I. HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES II. HOMERIC LANDS AND PEOPLES III. HOMERIC POLITY. THE OVER LORD IV. HOMER'S WORLD IN PEACE V. MEN AND WOMEN VI. THE HOMERIC WORLD IN WAR VII. HOMERIC TACTICS VIII. MEN'S DRESS IN HOMER. ARMOUR IX. WOMEN'S COSTUME X. BRONZE AND IRON. WEAPONS AND TOOLS XI. BURIAL AND THE FUTURE LIFE XII. RELIGION IN GREECE: PRE-HISTORIC, HOMERIC, AND HISTORICAL XIII. TEMPLES. ALTARS. RITUAL. PURIFICATION XIV. HOMER AND IONIA XV. ATTIC _VERSUS_ ACHAEAN TRADITIONS XVI. HOMER AND "THE SAGA" XVII. THE STORY OF PALAMEDES XVIII. HOMER AND THE CYCLIC POEMS XIX. THE GREAT DISCREPANCIES XX. CONCLUSIONS _APPENDIXES_ THE CATALOGUE THE SUPPOSED EXPURGATION OF HOMER THE ALLEGED ATHENIAN RECENSION OF HOMER THE LOST EPICS AND THE HOMERIC EPICS (_WIEDERHOLUNGEN_) INDEX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MOULDED PITHOS FROM SPARTA _Frontispiece_ SACRIFICE TO ATHENE DAGGER WITH LION-HUNTERS TIRYNTHIAN VASE: MAN IN HAUBERK CRETAN SEAL-IMPRESSION, MINOAN ARMOUR MENELAUS AND HECTOR FIGHTING OVER EUPHORBUS WARRIORS ARMING LADY POURING OUT WINE FOR WARRIOR PRINCESS FROCK: TIRYNS COSTUME OF WOMEN: TIRYNTHIAN VASE METOPE OF ATHENE, OLYMPIA THE FATES ON THE FRANÇOIS VASE ARIADNE, THESEUS, AND MINOTAUR HISTORIC GREEK COSTUME THE WORLD OF HOMER CHAPTER I HOMER'S WORLD. THE FOUR AGES "Homer's world," "the world that Homer knew," these are familiar phrases; and criticism is apt to tell us that they are empty phrases. Nevertheless when we use them we think of that enchanted land, so clearly seen in the light of "the Sun of Greece"; in the light of Homer. It is a realm of splendid wars, of gleaming gold and bronze, of noble men and of the most beautiful of women, which shines through a rift in the mists that hide the years before it and the years that followed. Can what appears so brilliant, so living, so solid, have been unreal, the baseless fabric of a vision; of a dream, too, that Homer never dreamed, for there was no Homer? The Homeric picture of life, the critics tell us, displays no actual scene of past human existence, and is not even the creation of one man's fantasy. It is but a bright medley and mosaic of coloured particles that came together fortuitously, or were pieced together clumsily, like some church window made up of fragments of stained mediaeval glass. "Homeric civilisation," says a critic, "is like Homeric language; as the one was never spoken, so the other was never lived by any one society."[1]