a crowd of 108 boisterous young men, "the Suitors," whose aim is to persuade Penelope to accept her husband’s disappearance as final and to marry one of them. The goddess Athena (who is Odysseus’s protector) discusses his fate with Zeus, king of the gods, at a moment when Odysseus's enemy, the god of the Sea Poseidon, is absent from Mount Olympus. Then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality; they observe the Suitors dining rowdily, and the bard Phemius performing a narrative poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius's theme, the "Return from Troy"[4] because it reminds her of her missing husband, but Telemachus rebuts her objections. That night, Athena disguised as Telemachus finds a ship and crew for the true Telemachus. Next morning Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done to the suitors. Along this journey Telemachus will mature and become a man. Accompanied by Athena (now disguised as his friend Mentor) he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos. From there Telemachus rides overland, accompanied by Nestor's son, to Sparta, where he finds Menelaus and Helen, now reconciled. He is told that they returned to Greece after a long voyage by way of Egypt; there, on the magical island of Pharos, Menelaus encountered the old sea-god Proteus, who told him that Odysseus is a captive of the mysterious nymph Calypso. Incidentally Telemachus learns the fate of Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and leader of the Greeks at Troy, murdered on his return home by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Meanwhile Odysseus, after wanderings about which we are still to learn, has spent seven years in captivity on the nymph Calypso's distant island. She is now persuaded by the messenger god Hermes, sent by Zeus to release him. Odysseus builds a raft and is given clothing, food and drink by Calypso. It is wrecked (the sea-god Poseidon is his enemy) but he swims ashore on the island of Scherie, where, naked and exhausted, he falls asleep. Next morning, awakened by the laughter of girls, he sees the young Nausicaa, who has gone to the seashore with her maids to wash clothes. He appeals to her for help. She encourages him to seek the hospitality of her parents Arete and Alcinous. Odysseus is welcomed and is not at first asked for his name. He remains several days with Alcinous, takes part in an athletic competition, and hears the blind singer Demodocus perform two narrative poems. The first is an otherwise obscure incident of the Trojan War, the "Quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles"; the second is the amusing tale of a love affair between two Olympian gods, Ares and Aphrodite. Finally Odysseus asks Demodocus to return to the Trojan War theme and tell of the Trojan Horse, a stratagem in which Odysseus had played a leading role. Unable to hide his emotion as he relives this episode, Odysseus at last reveals his identity. He then begins to tell the amazing story of his return from Troy. After a piratical raid on Ismarus in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms. They visited the lazy Lotus-Eaters and were captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus, escaping by blinding him with a wooden stake. They stayed with Aeolus the master of the winds; he gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home, had not the sailors foolishly opened the bag while Odysseus slept. All the winds flew out and the resulting storm drove the ships back the way they had come just as Ithaca came into sight. After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embarked and encountered the cannibal Laestrygones. Odysseus’s own ship was the only one to escape. He sailed on and visited the witch-goddess Circe, whose magic powers turned several of his sailors into swine. Hermes met with Odysseus and gave him a drug called moly, a resistance to Circe’s magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, fell in love with him. Circe released his men. Odysseus and his crew remained with her on the island for one year, while they feasted and drank. Finally, Odysseus' men convinced Odysseus that it was time to leave for Ithaca. Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew crossed the ocean and reached a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrificed to the dead and summoned the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias to advise him. Next Odysseus met the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief at his long absence; from her he learned for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of the suitors. Here, too, he met the spirits of famous women and famous men; notably he encountered the spirit of Agamemnon, of whose murder he now learned, who also warned him about the dangers of women (for Odysseus' encounter with the dead see also Nekuia). Returning to Circe’s island, they were advised by her on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirted the land of the Sirens, passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and landed on the island of Thrinacia. There Odysseus’ men, ignoring the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. This sacrilege was punished by a shipwreck in which all but Odysseus himself were drowned. He was washed ashore on the island of Calypso, where she compelled him to remain as her lover for seven years, and he had only now escaped. Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians, who are skilled mariners, agree to help Odysseus on his way home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus. Odysseus now plays the part of a wandering beggar in order to learn how things stand in his household. After dinner he tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself: he was born in Crete, had led a party of Cretans to fight alongside other Greeks in the Trojan War, and had then spent seven years at the court of the king of Egypt; finally he had been shipwrecked in Thesprotia and crossed from there to Ithaca. Meanwhile Telemachus, whom we left at Sparta, sails home, evading an ambush set by the suitors. He disembarks on the coast of Ithaca and makes for Eumaeus’s hut. Father and son meet; Odysseus identifies himself to Telemachus (but still not to Eumaeus) and they determine that the suitors must be killed. Telemachus gets home first. Accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus now returns to his own house, still disguised as a beggar. He experiences the suitors’ rowdy behavior and plans their death. He meets Penelope: he tests her intentions with an invented story of his birth in Crete, where, he says, he once met Odysseus. Closely questioned, he adds that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had learned something there of Odysseus’s recent wanderings. Odysseus’s identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, when he undresses for a bath and reveals an old scar; he swears her to secrecy. Next day, at Athena’s prompting, Penelope maneuvers the suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus’s bow. Odysseus takes part in the competition himself; he alone is strong enough to string the bow and therefore wins. He turns his arrows on the suitors and with the help of Athena, Telemachus and Eumaeus, all the suitors are killed. Odysseus and Telemachus kill (by hanging) twelve of their household maids, who had slept with the suitors; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus. Now at last Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is hesitant, but accepts him when he correctly describes to her the bed he built for her when they married. The next day he and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes, who likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the orchard that Laertes once gave him. The citizens of Ithaca have followed Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. Their leader points out that Odysseus has now caused the deaths of two generations of the men of Ithaca—his sailors, not one of whom survived, and the suitors, whom he has now executed. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to give up the vendetta.[5]
The geography of the Odyssey Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey (excluding the narrative of Odysseus) take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands. There are difficulties in the identification of Ithaca, the homeland of Odysseus, which may or may not be the same island that is now called Ithake. The wanderings of Odysseus as told to the Phaeacians, and the location of the Phaeacians' own island of Scherie, pose more fundamental geographical problems: scholars both ancient and modern are divided as to whether or not any of the places visited by Odysseus (after Ismarus and before his return to Ithaca) are real. Near Eastern influences Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey. Martin West has noted substantial parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey.[6] Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth, and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, a goddess who is the daughter of the sun-god Helios. Her island, Aiaia, is located at the edges of the world, and seems to have close associations with the sun. Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach the land of the dead from a divine helper: in this case she is the goddess Siduri, who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth. Her home is also associated with the sun: Gilgamesh reaches Siduri's house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu, the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky. West argues that the similarity of Odysseus's and Gilgamesh's journeys to the edges of the earth are the result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey.