Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the Iliadif we have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete, and on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope. {Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik, pp. 193-194.} We must not be told that the many other supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest, have "cumulative weight." If we have disposed of each individual supposed note of change in beliefs and manners in its turn, then these proofs have, in each case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are not more ponderous than a feather.
CHAPTER XII
LINGUISTIC PROOFS OF VARIOUS DATES
The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier and later.
Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later grammarin Iliad and Odyssey. In the Iliadfour or five Books are infected by "the later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The main division, that of Iliadand Odyssey, shows a distinct advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group with the Odysseyfour Books of the Iliadwhose Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions ..." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. X.} We are here concerned with linguisticexamples of "lateness." The "four Books whose Odyssean physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the IliadMr. Leaf adds Iliad, XI. 664-772: "probably a later addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in character," says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.} The value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see The Interpolations of Nestor).
The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines ( Iliad, XI. 670-762) are the occurrence of "a purely Odyssean word" (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a "forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot"; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a non-Odyssean sense (688), a verb for "insulting," not elsewhere found in the Iliad(though the noun is in the Iliad) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the sun, "four times in the Odyssey" (735). It is also possible that there is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).
These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the Iliadis that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at the disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of the Iliad.
This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the Iliadscarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that were so, all the Books of the Iliadwould, in the course of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling reciters.
How the twenty Books relatively pure "in grammatical forms, in syntax,
and in vocabulary," could be kept thus clean without the aid of written
texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at
the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with
"the defining article"—and, indeed, an employment of the article which
startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First
Book of the Iliad? {Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and
Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11-12.}
Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more
or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in
{Greek: amphi} with the dative meaning "about," and with {Greek: ex} "in
consequence of," and "the extension of the use of {Greek: ei} clauses
as final and objective clauses," and similar marks of lateness, so
interesting to grammarians. {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii. pp.
331-333.} But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in
these respects.
Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We later refer ( Archaeology of the Epic) to the Chancun de Willame, of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willameas taking a place beside the Chanson de Rolandin the earliest rank of Chansons de Geste. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The word зo, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article" ( li Reis, "the king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided or not at pleasure.... There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus. After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. Anand en have been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case." {Footnote: Romania, xxxiv. pp. 240-246.}
The poem is also notable, like the Iliad, for textual repetition of passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt novelties in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of epics, composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are confirmed in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar and metre of the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts carefully 'executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum of language.
These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis that allof the Iliad, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000 B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the Iliadwould equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.