APPENDIX. On the relation which Homer, Hesiod, and the Orphici, bear to elder Tradition. In this Appendix I bring together some points, which I could neither introduce into the exposition of my mythological method, nor yet leave altogether unnoticed; the latter for this reason, that precisely on these points are the most opposite, and in part the most extraordinary, notions abroad; which, nevertheless, those who adhere to them treat as established truths, and therefore declare war against every scientific striving which does not merely confine itself to the outside. On the other hand, mythology will not be enabled to treat these points with perfect clearness until many others are first thoroughly investigated; at present, to confess it freely, there is no point in the whole science more obscure than this, for example, What did Homer receive from older tradition? what alterations had mythi already undergone? what changes did he take the liberty of making? &c. What will be here given is merely only speak of matters on which I think I have obtained some light. Indulgence, therefore, must be granted to their disjointed and aphoristic form. a contribution: I will HOMER. When we consider the endless detail of occurrences, and the immense number of persons that figure in the Iliad and Odyssey, we can scarcely persuade ourselves that the poet received all this from tradition. Were the hundreds whom his principal heroes slay, and who are never named until they have fallen, all handed down to him in legends? Could he not have invented them as well, for instance, as the names of the Phæacians referred to above? 1 And yet, perhaps, in most cases we must assume such a transmission. First, for this reason, that the free invention of unmeaning names, which those of the slain almost always are, would be an occupation as unworthy of the bard as the application of those other names is happy and ingenious. Secondly, because those notices often preserve a connexion with each other, which could scarcely be the result of arbitrary invention. For instance, is there not an obvious agreement in this, that Oresbius, with variegated mitra, a man who hoarded well his wealth, dwelt in the thriving town of Hyle, on the lake Cephissus, and that there also was established the excellent leather-cutter Tychius, who made for Ajax his gigantic shield? Can we imagine this to have been invented? Further, the names are often evidently national, as Amisodarus, Maris, and Atymnius, names of a Lycian family not of Greek origin, which must be accounted to have been of the Milyan or Solyman race. The circumstance that the last of these names is also, in the form of Atymnus, found in Cretan Gortyna, admits of a satisfactory explanation from the ancient connexion between the continent and the island. We see clearly in other names, that although they never denoted individual persons, still they do not owe their formation to the poet, but to tradition. Thus, there appears once a son of Priam, called Gorgythion, who is evidently nothing else than a Gergithian with the patronymic form, (oi Tégyes thence Tegy/íwves or, by the easy exchange of sgy for ogy, Togyvíwves,) and therefore a hero formed from the name of a city, according to the mythic practice. Just in the same way, even the ancients remarked, that Kebriones, the bastard son of Priam, whose name so frequently occurs, is connected with Cebrenia, a Trojan city among the hills. Keßgións is probably come, by I P.226. εργ ? Il., v. 709. 4 3 Il., vii. 221. epic transposition, from Keßenveùs; and he is perhaps called bastard because the town, which was situated at the boundary, was not Trojan at all times. All this, and many other things, convince me that Homer drew from an exceedingly rich, full-streaming fountain of traditions. He was, indeed, separated by centuries from the time to which tradition itself relates; he depicts a remote and wonderful age, in which gods held intercourse with men as their equals; and although the heroes who contended around Troy have not yet, through growing adoration, and from being blended with originally dæmonic beings, been exalted to demi-gods, yet they are widely different from men "as they now are." Immediately behind stands a still more gigantic race, among whom the colossal form of Hercules towers like a mountain, and all is already strange and marvellous. But, nevertheless, an immense mass of traditions, all of course modified according to the character of the mythus, may have been saved over from that time, if we consider that the transmission of mythi was then almost the chief mental activity; that the memory of men possessed a strength of which we can now form no conception; that the ancient reigning families still existed for the most part, (Pelopidæ in Lesbos, Nelidæ in Ionia, Æacidæ in Epirus;) that the victorious Achæans, not long after the war, took into their possession the coast on which they had then contended; and that the bard of the Iliad, doubtless, lived where the scene of his poem is laid. Many things may have been related in these regions by the remnant of the Teucrians on Ida, and the Grecian inhabitants of ancient Troy; and all these may have been drawn into the stream of tradition, and mingled with it, before this great war of gods and men could be sung by Homer. In the mass of legends which Homer inherited, it is natural to suppose that many an historical relation was de 1 Comp. Od. iii. 113. 2 faced and disguised by a subsequent order of things, while others were preserved by tradition, but so as that the bard himself could not perceive their true foundation and connexion. An example of both. Like the people of all the other districts of Greece, the Boeotians, also, must assist in besieging Troy. But these Boeotians in the poet are not the ancient inhabitants of the country, they are the Boirol Aloλes, who did not until after the Trojan war, and amid great revolutions, subdue that district, which had been previously Minyan, Cadmean, and Thracian. Nevertheless, not merely the Catalogue-in which I have already elsewhere sufficiently taken notice of the additions of Argive, Rhodian, and Attic rhapsodists-but also the Iliad,' boldly represents the Boeotians, who otherwise often come upon the scene, as dwelling in the country afterwards called Boeotia. The following is an example of the other kind: Among the European allies of the Trojans, the Pæonians at the very first glance strike us by the great distance from which they come. The Thracians of the Hellespont, and the Ciconians,3 do not even form the link which connects them, for many other tribes still intervene. The riddle is solved by the very credible account of Herodotus; that previous to the Trojan war a swarm of Teucrians crossed over to Europe, passed through Thrace, and left behind the Pæonians on the Axius. Homer knows the result of this, the continued connexion of the Trojans and Pæonians, although he mentions nothing of the historical ground, not even the name of TEUCRIANS, which comprehended them all in common. The Pæonians had become to him entirely legendary. Their hero, Asteropea, is descended immediately from Pelegon; because the Pelagonians were a branch of the Pæonians, and Pelegon is a son of the great river Axius.6 I V. 709. 5 2 Comp. Orchom., p. 394; and Buttmann on the Aleuad., p. 12. 3 Il., ii. 844 sqq. 4 Herod., v. 13; vii. 20, 75. 5 Mannert Geogr. vii. p. 487. • See Il., xxi. 140; Comp. ii. 848; xvi. 287. |