HOMERIC MORALITY It is strange to read in old books that Homer has "no law and no morality." It seems so very contrary to the truth. Homeric law is the law of the heroic age: there is no code, but the king delivers judgments based no doubt on custom and public opinion. If they are unjust there is a general Nemesis, or Indignation, of men, and probably a punishment of all the land by the gods. In times of peace, as in the Odyssey, there is praise for "some blameless king, who in the fear of God rules among men many and strong, and upholds righteous judgments; to him the black soil bears wheat and barley, the trees are heavy with fruit, the flocks bring forth unfailingly and the sea provides its fish, because of his good leading; and the peoples prosper under him." (Od. xix. III.) So Odysseus "had no evil thoughts, but was kind as a father to his people" (Od. ii. 23o sqq., v. 8 sqq., etc.) In war, of course, such as we have in the Iliad, there is not so much question of law or justice, though it is noteworthy that the gerontes, or elders, have some influence beside the king. In Troy this is natural, since the Trojans are still living at home among their native sanctities. But even in the Achaean camp Nestor carries weight in the council of chief tains on the ground of his age and experience.
In the main, as in other heroic ages, morality has gone back to first principles, to what Homer calls aidos and nemesis. Aidos is generally interpreted as "shame" or "sense of honour," nemesis as "righteous indignation." Aidos is what you feel about your own actions: the honour that compels you, the shame that deters you, the, ruth or remorse that haunts you. Nemesis, or "the nemesis of men," is what is felt by the onlooker about the act of another, done or contemplated. If you feel disposed to run away in battle, or if you continue to be angry after receiving atone ment, think of the "nemesis of men"! When Helen is asked to go and let Paris make love to her when he has emerged with doubtful honour from a battle with Menelaus, she says roundly : "I will not go. Nef.turanTOP bE KEV E171; it would be a thing to feel nemesis at." The word nemesis soon passes away from the sphere of ordinary human blame. It becomes the haunting impalpable wrath of the earth and sun, the "innumerable Kcres," the gods and the dead. The deeds that rouse it fall mainly into three categories; first, actions that imply cowardice. "Aidos, ye Argives . . . will ye not stand? . . . I have nemesis against you in my heart." Secondly, perjury and lying. This never occurs in Homer, because the heroes never commit the action, except per haps Pandarus, who is killed. But it is the most typical source of shame in the rest of the heroic tradition.
Thirdly, and much the most important, any wrong or treachery towards the helpless, the stranger, the suppliant, and the aged. The feeling often occurs in Homer, but the doctrine is most clearly expressed by a passage in Hesiod (Works and Days 327 sqq.) . "It is all as one thing—the man who wrongs a suppliant or a stranger, the man who violates his brother's bed; the man who in heartlessness sins against orphan children; the man who reviles his old father on the bitter threshold of age: with that man Zeus himself is wroth." The parable of the prayers, Daughters of Zeus, in Il. ix. 502 illustrates the same feeling. They are prayers for mercy or forgiveness. Lame, and wrinkled and half-blind, they stagger after the footsteps of Ate (Blindness, or Evil) trying to heal the harm she has done. . . . And woe to the man who rejects them, for the daughters of God speak to their Father. Such a man would be Expurgations.—A saga, or a body of poetry, which lasts on in tradition from one age to another is almost certain to be altered to suit changes of taste, particularly if the standard is rising. The Northern epics were modified as their people became Chris tian. The books of the primitive polytheistic Hebrews were modified as the religion of Jehovah prevailed. The acting texts of Shakespeare changed most sensitively in the 18th and 19th century. In Homer, as Plato explains in the Republic, there are occasional passages which hurt the moral sense of a later age, and "we must beg Homer not to be angry if we delete them" (Rep. iii. p. 387b). Zenodotus and Aristarchus are recorded as hav ing acted in this spirit after Plato, and other critics and poets had evidently done so before. Zenodotus mostly deleted what was a7rp€7rES, "unseemly"—abusive language, attribution of fear to the Gods or heroes, of a mean motive to Achilles or Agamemnon, of a list of amours to Zeus, and the like. These