Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: 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.Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Philosophy
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3: I. Agorè: 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.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)
Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer
From the force, variety, and extreme delicacy of his uses of the
word, it is evident that Homer set very great store by the sentiment
which is generally expressed through the word αἰδώς, and which ranges
through all the varieties of shame, honour, modesty, and reverence.
Though a minute, it is a remarkable circumstance, that he confines
the application of this term to the Greeks; except, I think, in one
passage, where he bestows it upon his particular favourites the
Lycians[521], and a single other one, where Æneas[522] employs it under
the immediate inspiration of Apollo, with another sense, in an appeal
to Hector and his brother chiefs, not to the soldiery at large.
[521] Il. xvi. 422.
[522] Il. xvii. 336.
With the Greeks it supplies the staple of military exhortation[523]
from the chiefs to the army; Αἰδὼς, Ἀργεῖοι.
[523] Il. v. 787. viii. 228. _et alibi_.
But quite a different form of speech is uniformly addressed to the
Trojans proper: it is
ἀνέρες ἔστε, φίλοι, μνήσασθε δὲ θουρίδος ἀλκῆς,
which is below the other, and appeals to a less peculiar and refined
frame of intelligence and of sentiment.
~_Summary of differences._~
Whatever may be thought of the degree of detail into which (guided as
I think by the text) I have ventured to carry this discussion, and of
the particularity of some of the inferences that have been drawn, I
venture to hope few will quit the subject without the conviction that
Homer has worked with the purpose and precision which are his wont, in
the diversities which mark the general outline of his Greeks and his
Trojans, and of the institutions of each respectively; and that he has
not altogether withheld from his national portraits the care, which he
is admitted to have applied to his individual characters on both sides
with such extraordinary success. If we look to the institutions of the
two countries, although the comparison is diversified, we must upon
the whole concede to the Greeks, that they had laid more firmly than
their adversaries those great corner stones of human society, which are
named in their language, θέμις, ὅρκος, and γάμος. In the polity of Troy
we find more scope for impulse, less for deliberation and persuasion;
more weight given to those elements of authority which do not depend
on our free will and intelligence, less to those which do; less of
organization and of diversity, less firmness and tenacity of tissue, in
the structure of the community. We are told of no φῦλα and no φρῆτραι,
no intermediate ranks of officers in the army; no order of nobles or
proprietors, such as that which furnished the Suitors of Ithaca. There
are, in short, fewer secondary eminences; it is a state of things, more
resembling the dead level of the present Oriental communities subject
to a despotic throne, though such was not the throne of Priam. Among
the people themselves, there is more of religious observance and
apparatus, but not more of morality: less tendency indeed to crimes
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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