5 Preface to Homer (1538?) CR XI, 397–413
5 Preface to Homer (1538?)
CR XI, 397–413
Preface to the Homer of Veit Winsheim1
Since I am about to enter upon the interpretation of the Homeric poem in a few days, it has seemed right that I commend, as I can, that lecture and these studies to the young by an oration in this place. I believe I can do so quite rightly, given that the matter is most worthy of commendation, and also much needed in these present times and amidst such corrupt judgements of men. I consider in my mind these admirable gifts of God, namely the study of literature and of the humanities – and apart from the Gospel of Christ this world holds nothing more splendid nor more divine – and I also consider, on the other hand, by what blindness the minds of men are enveloped in unnatural and Cimmerian2 darkness; they spurn these true and greatest gifts, and with great effort they pursue means for their wishes and desires that are not only inferior but also ruinous and destructive to themselves. When I weigh these things in my heart, I am violently moved, for it comes to my mind by what dense darkness and, so to speak, black night the hearts of men are surrounded. I am not further astonished, if men are blind in things that are divine and beyond human understanding, when I see them thus treading under foot these their own and personal goods for which they are intended by divine providence, and which they could have comprehended and cherished.
We disdain, and make the butt of our jokes, the study of classics, by which that part of us that alone deserves the name ‘man’, that is made in the image of God and for the possession of true and everlasting happiness, was meant to be refined and roused. Instead of these, we pursue with mad and blind effort I know not what illusions held out by Satan, and worthless shadows, and hitherto have not had the reverence to look at that sun. That unceasing enemy of humankind leads our minds away from admiration and love for what is true and good by whatever kind of deceit he can, and he blinds our eyes by false appearances and obscures them to such an extent that we see and cherish anything rather than that which we should have seen and cherished most.
1 Veit Winsheim (1501–78), as the Dean of the arts faculty at Wittenberg, presided over the promotion of Bachelors of Arts in February 1538.
2 The phrase ‘Cimmerian darkness’, alluding to the Cimmerii (a mythical people said to live in perpetual darkness), indicates deep obscurity or darkness of the mind; Erasmus, Adages, II.vi.34.
What happens to the Muses and the study of them now is the same as Strabo3 [XIV.2.21] reports as having once happened in Iassus to a singer accompanying himself on the cithara. When he was singing learnedly and sweetly in the theatre there and the Iassians were listening to him, as soon as a bell rang (which was the sign of the sale of fish on offer), immediately all left the singer behind and scattered to buy fish, with the exception of one somewhat deaf man who alone remained, not having heard the sound of the bell. The singer thereupon turned to him and said: ‘I am immensely grateful to you – because of the enthusiasm for music as well as because of the honour to me – for not dashing out immediately at the ringing of the bell, like all the others, in order to buy fish.’ The man said: ‘What do you say? Has the bell rung yet then?’ When the singer confirmed this, he said: ‘Good luck to you’, rose and forthwith he, too, ran out to buy fish. The singer was abandoned alone, and in a city of that size he did not find anyone who cared more for music than for rotten fish.
In such a way these studies and writings are neglected in our times. Each one rushes towards the mean and gainful arts, they are slaves to their detestable desires and to their stomachs, and they know no god besides these. Only very few take care to refine and honour their minds, the better and more divine part of them. Just as in a noisy and drunken banquet men talk nonsense, laugh, bawl and make loud noise while some famous musician is playing, and they neither pay attention nor receive in their ears and hearts the sweetness of the music, nor enjoy it thoroughly, so our times, as if intoxicated and frantic with their desires, neither listen to the voices of the Muses nor pay attention to them. Those who by their authority and efforts should have eminently fostered and honoured these studies, the majority being barbarians and without education, greatly desire rather to see them oppressed and annihilated. When Herod, the king of the Jewish people, was raised to royal honours from humble and obscure origins, he ordered all books containing genealogies to be burnt and destroyed so that, the distinction between nobility and obscurity being removed, the obscurity of his own origins would be less disreputable. In just the same way uneducated men hate literature and want it destroyed, hoping that thereby they can hide their own ignorance better.
