he seems to intimate the insecure state of the chief existing dynasties of the race of Pelops; and it is inferred from this, that he flourished during the third generation, or upwards of sixty years after the destruction of Troy. Upon this argument Heyne* remarks, that in the first place a poet, who was celebrating heroes of the Pelopid race, had no occasion to notice a revolution by which their families were expatriated and their kingdoms abolished; and next, which seems an insurmountable objection, that the Ionic migration took place sixty years later than the return of the Heraclidæ, yet that Homer was an Ionian, and a resident in, or at least perfectly conversant with, Ionian Asia, is admitted on all hands and is indeed incontestable; and as he never notices this migration, though it was certainly a very remarkable event and one which he must have known, he may just as well for other or the same reasons have been silent on the subject of a revolution by which that migration was caused. The Arundelian Marble places Homer B. C. 907, the Ionian Migration B. C. 1044, the Return of the Heraclidæ B. C. 1104, and the Capture of Troy B. C. 1184. Heyne approves this calculation as, upon the whole, the most consistent with all the authorities: but it is at variance with Newton's chronology, and is VOL. I.-7 *Excurs. ad. Il. ' xxiv. therefore a calculation, of the exactness of which we can never feel confident. The vicissitudes to which Homer's reputation and influence have been subject deserve notice. From the first known collection of the Iliad and Odyssey in the time of the Pisistratida to the promulgation of Christianity, the love and reverence with which the name of Homer was regarded, went on constantly increasing, till at last public games were instituted in his honor, statues dedicated, temples erected, and sacrifices offered to him as a divinity. There were such temples at Smyrna, Chios, and Alexandria; and according to Ælian,f the Argives sacrificed to, and invoked, the names and presence of Apollo and Homer together. But about the beginning of the second century of the Christian era, when the struggle between the old and the new religions was warm and active, the tide turned. "Heathenism," says Pope,‡ "was then to be destroyed, and Homer appeared the father of it, whose fictions were at once the belief of the Pagan religion, and the objections of Christianity against it. He became therefore deeply involved in the question, and not with that honor which hitherto attended him, but as a cri * Cic. pro Archia. † Lib. ix. c. 15. minal who had drawn the world into folly. He was on the one hand* accused for having framed fables upon the works of Moses-as the rebellion of the Giants from the building of Babel, and the casting of Ate or Strife out of Heaven from the fall of Lucifer. He was exposed on the other hand for those which he is said to invent, as when Arnobiust cries out, "This is the man who wounded your Venus, imprisoned your Mars, who freed even your Jupiter by Briareus, and who finds authorities for all your vices," &c. Mankind was derided for whatever he had hitherto made them believe; and Plato,§ who expelled him his Commonwealth, has of all the Philosophers found the best quarter from the Fathers for passing that sentence. His finest beauties began to take a new appearance of pernicious qualities; and because they might be considered as allurements to Fancy, or supports to those errors with which they were mingled, they were to be depreciated, while the contest of Faith was in being. It was hence, that the reading of them was discouraged, that we hear Rufinus accusing St. Jerome for it, and that St. Austin|| rejects him as the grand master of Fable; though indeed *Just. Mart. Admon. ad Gentes. +Advers. Gentes, lib. vii. + Tertull. Apol. c. 14. § Arnobius, ibid. Eusebius præp. evangel. lib. xiv. c. 10. Confess. lib. i. c. 14. the dulcissime vanus, which he applies to Homer, looks but like a fondling manner of parting with him. Those days are past; and happily for us, the obnoxious poems have weathered the storms of zeal which might have destroyed them. Homer will have no temples, nor games, nor sacrifices in Christendom; but his statue is yet to be seen in the palaces of kings, and his name will remain in honor among the nations to the world's end. He stands, by prescription, alone and aloof on Parnassus, where it is not possible now that any human genius should stand with him-the Father and the Prince of all heroic Poets-the boast and the glory of his own Greece, and the love and the admiration of all mankind. INTRODUCTION ΤΟ THE ILIAD. Ir may perhaps be confidently said that the Iliad is, with the exception of the Pentateuch and some other books of the Old Testament, the most ancient composition known. There seems to be good proof that it is older than the Odyssey, older than Hesiod, and older than the Epical and other Poems which have been ascribed to Orpheus and Musæus, and which were probably, for the most part, produced during the interval between the Homeric age and the dynasty of Pisistratus; an interval of which we can learn little from history, and the obscurity of which seems in some sort to be aggravated by contrast with the light with which it is bounded. The splendor of Homer is at the beginning and the end of this interval, and the two bright points of the composition and the collective publication of the Iliad define, but they do not measure, the length, the depth, or the breadth of the historic darkness between them. |