The nucleus of fact in this story may probably consist
z this; that Lycurgus became more acquainted with
*he Homeric versos among the Ionian rhapsodists, and
succeeded in introducing, by means of his own or oth-
tn' memory, some connected portions of them into
Western Greece.
z this; that Lycurgus became more acquainted with
*he Homeric versos among the Ionian rhapsodists, and
succeeded in introducing, by means of his own or oth-
tn' memory, some connected portions of them into
Western Greece.
Charles - 1867 - Classical Dictionary
net/2027/uva.
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hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? HIS
HOM
Strabo enters into some details concerning the dress
of the ancient Spaniards. The Lusitani covered them-
selves with black mantles, because their sheep were
mostly of that colour. The Celtiberian women wore
iron collars, with rods of the uamo metal rising behind,
and bent in front; to these rods was attached the veil,
their usual ornament. Others wore a sort of broad
turban, and some twisted their hair round a small ring
about a foot above tho head, and from the ring was
appended a black veil. Lastly, a shining forehead was
considered a great beauty; on that account they pull-
ed out their hair and rubbed their brows with oil. --
The different tribes were confounded while the Ro-
mans oppressed the country ; but, in the beginning of
the fifth century, the Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths
invaded the Peninsula, and, mixing with the Celts and
Iberians, produced the different races which the phys-
iologist still observes in Spain. The first-mentioned
people, or Suevi, descended the Durius or Ducro under
the conduct of Ermeric, and chose Braga for the cap-
ital of their kingdom. Genaeric led his Vandals to
the centre of the peninsula, and fixed his residence at
Toletum or Toledo; but fifteen years had not elapsed
after the settlement of the barbarous horde, when The-
odoric, conquered by Clovis, abandoned Tolosa or
Toulouse, penetrated into Spain, and compelled the
Vandals to fly into Africa. During the short period
that the Vandals remained in the country, the ancient
province of Bstica was called Vandalousia, and all the
country, from the Ebro to the Straits of Gibraltar, sub-
mitted to them. The ancient Celtiberians, who had
so long resisted the Romans, made then no struggle
for liberty or independence; they yielded without re-
sistance to their new masters. Powers and privileges
were the portion of the Gothic race, and the title of
kiy del Goda, or the son of the Goth, which the Span-
iards changed into hidalgo, became the title of a noble
oi a free and powerful man among a people of slaves.
A number of petty and almost independent states were
funned by the chiefs of the conquering tribes; but the
barons or freemen acknowledged a liege lord. Spain
and Portugal were thus divided, and the feudal sys-
tem was thus established. Among the Visigoths,
however, the crown was not hereditary, or, at least,
the law of regular succession was often set at defiance
by usurpers. The sovereign authority was limited by
the, assemblies of the great vassals, some of whom
were very powerful; indeed, the Count Julian, to
avenge himself on King Rodcric for an outrage com-
mitted on his daughter, delivered Spain to the Moham-
medan yoke. (Malic-Brun, Geog. , vol. 8, p. 18, seqq. ,
Am. ed. )
IIisti-ea. Vid. Oreus.
Histi. eotis. Vid. Esliasotis.
HisTiiEua, a tyrant of Miletus, who, when the
Scythians had almost persuaded the Ionian princes to
destroy the bridge over the Ister, in order that the
Persian army might perish, opposed the plan, and in-
duced them to abandon the design. His argument
was, that if the Persian army were deatroyed, and the
power of Darius brought to an end, a popular govern-
ment would be established in every Ionian city, and
the tyrants expelled. He was held in high estimation
on this account by Darius, and rewarded with a grant
of land in Thrace. But Megabyzua having convinced
the king that it was bad policy to permit a Grecian
settlement in Thrace, Darius induced Histisus, who
? ? was already founding a city there, to come to Susa,
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? HCMERUS.
