INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

ON

HOMER AND HIS WORKS.

THE city of TROY was the metropolis of Troas, a country on the shores of the Hellespont, watered by the rivers Satnois and Rhodius on the south and north, and Scamander and Simois in the middle part.

How long this city flourished is unknown, but it seems certain that it arrived at a high degree of wealth and power. Its first king is said to have been Teucer, and its last Priam, who, by his wife Hecuba, had nineteen children.

The second son of Priam, Paris or Alexander, was, on account of a dream of his mother, denoting that he should set fire to Troy, brought up in obscurity as a shepherd. In this condition he is said to have decided the contest among the three goddesses for the prize of beauty. Afterwards, discovering his origin, and being acknowledged by his father, he made a voyage to Greece, where, being entertained by Menelaus, king of Sparta, he became enamoured of his queen, Helen, the most beautiful woman of her age, and fled with her to Troy, where she was received into the family of Priam as a daughter-in-law.

But Menelaus was less disposed to be satisfied with his loss, than Paris and Priam with their gain, and prevailed on the most eminent leaders and princes of Greece to join with him in an expedition to Troy to recover his wife by force of arms. Of the troops collected for the expedition, which is said to have been

two years in preparation, Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, and king of Mycena and a large portion of the Peloponnesus, was chosen commander-in-chief. The other most remarkable leaders were Achilles, from Phthiotis in Thessaly; Ajax, son of Telamon, from Salamis; Ajax, son of Oileus, from Locri; Ulysses, from Ithaca; Diomed from Argos; and Nestor from Pylos. There were many others of inferior note.

When the Grecian host, which filled twelve hundred such vessels as were then in use, arrived on the coast of Troas, they proceeded, it appears, to lay siege to the city of Troy. But the Trojans, headed by Hector, the son of Priam, with Æneas, a Trojan chief, Sarpedon king of Lycia, Pandarus of Zeleia, Pylæmenes of Paphlagonia, and other auxiliaries, made so resolute and vigorous a resistance, that the siege or blockade was protracted for ten years. It is supposed by Thucydides,1 however, that the whole of this period was not occupied in attacks on the town, but that the Greeks, when the provisions which they brought with them were exhausted, applied themselves, for subsistence, to the cultivation of the neighbouring land, and to predatory excursions, leaving before the walls of Troy only just a sufficient number to keep up the form of a siege. Had their whole force, under the command of such able leaders, maintained continuous assaults on the city, it is not likely that the inhabitants, however resolute or skilful, would have succeeded in delaying the capture of it for so long a period.

It was in the tenth year of the siege that discord arose between Agamemnon and Achilles, from the following cause. A pestilence spread through the Grecian army, and Calchas, the chief augur of the Greeks, being consulted respecting the origin of it, declared that it proceeded from Apollo, whose priest Chryses, having come to the camp to offer ransom for his daughter, (who had been taken prisoner by Achilles at the capture of the neighbouring city of Lyrnessus, and had been assigned, in the distribution of the spoil, to Agamemnon,) had been dismissed with a contumelious refusal by Agamemnon, and had in consequence called down the anger of Apollo on the Grecian army. Calchas foretold that the pestilence would not cease till Apollo should be appeased by the surrender of the captive to her father; and Aga 1 B. i. c. 11

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memnon at length consented to part with her, but declared that, as he yielded her up for the public good, he must be indemnified by some equivalent; for that he, the commander-in-chief, must not be the only one of the leaders left without a due share of the spoil. Unless such equivalent were awarded him, he threatened that he would seize, by force, the portion of some one of the other chiefs. As no offer of indemnification was made, he carried his threat into execution, and seized upon Briseïs, another female captive, who had been assigned to Achilles. Achilles, deeply offended, retired in wrath to his ships, and refused to take any farther part in the siege. By his absence, the Greeks were so weakened and dispirited that Hector and his troops had the advantage over them in several encounters, and spread among them great slaughter and dismay.

An embassy was sent to Achilles, offering him valuable presents, and the restoration of Briseïs; but he refused to lend his countrymen any assistance until Hector was actually setting fire to the ships, when he allowed his friend Patroclus to lead his troops to the rescue. Patroclus encountered Hector, by whom he was killed and despoiled of the armour of Achilles, which he had assumed on taking the field. Achilles was seized with grief and rage at the loss of his friend, and, as soon as new armour was made for him, returned to the field of battle and slew Hector, after whose death the Trojans were no longer in a condition to offer any effectual resistance to the besiegers. Troy was taken by the Greeks, according to the chronology which we adopt, in the year 1184 before the commencement of the Christian era.

