A New View of the Epic

Extract

Much has been written about the origin of the Homeric Poems, and the processes, more or less long, by which they were given eventual literary form. The archaeological discoveries of Schliemann and his successors, from 1870 to about 1910, lengthened the perspective and changed the point of view, diverting attention from the latest to the earlier phases, from an ‘Ionian’ to an ‘Aeolic’, ‘Achaean’, and even Mycenaean epic or saga or folk-tale. But not only was there no recovery of early literary texts related to the Minoan scripts, but the decline and fall of the Minoan régime revealed even more clearly the wide interval between the traditional date for the ‘Fall of Troy’ and the emergence of the ‘Ionian’ epic. Political circumstances unfortunately terminated the American excavation of Hissarlik before the questions asked by M. Charles de Vellay about the north side of the fortress could be completely answered; but it seems certain that there was a north wall, and that this was deliberately destroyed at a rather late date, as in the story of the foundation of Achilleum. In Aeolis and Ionia, too, no large excavation is possible yet; so attempts to find archaeological equivalents for the latest indications of material culture in the poems are still conjectural.