merate, including Ephesus, Hissarlik, Cyprus, Mycenæ, and Olympia, are now giving in their tale; and 'the cry is still, they come.' We purpose regarding some few of these, and especially that of Mycenae, not archæologically, with the view of fixing their date and value in the history of human progress, but illustratively as regards ancient literature.

The moment that any such discovery as those to which we have referred takes place, the eyes of all who are capable of the effort are instantly turned chiefly on two records: the Homeric Poems and the periegetic memoranda of Pausanias. The former are the first-ripened harvest of secular humanity; the latter are the records of the last gleaner in the same early field. We propose at present chiefly to deal with the first, referring incidentally to the latter as occasion may require.

The artistic feature that floats on the surface of Homeric poetry is its similes, among which the most lively and typical are those which deal with animal life. But not in simile alone is Homer's poetical energy in favour of animals expressed. The immortal or heaven-given1 coursers of more than one hero, their tears and human sympathies,2 their power, in one instance, of speech and prophecy;3 the favourite dogs of Patroclus slaughtered on his pyre, as if to attend his shade; the similar pair which form the sole retinue of Telemachus on a state occasion;5 the hounds that detect the goddess's presence, invisible to their master; the dogs and mules that are the first victims of a pestilence aimed by an avenging deity at man;7 the touching episode of the noble hound Argus, who alone penetrates the disguise of magic transformation which baffled every human eye, and whose sagacity is fatal to himself; the beautiful freshness of the hunting scene, in which the young Odysseus received the scar that marked him for life-all these show the same poetic factor which is powerful in simile raised to a higher power by incident. Above all, the introduction among the groups on the shield of Achilles of two purely animal pieces,10 or in which the human element is a pure accessory to the animal, and the exquisite balance between slaughter and security, energy and repose, which the pair exhibit, show us how deeply the poet was enamoured of the theme he handles here. As he divides his human compartments between the works of peace and war, so he preserves the like contrast in his studies from

1 Il. xvi. 150, 867; v. 265 fol.; xx. 220-9.

2 xvii. 437-41; xxiii. 283-4.

5 Od. ii. II et al.

8 Od. xvii. 300 foll.

3 xix. 407-15.

6 xvi. 162.

9 xix. 429 foll.

4 xxiii.

174.

7 Il. i. 50. 10 Il. xviii. 573 foll.

the pasture and the fold. Yet, with exquisite truth of feeling, in the human subjects peace predominates; in the animal pieces the more sustained note is one of strife and blood. His two lions here, like those at the famous gate of Mycena, are evidently 'masters of the situation;' the men set on the hounds, who bay at a safe distance. Then comes, in three lines, the companion picture of folded flocks, with sheep-cote, shed, and pen appurtenant.

Again, we have the belt (Tɛλáμwv) of Herakles, a marvel of its kind, inwrought with wondrous forms (0éσкɛλа ëрya), which are found to be, first a list of wild and fierce animals-bear, and boar, and lion-then a series of combats, massacres, and homicides. Here it is remarkable that the beasts seem to lead (Od. xi. 610-2). Thus in simile, in incident, and in art, we find the same note struck again and again. If animals could turn critics, the Iliad would be their favourite poem. No poet has ever shown such a hearty love of man's mute comrades, or so deeply interwoven that love with the master-passions of strife, sorrow, and devoted affection. It is as though the degraded sympathies which led the Egyptian to enshrine the repulsive forms of crocodile and monkey, blossomed, in the clearer atmosphere of the Greek mind, into a delighted appreciation of animal nobleness. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, this love of animal life and movement is not a pure individuality of the poet's; it marks the period at which and the conditions under which he composed. While he triumphs in word-pictures drawn from it, his human images have often the scantiest pictorial embellishment, and what embellishment they have falls constantly into the fixed forms of 'epic common-place.' More conspicuously is this to be seen in the absence of emotional play of feature and of variety of mien in his personages. On great occasions he seems indeed to rise into a higher sphere of feature-study; and the malignant passion of Agamemnon,' the abject terror of Dolôn,2 the 'grim-visaged smile' of Ajax,3 the tearful laughter' and agonised consternation of Andromache, show us that the feature-record of the more masterful emotions had not escaped him. But we may look a long way in either poem through a wide extent of exciting scenes and animated dialogue without anything more than the constant recurrence of the stern look, the seizure of pale fear, the silently shaken head with mind