So it happens that literature is attacked by some and abandoned by others; blind desire carries away each one in a different way, and we admire
3 Strabo (c. 64 BC-AD 19), a Stoic who wrote the Geographica describing the geography, history and customs of the chief countries in the Roman world.
anything rather than the true good, and we do not even recognise it. So Satan holds human minds shackled by his fetters, and he leads them astray to whatever place he wants, and indeed now the disgrace of ignorance is considered the least of ills; if we were not insane and enslaved in our minds, we would not consider anything sadder or more worth fleeing. In the mean time some pursue honours, others the basest pleasures and the majority riches and money. They value these possessions alone at an enormous price, selling their life and soul at a profit, as one says. The wretched people measure happiness by these things, not considering how often that unhappy happiness is not merely interrupted by a slight change, but truly and absolutely turned upside down. Many have learnt this lesson from experience, the teacher of the foolish.
But what shall I say? We can see that it happens generally that the best things are held in utmost contempt and, on the other hand, that the worst things are made great. Therefore, if the same happens to literature and the teaching of classics, this must not appear to us as something new or excessively astonishing, nor is it fitting for us to be alienated from loving and cherishing these studies by the exceedingly bad judgement and error of the crowds. The matter itself and indignation move me to say this beforehand, as I am about to speak of Homer and of these our studies. For who would not be moved, seeing such extraordinary contempt for the best things? In your kindness, bear with me in this complaint that my distress and the indignity of the matter have wrung out of me.
But to get down to our actual topic, I have, as I said, decided to expound – with the help of the gods – Homer's poem; I chose to speak briefly about it first on this occasion. I do so also in order to be able to commend it to the young by this oration, and to honour it with worthy praise, although it can never be honoured as it deserves, and Homer's splendour surpasses any oration. But just as great deities are sometimes worshipped with sacrifices of coarse grain and salt, so we bestow upon the praise of such a great writer what little we can in our insignificance. We shall not be talking here about the birth, country and life of Homer, for this has been expounded with sufficient accuracy and at length by others; we shall discuss, briefly and as well as the short time will allow, the poem itself and the usefulness that scholars can derive from it. For those who read Homer in such a way that they derive nothing but pleasure from it, and aphorisms collected like little flowers, act like someone who tends a very fertile field only for the sake of their mind, so that he may occasionally crown himself with flowers
growing there, neglecting care for the produce that he could reap in great abundance. Someone said, correctly, I believe, that such a man is not a sufficiently judicious steward. Even though one can obtain such pleasure from reading Homer as from hardly any other author – and it is entirely so arranged by nature that the highest true pleasure is matched with the highest usefulness – this must nevertheless not be the foremost object of attention. There is another one that is greater and preferable, beyond question; just as the heads of families are usually circumspect in what concerns their family, so immediately in the beginning we should devise a method in our minds if we are to attach any value to the task of reading this or that author. If we do this in studying Homer, then immediately the endless multitude of benefits becomes clear to us, as a throng of good things (myrmēkia agathōn), which we can demand from that text abundantly and to our fill, as they say. If anyone were to include and enumerate them all in a single oration, it would be as Virgil said [Georgics 2.105–8]: ‘We who would have knowledge of this world would likewise fain to learn how many grains of sand on the Lybian plain are stirred by the Westwind, or when the East falls in unwonted fury on the ships, would know how many billows of the Ionian Sea roll shoreward.’4 To speak the truth, although I have not so completely forgotten who I am as to dare claim that I could perceive and know all those prodigious and countless riches of the Homeric poem, of which no doubt only the smallest part is known, nevertheless I feel that it is clearly happening to me that, as one says, the abundance is making me needy. For when I contemplate this work, manifold things, appearing from every side like divine miracles, leave me stupefied and anxious, so that it is difficult to judge where I should begin and where I should stop. For I fear that I should fare like those who, having deliberated greatly and at length, have to choose from an enormous heap of precious things certain treasures (keimēlia) and sometimes err through excessive care and doubt, and, leaving the best behind, set apart the less precious. In the same way I, too, fear that, passing by the better things which others perhaps admire more, I may choose the inferior ones; but whether this is noticed I do not regard it as being of great moment. For it does not escape me that the keenness of people's minds is usually blunted by the splendour of the Homeric song, just as the eyes' keenness and faculty are overpowered by the rays of the sun. We shall therefore assemble a few examples out of an infinite variety – a task like
4 As translated by H. Rushton Fairclough in Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI (Cambridge, MA and London, 1967), pp. 123–5.
enclosing the sea in narrow water-pipes – and enumerate summarily and briefly those which have seemed to us the most admirable in that poem.
