has done a great deal towards establishing a solid
and well-founded view of this complicated question.
Nitzsch opposed Wolf's conclusions concerning the
later date of written documents. He denies that
the laws of Lycurgus were transmitted by oral
tradition alone, and were for this purpose set to
music by Terpander and Thaletas, as is generally
believed, on the authority of Plutarch (de Mus. 3).
The Spartan v6iioi, which those two musicians are
said to have composed, Nitzsch declares to have
been hymns and not laws, although Strabo calls
Thaletas a (Greek characters) (by a mistake, as
Nitzsch ventures to say). Writing materials were,
according to Nitzsch, not wanting at a very early
period. He maintains that wooden tablets, and the
hides ((
Greek characters)) of the Ionians were employed,
and that even papyrus was known and used by
the Greeks long before the time of Amasis, and
brought into Greece by Phoenician merchants.
Amasis, according to Nitzsch, only rendered the
use of papyrus more general (6th century B.C.),
whereas formerly its use had been confined to a
few. Thus Nitzsch arrives at the conclusion that
writing was common in Greece full one hundred
years before the time which Wolf had supposed,
namely, about the beginning of the Olympiads (8th
century B.C.), and that this is the time in which
the Homeric poems were committed to writing. If
this is granted, it does not follow that the poems
were also composed at this time. Nitzsch cannot
prove that the age of Homer was so late as the
eighth century. The best authorities, as we have
seen, place Homer much earlier, so that we again
come to the conclusion that the Homeric poems
were composed and handed down for a long time
without the assistance of writing. In fact, this
point seems indisputable. The nature of the Homeric language is almie a sufficient argiunent, but
into this consideration Nitzsch never entered.
(Hermann, Opusc. vi. 1, 75; Giese, d. Aeol. Dialect, p. 154.) The Homeric dialect could never
have attained that softness and flexibility, which
render it so well adapted for versification—that
variety of longer and shorter forms, which existed
together—that freedom in contracting and resolving
vowels, and of forming .the contractions into two
syllables—if the practice of writing had at that
time exercised the power, which it necessarily possesses, of fixing the forms of a language. (Müller,
Hist, of Gr. Lit. p. 38.) The strongest proof is the
Aeolic Diganima, a sound which existed at the
time of the composition of the poems, and had entirely vanished from the language when the first
copies were made.
It is necessary therefore to admit Wolf's first position, that the Homeric poems were originally not committed to writing. We proceed to examine the conclusions which he draws from these premises.
However great the genius of Homer may have been, says Wolf, it is quite incredible that, without the assistance of writing, he could have conceived in his mind and executed such extensive works. This assertion is very bold. "Who can determine," says Müller (Hist. of Greek Lit. p. 62), "how many thousand verses a person thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and confide to the faithful memory of disciples devoted to their master and his art?" We have instances of modern poets, who have composed long poems without writing down a single syllable, and have preserved them faithfully in their memory, before committing them to writing. And how much more easily could this have been done in the time anterior to the use of writing, when all those faculties of the mind, which had to dispense with this artificial assistance, were powerfully developed, trained, and exercised. We must not look upon the old bards as amateurs, who amused themselves in leisure hours with poetical compositions, as is the fashion now-a-days. Composition was their profession. All their thoughts were concentrated on this one point, in which and for which they lived. Their composition was, moreover, facilitated by their having no occasion to invent complicated plots and wonderful stories; the simple traditions, on which they founded their songs, were handed down to them in a form already adapted to poetical purposes. If now, in spite of all these advantages, the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey was no easy task, we must attribute some superiority to the genius of Homer, which caused his name and his works to acquire eternal glory, and covered all his innumerable predecessors, contemporaries, and followers, with oblivion.
The second conclusion of Wolf is of more
weight and importance. When people neither
wrote nor read, the only way of publishing poems
was by oral recitation. The bards therefore of
the heroic age, as we see from Homer himself,
used to entertain their hearers at banquets, festivals,
and similar occasions. On such occasions they
certainly could not recite more than one or two
rhapsodies. Now Wolf asks what could have induced any one to compose a poem of such a length,
that it could not be heard at once ? All the charms
of an artificial and poetical unity, varied by episodes, but strictly observed through many books,
must certainly be lost, if only fragments of the poem
could be heard at once. To refute this argument,
the opponents of Wolf were obliged to seek for
occasions which afforded at least a possibility of
reciting the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey. Banquets and small festivals were not sufficient; but
there were musical contests ((Greek characters)}), connected with
great national festivals, at which thousands assembled, anxious to hear and patient to listen. "If,"
says M{{{1}}}:ller (Hist, of Greek Lit. p. 62), " the Athenians could at one festival hear in succession about
nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies, without ever thinking that it might be better
to distribute this enjoyment over the whole year,
why should not the Greeks of earlier times have
been able to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey, and
perhaps other poems, at the same festival? Let us
beware of measuring by our loose and desultory
reading the intention of mind with which a people
enthusiastically devoted to such enjoyments, hung
with delight on the flowing strains of the minstrel.
In short, there was a time when the Greek people,
not indeed at meals, but at festivals, and under the
patronage of their hereditary princes, heard and
enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as
they were intended to be heard and enjoyed, viz.
as complete wholes." This is credible enough, but
it is not quite so easy to prove it. We know that,
in the historical times, the Homeric poems were
recited at Athens at the festival of the Panathenaea
(Lycurg. c. Leocr. p. 161) ; and that there were
likewise contests of rhapsodists at Sicyon in the
time of the tyrant Cleisthenes (Herod, v. 67), in
Syracuse, Epidaurus, Orchomenus,Thespiae, Acrae-