HOMKRUS-
lut. by assuming Smyrna as the central point of Ho-
mer'* life and celebrity, the claims of all the other cities
irhich rest on good authority, may be explained and
reconciled in a simple and natural manner. --If one
may venture to follow the faint light afforded by the
dawnings of tradition, and by the memorials that have
come down to us relative to the origin of the bard, the
following may be considered as the sum of our inqui-
ries. Homer was an Ionian, belonging to one of the
families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a
time when . Eolians and Achaeans composed the chief
part of the population of the city, and when, more-
over, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedi-
tion of the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest
interest: whence he reconciles, in his poetical capaci-
ty, the conflict of the contending races, inasmuch as
he treats an Achaean subject with the elegance and
geniality of an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out
the Ionians, it deprived itself of this poetical renown;
and the settlement of the Homeridae in Chios was, in
all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the
lonian9 from Smyrna. It may, moreover, be observed,
thai, according to this account, founded on the history
of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer
would fall a few generations after the Ionic migration
1o Asia; and with this determination the best testi-
monies of antiquity agree. Such are the computa-
tions of Herodotus, who places Homer, with Hesiod,
400 years before his time (Herod. , 2, S3), and that
of the Alexandrean chronologists, who place him 100
years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the le-
gislation of Lycurgus (Apollod. , Fragm. , 1, p. 410,
ti. Heyne); although the variety of opinions on this
subject, which prevailed among the learned writers of
antiquity, cannot be reduced within these limits. --It
ii said by Tatian (Fabr. , Bibl. Gr. , 2, 1, 3), that
Theagenes of Rhegium, in the time of Cambyses,
Stesimbrotus the Thasian, Antimachus tho Colopho-
nian, Herodotus of Halicamassus, Dionysius the Olyn-
tbian, Ephonis of Cumae, Philochorus the Athenian,
Metaclides and Chamaeleon the Peripatetics, and Zen-
odotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthe-
nes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus, the grammarians,
all wrote concerning the poetry, the birth, and the age
of Homer. Of the works of all these authors nothing
now remains, with the nominal exception of a life ol
Homer attributed to Herodotus, but which, as well on
account of its minute and fabulous details, as of the in-
consistency of a statement in it with the undoubted
language of Herodotus, is now almost universally con-
sidered as spurious. Such as it is, however, the life
of Homer is a very ancient compilation, and the text
from which all subsequent stories have been taken or
altered. There is a short life of Homor, also, bearing
the name of Plutarch, but which is, like the former,
generally condemned as a forgery; a forgery, however,
->( this unusual nature, that there is reason to believe
it more ancient than its supposed author. Thus
Quintilian (10, 1) and Seneca (Ep. , 88), both more
ancient than Plutarch, seem clearly aware of this life
of Homer. Some account of the common traditions
about Homer will probably be looked for here, and
the story will explain the origin of several epithets
which are frequently applied to him, and the meaning
of many allusions to be met with in the Greek and
Latin writers. --There is, then, a general agreement
that the name of Homer's mother was Critheis; but the
? ? accounts differ a good deal as to his father. Ephorus
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? HUMbKLS
<<. es that the poet, being on his voyage to Thebes, to
attend a musical or poetical contest at the feast of Sat-
urn in that city, landed in the island of Io, and, while
sitting on a rock by the seashore, observed some young
fishermen in a boat; that Homer asked them if they
had anything (el ri Ixotev), and that the young wags,
who, having had no sport, had been diligently catch-
ing, and killing as many as they could catch, of cer-
tain personal companions of a race not even yet ex-
tinct, answered, "as many as we caught we left; as
many as we could not catch we carry with us. " The
catastrophe is, that Homer, being utterly unable to
guess the meaning of this riddle, broke his heart out
of pure vexation, and that the inhabitants of the island
buried him with great magnificence. --There has been
as much doubt and controversy about the age of Ho-
mer as about himself and his poems. According to
the argument of Wood (Essay on the Original Ge-
nius, CfC. , of Homer), Haller (Heyne, Exeurs. 4, ad II. ,
84), and Mitford (History of Greece, c. 1), he lived
about the middle of the ninth century before Christ;
which date agrees exactly with the conjecture of He-
rodotus, who wrote B. C. 444, and is founded on the
assumption that Homer must have lived before the re-
turn of the Heraclidas into Peloponnesus, an event
which took place within eighty years alter the Trojan
war. The Newtonian calculation is also adopted,
which fixes the capture of Troy as low as B. C. 904.
