STUDIES ON HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE. I. AGORE: POLITIES OF THE HOMERIC AGE. II. ILIOS: TROJANS AND GREEKS COMPARED. III. THALASSA: THE OUTER GEOGRAPHY. IV. AOIDOS: SOME POINTS OF THE POETRY OF HOMER. BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L. M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.-HORACE. OXFORD: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. M.DCCC.LVIII. [The right of Translation is reserved.] ADVERTISEMENT. SINCE the Sections which relate to Ethnology passed through the Press, the First Volume of Mr. Rawlinson's Herodotus has appeared. Earlier possession of this important Publication would have emboldened me to proceed a step further in the attempt to specify the probable or possible form of the original Ethnic relation between the Pelasgians and the Hellenes of the Greek Peninsula, by designating the latter as pure Arian, and the former as Arian, with a residue or mixture of Turanian elements. It has also been since the Olympus' was printed, that I have become acquainted with Welcker's recent and unfinished 'Griechische Götterlehre,' (Göttingen, 1857.) I could have wished to refer to it at various points, and especially to avail myself of the clearer view, which the learned Author has given, of the position of Kpóvos. Founding himself in part on the exclusive appropriation by Homer of the term Kpovídŋs to Jupiter, he enables us to see how Jupiter may have inherited the sole use of the title as being 'the Ancient of days;' and how Kpóvos was a formation in the Mythology wholly secondary and posterior to his reputed son. (Welcker, sectt. 27, 8. pp. 140-7.) Another recent book, M. Alfred Maury's Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, undertakes the useful task of unfolding largely the relations of the Greek religion to the East. But the division of it which deals with Homer specifically is neither complete nor accurate, and affords a new illustration of the proposition which I chiefly desire to establish, namely, that Homer ought to be treated as a separate and independent centre of study. 11, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON, March 15, 1858. |