The Iliad - Homer (best novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

Project Gutenberg’s The Iliad, by Homer, Translated by Pope #7 in our series by Homer

 

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Title: The Iliad

 

Author: Homer

Alexander Pope, Translator

 

Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6130]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on November 17, 2002]

 

Edition: 10

 

Language: English

 

Character set encoding: ASCII

 

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ILIAD ***

 

Produced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

 

{Illustration: Title page, with drawing of a bust of Homer, and a curving sash bearing the inscription ‘Illustrated by Flaxman’s Designs’.}

 

THE ILIAD OF HOMER

 

TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER POPE,

 

WITH NOTES BY THE

REV. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, M.A., F.S.A.

 

AND

 

FLAXMAN’S DESIGNS.

 

1899

 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 

Iris

Hector and Ajax separated by the Heralds Greek Amphora—Wine vessels

Juno and Minerva going to assist the Greeks The Hours taking the Horses from Juno’s Car The Shield of Achilles

Pluto

The Embassy to Achilles

Greek Galley

Proserpine

Achilles

Diomed and Ulysses returning with the spoils of Rhesus The Descent of Discord

Hercules

Polydamas advising Hector

Greek Altar

Neptune rising from the Sea

Greek Earrings

Sleep escaping from the wrath of Jupiter Greek Shield

Bacchus

Ajax defending the Greek Ships

Castor and Pollux

Buckles

Diana

Sleep and Death conveying the body of Sarpedon to Lycia AEsculapius

Fight for the body of Patroclus

Vulcan from an antique gem

Thetis ordering the Nereids to descend into the Sea Juno commanding the Sun to set

Tripod

Thetis and Eurynome receiving the Infant Vulcan Vulcan and Charis receiving Thetis

Thetis bringing the Armour to Achilles Hercules

The Gods descending to Battle

Centaur

Achilles contending with the Rivers The Bath

Andromache fainting on the Wall

The Funeral Pile of Patroclus

Ceres

Hector’s Body at the Car of Achilles The Judgment of Paris

Iris advises Priam to obtain the body of Hector Funeral of Hector

 

INTRODUCTION.

 

Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.

 

And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attractive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of another, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the impostures of pluralist sinecures in the Church.

History and tradition, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are subjected to very different handling from that which the indulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere statements are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records.

Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has furnished. To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole—we must measure them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole narrative, than the respective probability of its details.

 

It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, we know least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and Shakespere [Footnote: “What,” says Archdeacon Wilberforce, “is the natural root of loyalty as distinguished from such mere selfish desire of personal security as is apt to take its place in civilized times, but that consciousness of a natural bond among the families of men which gives a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their affections in behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their ancient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? Hence the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or justice in our hereditary princes “‘Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo, Projice tela manu sanguis meus’

 

“So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influence even when history witnesses that vast convulsions have rent and weakened it and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been rekindled in our own days towards the grand daughter of George the Third of Hanover.

 

“Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idolize those great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given expression, in the immortal language of song, to the deeper inspirations of our nature. The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespere are the universal inheritance of the human race. In this mutual ground every man meets his brother, they have been bet forth by the providence of God to vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and that, in these representatives of our race, we might recognize our common benefactors.’—_Doctrine of the Incarnation,_ pp. 9, 10.] have, perhaps, contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment of mankind than any other three writers who could be named, and yet the history of all three has given rise to a boundless ocean of discussion, which has left us little save the option of choosing which theory or theories we will follow. The personality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon everything else, even down to the authorship of plays, there is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon will allow us to know. He was one of the dramatis personae in two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. He appears as the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as those of the writers who have handed them down. When we have read Plato or Xenophon, we think we know something of Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined both, we feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant.

 

It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact related in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two scholars read in the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe in the good-natured old king whom the elegant pen of Florian has idealized—_Numa Pompilius._

 

Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect to Homer, and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be described as a free permission to believe any theory, provided we throw overboard all written tradition, concerning the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey. What few authorities exist on the subject, are summarily dismissed, although the arguments appear to run in a circle. “This cannot be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, because it cannot be true.” Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and oblivion.

 

It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies of Homer are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and imagination, in which truth is the requisite most wanting. Before taking a brief review of the Homeric theory in its present conditions, some notice must be taken of the treatise on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to Herodotus.

 

According to this document, the city of Cumae in AEolia, was, at an early period, the seat of frequent immigrations from various parts of Greece. Among the immigrants was Menapolus, the son of Ithagenes.

Although poor, he married, and the result of the union was a girl named Critheis. The girl was left an orphan at an early age, under the guardianship of Cleanax, of Argos. It is to the indiscretion of this maiden that we “are indebted for so much happiness.” Homer was the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the name of Melesigenes, from having been born near the river Meles, in Boeotia, whither Critheis had been transported in order to save her reputation.

 

“At this time,” continues our narrative, “there lived at Smyrna a man named Phemius, a teacher of literature and music, who, not being married, engaged Critheis to manage his household, and spin the flax he received as the price of his scholastic labours. So satisfactory was her performance of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made proposals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further inducement, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would become a clever man, if he were carefully brought up.”

 

They were married; careful cultivation ripened the talents which nature had bestowed, and Melesigenes soon surpassed his schoolfellows in every attainment, and, when older, rivalled his preceptor in wisdom. Phemius died, leaving him sole heir to his property, and his mother soon followed. Melesigenes carried on his adopted father’s school with great success, exciting the admiration not only of the