expurgations are recorded in the Scholia. So is the meditated parricide of Phoenix and a suggestion, by Ajax, of all people, that the Achaeans should "pray silently, so that Trojans should not hear." There has been a complete expurgation of certain primitive vices, which were current in most parts of later Greece (Schol. on 11. xvi. 97 sqq., xx. 231 sqq. v. 266). The brother-and-sister marriage of Alcinous and Arete is turned into one between uncle and niece. (Schol. Od. vii. 55 sqq.) The torture of Hector before death has been turned into an insult to his body after death. In general, mutilation, stripping of the dead, torture and be heading have been either removed or softened down. Poisoned arrows are condemned, though it is clear that Homer's arrows, like those of Heracles in Hesiod, originally "had death on the tip and wept in drops" (Aspis 132). There has also been a vigorous and almost complete excision of human sacrifice. Homer says nothing of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia or Polyxena; "rightly," says Pausanias, "he omitted such a cruel and unlawful deed." The one human sacrifice which seems to have been too firmly fixed in the legend to admit of expurgation, viz., the sacrifice of twelve noble Trojans by Achilles at the pyre of Patroclus, is hurried over in a shamefaced line and a half, without even a principal verb, and is followed by the words: "Yea, he devised evil things in his heart." The Odyssey, which is in many ways less a mirror of chivalry than the Iliad, admits something very like torture for Melanthios and the treacherous bondmaids. After all, they were only slaves! Each case needs separate consideration, but the fact of ex purgation can hardly be denied. The real Akhaiusha who took Troy were probably a horde of savages. We can see the un expurgated account of their doings in the fragments of the Epics that were considered "non-Homeric," i.e., which never passed through the furnace of the Panathenaic recitation. But the "godlike Achaioi" of Homer have been made into ideals of manly chivalry, held up to the imitation of the young, and must not be described as practising the "beastly devices of the heathen." The true spirit of Homeric chivalry comes out in the parting of Hector and Andromache in Il. vi., the reconciliation of Achilles and Priam in Il. xxiv., or the words of Odysseus over his dead enemies: "Unholy it is to vaunt over slain men." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-(I.) Editions of text: Editio princeps by Demetrius Bibliography.-(I.) Editions of text: Editio princeps by Demetrius Chalcondylas, Florence (1488) ; Aldines (1504, 1517). Modern Critical Texts. La Roche, Odyssey (5867-68), Iliad (1873-76) ; Ludwich, improvement on La Roche, Odyssey (1889-91) , Iliad (1901, 1907) ; Allen (Oxford, 5 vols., 1908 and after) ; based on fullest examination of mss. and papyri. (2.) Editions which attempt to restore the text to some pre-Aristarchean form:—Payne Knight (1820, after Prolegomena, 1816) , a curiosity of wild restoration ; Brandreth, Ilias (1841) ; Fick, text restored to "the original Aeolic," Odyssey (1883), Iliad (1886) ; Less adventurous, Van Leeuwen and Mendez da Costa, several editions (1889-1912) , with prolegomena and notes, and restoration into sup posed "original Ionic"; Platt (Cambridge 1892, 1894) removes surface corruption and restores the digamma where the case is clear. (3.) Commentaries:—Van Leeuwen (as above) ; Leaf, Iliad (2nd ed. 5900 1902) the best commentary in English; Ameis, afterwards continued by Hentze and (7th ed.) by Paul Cauer (5913), probably the best in German ; a remarkable edition of the Odyssey in six vols., treated dramatically, by V. Berard (Paris 1924) ; Odyssey I.–XII., Merry and Riddell, XIII.–XXIV., Monro (1886, 1901), with valuable appendices. (4.) Scholia. The Venetian Scholia, first pub. by Villoison (1788) ; Best Edition, Iliad (4 vols.) and Odyssey (2 vols.) by Dindorf ; Town ley, Scholia to Iliad (2 vols.) by Maas (1855-88) ; Eustathius' vast commentary, pub. Rome 1542, reprinted Stallbaum (Leipzig, 1827). Books on the Scholia:—Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis Homericis 1865) , very interesting; more elaborate, Ludwich, Aristarchs Hom. Textkritik (2 vols. 2884, 1885) ; Roemer, Homerexegese Aristarchs (ed. Belzner 1924) ; Wecklein, fiber Zenodotus and Aristarch • (5.) Books on the Text:—La Roche, Horn. Textkritik (1866) and Hom. Untersuchungen (186g) ; Ludwich, Die Homerische Vulgata als voraris tarchisch erwiesen; Agar, Homerica (1908) ; Bolling, External Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (1925).