First I declare that no work has been brought forth by any human mind since the beginning of the world, in any language or nation – with the exception of the holy writings – in which there is such a wealth of teaching or of elegance and pleasantness. I am not unaware that this is a daring statement and one that excites ill will, but at the same time I do not doubt that nobly educated minds, who have tasted Homer only lightly and, as they say, with the foremost part of the lips,5 will agree ardently with me on this. But now I shall not talk about that teaching which contains the nature of things, which transmits the positions of the celestial circles and the stars and their rising and setting, which shows the harmony of the temperature of the human body, the symmetry (syrnmetrian) of its members and their various conditions. I shall not speak about the hidden learning with which the Homeric poem is filled and crowded throughout, for the short time does not allow us to enumerate the individual examples; let us come to our better-known ones. What moral injunction will you give me for ordering one's life well and happily, that has ever been uttered by wise men, for which there is not some splendid and distinguished example in Homer? What duty is there in life or what matter is there altogether of which there is not a likeness portrayed in it? They are the most refined, the sweetest and at the same time the wisest thoughts about all things and matters that can be conceived by any human mind. For what is sweeter or more ethical (ēthikon) to think, what can one be admonished more seriously for, than that which Homer repeats in several passages of his poem to those who are angry for a not unreasonable cause – ameinō d'aisima panta – that is, nothing is better in all things than moderation, readiness to be appeased and forbearance? What is more just and human than the utterance of Diomedes in book nine of the Iliad to decree, as the first law in the assembly, freedom for those who speak and patience for those who listen? Do we not see how our century is afflicted more than anything else by the fact that the mighty cannot bear free speech, and not even any thought of freedom? What is more heroic than Hector saying: ‘There is one perfect omen, to defend one's country’ [Iliad XII.243] – that there is one most auspicious sign, and that is to fight bravely and to die nobly for one's country? If the princes of our times had this sentence before their eyes and inscribed in their hearts, we would not see the Turks attack Germany and the Christian
5 To take a brief sample of something: see Erasmus, Adages I.ix.92.
world again and again with impunity, nor would we fear their arrival quite so much. What is more divine than when he writes that he who has not rendered thanks to his parents for his nursing dies a premature death, among the first. Likewise, he says: ‘Ill deeds do not attain to virtue, and even a slow man catches up with a fast one’ [Odyssey viii.329] – that evil deeds do not lead to success or have a good outcome, and that the wicked man, however fast he may be and however versed in deceit, is nevertheless caught, and even by one who is lame. There is no doubt that this kind of saying was first uttered by the holy fathers and transmitted to posterity. Then they were passed on from one to the other, one could say from hand to hand, and finally extended to the men by whom they were included in these written monuments, so that, put in an illustrious and perspicuous place, they could be kept in the memory of all posterity and beheld with admiration.
Homer's poem is full of such sentences that have almost the weight and authority of laws, and which had to be by right respected with extraordinary scrupulousness, like oracles or divine responses, and committed to memory and always kept before one's eyes. And it seems that what Cicero said of Euripides – that he believed his individual verses to be separate testimonies – can be said much more truly of Homer, since Euripides and the other poets gush forth from Homer like rivulets from a never-failing source.
In any kind of art some principles and common notions are passed on, to which those who occupy themselves with those arts turn their thoughts as by the Lesbian rule.6 You will remember, young men, that Boethius in his dialectics calls common preconceptions (prolēpseis) of that kind maxims. I should say that the entire Homeric poem consists of such maxims, that is of common and most useful rules and precepts for morals, life and civil duties, for which there is widespread use in every life and in all its actions. He teaches many things, admonishes wisely on many, and instils in the young the most honourable and agreeable notions of modesty, respect and the other virtues. No one is a better teacher of the habits of pleasantness and humanity than he; he demonstrates and accomplishes a certain experience of life in the young, which is otherwise held in highest praise, but is attributed only to old age. The passage from the Latin poet is well known:
6 The Lesbian rule alludes to a lead rule used in Lesbian architecture. The rule changed to fit the shape of the stone and hence did not remain a rule. The phrase ‘by the Lesbian rule’ is used when things are done the wrong way round: see Erasmus, Adages, I.V.93.
