Note 319 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS. (continued 2)

Horat. Epist. i. 2, v. 1-26:—

Horace contrasts the folly and greediness of the companions of Ulysses, in accepting the refreshments tendered to them by Circe, with the self-command of Ulysses himself in refusing them. But in the incident as described in the original poem, neither the praise nor the blame, here implied, finds any countenance. The companions of Ulysses follow the universal practice in accepting hospitality tendered to strangers, the fatal consequences of which, in their particular case, they could have no ground for suspecting; while Ulysses is preserved from a similar fate, not by any self-command of his own, but by a previous divine warning and a special antidote, which had not been vouchsafed to the rest (see Odyss. x. 285). And the incident of the Sirens, if it is to be taken as evidence of anything, indicates rather the absence, than the presence, of self-command on the part of Ulysses.

Of the violent mutations of text, whereby the Grammatici or critics tried to efface from Homer bad ethical tendencies (we must remember that many of these men were lecturers to youth), a remarkable specimen is afforded by Venet. Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 453; compare Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, p. 95. Phœnix describes the calamitous family tragedy in which he himself had been partly the agent, partly the victim. Now that an Homeric hero should confess guilty proceedings, and still more guilty designs, without any expression of shame or contrition, was insupportable to the feelings of the critics. One of them, Aristodemus, thrust two negative particles into one of the lines; and though he thereby ruined not only the sense but the metre, his emendation procured for him universal applause, because he had maintained the innocence of the hero (καὶ οὐ μόνον ηὐδοκίμησεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐτιμήθη, ὡς εὐσεβῆ τηρήσας τὸν ἥρωα). And Aristarchus thought the case so alarming, that he struck out from the text four lines, which have only been preserved to us by Plutarch (Ὁ μὲν Ἀρίσταρχος ἔξειλε τὰ ἔπη ταῦτα, φοβηθείς). See the Fragment of Dioscorides (περὶ τῶν παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ Νόμων) in Didot’s Fragmenta Historicor. Græcor. vol. ii. p. 193.