Silence as to the numbers of the armies. 439 studying history, certainly feel in mastering its chronology; while to those who are apt at figures it is not only acquired with ease, but it even serves as the nexus and support of the whole chain of events. There were several occasions, upon which it would have been most natural and appropriate for Homer to use the faculty of multiplication; yet on no one of these has he used it. He constantly supplies us with the materials of a sum, but never once performs the process. The first example in the Iliad is supplied by that passage of the unhappy speech of Agamemnon to the Assembly in the Second Book, which causes the feverfit of home-sickness. He compares the strength of the Greek army with that of the Trojans; and he only effects the purpose by this feeble but elaborate contrivance. Should the Greeks and Trojans agree to be numbered respectively, and should the Trojans properly so called be placed one by one, but the Greeks in tens, and every Trojan made cupbearer to a Greek ten, many of our tens would be without a cupbearert.' In the first place, the fact that he calls this ascertaining of comparative force numbering (àpi0unonuévai) is remarkable; for it would not have shown the numbers of either army; nor even the difference, by which the Greeks exceeded a tenfold ratio to the Trojans; but simply, by leaving an unexhausted residue, the fact that they were more, whether by much or by little, than ten times as many as the besieged. Secondly, it seems plain that, if Homer had known what was meant by multiplication, he would have used the process in this instance, in lieu of the elaborate (yet poetical) circumlocution which he has adopted; and t Il. ii. 123-8. would have said the Greeks were ten times, or fifteen times, or twenty times, as many as the inhabitants of Troy. After this, Ulysses reminds the Assembly of the apparition of the dragon they had seen at Aulis. The phrase χθιζά τε καὶ πρώιζα, which he employs, may grammatically either belong to the epoch of the gathering at Aulis, or to the time of the plague, which had carried off a part of the force a fortnight or three weeks before. In whichever connection of the two we place it, it affords an instance of extreme indefiniteness in the use of two adverbs which are at once expressive of time and of number; for on one supposition he must use them to express whole years, and on the other they must mean near a fortnight, and therefore a certain number of days. The next case is remarkable. It is that of the Catalogue. The resolution, which introduces it, was not a resolution to number the host; but simply to make a careful division and distribution of the men under their leaders, with a view to a more effective responsibility, both of officers and men". But when the Poet comes to enumerate the divisions, it is evidently a great object with him to make known the relative forces, and thus the relative prominence and power, of the different States of Greece. Yet nothing can be more imperfect than the manner in which the enumerating portion of his task is executed. In the first place, we trace again the old habit of the loose and figurative use of numbers. For Homer could hardly mean us to take literally all the numbers of ships, which he has stated in the Catalogue: since, in every case where they come up to or u Il. ii. 362-8. Silence as to the numbers of the armies. 441 exceed twenty, they run in complete decades without odd numbers; subject to the single exception of the twenty-two ships of Gouneus. Podalirius and Machaon have thirty, the Phocians forty, Achilles fifty, Menelaus sixty, Diomed eighty, Nestor ninety, Agamemnon an hundred the only full multiple of ten omitted being the utterly intractable éẞdoμýкovта. But again, he gives us no effectual clue to the numbers of the crews. Each of the fifty ships of the Boeotians had one hundred and twenty men, and each of the seven ships of Philoctetes had fifty. Thus he supplies us with the two factors of the sum, which would find the number of men, in each of these two cases; but in neither case does he perform the sum; and such is the uniform practice throughout the poems. For the Greek force generally, he has not even given us the factors. It has indeed been conjectured, that fifty may have been the smallest ship's company, and one hundred and twenty the largest but this is mere conjecture; and even if it be well founded, still we do not know whether the generality of the ships were about the mean, or nearer one or the other of the extremes. Again, it would appear probable from the Odyssey, that these numbers, of fifty and one hundred and twenty, are exclusive at least of pilots and commanders, if not also of the stewards and the minor officers; for the number mentioned by Alcinous is fifty-two; and although he says that all were to sit down to row, the texts when compared cannot but suggest, that the number fifty was an usual complement of oars, and that the two were the captain and pilot respectively b. Plainly, there must have been very great inequalities × Il. ii. 509, 719. y Il. xix. 44. a Od. viii. 35. in the crews of the Greek armament; or Homer could not have said, after giving Agamemnon an hundred ships, that he had by far the largest force of all the chiefs; ἅμα τῷγε πολὺ πλεῖστοι καὶ ἄριστοι λαοὶ ἕποντ'. For Diomed and Idomeneus have each eighty ships, and Nestor has ninety, so that their numbers would come very near Agamemnon's, unless their ships were smaller. But to sum up this discussion. It is evident that, if only we suppose the Greeks of Homer's time to have had a definite and well developed sense of number, the mention by Homer of the amount of force in the Trojan expedition would have been a fact of the highest national interest and importance. Yet he has left us nothing, which can be said even definitely to approximate to a record of it, though the enumeration of the Catalogue appears almost to force the subject upon him. The fair inferences seem to be, that he did not understand the calculative use of numbers at all, or beyond some very limited range; and that, even within that range, he for the most part employed them poetically and ornamentally; they were decorative and effective, like epithets to his song, but they were not statistical; as expressions of force they were no more than (as it were) tentative, and that but very rudely. I am further confirmed in the belief of Homer's indeterminate conception of number, from the strange result to which the contrary opinion would lead. He tells us of the Trojan bivouacd; χίλι ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἐν πεδίῳ πυρὰ καίετο· πὰρ δὲ ἑκάστῳ Silence as to the numbers of the armies. 443 In this case he has given us again the factors of a sum in multiplication, though not the product. Did he mean them to be taken literally? If he did, then it is indeed strange that, although he says nothing whatever on the subject of number in the Trojan Catalogue, yet he has here supplied us with all the particulars necessary for estimating the Trojan force, while as to the Greek army, we remain unable to say whether it amounted to fifty thousand, or to half, or to twice or thrice that number. But it is quite plain from the total absence of specified numbers in the Trojan Catalogue, that he had no desire, as indeed he had no occasion, to give an accurate account of the Trojan force. On the other hand it appears, from the details of the Greek Catalogue, that he did wish to describe the amount of the force on that side, as far as he could conceive or convey it. If all this be so, then nothing can show more clearly than the thousand Trojan watch-fires, with their fifty men at each, Homer's figurative manner of employing numerical aggregations. If however we admit the figurative use, we at once find everything harmonious. He describes the Trojans by the method of bold enhancement, at a juncture of the poem where it is his purpose to make them terrible to the Greek imagination. The instance of Proteus in the Odyssey has already been referred to: but one more marked is afforded by the description that Eumæus gives of the herds and flocks of Ulysses. This, again, is one of the instances where the spirit and gist of the passage almost required that a total should be stated. For the object is to give a telling account. The wealth of this prince, says the Poet, was boundless; none of the heroes, whether of Ithaca or of the fertile continent, had so much; no, nor |