Part 6 (1/2)

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

240, 241.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

HOMERIC ARMOUR

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

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

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