The Historians' History of the World 04

Homer, moreover, created for the Greeks their heroic legend. The whole wealth of scattered and desultory reminiscence and tradition among the various tribes and families, combined with all that occupied the memory and imagination of man, was gathered together in one by the art of the Epic poets. Thus another and more beautiful domain was built up in the imaginations of men, from which a light fell on the present so brilliant that the present paled before it, while even as children men began to make themselves at home in that domain. Here it was that the Greeks found their common fatherland, proud and united, whilst they were still at daggers drawn with one another upon earth, and once more when they were all subject to foreign lords; to this day all those of us who have drunk a draught from Homer’s spring, feel at home in this region. Their gods the Greeks, likewise, received from Homer; not the faith by which the heart is made heavy and light, rendered contrite and redeemed, but the names and the histories, the relations and the amours of their celestial host—that is to say, their mythology.

The name itself implies how far it was from anything like divine revelation and holiness. The muse has much to say that is untrue but resembles truth. Homeric art, however, understood the secret of humanising the stories of the gods as effectually as the stories of tribes and kings. And this Homeric art took captive the fancy of the listeners, that is, the fancy of the whole nation as soon as it gave ear to the poetry of Homer. Homer gave to the Greek his gods, and all the Greek gods turned into men with the gift. He gives us a complete picture of nature too, he teaches us to see what surrounds us, and the sorrows and joys that condition our brief life under the sun. The roseate flush of dawn, the twinkling of the dog-star, the rush of the hurricane, the babble of the mountain stream, the tops of the fir trees in the highland forest, and the clumps of asphodel on untilled ground; the lions and wolves in the Asiatic mountain country, the horse and the hound, the companions of man, he sees everything, shows everything, loves everything; above all, the sea, eternal, ever new, that has become a home to the Ionian in lieu of mother-earth. In the light in which he viewed Nature and set her forth the Greeks accustomed themselves to look upon her. Not only so, but whole generations took pleasure in the reproduction of what had once been done, and turned their eyes aside from the contemplation of the Real, the infinitude whereof no Homer can exhaust.

In fine, the judgment passed upon Homer by Horace, who repeats the verdict of the stoics, contains a large measure of truth:

“Qui, quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,

Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit.”

He gives us a complete picture of the doings of man, shows us princes and beggars, old men and boys, the budding maiden and the perfection of dæmonic beauty. So rich is this completeness, so profound the poet’s knowledge of life, that the thing we most clearly realise is the utter preposterousness of any attempt to compare Homer with any popular poetry whatsoever. Rather does Plato rightly name him the grandsire of tragedy, and only one picture of the world can claim a birthright equal to that of Homer—the picture set forth on the stage of William Shakespeare.

In this Homeric delineation of mankind, which includes immortal men, to wit, the gods, and has the portrayal of nature for its complement, lies that specifically Homeric quality which casts a spell over every unspoilt mind, and which the finest art-critics of all times and nations never grow weary of praising. It bears witness to a high psychological culture in both poets and listeners. No state of primitive barbarism such as Tacitus depicts in the Germani, none but an old and richly developed civilisation, could lead up to this. The fresh observation of nature in the pictures of Knossos, the rigid stylistic convention of the cuttle-fish on the golden platter of Mycenæ, for example, the bold ornament on painted vessels, like the pitcher of Marseilles, the architecture of the beehive tombs, show the Homeric sense of art in other regions and at a pre-Homeric period.