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Now the evidence for Pisistratus which, in 1892, he thought "conjectural and of late date," seems to him a sufficient basis for an hypothesis of a Pisistratean editor of the Iliad, while the evidence for an Homeric school which appeared to him good enough for an hypothesis in 1892 is rejected as worthless, though, in each case, the evidence itself remains just what it used to be.
Contrast for a moment the sort of sexless Valkyrie who appears in the Iliad under the name of Athena with the Korê of Ephesus, strangely called Artemis, a shapeless fertility figure, covered with innumerable breasts. That suggests the contrast that I mean. Secondly, the poems are by tradition aristocratic; they are the literature of chieftains, alien to low popular superstition.
On the fly-leaf of the volume he sent my father was written the following beautiful inscription: "To General Lee, The most stainless of living commanders and, except in fortune, the greatest, this volume is presented with the writer's earnest sympathy and respectful admiration ... oios yap epveto Idiov Ektwp. Iliad VI 403,"
But I think what Jeff liked best of it all was the sort of public recognition that it meant. He'd stand there in the shop, hardly bothering to shave, and explain to the men in the arm-chairs how he held her, and they shoved her, and he clung to her, and what he'd said to himself a perfect Iliad while he was clinging to her.
Monro, and many authorities are agreed. 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. These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.
'Why, we were pegging away at the Iliad and came to where Zeus tells Juno not to inquire into his plans or he'll whip her, and Jo was disgusted because Juno meekly hushed up. I said it was all right, and agreed with the old fellow that women didn't know much and ought to obey men, explained Ted, to the great amusement of his hearers.
For the story has been retained by the three races alike, in all its principal features; though the Veda has left it in the sky where it originally belonged, while the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied have brought it down to earth, the one locating it in Asia Minor, and the other in Northwestern Europe. Sarama, the creeping Dawn, is sent by Indra to find and recover them.
Among other volumes of verse on the top shelf of the bookcase, of which I used to look at the outside without penetrating deeply within, were Pope's translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Dryden's Virgil, pretty little tomes in tree-calf, published by James Crissy in Philadelphia, and illustrated with small copper-plates, which somehow seemed to put the matter hopelessly beyond me.
They had some realization of this truth even in the days of the Iliad. In any case of exposure to or contraction of disease, the total abstainer has a proved advantage over even the light drinker.
And it was for men who were able, and forced, to do that, that the Iliad and the Odyssey and the other early epics were composed. But life is not only short; it is, in itself, valueless. "As the generation of leaves, so is the generation of men." The life of man matters to nobody but himself. It happens incidentally in universal destiny; but beyond just happening it has no function.
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