The argument is based upon the great improbability
that Homer, so minute as he is in his descriptions of
Greece, and so full of the histories of the reigning
dynasties in its various districts, should never notice
so very remarkable an occurrence as the almost total
abolition of the kingly government throughout Greece,
ind the substitution of the republican form in its stead.
Now this national revolution was coincident with, or
immediately consequent on, the return of the descend-
ants of Hercules. It is said, also, that the poet men-
tions the grandchildren of . 'Eneas as reigning in Troy,
in the prophecy of Neptune in the Iliad (20, 308), and
that, in another speech of Juno's, he seems to intimate
the insecure state of the chief existing dynasties of
the race of Pelops; and it is inferred from this, that
he nourished during the third generation, or upward of
sixty years after the destruction of Troy. Upon this
argument Heyneremarks (Exeurs. , ad 11. , 24), that, in
the first place, a poet who was celebrating heroes of
the Pelopid race had no occasion to notice a revolu-
tion by which their families were expatriated and their
kingdoms abolished; and next, which seems an in-
surmountable objection, that the Ionic migration took
place sixty years later than the return of the Herach-
dae; yet that Homer was an Ionian, and a resident in,
or at least perfectly conversant with, Ionian Asia, is
admitted on all hands, and is indeed incontestable;
and as he never notices this migration, though it was
certainly a very remarkable event, and one which he
must have known, he may just as well, for other or
the same reasons, have been silent on the subject of a
revolution by which that migration was caused. The
Arundelian marbles place Homer B. C. 907, the Ionian
migration B. C. 1044, the return of the Heraclidae B. C.
1104, and the capture of Troy B. C. 1184. Heyne
approves of this calculation, as, upon the whole, the
most consistent with all the authorities; but it is at
variance with Newton's Chronology, and is therefore
a calculation, of the exactness of which we can never
feel confident --The vicissitudes to which Homer's
? ? reputation and influence have been subject, deserves
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? HOMiCRUS.
HUMERUS.
? ey Willi briel epic lays; such as in later times were
produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod.
Ii was also possible, if it were desired, to form from
'. ;,rm longer series of adventures of the same hero;
but they always remained a collection of independent
poems on the same subject, and never stained to that
uiiny of character and composition which constitutes
one poem. It was an entirely new phenomenon,
which could not fail to make the greatest impression,
when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition.
which (besides its connexion with the other parts of
the same legendary circle) had in itself the means of
? wakening a lively interest and of satisfying the mind;
and, at the same time, admitted of such a development,
that the principal personages could be represented as
acting each with a peculiar and individual character,
without obscuring the chief hero and the main action
of the poem. One legendary subject of this extent
and interest Homer found in the Anger of Achilles,
and another in the Return of Ulysses. The former
of these gave birth to the Iliad, the latter to the
Odyssey. Of the character of these two poems we
will treat in separate articles (vid. Ilias, Odyssea).
Our atteution will now *><< directed to other parts of
the main subject.
Origin and Preservation of the Homeric Poems.