1 Il. i. 104-5.
3 vii. 212.

2

x. 374-6.

4 vi: 484; xxii. 461–2, 466–8.

brooding mischief, the nodding brows, the smile.1 Even in the outward form of man and woman there is an absence of descriptive width of range and discrimination of touch.

On the other hand, in action and feeling, and all the intrinsic essence of character, the poet shows an exuberance of resource which is the very opposite of this feebleness. To say nothing of the more imposing forms of heroic life in either sex, the secondary characters, such as Menelaus, Idomeneus, Alcinoüs, Eumæus, and Melanthius, Arêtê and Euryclea, all have their distinct impressiveness and spontaneous personality. We feel their separate moral type the moment they enter upon the scene. In external portraiture they are equally indistinct, and so for the most part are the grander personages themselves. Of the Greek host Achilles is most beautiful. But we have no image which arrests us; and the rare beauty of Euphorbus is paid off in a simile.2 Hero and heroine are alike godlike in form, or are compared with some deity in respect of some personal attribute. All are beautiful and largely moulded, some more beautiful and larger than others, the gods most beautiful and largest of all. Thus two of Priam's daughters are each in turn said to be 'the fairest (eidos aploτn) of all,'3 while two heroes of the Greek host are similarly each the most handsome, next to Achilles. Thus the same epithet-' substantial,' shall we render it?-is applied to the 'hand' of the warrior in the shock of combat,5 and to that of the lady in her bower. With the same 'dear' or 'fond hands' the hero in his chariot picks up the reins from the battle-field, and the saviour-goddess Inô receives back her magic scarf. There is hardly a trace of this monotony when the poet is dealing with the brute. There he is unsurpassed in freshness and vigour." Every attribute of his four-footed or winged studies is discri

1 ὕποδρα ἰδὼν, Π. ii. 245 et al. ; ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος ᾑρει or εἷλε, vii. 479 et al.; ἀκέων κίνησε κάρη κακὰ βυσσοδομεύων, Οd. xviii. 465, cf. viii. 273 et al.; ἐπ ̓ ὄφρυσι νεῦσε, i.e. ἐπένευσεν ὄφρυσι, Ι. i. 528 et al.; μειδιύων, vii. 212; xxiii. 786.

2 xvii. 50-60. The personal comeliness of Odysseus as enhanced by Pallas includes 'close-curled hair, like the hyacinth flower'—an unusually · graphic touch of personal description; but of his general appearance we read only that the goddess 'made him seem taller and more robust.'-Od. vi. 229-31.

5

3 iii. 124; xiii. 365-6.

4 Il. ii. 671-5; Od. xi. 469-70.

Xeipì maxeiŋ.—Il. iii. 376 et al.; cf. Od. xxi. 6.

6 χείρεσσι οι χερσὶ φίλῃσιν, Il. xvii. 620 ; cf. Od. v. 462.

7 We find fixed epithets, as κύνες ἀργοὶ, βόες εὐρυμέτωποι, λὶς ἠϋγένειος, and the like, but that is about all; and fixed epithets in Homer pervade all things, animate and inanimate, human and divine.

minated at once-the most expressive with the greatest keenness. The single line which describes the boar charging his assailant home

1

'With back all bristle-crested and eyes that glare out fire' 1— how wonderfully effective is it, and what a contrast it offers with the line a hundred times staled, which describes the human warrior 'brandishing on high and hurling forth his lance of lengthy shade.'