(6.) General:—Wolf, Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795, ed. Volkman 1844) . Wolf was to some extent preceded by Wood, Essay on the Origi nal Genius of Homer (1769) ; and the Abbe d'Aubignac, Conjectures Academiques (pub. 5715 but written about 5669). Compare also Vico, 11 vero Homero, 1744. Hermann, De Interpolationibus and De Iteratis apud Homerum, in his Opuscula (5 vols.) ; Lachmann, Betrachtungen Tuber Homers Ilias (1837-41, ed. Moritz Haupt 1865, 1874) ; Erhardt, Entstehung der Hom. Gedichte (5894) ; Jebb, Introduction to Homeric Study (1887), still useful; Browne, Handbook of Homeric Study (1908) ; Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age (5907) ; Cauer, Gsrundprob leme der Homerischen Kritik (3rd ed'. 1921-23) gives the best con spectus of the whole problem. Chadwick, The Heroic Age (1912 ) brought new light on the Homeric question by a study of "heroic ages" as a type. Rothe, Ilias als Dichtung (191o), Odyssee als Dichtung , a good restatement of the old "unitarian" point of view ; cf. M. Stawell, Homer and the Iliad (19o9). Drerup, Homerische Poesie (5 vols. 1921) ; the first gives a valuable conspectus, specially devoted to correcting Cauer, learning great, but standpoint somewhat uncritical. G. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic (1907, 3rd ed. 1925) ; T. W. Allen, The Homeric Catalogue of Ships (1921) and Origin and Transmission of the Homeric Poems (1926) ; U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homerische Untersuchungen (5884) and Homer and die Ilias (1920) and Heimkehr des Odysseus (1926) ; Eric Bethe, Homer and die Hel densage (1902) , valuable on the nuclei of historical fact, transmuted, in the poems, and Homer, Dichtung and Saga (3 vols. 1914-27). Seeck, Quellen der Odyssee (1887) , struck out a new line of inquiry ; vigor ously followed up by Mulder, Ilias and ihre Quellen (1950). J. A. K. Thomson, Studies in the Odyssey (1914), emphasizes tradition and attempts imaginative understanding; E. Schwartz, Odyssee (1924) ; Finsler, Homer in der Neuzeit (1912) and Homer (5908), very wide reading; Bedier, Les Legendes Epiques (1908-13). Ingenious are:— Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey (identified as Nausicaa 1897) ; Shewan, The Lay of Dolon (191I) ; Smyth, A Nu: aerical Law in the Homeric Poems (1914) . (7.) Among older books Welcker's Epische Cyclus (5835-49), is still valuable; also Sengebusch, Introductions to Dindorff's text of Homer ; Friedlaender, Wolf bis Grote (1853) ; Kirchhoff, Homerische Odyssee (1869) ; and Paley, articles cited in Sayce's Appendix to vol. 1 of Mahaffy's Greek Literature. Andrew Lang's books, though injured by their polemical tone, are still useful:—Homer and his Age (1906), Homer and the Epic (1895) and The World of Homer (Ig1o). Gladstone's Studies on Homer (1858), Juventus Mundi (1869) contain some brilliant suggestions ; Hayman's Odyssey (1866), has useful notes. Geddes, Problem of Homeric Poems (1878) ; Nitzsch's voluminous writings, Erliiuternde Anmerkungen zu Homers Odyssee (1826-4o) , etc., have lost most of their value ; bachs, Anmerkungen zur Ilias (first three books) much praised (1864) .