Whether the Homeric poems were w reality the
work of a single bard or not, their intrinsic merit, and,
consequently, their rank in Greek literature, must re-
main the same, and be equally a worthy object of
studious inquiry. The decision of that question can-
not in the slighteat degree affect our estimate of their
quality. Whether all the poems that are now attrib-
uted to Homer were his production; whether the Iliad
and the Odyssey, both, or one of them only, can lay
claim to such parentage; or whether, lastly, any such
person as Homer, or, indeed, any individual author of
the poem ever existed, whichever of these propositions
he true, it seems to be a matter of little importance to
those whose object it is not to spell the inscriptions on
mouldering monuments, but to inhale the breath of an-
cient grandeur and beauty amid the undoubted- ruins
of the great. The Iliad and the Odyssey exist; we
have them in our hands; and we should not set them
the less in honour though we were to doubt the im-
press of any Homer's hand, any more than we should
cease to reverence the genius or the ruins of Rome,
because shepherds or worse may have laid the first
? lone of her walls. It is this very excellence, howev-
er, of the Homeric poetry, and the apparent peculi-
arity of the instance, together with the celebrity of the
controversy, to which the scepticism of some modern
scholars has given birth, that compels us to devote a
portion of this article to a notice of the points in ques-
tion. No trace appears of any doubt having ever been
entertained of the personal existence of Homer, as the
author of the Iliad, till the close of the 17th and be-
ginning of the 18th century, when two French writers,
Hedelin and Perrault, first suggested tho outlines of
a theory respecting the composition of that poem,
which has since been developed with so much learning
and talent by Heyne, Wolfe, and others, that its ori-
ginal authors are now almost forgotten. The substance
of this theory is, that, whether any such person as
Homer lived or not, the Iliad was not composed en-
tirely by him or by any other individual, but is a com-
pilation, methodized indeed and arranged by success-
? ? ive editors, but still a compilation of minstrelsies, the
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? HOMERuS.
HUMERUS.
I vaieil in the Homeric >>ge. It has likewise been
urged, that the structure of the Homeric verses fur-
nishes a decisive proof, that the state of the Greek
language, at the time when these poems were written,
was different from that in which they must have been
composed. And by others it has been thought incon-
sistent with the law of continual change, to which all
languages are subject, that the form in which these
works now appear should differ so slightly as it docs
from that of the Greek literature, if it really belonged
to the early period in which they were first recited.
Tbese difficulties are, it must be owned, in a great
measure removed by the hypothesis that each poem
is an aggregate of parts composed by different authors;
fcr then the poet's memory might not be too severely
taxed in retaining his work during its progress, and
might be aided by more frequent recitations. But this
hypothesis has been met by a number of objections,
some of which are not very easily satisfied. The ori-
ginal unity of each poem is maintained by arguments
derived partly from the uniformity of the poetical char-
acter, and partly from the apparent singleness of plan
which each of them exhibits. Even those who do not
think it necessary to suppose an original unity of de-
sign in the Iliad, still conceive that all its parts are
stamped with the style of the samo author. (Clinton,
Fast. Jit II. u, vol. 3, p. 375, 379. ) But with others,
from the time of Aristotle to our own day, the plan
itself has been an object of the warmest admiration;
and it is still contended, that the intimate coherence of
me parts is such as to exclude the hypothesis of a
multiplicity of authors. (Vid. Ilias. ) If the parts out
of which the Iliad or the Odyssey was formed are
supposed to have been at first wholly independent of
each other, the supposition that they could have been
so pieced together as to assume their present appear-
ance is involved in almost insurmountable difficulties.
For how, it may be asked, did the different poets in
*ach instance happen to confine themselves to the
tame circle of subjects, as to the battles before Troy,
and the return of Ulysses 1 Must wo suppose, with a
modern critic (Hermann, Wiener- Jahrbiicher, vol. 54),
that in the Iliad and Odyssey we see the joint labours
of several bards, who drew their subjects from an ear-
lier Iliad and an earlier Odyssey, which contained no
more than short narratives of the same events, but yet
had gained such celebrity for their author, that the
greatest poets of the succeeding period were forced to
adopt his name, and to content themselves with filling
up his outline! This would be an expedient only to
be resorted to in the last emergency. Or must we
adopt the form which this hypothesis, by giving it a
different turn, has been made by others to assume, that
the Iliad and Odyssey, after the main event in each
had formed the subject of a shorter poem, grew un-
der the hands of successive poets, who, guided in
part by popular tradition, supplied what had been left
wanting by their predecessors, until in each case the
curiosity of their hearers had been gratified by a fin-
ished whole? (Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 1, p. 246. )
This supposition is involved in still greater difficulty
than the former, for we have here a race of bards,
who, though living at different periods, and though
the language was, during all this time, undergoing
changes cf some kind or other, yet write all of them
in a manner so similar, and display so few, if any, dis-
crepances, that their various productiens, when col-
? ? lected together, wear all the appearance of a poem by
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? HOMERUS.
