A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy.

  • John Pentland Mahaffy
Date:
1908
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    21 the Ihrenus, supported by the Nereids. If we are to trust the descriptions of the Iliad, the Threnus was not a fixed formula, but a rehearsal of the virtues of the dead—a form of lament common to almost all ages and nations. Of course the epic poet must have modified the original metre, which can hardly have been hexameter. The rest of the fragments of that Greek popular poetry which may have been in vogue before Homer, but which is not actually mentioned in the poems, will be better discussed in connection with the origin of lyric poetry. The comic or lighter poems ascribed to Homer, such as the Margites and Eiresione, which show peculiarities in metre and style of great interest, will be treated after the Homeric hymns. Enough has here been quoted to prove the widespread practice of danc- ing and playing together with lyric singing, partly religious, like the paean of supplication or of victory,1 partly secular, such as war-dances and dances at feasts. We have also shown the almost certain existence of shorter epics, both heroic and genealogical. Such were the conditions of literature from which Homer or the Homeric poems sprang.2 1 A 473, X 391. 2 Niese i Ent. der horn. Poesie, Berlin, 1882) has an excursus arguing Lgainst the existence of any popular poetry, or of parallel epic stories, earlier than the Iliad. He thinks all the other epic stories grew out of] tnd were attached to, it and the Odyssey. Nevertheless, he admits that he dialect of the poems from the commencement was a highly artificial >ne, and specially constructed for them (p. 13). Is it possible that this houldbe the earliest poetry of a poetical nation? That the Iliad and Odyssey either absorbed or superseded earlier attempts is of course what re should reasonably expect. Cf. the note of Sittl, Lit. Gesck. i. p. 34 iohde in his Psyche (I3 pp. 14 sqq.) has shown how remnants of older and uder beliefs, especially concerning the Ahnencult (worship of ancestors) ranspirein the Homeric poems which sought to ignore and supersede them.’ his is clearly the case with the savage rites practised at the funeral of atroclus. Is it likely that this earlier stage of Greece found no poetic xpression ? 1
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