Note 238 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

Nitzsch (De Historiâ Homeri, Fascic. 1, p. 128, Fascic. 2, p. 71), and Ulrici (Geschichte der Episch. Poesie, vol. i. pp. 240-381) question the antiquity of the Homêrid gens, and limit their functions to simple reciters, denying that they ever composed songs or poems of their own. Yet these gentes, such as the Euneidæ, the Lykomidæ, the Butadæ, the Talthybiadæ, the descendants of Cheirôn at Peliôn, etc., the Hesychidæ (Schol. Sophocl. Œdip. Col. 489), (the acknowledged parallels of the Homêridæ), may be surely all considered as belonging to the earliest known elements of Grecian history: rarely, at least, if ever, can such gens, with its tripartite character of civil, religious, and professional, be shown to have commenced at any recent period. And in the early times, composer and singer were one person: often at least, though probably not always, the bard combined both functions. The Homeric ἀοιδὸς sings his own compositions; and it is reasonable to imagine that many of the early Homêrids did the same.

See Niebuhr, Römisch. Gesch. vol. i. p. 324; and the treatise, Ueber die Sikeler in der Odyssee,—in the Rheinisches Museum, 1828, p. 257; and Boeckh, in the Index of Contents to his Lectures of 1834.

“The sage Vyasa (observes Professor Wilson, System of Hindu Mythology, Int. p. lxii.) is represented, not as the author, but as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Puránás. His name denotes his character, meaning the arranger or distributor (Welcker gives the same meaning to the name Homer); and the recurrence of many Vyasas,—many individuals who new-modelled the Hindu scriptures,—has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labors are separated.” Individual authorship and the thirst of personal distinction, are in this case also buried under one great and common name, as in the case of Homer.