HUMERUS.
eomp<<Hed the rhapsodists to follow one another, ar-
cording to the order of the poem, ant] for having thus
restored these great works, which were falling into
fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is iidccd
true, that some arbitrary additions may have oeen made
to them at this period; which, however, we can only
hope to be able to distinguish from the rest of the
roem, by first coming to some general agreement as
lo the original form and subsequent destiny of the Ho-
meric compositions. {Midler, Hist. Gr. Lit. , p. 62,
Introduction of the Homeric Poena into Greece.
Two different accounts are given on this head. 1.
First, it is said that Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator,
met with the poems of Homer during his travels in
Asia, and, being charmed with them, carried them
with ln. 'ii by some means, ami in some shape or other,
tuck to his native city. The authority for this is a
passage of a fragment of Heraclides Ponticus, in which
he says that Lycurgus, "having procured the poetry
of Homer from the descendants of Creophylus, first
introduced it into the Peloponnesus. " /Elian {V. II,
13, 14) repeats this with advantage: "Lycurgus the
Spartan first carried the poetry of Homer in a mass
into Greece. " Plutarch (Vit. Ltjcurg. ) finishes off the
story in his usual manner. "There (in Asia) Lycur-
fros first fell in with the poems of Homer, probably in
the keeping of the descendants of Cleophylus; he
rrr? : them out eagerly, and collected them together
for the purpose of bringing them hither into Greece;
tor there was already at that time an obscure rumour
of these verses among the Greeks, but <<we few only
possessed some scattered fragments of this poetry,
which were circulated in a chance manner. Lycurgus
had the principal hand in making it known. " This
Creophylus or Cleophylus, a Samian, is said to have
been Homer's host in Samos, and a poet himself.
The nucleus of fact in this story may probably consist
z this; that Lycurgus became more acquainted with
*he Homeric versos among the Ionian rhapsodists, and
succeeded in introducing, by means of his own or oth-
tn' memory, some connected portions of them into
Western Greece. That he wrote them all out is, as
we may sec, so far as the original authority goes, due
to the ingenious biographer alone. But the better
founded account of tho introduction, or, at least, of
? be formal collection of the Homeric verses, though
not inconsistent with the other, is, that, after Solon had
directed that the rhapsodists should, upon public oc-
casions, recite in a certain order of poetical narration,
and not confusedly, the end before the beginning, as
had been the previous practice, Pisistratus, with the
ielp of a large body of the most celebrated poets of
llis age, made a regular collection of the different rhap-
sodies which passed under Homer's name, committed
them all to writing, and arranged them very much in
the terics in which we now possess them. The di-
vision of the rhapsodies into books corresponding with
the letters of the Greek alphabet, was probably the
work of the Alexandrean critics many centuries after-
ward. Now the authorities for attributing this primary
reduction into form to Pisistratus, are numerous and
express, and a few quotations from them will be the
most satisfactory way of putting the student in pos-
session of the opinions of the ancients upon this sub-
|ect--" Who," says Cicero, "was more learned in
that age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been
more refined by literature than that of Pisistratus,
? ? who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer,
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? HOMERUS.
HUMERUS.
> poet oi Colophon; and of another very celebrated
oi. e by Aristotle, which edition Alexander is said to
have himself corrected and kept in a very precious
casket, taken among the spoils of the camp of Darius.
This edition was called 7 Ik tov vupdnnoc. The edi-
tions by any known individual were called oi hot' uv-
tpa, to distinguish them from several editions existing
in different cities, but not attributed to any particular
editors. These latter were called al xaru rtoXeic, or
al rx itoXeav. The Massiliotic, Chian, Argive, Sino-
pic, Cyprian, and Cretan are mentioned. There are
three other names very conspicuous among the mul-
titude of clitics, and commentators, and editors of
the Iliad in subsequent times; these are Zenodotus,
Aristophanes, the inventor of accents, and Aristarchus.
