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The End of the Odyssey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. B. Bury
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Extract

The course of Homeric criticism during the last twenty years or so has not indeed given us any grounds for thinking that unanimity on fundamental questions is likely to be reached in the near future, but it has accomplished one thing. It is possible now to think and speak of Homer as a man who was born at a definite fortunate moment, ate, drank, and even slumbered, composed two long epics much in the same way as other men of genius have composed great works, had his joys and sorrows, triumphs and disappointments, and ultimately died—it is possible to think and speak of him thus without being considered absurdly simple or simply absurd. And so one can venture to approach the problem of the last section of the Odyssey in just the same way that one would approach a similar literary problem in a later age of the world, taking it for granted that the poet lived and worked under ordinary human conditions. In this paper I assume without discussion the truth of the unitarian view that Homer was the author of the Iliad and of the Odyssey (at least to ψ 296), and also that the Odyssey is the later of the two; I assume that in composing them he was aided by the art of writing; and I assume that he lived about 900–850 B.C. at latest.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , 1922 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1922

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References

1 For instance, the impossible form μαχεούμενοι in ω 113 meets us in λ 403 μαχεούμενον, where the same passage occurs. The right reading is clearly μαχεόμενον, which was changed to suit posthomeric metrical canons. The incorrect ἤην (twice in this section ψ 316, ω 343) should be amended to ἦεν, as also in τ 283; in each of these three cases it occurs as the first foot of a verse and at the end of a clause followed by ἀλλά or δέ, and the emphatic position enables the trochee to do duty for a spondee (in Λ 808 there is no metrical ‘necessity’ for and Mr. Monro pointed out that should be read there). A contracted genitive from a nominative in -εύς (Ὀδυσεῦς ω 398) happens to be unique; but here the only question which really arises is whether it is a case of contraction or of synizesis, a particular case of a general question which pervades the poems. I should be inclined to read Ὀδυσέος. In the same way Ἑρμέας might well be restored in ω 1, ε 54 and elsewhere; the form is preserved in E 390.

2 The Canonicity of Homer, in Cl. Q. vii. 4, Oct. 1913.

3 The attempt of Mr. Rothe to defend it (Die Odyssee als Dichtung, p. 187) is quite unconvincing.

4 I observe that Mr. Rothe has made much the same remark, op. cit. p. 180.

5 I cannot agree with Mr. Monro (in his note ad loc.) that ‘the passing away of life is so often described in the Iliad and Odyssey that this argument is as strong as any argument ex silentio can be.’ For since in none of these cases, except in that of Elpenor in λ, would a description of the soul's journey to Hades have been in the least relevant, the amplitude claimed for the argument ex silentio really disappears. In the case of Elpenor a mention of Hermes would have been relevant, but it was not necessary.

6 Lectures on Greek Poetry, p. 59.

7 Strom. VI Chap. II. 25, 1 (p. 442, ed. Stählin).

8 Proclus, , Chrest., p. 109Google Scholar in Allen's ed. of the Cycle.

9 The island of Circe was in the east (μ 4), and north of the land of the Cimmerians (κ 507). Therefore the land of the Cimmerians and the ghost-world were imagined by Homer as in the east or southeast, not in the north, much less in the west, The return journey northward to Aeaea was facilitated by the current of the Ocean, so that this stream in Homer's conception flowed in the opposite direction to the movement of the hands of a clock. Mr.Berger, (Mythische Kosmographie der Griechen, p. 32)Google Scholar placed the world of the dead in the west, but his idea of the routes is not lucidily expressed, and I am not sure that I understand his view.

10 The substance of this and the following considerations has of course been urged often by those who hold ω genuine, and recently, I see, by Mr.Rothe, in Die Odyssee als Dichtung, pp. 181sqq.Google Scholar They were well put by Miss Stawell, in Homer and the Iliad.

11 a 29–30, 35 κ.τ.λ., 298–300; γ 193–198, 248 κ.τ.λ.; δ 512 κ.τ.λ; λ 409 κ.τ.λ. cp. 445.

12 This has been well brought out by Mr.Sheppard, in his interesting article J.H.S., xxxvii. 47Google Scholarsqq.

13 Suidas, Cp. sub Ὅμηρος (p. 258 in Allen's, ed. of the Vitae).Google Scholar

14 Cl. Q. i. 3, July 1907.

15 Das fünfte Buch der Ilias, 1913.

16 Op. cit. p. 57.

17 The length of Part II. in the common text is 5805 vv. I have omitted 63 aa interpolations—generally recognised as such. In regard to the two passages about the removal of the arms into the θάλαυος, I have not followed Zenodotus in athetising π 281–298, nor Kirchhoff in rejecting τ 4–52, nor Monro in rejecting both passages. My view is that the second passage is entirely genuine, and that in the first some verses have been interpolated, viz. 281–283 and 286–296. But I have not included them in the list of interpolations I have allowed for in counting the verses of the Odyssey. In Part I. I have omitted forty-eight verses.

18 I may say that Mr. Drerup's ‘rhapsodies’ (which were independently determined by Mr. Adcock) seem to be satisfactory as subdivisions in Part I. If I were seeking for convenient intervals of five minutes in Part II., I think I should divide thus: v 93–ξ; ο; π–ρ 327; π 328–ρ 50; τ 50–υ; φχ; ψω. I have not seen Mr.Stürmer, 's book, Die Rhapsodien der Odyssee, 1921.Google Scholar

19 Mr.Sheppard, has just put forward a very different arrangement, in a paper read before the Cambridge Philological Society (Cambridge University Reporter, May 23, 1922, p. 1005).Google Scholar

20 Mr. Drerup's idea that the latter part of B (484 to end) was not a part of the poem, but a sort of excursus or appendix, is to me unintelligible. Mr. Sheppard (loc. cit.) regards the Catalogue, the Doloneia, and the Shield (in Σ) as “interludes.”

21 It is obvious in any theory that the author of the second nekyia had the first nekyia in his mind. E. g. ψ 20–22 = λ 387–9, a repetition which is quite Homeric and illustrates, in my view, the disciple's knowledge of Homer's method.