It is this tale that Homer has chosen to tell in that form of composition which we call an epic poem. He commences with the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles in the tenth year of the war, rushing, as Horace says, in medias res, and giving his reader to understand, in the course of his narration, what events had preceded the point of time from which he starts. At what period Homer lived, after the termination of the war which he relates, is utterly uncertain. Eratosthenes, the keeper of the Alexandrian library in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, and Crates, a grammarian contemporary with Aristarchus, place him in the first century after the capture of Troy; Aristotle and Aristarchus about a hundred and forty years after it; Philo

according to the old fine given in Aulus Gellius from the Greek,

Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ;

but their claims found none to decide them. According to the life ascribed to Herodotus, however, it is said that he was born at Smyrna, and that his mother's name was Critheis, a native of Cumæ, daughter of Melanopus. Who was his father, the writer cannot tell us, for Homer was illegitimate. Critheis, being found with child by some person unknown, was sent away by Cleanax, under whose care she had been left by her father, to Smyrna, under the protection of a man named Ismenias. Soon after, she was delivered of Homer, on the bank of the Meles, a river near Smyrna, from whence he was called Melesigenes. Some said that Meles, the god of the river, was his father others that his father's name was Mæon, and hence he is called Mæonides; though others, again, say that this name merely denotes him to have been a native of Mæonia, the old name of Lydia.

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When his mother was delivered of her son, she left Ismenias, and became acquainted with one Phemius, who had a school in Smyrna, and who made her an offer of marriage, engaging to adopt and educate her son. This offer she accepted, and she and her husband lived till Homer was grown up, when they both died about the same time, and Homer took charge of the school, which he conducted with so much success, that he gained the admiration not only of the inhabitants, but also of the strangers whom the trade carried on there, especially in corn, attracted to the city. Amongst these was Mentes, master of a vessel from Leucadia, a man of some knowledge and intelligence, who prevailed on Homer to relinquish his school, and travel with him, offering

to pay his expenses and allow him a salary, and observing that

it was proper that he should see with his own eyes, while he was still young, the countries and cities which he might hereafter describe. With Mentes he visited Spain and Italy, and touched, on the way back, at Ithaca, where, having previously suffered from a defluxion in his eyes, he became much worse, and was left by Mentes, who was called away to Leucadia, under medical care, with a friend of his named Mentor, from whom he experienced great hospitality and kindness, and learned the principal incidents in the life of Ulysses. When Mentes re

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turned, he accompanied him to Colophon, where, if not previously at Ithaca, he became entirely blind.

Whether he was deserted by Mentes, or how he became separated from him, does not appear; but, finding himself in great poverty, he resolved on going back to Smyrna, where he might hope for some support from those who knew him, and for some opportunity to display or cultivate his poetical abilities. But, being disappointed in his expectations, he set out for Cuma, and was entertained on his way by one Tychius, an armourer or leather-dresser, at Neon Teichos; and the inhabitants of the place, says the biographer, still point out the spot where Homer sat and recited his verses, and pay it great honour.

He proceeded, however, after a time, to Cumæ, and being favourably received, and delighting the people with the recital of his poetry, he offered, if they would allow him a public maintenance, to do his utmost to make their city famous. His offer was taken into consideration in the public council, and the majority seemed favourable to the request; but one man observed, that if they resolved to maintain oμnpo, they would gather about them a great number of useless people, whence, says the biographer, the poet, who had been previously called Melesigenes, first received the name of Homer, for the people of Cuma call blind men öunpot. The remark had such effect, that the maintenance was refused, and the poet could not forbear uttering a wish that Cumæ might never find a poet to give it renown.

From Cuma he went to Phocæa, where one Thestorides, another master of a school, offered him a maintenance if he would communicate his verses to him. As Homer's necessities obliged him to comply with this proposal, Thestorides, as soon as he had made himself master of a sufficient number of the verses, went off to Chios, where he gained subsistence and credit by repeating them, until some people from Chios brought word to Homer of what he was doing; when Homer determined to pursue and expose him. Having made his way to Erythræ, he prevailed on some seamen to carry him over to the island, where the first person that he encountered was a shepherd named Glaucus, by whose dogs he had nearly been worried, but who entertained him kindly, and conducted him to his master, who, finding him a man of knowledge, induced him to stay in his house, and un