This last celebrated man lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Philometor, B. C. 150, and, after a collation of all the
copies then existing, he published a new edition, or
&top0uoic, of the Iliad, divided into books, the text of
which, according to the general opinion of critics, has
finally prevailed as the genuine diction of Homer.
{Coleridge, Introduction, &. c, p. 37-55. ) In the
preface to Gronovius' Thesaurus (vol. 5), there is a
particular and curious account of the manner in which
Pisistratus put together the poems of Homer. It is
taken from the Commentary of Diomedes Scholasticus
on the grammar of Dionysius the Thracian, and was
first published in the original Greek by Bekker, in the
second vol. of his Anecdota Grctca (p. 767, seqq. ). It
is in substance as follows: The poems of Homer
were in a fragmentary state, in different hands. One
man had a hundred verses; another two hundred; a
third a thousand, &c. Thereupon Pisistratus, not
being able to find the poems entire, proclaimed all
over Greece, that whoever brought to him verses of
Homer, should receive so much for each line. All
who brought any received the promised reward, even
those who brought lines which he had already obtained
from others. Sometimes people brought him verses
of their own for those of Homer, now marked with an
obelus (roi>c vvv o6eXi(o/ievovc). After having thus
made a collection, he employed 72 grammarians to
pu' together the verses of Homer in the manner they
I'. iought best. After each had separately arranged the
verses, he brought them all together, and made each
show to the whole his own particular work. Having
all in a body examined carefully and impartially, they
with one accord gave the preference to the composi-
tions of Aristarchus and Zenodotus, and determined
still farther, that the former had made the better one of
the two. (Bekker, Anec. Grac. , I. c. )
Iliad and Odyssey.
For an account of these two poems, and the discus-
sions connected with them, consult the articles Ilias
and Odyssea. The remainder of our remarks on the
present occasion will be confined to a brief consider-
ation of a few minor productions that are commonly
attributed to Homer.
1. Margites.
This poem, which was a satire upon some Strenuous
blockhead, as the name implies, does not now exist;
but it was so famous in former times that it seems
proper to select it for a slight notice from among the
score of lost works attributed to the hand of Homer.
It is said by Harpocration that Callimachus admired
ths Margites, and Dio Chrysostom says (Diss. 53)
that Zeno the philosopher wrote a commentary on it.
? ? A genuine verse, taken from this poem, is well known:
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? HOM
HON
m great reputation at Syracuse about 500 B. C. . was
supposed by many to be the real Homer of this par-
ticular poem. One thing, however, is certain, that
these hymns are extremely ancient, and it is probable
that some of them only yield to the Iliad and Odyssey
in remoteness of date. They vary in character and
poetical merit; but there is scarcely one among them
that has not something to interest us, and they have
ill of them, in a greater or less degree, that simple
Homeric liveliness which never fails to charm us
wherever we meet with it.
4. Epigrams.
Under the title of Epigrams are classed a few verses
on different subjects, chiefly addresses to cities or
private individuals. There is one short hymn to Nep-
tune which seems out of its place here. In the fourth
epigram, Homer is represented as speaking of his
blindness and his itinerant life. As regards the gen-
eral character of the Greek Epigram, it mav here be
remarked, that u is so far from being the same with,
or even like to, the Epigram of modern times, that
sometimes it is completely the reverse. In general,
the songs in Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Waller, and,
where he writes with simplicity, in Moore, give a better
notion of the Greek Epigrams than any other species
of modern composition.
5. Fragments.
The Fragments, as they are called, consist of a few
scattered lines which are said to have been formerly
found in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the other sup-
posed works of Homer, end to have been omitted as
spurious or dropped by chance from their ostensible
context. Besides these, there are some passages from
toe Little Iliad, and a string of verses taken from Ho-
mer's answers in the old work, called the Contests of
Homer and Hesiod. {Coleridge, Introduction, dec,
p. 235. )
Conclusion.
Since the Homeric question was first agitated by
Wolf and Heyne, it has been placed on a very differ-
ent footing by the labours of more recent scholars.
