561ST ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. HELD IN THE CONFERENCE HALL, CENTRAL HALL, PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., TOOK THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed, and the SECRETARY announced the election of C. E. Buckland, Esq., C.I.E., as an Associate of the Institute. The CHAIRMAN said it was his very pleasing duty to ask Professor Margoliouth, who was well known to the Members of the Victoria Institute, to read a paper on a subject of no ordinary interest, 'Homer, his Life and Work.” THE THE LIFE AND WORK OF HOMER. By the Rev. Professor D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, D.Litt. HE speculations called Homeric Criticism were started in the year 1795 by the Halle Professor, F. A. Wolf, who summarized the result of his researches as follows: the roice of all antiquity, and generally speaking a unanimous tradition, attests the fact that the Homeric Poems were first committed to writing by Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, who died 527 B.C., and by him arranged in the order wherein they are now read. This supposed result can only be characterized by a phrase too harsh for this audience; for Wolf's main proposition is attested by no ancient writer whatever, and contradicted by many, who either assert or imply that Homer, like other poets, wrote his own works, and indeed in the Ionic alphabet wherein they are written and printed. The only ancient author who speaks of a period of oral transmission is the Israelite, Flavius Josephus, scarcely an authority on Hellenic literary history, and notoriously untrustworthy on all subjects; he is contradicted by his contemporaries Plutarch and Dion Chrysostom, and even by his * Prolegomena ad Homerum, xxxiii. countryman, the translator of Ecclesiasticus, who two centuries. before had studied in Alexandria, then the focus of Homeric. learning, and thinks of epic poets as writing their works.* Of the author to whom the world owes the Iliad and the Odyssey the Hellenes apparently knew little. They state, or rather assume, that his name was Homeros, a Greek word signifying "hostage," which when applied to a child—as a novelist informs us-means hostage to each parent for the loyalty of the other. Clearly this name might be given to any child, whence no inference can be drawn from it. They also regularly associate with his name the title l'oet, variously interpreted as "Author," " Versifier," and "Romancer." Accordingly to all, this title is pre-eminently his; according to some, it is his exclusively. It was thought remarkable in antiquity that Homer did not, like other authors, mention his own name at the beginning and end of his works; yet it was either known or suspected in some quarters that this anonymity was only ostensible; that there was somewhere a cryptic signature. The clearest hint of this is to be found in the Latin verse translation of the Iliad, perhaps of the first century of our era. Its author has introduced his own name ITALICUS into his rendering of the prologue by means of an acrostich. The eight lines whereby he has rendered the seven of the original begin successively with the letters of his name I ram, Tristia, A tque, etc. The employment of the cryptic signature can be traced to an early period of Greek literature. Epicharmus, about 500 B.C., is said to have armed most of his works with cryptic signatures, proving that they were his. In the fourth century we read of a poet substantiating his claim to the authorship of a pseudonymous work by pointing to a cryptic mark of the kind. The presence of such a signature is almost always revealed by something unnatural in the text which it underlies, since the letters have to do double duty, and, like other servants, cannot serve two masters with complete fidelity. The prologue of the Iliad contains in profusion signs of an underlying cryptogram. Every word of the first line is calculated to provoke criticism, and four out of the five words of which it consists actually did provoke it. We need only quote what has been said about its first word, unviv "Anger.' This shocked antiquity as an unlucky commencement; a literary work should begin with a * xliv. 5, διηγούμενοι επη ἐν γραφη. lucky word. In the second place it is not even appropriate; for the subject of the Iliad is not so much the anger of Achilles as his glorification. F. A. Wolf suggested re-writing the passage so as to commence with the lucky and appropriate word kudos, Glory." In ancient times other expedients were tried to evade the difficulty. A translator rarely introduces such an artifice as that employed by Italicus unless his text contains something analogous; but he is often compelled to substitute something simple for something complicated, when reproduction of the latter exceeds his power. The prologue of the Greek Iliad certainly displays no acrostich; but with the kindred artifice, the Anagram, the name of Homer is associated by his Byzantine commentator Eustathius, and such association can be traced far earlier. The author of the first monograph on Homer, Theagenes of Rhegium, in the sixth pre-Christian century appears to have applied the principle of the anagram in determining the import of certain Divine names. Even earlier the poet Hesiod appears to have applied it in determining the parentage of a Homeric hero. The gulf between the acrostich of Italicus and the Homeric