‘… older age does not have only what we flee; experience comes with advanced years’ [Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI.28f]. Indeed, reading Homer performs this divine service, namely to impress the prudence of the old upon the youthful mind, for they can obtain and draw from this poem, by a short-cut, as from a treasure or a spring those things which old people usually learn from long experience, and which numerous years, the variety of things and the experiences of human life teach them. For the teaching of how to live rightly and happily is not delivered less successfully there than in any writings of the philosophers, as Horace said truthfully of Homer [Letters 1.2.4]: ‘What could there be that is ugly, that is beautiful and that is useful, that he did not teach more clearly and better than Chrysippus or Crantor?’ Indeed, he envelops the most serious and holy tenets in the sweetest and most pleasant poetic images, so that noble and inquiring (syzētika) minds are educated with, as Plutarch says, a sense of beauty.
Nor is ethics (to ēthikon), that is the grace and gentleness of manners, and the moderation and humanity of the mind, expressed in any writings as it is in Homer's poem. Therefore, if it is true that, as they say, studies are transformed into manners, there can be no anger, but rather, by contact with the most humane and delightful poet, minds also grow gentle and become more humane and peaceful. I believe that great men endowed with outstanding intellects have noticed this, and some call the Homeric poem the workshop of humanity, others the fountain of all pleasantness and beauty. Pliny calls Homer the most eminent father of higher teaching and of antiquity, while Plato calls him the best teacher for life [Laches 201b1]. In order to understand that these magnificent titles have been rightly attributed to Homer, and to understand his poem, let us display to ourselves the entire body of the work, so that we do not have to conjecture, as with a ruined statue, from the mutilated parts and limbs.
The Homeric poem has two themes; one is entitled Iliad, the other Odyssey. Plutarch judges that in the Iliad Homer celebrates physical strength, in the Odyssey the powers of the intellect [Fortune of Alexander 327f.]. In the Iliad he describes, according to tradition, the most noble and therefore the honourable and pious war which the Greeks waged against the barbarians in defence of conjugal virtue, in order to avenge adultery and the violation of hospitality. The Odyssey contains the wanderings of Ulysses by whose image the poet wanted to describe a wise and civil man cast about by varied storms of fortune, who knew how to sway and temper fortune by judgement.
I believe that there is only little for me to say here about that part [i.e. the Odyssey], as we have decided to expound it first. There is no doubt that in the Iliad the poet wanted to describe the arts of the military and of war, in the Odyssey those of peace; and so in the entire poem he meant to form, educate and prepare the kind of intellect that one day must rule the state by either kind of art. Accordingly, in the Odyssey he paints a picture of civil and peaceful life, but in the Iliad he sets out military examples; for by these arts states and kingdoms are acquired, held and ruled, and whoever will some day lead the state must be instructed in these arts. Homer's verse to that effect is well known, of which they say that Alexander the Great was so pleased by it that he always kept quoting it: ‘Both a good king and a strong fighter’ [Iliad III. 179].
But let us see what Homer assigns to that man whom he conceives as a civil man, a prince in the state and endowed with such gifts of the intellect and such arts and virtues. First of all he assigns to him a great love for his country, and we know that after the love for God this is the highest degree of piety and justice. As Herodotus reports, Solon, when staying with Croesus, ascribes the highest degree of happiness to him who dies for his country, and the next degree to him who fulfils his duty towards his parents [Histories, 1. 30f.]. In order that Ulysses be filled with this love for his country and that he be made more distinguished, the poet conceives many opportunities and various obstacles by which his return to his country is hindered, against all of which he struggles with counsel, reason and the powers of the mind, and all of which he surmounts in the end. And what is the country that he holds so dear? To be sure, a barren, narrow island, attached to the roughest rocks like a bird's nest, as Cicero says [On the Orator 1.xliv. 196]. He has such longing and love for it that he would not hesitate to prefer the smoke coming from there to immortality. And we can see that this fondness has been extraordinary in all great and distinguished men. Demosthenes writes [Letters II.20] that when he was in exile in Calauria, he used to climb every day to the top of the sanctuary where he had taken refuge, and, measuring the distance with his eyes, gazed in the direction of Athens with great longing and love; although his country had been ungrateful and wicked towards him, it was still dearer to him than his life or his soul.