The student may consult with advantage the following
works: Xitzsch, de Hisloria Homeri Meletemata. --
Kreuser, Vor/ragen Other Homcros. --Id. , Homerisehe
Rkaptodcn. -- Miillcr, Homerisehe Vorschulc. -- Hci-
ncckc, Homer und Lt/eurg. --Knight, Prolegomena ad
Homerum. -- London Quarterly Review, No. 87. --
Miller's Review of Nitzsch's work, in the GStlingen,
Gel. Anteigen, for Fcbr. , 1831. --Hermann's remarks
m the Wiracr Jahrbiieher, vol. 64. --Hug, Erfindung
der Buchstabenschrift. --An argument which confines
itself to the writings of Wolf and Heyne, can now add
hut little to our means of forming a judgment on the
Homeric question, and must keep some of its most
impoitant elements out of sight. (ThirlwaU's Greece,
vol. 1, p 248, t'n notis. )--The best edition of the Iliad
is that of Heyne, Lips. , 1802-1822,9 vols. 8vo. The
most popular edition of the entire works is that of
Clarke, improved by Ernesti, Lips. , 1759, 1824,
Glasg. , 1814, 5 vols. 8vo. The most critical one,
however, is that of Wolf, Lips. , 1804-1807, 4 vols.
12mo. A good edition of the Odyssey is still needed,
though the want may in a great measure be supplied
by the excellent commentary of Nitzsch, Hannor. ,
1826-1831, 2 vols. 8vo. --II. A poet, surnamed, for
distinction' sake, the Younger. He was a native of
Hierapolis in Caria, and flourished under Ptolemy
? ? Philadelphia. Homer the Younger formed one of the
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? HOR
HOUaTILS.
nus died of the dropsy at Ravenna, in August, 423,
leav'ng no issue. {Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 39,
teqq. --Encycl. Vs. Knowl. , vol. 12, p. 281. )
Horapollo, or Hobus Apollo, a grammarian of
Alexandrca, according to Suidas, in the time of the
Roman emperor Theodosius. He taught, first in his
native city, and afterward in Constantinople, and
wrote, under the title of Te/tevixu, a work on conse-
crated places. Several other writers of this name are
mentioned by Suidas, by Stephanus of Byzantium
(j v. *eve6j;6't{->, by Photins (p. 536, ed. Bekker), and
by Eustathius (ad Od. 4). It is doubtful to which one
of the whole number a treatise which has come down
tc us on Egyptian Hieroglyphics is to be ascribed.
According to the inscription that is found in most
MSS. , the work was originally written in Egyptian,
and translated into Greek by a person named Philip.
Bit, whatever opinion we may form respecting the
author, it is evident that the work could not have been
written before the Christian era, since it contains allu-
sions to the philosophical tenets of the Gnostics. Its
merits are differently estimated. The object of the
writer appears to have been, not to furnish *a key to
the Hieroglyphic system, but to 'explain the emblems
and attributes of the gods. Champollion, and Lee-
mans in his edition of the work, are disposed to at-
tribute greater importance to it than former critics had
been willing to allow. The best edition is that of Lee-
mar. s, Amsl. , 1834, 8vo. Previous to the appearance
of this, the best edition was that of De Pauw, Traj. ad
Rhen. , 1727, 4to.
HoRi? ('ilpai), the Seasons or Hours, who had
charge of the gates of Heaven. Hesiod says that they
were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis; and he
names them Eunomia (Order), Dike (Justice), and
Eirene(Peace). "They watch," adds the poet, "over
the works of mortal man" (ipy' upaiovoi Karathnrotat
QpoToioi. --Thcog. , 903). By an unknown poet (ap.
Htobaum. --Lobeck, Aglaoph. , p. 600), the Hone are
called the daughters of Time; and by late poets they
were named the children of the year, and their num-
ber was increased to twelve. . (Nonnus, 11, 486. --Id. ,
12, 17. ) Some made them seven or ten in number.
(Hygin. , fab. , 183. )--The Hora seem to have been
originally regarded as presiding over the three seasons
into which the ancient Greeks divided the year.