anagram is bridged over by a Sinhalese poet, Dunuvila, who has substituted the double for the single vertical column, distributing the letters of his name over four lines, thus: DU NU VĨ LA; each of these pairs of letters successively commences a line. The plan of Homer in the prologue of the Iliad is the same, except that he has substituted the anagram for the acrostich. The fourteen letters which constitute the first two vertical columns MH От по HP OI EE AT give the anagram ОMÍPOT ПOIHTA EE of Homer, Poet, from. We now see why he began with the unlucky and inappropriate word MHNIN; its first two letters were the second and third of his name. The fifth line was ejected by some critics, and gave offence at an early period; its first word, however, contained the second and third letters of his title. Now accident can ordinarily be distinguished from design by the fact that the former gives either too little or too much; the latter gives precisely what is required. The occurrence in this anagram of the author's name and title, and both in the same grammatical case, appears to exclude the possibility of accident; still there remains the preposition "from," which cannot well be taken with these words, yet must have some purpose if we have before us the work of design. If, however, the next pair of vertical columns constitutes a second anagram, we shall be unable to read it without some rule; and what is equally desirable is some instruction from the author himself to look for such puzzles in his works. For we have no wish to find in them anything which he has not himself put there. The instruction and the rule which we seek are to be found in the place where they should be sought, viz., in the line which precedes the epilogue of four lines which closes the Odyssey. The anagrammatic value of that line is an iambic verse with part of another giving the sense*: Thou, who at some time seckest the prayers of Homer and of the Iliad, find them somehow. The language of this instruction is that plain Greek which would have been understood at any time from Homer's day to our own. The instruction gives us most of the guidance which we require. What should surprise us is not the absence of the Poet's name at the beginning and end of his works, but the absence of prayers; and indeed such a work ought to commence with a prayer to Apollo, as we know on the authority of one of the Homeric Hymns, which declares that it should end with mention of this deity also. We cannot doubt that so pious a poet would have regarded this as a matter of the utmost importance. We are then told to look for the prayers and find them. Probably they are in the form of anagrams, like the instruction itself; and probably they will be in iambic metre, like that instruction. What the reader now has is the content of the puzzlesprayers; the nature of the puzzle, anagrams; and the rule for arranging the letters, viz., iambic metre. The seat of the puzzles is doubtless the prologues and epilogues, which are clearly marked off. It is left to him to discover the anagramunit, i.c., the number of vertical columns to be taken together, and then to arrange the letters within those groups so as to furnish iambic verses correct in grammar, metre and sense. If this can be done, then the cryptic instruction and the cryptic prayers will confirm each other; corresponding as key and lock. The first of these puzzles is formed by the four lines which immediately follow the instruction and constitute the epilogue of the Odyssey. The anagram unit is four vertical columns, or sixteen letters; the result is as follows: * ΜΗΠΩΣΤΟΙ ΚΡΟΝΙΔΗΣ ΚΕΧΟΛΩΣΕΤΑΙ ΕΥΡΥΟΠΑΖΕΥΣ ΟΜΗΡΟΥ ΚΙΛΙΑΔΟΣ ΖΗΤΩ ΠΟΤΕ ΕΥΡΙΣΚΕ ΠΩΣ. ΕΥΧΑΣ Having come at last to the end, offer a fervent prayer. Goddesses, who made the lay wherein I have presented Odysseus, how he wrought and endured acts of enmity unmatched in magnitude: may as great acts of kindness be wrought about it, if it seem good to the gods and to you, ye goddesses.* The next which comes for solution is the prologue of the Odyssey, which is a very miracle of the Poet's ingenuity; his ten hexameters here are to be divided by vertical lines between every pair of columns; there result twenty anagrams, of which sixteen are of twenty letters, giving a preface of thirteen iambic lines, thus: Thou (in a sense), Apollo, art the author; O king, be very gracious; "expelling" the load of cares which has entered, come enter us, and bear aloft one well accustomed to such a journey. Thou didst bid me lay down Carnage and Strife there whence they once arose; to turn the War-god towards his northern home; to propitiate on the earth's account her child Erinys with sacrifices, prayers and pyres; and after this in payment of thy due reward, O son of Laertes, to compose as many lays as Homer, recommended by the choice, brave son of Aeneas, was chosen by Ilion to compose for her. But for this, Apollo, the scion of Aeneas would by offers of reward have turned my mind to some fresh Trojan theme.t * πολλὰς ἀφίκων τέρματα δὴ θοῦ ἀράς θεαί, αἳ κάμον ἀοιδήν, ᾗτ ̓ ἔθηκ ̓ Ὀδυσῆ ἐνί, ὅππη τε ἔρδε δήι ἔμιμνε θ ̓ ὅσ ̓ ἄμαχα, τόσ ̓ ἀμφὶ ἔο ἔρδοιτο κήδει ̓ ἔργ ̓, ἐὰν θεοῖσι χὐμῖν ηύ, ὦ θεαί, δοκῇ Authority for apikov is given by Veitch, Greek Verbs, 1871, p. 296; in the work of which this paper is an abstract it is proposed to justify every phrase, form, and thought which these and the other verses produced here contain. |