The next degree of virtue, to return to our topic, is duty towards one's parents, spouse and children, and, for the prince, especially towards his citizens and subjects, which Homer attributes to Ulysses to the highest
degree. How piously does he cherish and revere his parents! With what love does he embrace his son or his wife, from whom he would not suffer himself to be torn away, not even by familiarity with immortal goddesses! With what care and solicitude does he protect the life of his companions, even though they do not deserve it! How he keeps watch for them and does not decline any kind of trouble or toil when considering their safety!
Because the poet makes him a most wise and constant man, he contrives various opportunities in which these virtues can be seen, and he exposes him to various misfortunes and dangers in which his fortitude is shown and his ready power of judgement shines forth. For we know that adverse fortune is like a practice-field and a gymnasium, where strength of the mind and uncommon virtue are exercised and seen. It is also remarkable that he makes him most wise and most eloquent, and attributes to him speech flowing like rivers swollen with the snows of winter, and he opposes and compares two completely perfect ways of speaking in Menelaus and Ulysses. Moreover, he pretends that Ulysses is ruled and protected by Minerva, in order to show that great men are dear to God and that, supported by His help, they can accomplish great things.
Then he makes him fight with the Cyclops and with the suitors, that is with tyrants and with quarrelsome and vicious men occupying the bed and possessions of others, because for heroic and distinguished men there have always been struggles and contests with these two types of men. And, what needs to be observed in particular, Homer conceives him as being most patient and persevering in what he has determined. In order to keep his course and to achieve what he wants, he does not let himself be defeated or broken by any trouble or toil or by any abuse. When he already seems to have done with dangers and ills, even in his own house he endures much that is unbearable, he withstands being torn and needy, being made sport of, being beaten, having bones thrown at him by the suitors and being mocked by his household. He conceals everything for a time, waiting for the opportunity to regain his house, take possession of his things and take revenge. That virtue is unique in distinguished men – not only to achieve great and memorable things for the good of their country and of many men at risk of their life, but also to withstand and endure injustice, disgrace, abuse and disrepute, and persevere on their determined course, aiming for and following only what is honourable and beneficial. The phrase by Ennius about Fabius is well known: ‘For he did not put reputation above safety.’ It is clearly Ulysses' kind of wisdom, by which unfortunate and
miserable facts are sustained and endured. I shall desist from talking about Ulysses, whom Philostratus [Lives of the Sophists 1.8.3] calls Homer's delight (athyrma), since I would run out of time more quickly than of things to say. For in Homer there are countless passages intended and devised as if by divine providence (and Horace has said not rashly that they are wonderful), and throughout they are all created with incredible elegance and pleasantness, diversified by various moods, chiefly the dispositions (ēthesi), however, and by many splendid and pleasant accidents – indeed arranged with such order and economy (oikonorniai) of things that I would consider anyone who is not charmed by reading Homer lacking in any sense of humanity: an animal, not a man.
There is in that work a perfect and absolute image of human wisdom, as much as can ever exist and be imagined altogether, and in every kind of teaching there is nothing sweeter, nothing more splendid and nothing in which greater splendour of eloquence shines forth. It was rightly said by Fabius [Quintilian, Education of the Orator X.i.46] that just as the courses of all streams and springs take their origin from the ocean, Homer had given a model and origin to all parts of eloquence. For he did not collect rainwater, as Pindar says, but he rushes forth in a living river created by the gift of divine providence so that he might thereby test all his strength by eloquence.
Although after his age there flourished a considerable number of poets, he himself nevertheless always kept his, that is the highest and noblest, place, and he alone snatches away the palm of victory from all poets that any age has brought forth, and he leaves them all far behind. He achieved this, namely that it requires a great nature and a great mind to follow his virtues, not by emulation, which is impossible, but at least with the intellect. Manilius sings of him, splendidly as well as truthfully:
Yet all posterity has for its verse drawn on the rich
stream issuing from his lips and, daring to
channel his river into slender rills, has
become fertile by the wealth of One. [Astronomica II. 8–11]7
And Theocritus says that if the birds of the Muses, that is the other poets, dared compete with Homer, they would toil in vain and it would be like the cry of the cuckoo compared to the sweet song of the nightingale. Philostratus, too, declares that Homer is not like the sculptor Euphranor,
7 As translated by G. P. Goold in Manilius, Astronomica (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1977), p. 83.
who excelled among the others in his art by certain virtues, but is most distinguished in all of them, any of which would be highly praised in one person. He records an agreeable story about Homer which I thought was not inappropriate to relate briefly here.