Thus for Homeric mastery in one department there is a compensation of weakness in another. The superabundance in particular of similistic energy is the direct measure of the poet's defective sensibility as regards the traits of impassioned or emotional humanity. And the true account of this, we believe, is to be found in the fact that art-culture had trained the poet's eye and expressional power to a full mastery over the brute creation, but had as yet placed no equal resources within his reach as regards man. As regards one wide department of pictorial effect, viz. colour, Homer must be allowed to be one of the least expressive and probably least receptive of poets. Mr. Gladstone has devoted a very careful essay to the subject in his Homeric Studies, vol. iii. iv. Aoidos: Colour in Homer; and although we think he presses the negative argument a little too hard as regards some highly descriptive words of colour, yet he succeeds in establishing generally a great vagueness in their use, and concludes on the whole, we think fairly enough, that 'the organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age.' With regard to the pathos of musical sound Homer is feebler still, as compared with Pindar,. for instance. He had no materials out of which to construct such a simile as the Shakespearian—

'Each under each matched like a peal of bells ;'

or as that of Milton

'As in an organ, from one blast of wind

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.'

But these departments of colour and music are beside our present purpose, save as illustrations of defects arising from the lack of cultivation at the poet's period. It remains, then, that the mirror of animal simile is the natural makeshift of a poet who feels the expressiveness of humanity, but has no

1 φρίξας εὖ λοφιὴν, πῦρ δ' ὀφθαλμοῖσι δεδορκὼς, Od. xix. 446.
* Such as ιονεφὲς, ἰόεις, ἁλιπόρφυρος.

2

camera of art in which to catch its fully moulded image. Thus Odysseus is found among the slaughtered suitors, 'bespattered with blood and gore like a lion,' &c. How he looked we are left to feel as best we can, for the poet 'rides off,' so to speak, on the lion. Indeed, until Greece assumed the chisel-probably early in the sixth century B.C.'-the rigorous study of external humanity had hardly begun. And this defect could not but tell upon the poet, for it is the presence of the ideal which enables us to differentiate the actual, by fixing a standard and by training observation. And that object of his study was sure to suffer most from this defect in which the dominion of mind over matter is most complete, viz. in the human face and form. The brute creation suffers little comparatively from the absence of idealisation, and inanimate nature perhaps not at all. Thus, if no ideal standard of animal form was absolutely reached, an adequately vigorous and graceful copy of actual nature was likely to suffice. This latter, we see, had been realised at Mycenawhether by native or imported artists is of less importance—and this it is which gives to the art-treasures resulting from recent discovery a highly illustrative value in respect to Homer. The archaic samples of Mycena in particular show that epoch in the history of art at which the artist had fairly compassed animal delineation, but lagged far behind the mastery of the human form. How many centuries may lie between their actual date and that of the Iliad may never be exactly known, but both they and it belong to the same general period, and come under the same characteristic law.

The result is that we have from Mycenæ a series of designs which closely reflect the Homeric animal simile, and have the same rationale underlying them. The same sort of scenes or groups are fixed upon. Lions in pursuit or in repose, stags, oxen, swans, eagles, the cicala, the cuttlefish, whether moulded, or in repoussée, or in intaglio.

In the women's tomb at Mycena was a golden ornament showing for device an ox attacked by two lions. We have the very same picture in the Homeric shield of Achilles. We

1 Thus the body of the statue of Apollo at Amycle, which may probably have been wrought in the seventh century, was a bronze column, with human head, feet, and hands; showing exactly how the typical Athenian Hermes originated. Pausan. III. xix. 2.

2 In Chios and the Asiatic mainland there were earlier efforts, but prelusive and tentative only. But until the Athenian school of sculpture and painting of the late fifth century the means of æsthetic culture, as the world has since known them, did not exist.

3 Il. xviii. 579 foll.