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We gather from Homer that there was a low sense of truth among the Greeks of the Homeric Age, but that the people were better than might be expected from the examples set them by the gods in whom they professed to believe. Says MAHAFFY: "At no period did the nation attain to that high standard which is the great feature in Germanic civilization.
There fought the gallant de Villiers, while Ian Hamilton rallied the defenders and led them in repeated rushes against the enemy's line. Continually reinforced from below, the Boers fought with extraordinary resolution. Never will any one who witnessed that Homeric contest question the valour of our foes. It was a murderous business on both sides. Edwardes of the Light Horse was struck down.
In civil wars the priests were sometimes bribed to support one of the contending parties. THE HOMERIC POEMS. Within the last century, there has been much discussion about the authorship of the two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The place where they were composed, whether among the Ionians in Greece proper or in Asia Minor, is still a matter of debate. It was probably Asia Minor.
Then, again, universally the Homeric Greek, from many causes, is easy; and especially from these two: 1 st, The simplicity of the thought, which never gathers into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, which we find in the dramatic poets of a higher civilization.
Some one having pronounced Tennyson eminently Homeric, Mr. Arnold discusses the relation of the English idyllic to the Ionian epic poet, and finds him at the opposite pole in respect of simplicity. As to a vehicle for the translation of Homer, he gives his voice decidedly in favor of English hexameter, and tries his own hand at that measure. His success strikes us as respectable, but not eminent.
Fragrant odors from the censers were flung upon the air; a shower of roses fell from the windows upon the maidens; arms glistened in the sunlight, and in moments when the people were silent the sounds of lyres and flutes floated on the breeze, accompanying with soft melodies the voices of the Homeric rhapsodists.
A musical cadence, or even possibly an instrumental accompaniment, may have marked the Homeric chant about Achilles and Ulysses. Whereas, obviously, in regard to Herodotus, the readings given by him at the Olympic games were readings in the modern sense, pure and simple. Lucian has related the incident, not only succinctly, but picturesquely.
In suggesting this view, we are not opening the door to Euhemerism. If there is any one conclusion concerning the Homeric poems which the labours of a whole generation of scholars may be said to have satisfactorily established, it is this, that no trustworthy history can be obtained from either the Iliad or the Odyssey merely by sifting out the mythical element.
In the mature Greek jurisprudence, the rule advances a few steps on the practice hinted at in the Homeric literature; and though very many traces of stringent family obligation remain, the direct authority of the parent is limited, as in European codes, to the nonage or minority of the children, or, in other words, to the period during which their mental and physical inferiority may always be presumed.
Again, such a bronze chiton might stop a spear of which the impetus was spent in penetrating the shield. But Homeric corslets did not, as a rule, avail to keep out a spear driven by the hand at close quarters, or powerfully thrown from a short distance. Even the later Greek corslets do not look as if they could resist a heavy spear wielded by a strong hand.
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