He says that, as a youth, Achilles was stirred with astonishing enthusiasm and love for music and poetry, so that he entreated the Muses every day with prayers to be made into an outstanding musician with their help. When he would not stop pleading, finally the Muse Calliope appeared to him and warned him not to fight against destiny, for it pleased the gods otherwise, to make him not a singer but an outstanding warrior, who would perform such deeds that poets would take them as a subject for their writings. Indeed, after a hundred years there would be a bard by the name of Homer, who would celebrate his exploits and brave deeds in an immortal song. This is what Philostratus says of Homer. Without doubt he means that Homer was roused by divine power and sang his song inspired by divine virtue.
It can be seen in many passages that he sang as if from the innermost part of the temple or from the tripod of Apollo, higher and more divine than human understanding. This is shown by a few oracles scattered in his poem, which could not have been conceived by the human mind without the inspiration of a god – such as the one about the descendants of Aeneas and the everlasting existence of the future Roman empire, which is rendered by Virgil in the following verse: ‘And the sons of your sons, and those who are born from them’ [Aeneid 3–98]. Therefore Democritus says, not without reason, that Homer had been assigned a soul with the gift of divination [Fragment 21.1].
However, this is neither the place nor the time to pursue this argument. Let us therefore return to our subject and to what is more befitting our studies and manners. At the present occasion I have no leisure to consider these hidden topics of philosophy (ta philosophoumena) concerning the origins of things, the motion of the celestial bodies and stars, the elements, the earth and counter-earth,8 the constitution of man, the soul and its parts, the seat of the faculties of the soul, the single faculties, the emotions (praiseworthy and corrupt ones), then reason and intellect, and sensation and appetite which are locked in constant struggle with the former, the more divine part of man and his dumb part. Even if, as I say, I am not at
8 For the concept of counter-earth, see G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (London, 1970), pp. 27–9.
liberty to consider these, the students should nevertheless know that the seeds and origins of all these things are in Homer. And there has been no better or more outstanding painter of our nobler and more divine part than Homer.
Therefore, in Silius [Punica XIII.778–97], Scipio lauds Homer's shade, that he has seen in the netherworld, with great but not false praise, and, in a passage of great skill, he wishes for such a poet for his own times. For the sake of the young men here it is not troublesome to quote the passage; this is what he says:
And he saw, walking along the boundaries of Elysium,
the figure of a youth, his hair bound by a purple fillet
and flowing over his shining neck.
‘Tell me, young maid’, he said, ‘who is he? For with a light beyond compare
shines the man's venerable brow, and many souls
follow him in admiration, surrounding him with joyous cries.
That countenance, were it not in the Stygian shadows,
I would easily believe to be a god.’ ‘You would not be wrong,’ said
the wise handmaid of Trivia, ‘he is worthy of being held to be a god,
and a great genius dwells in his mighty mind.
He described the Earth, the sea and the stars,
and he matched the Muses in song, Phoebus in honour.
Before he ever saw it, all this region, he revealed in order to the world,
and he raised fame of your Troy up to the stars.’
Scipio gazed with joyful eyes at the ghost of Homer, and said:
‘If Fate would suffer such a poet to sing the deeds of Rome
for all the world to hear, how much greater impression the same
deeds would make upon posterity, if Homer testified to them!
How fortunate was Aeacid [Achilles], whose lot it was to be made known to all
by such a voice. The hew was made greater by the poet's verse.’9
So much about Scipio's praise of Homer in Silius.