(8.) Archaeology:—All books are dependent on the discoveries of Schliemann at Troy and Mycenae, between 1869 and 1896, summed up in Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations (1891, Eng. tr. 1891) , and later on those of Sir Arthur Evans and others in Crete, summed up in Evans, The Palace of Minos at Knossus (3 vols. 1921-28) ; cf. W. Leaf, Troy (1912) , Homer and History (1915) and Strabo on the Troad (1923) ; Robert, Studien zur Ilias (19o1) ; Helbig, Das H. Epos durch die Denkmaler erklart (1884, 1887) ; Buchholtz, H. Realien (1871-73) Reichel, H. Waffen (epochmaking) ; V. Berard, Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee (19o2–o3), fascinating rather than convincing; Noack, H. Palaste (1903) ; cf. Dorpfeldt in Mitth. Arch. Inst. Ath. (19o5) ; Ridge way, Early Age of Greece (19o1) , first emphasized the northern inva sions. Wace and Thompson, Prehistoric Thessaly; Sartiaux, Troie (1915) ; Macurdy, Troy and Paeonia (1925) ; Hall, Oldest Civilization of Greece (19o1) , and Ancient History of Near East (1913) , and Aegean Archaeology (1915) ; Dussaud, Les Civilisations Pre-helleniques (2nd ed. 1914) ; Glotz, Civilisation egt enne (1924) ; Heusey, Histoire du Costume antique (1922).
(9.) Language:—Buttmann, Lexilogus (1818-25), still interesting; Monro, Homeric Grammar (2nd ed. 1891) ; van Leeuwen and Mendez da Costa, Eucheiridion Dictionis Epicae (2nd ed. 1918) • Dielitz, H. Formenlehre (1908) ; Freund, Formenlehre d. H. Mundart (1906) ; Schulze, Quaestiones Epicae (1902) ; Delbruck, Syntaktische Forschun gen (1871-72) ; Thumb, Das Digamma (1898) and Die Gr. Dialekte (3rd ed. 1928) ; Bekker, Homerische Bldtter (1863-72) • Cobet, Miscel lanea Critica (1876) ; Bechtel, Vokalkontraktion bei H. (1908) ; Meil let, Apercu d'une Histoire de la Langue Grecque (192o) , very good; Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer (1916). (io.) Metre:—Hartel, Homerische Studien; Solmsen, Untersuchungen zur Gr. Laut- and Verslehre (1901) ; Danielsson, Zur Lehre vom H. Digamma, Ind. Forsch. XXV. ; Witte in Pauly-Wissowa's Realenz y klopedie, "Homeros"; Drewitt, "Scansion in H. Verse," in Class. Quar terly (April 1908) ; Usener, Altgriechischer Versbau (1886) ; Schroder, Vorgeschichte des H. Hexameters (1908). (11.) Lexica, etc.:—Con cordance to Iliad by Prendergast (1875) and to Odyssey by Dunbar; Lexicon Homericum by Ebeling (188o-85) ; Gehring, Index Homericus (1891) ; Facsimile codex Venetus A, Sijthioff 0900, with introduc tion by Comparetti. The chief classical periodicals (such as, in England, Journal of Hellenic Studies, Classical Quarterly, Classical Review, Liv erpool Annals of Archaeology, and in America Classical Philology, American Journal of Archaeology) contain passim articles on Homer, e.g., many on mss. by T. W. Allen in the Class. Review; the literature is summarized from time to time in Bursian's Jahresberichte: esp. vols. CLXVI. (text), CLXXXII. (general and archaeological). The histories of Greece and of Greek Literature all treat of Homer.