However, we meet with an objection, and indeed from that most distinguished and learned man, Plato, who, condemning Homer as for a capital crime, excludes him from his Republic, and thrusts him out and despatches him into exile. I can echo the words of Chrysostom on this accusation: it is difficult to judge between such great men, just as it is difficult to utter a verdict when two men, both good, both eminent and honourable, both
9 Translation based on that of j. D. Duff in Silius Italicus, Punica (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1961), vol. 2, pp. 261–3.
friends, disagree in their judgements on some serious and weighty matter, so that one does not appear to condemn the judgement of one of them by one's speech. But let us see what moved Plato to expel Homer from the city created by him [Republic III.9.398a]. For one must not think that he is doing so rashly, especially when he himself called him the best and most divine of poets (ariston kai theiotaton tōn poiētōn).
So what has that innocent nightingale done to deserve being banished from the Platonic fields? It can be objected that he had related some ridiculous and absurd things about the immortal gods and about religion. I agree, a great and capital crime. But let Plato or another champion of his judgement tell me what else Homer could have related about the gods or about religion, as it was then in Greece, and whether Plato himself knew and recounted anything much better. Homer himself followed what was then customary regarding religion or the immortal gods, and in those times there was no other form of religion among these people than the one Homer describes. I shall not discuss here whether it was true or false. Certainly Homer agrees in this with Plato and some most distinguished men, that there is a God and that He cares for human affairs; therefore he assembles so many counsels of the gods, in order to show that human affairs do not arise fortuitously or by chance, but are arranged and ruled by the immortal gods. He makes God loving of humans (philanthropon), and therefore Jupiter is shown by him lamenting that he is affected by human vicissitudes, and that he grieves about the ills and miseries of mankind; he declares that the good are protected and showered with good things, the wicked punished by divine power. Minerva commends Ulysses in the first book of the Odyssey, first of all for his virtue and nobility, and then also because of his zeal for piety and religion, or the worship of the gods. If human nature strives by its own powers, what better or more sublime can it imagine about the will of God than that He loves, protects and helps the good, hates the impious and the wicked and afflicts them with punishment, and attends to and rules human affairs?
As for what allegorical themes other than these he has added, it can easily be understood that he pursued another objective, and that he alluded to the manners of men and to the nature of things, and that he concealed serious and ponderous tenets in these poetic images, as was the custom in those times. Since Plato, too, sometimes sports in that way with the immortal gods, in order to demonstrate something else, he who wants to be such a strict judge of others can be convicted of just the same crime. Furthermore,
one can also retort what Chrysostom says, namely that Homer described ‘some things according to belief, others according to truth’ (ta men kata doxan, tade kat' alētheian) [Orations, LIII.4.6]. And that is sufficient for me to say about the first issue.
The second objection made is that he attributed tears to great and heroic men; I do not see why this should merit rebuke. On the contrary, it seems praiseworthy to me that he did not think idly of the stupid and imaginary Stoic freedom from passions (apatheia), but presented such images of affairs and men as they are in the nature of things and in life; he did not invent marvellous opinions remote from human common sense, but expressed in his song the things that are most usual in life and consistent with common sense. He intended to show how great men are faced with very serious and sad vicissitudes, and are overcome by great emotions of the soul – as the Roman poet says of his Aeneas: ‘he feigns hope on his face and deep in his heart stifles anguish’ [Virgil, Aeneid 1.209].l0 And elsewhere: ‘he rages with the mighty fire of anger’ [ibid. IV.532]. For the poets described the heroes as they were, without doubt also exposed to human vicissitudes and moved by them. They set before us familiar images of emotions, actions and duties in life, and of men, and they did not follow the strange paradoxes (atopōtata paradoxa) which some of the philosophers greatly enjoy.
Furthermore, the third crime held against Homer by Plato, I believe, was that he invented the underworld, for he is thought to inspire in men the fear of death, when they imagine for themselves after this life the horrors of what he depicts in the underworld, and thus the reading of Homer's poem appears to sap the strength of the mind. We shall reply to this briefly that Homer intended to celebrate the tenet of the immortality of the soul, to which the more sagacious and noble men of all centuries have adhered. He wanted to show that there was some place and abode after this life, where the souls of the good and the wicked live, and where there is some honour for the good and the wicked are punished. Furthermore he followed the familiar opinion that men then had of the netherworld. He did not contrive anything new or unheard of, or alien to the common judgement of that age, as the philosophers did.
These are the capital crimes for which Homer is punished with exile by Plato, and is relegated from the Platonic city to I know not what lonely lands, to the Scythians, I believe, or the Garamantes. Nor is this done at random, for Chrysostom is witness [Orations XXXVI.9.7] that even those
10 As translated by H. Rushton Fairclough in Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, pp. 255, 435.
who were barbarians and unacquainted with Greek learning, softened by the sweetness of the Homeric song, began, for that one reason, to make themselves acquainted with Greek writing, so that they could learn that poem by heart, and it was even repeated among the Indians. So, to whatever people Plato banished Homer from his Greece, he made it immediately more cultivated and more human by acquaintance and contact with him, as by the arrival of a god.
To Plato's stance in this matter we can also oppose the unanimity of all the best and wisest men who have flourished in all the centuries since Homer through the praise of their intellect, teaching, virtue or wisdom. For there was no one among them who did not praise Homer's poem with a loud voice or did not cherish him and worship him like a god. Archelaus, the best and wisest king of the Spartans, never used to go to bed, nor go out when he had arisen from his bed, without first reading with attention, almost solemnly, something from Homer; whenever he had some time free from his duties, he immediately rushed to his Homer, saying that he went to his lover and darling.
Nor is it unknown how much Alexander of Macedon relished Homer's poem. Whether he dealt with serious things or jests, even when he armed himself for war, he used to repeat Homer's songs. When a casket from the spoils of Babylon, made of gold and gems, of enormous value, was brought to him and the others assigned it to various uses for the keeping of precious things, Alexander replied that there was nothing for which the box was more appropriate than for keeping the Homeric poem; for the most noble treasure a no less noble vessel in which to preserve it was proper.11 We, however, young men, who do not possess golden vessels or ones adorned with jewels, let us nevertheless emulate Alexander the Great and store this valuable treasure in a no less noble casket, namely in our hearts, and adorn and enrich the more excellent and divine part of ourselves by it.
‘What are you telling me about treasures and riches?’ some may ask, and indeed we can see that Homer, in his lifetime, was destitute, and that so far none of his disciples has become rich. We know that this is true, and that it is all too true in these our times; but we have to remember that it is certain and evident proof of public misfortune that we see these studies despised. But these ignoble thoughts and most sordid words should not concern us. Those who spurn those far more excellent goods for the sake
11 The casket for Homer was from the spoils after the battle of Gaugamela, not Babylon. For the casket, see Plutarch, Fortunes of Alexander, XXVI. 1.
of sordid gain are not worth being initiated into these sacred rites of the Muses, or admitted to this sanctuary of humanity and virtue. Homer does not swell the purse with gold or silver, nor the stomach with fat, nor does he encircle the fingers with rings adorned with jewels; but he certainly fills the mind with treasure, which is the more excellent and immortal part of ourselves, and adorns and enriches it. It should not deter us that Homer was destitute and despised in his lifetime, and that those who cherish studies of this kind are destitute. It is a condition universal to all the best things that they are despised in this miserable life full of errors and blindness. In what way have those who proclaim the word of God, the preachers of eternal salvation, who announce liberation from death, from sin and from eternal torment in the underworld, always been received and treated by the ungrateful world, and how are they treated today? It must not appear greatly surprising or new to us that the good things are neglected and the lesser ones, by contrast, become great; this is not a new situation in the world, and it is already beginning to be almost customary from a depraved habit. Let us, on the other hand, consider it thus that Homer does not serve gain, but that he is better than that; for virtue and the Muses refuse to prostitute themselves and, as the saying goes, to sit in the place of the harlots [Ovid, Letters from Pontus II.iii.20]. Those who consider everything in relation to its usefulness for them, and who measure happiness by the possession of the goods of fortune, should remember that they are grasping fragile and most unstable goods that are often destructive for those who own them, and that by the movement of one moment their entire happiness and they themselves can be completely overturned. If these studies are prevented because of indigence and contempt then, by the same move, humanity, virtue and nobility are excluded, the disciples of the Muses, to whom Homer is father and tutor, and all that is truly good, holy and pious in the world is excluded. On to all this one can inscribe the epigram (epigramma) that someone set up on his dwellings: ‘This is not a large house, what of it? Often virtue gifted with genius is hidden under a poor roof.’ I have spoken.