(Wclcker, Tril. , p. 500, not. ) As the day was simi-
larly divided (11. , 21, 111), they came to be regarded
as presiding over its parts also; and when it was far-
ther subdivided into hours, these minor parts were
placed under their charge, and were named from them.
(Quint. , Smyrn , 2, 595. --Nonnus, I. c. ) Order and
regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transi-
tion was easy from the natural to the moral world;
and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were re-
garded as presiding over law, justice, and peace, the
great producers of order and harmony among men.
(Keighlley's Mythology, p. 190, seq. )
Horatu, the sister of the Horatii, killed by her
surviving brother for deploring the death of her be-
trothed, one of the Curiatii, and for reproaching him
with the deed by which she had lost her lover. (Vid.
Horatius II. )
Horatios, I. Quintus Flaccds, a celebrated Ro-
man poet, born at Venusia or Venusiurn, December
8ih, B. C. 65, during the consulship of I,. Aurclius
Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. (Od. , 3, 21 1.
? ?
? HIS
HOM
Strabo enters into some details concerning the dress
of the ancient Spaniards. The Lusitani covered them-
selves with black mantles, because their sheep were
mostly of that colour. The Celtiberian women wore
iron collars, with rods of the uamo metal rising behind,
and bent in front; to these rods was attached the veil,
their usual ornament. Others wore a sort of broad
turban, and some twisted their hair round a small ring
about a foot above tho head, and from the ring was
appended a black veil. Lastly, a shining forehead was
considered a great beauty; on that account they pull-
ed out their hair and rubbed their brows with oil. --
The different tribes were confounded while the Ro-
mans oppressed the country ; but, in the beginning of
the fifth century, the Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths
invaded the Peninsula, and, mixing with the Celts and
Iberians, produced the different races which the phys-
iologist still observes in Spain. The first-mentioned
people, or Suevi, descended the Durius or Ducro under
the conduct of Ermeric, and chose Braga for the cap-
ital of their kingdom. Genaeric led his Vandals to
the centre of the peninsula, and fixed his residence at
Toletum or Toledo; but fifteen years had not elapsed
after the settlement of the barbarous horde, when The-
odoric, conquered by Clovis, abandoned Tolosa or
Toulouse, penetrated into Spain, and compelled the
Vandals to fly into Africa. During the short period
that the Vandals remained in the country, the ancient
province of Bstica was called Vandalousia, and all the
country, from the Ebro to the Straits of Gibraltar, sub-
mitted to them. The ancient Celtiberians, who had
so long resisted the Romans, made then no struggle
for liberty or independence; they yielded without re-
sistance to their new masters. Powers and privileges
were the portion of the Gothic race, and the title of
kiy del Goda, or the son of the Goth, which the Span-
iards changed into hidalgo, became the title of a noble
oi a free and powerful man among a people of slaves.
A number of petty and almost independent states were
funned by the chiefs of the conquering tribes; but the
barons or freemen acknowledged a liege lord. Spain
and Portugal were thus divided, and the feudal sys-
tem was thus established. Among the Visigoths,
however, the crown was not hereditary, or, at least,
the law of regular succession was often set at defiance
by usurpers. The sovereign authority was limited by
the, assemblies of the great vassals, some of whom
were very powerful; indeed, the Count Julian, to
avenge himself on King Rodcric for an outrage com-
mitted on his daughter, delivered Spain to the Moham-
medan yoke. (Malic-Brun, Geog. , vol. 8, p. 18, seqq. ,
Am. ed. )
IIisti-ea. Vid. Oreus.
Histi. eotis. Vid. Esliasotis.
HisTiiEua, a tyrant of Miletus, who, when the
Scythians had almost persuaded the Ionian princes to
destroy the bridge over the Ister, in order that the
Persian army might perish, opposed the plan, and in-
duced them to abandon the design. His argument
was, that if the Persian army were deatroyed, and the
power of Darius brought to an end, a popular govern-
ment would be established in every Ionian city, and
the tyrants expelled. He was held in high estimation
on this account by Darius, and rewarded with a grant
of land in Thrace. But Megabyzua having convinced
the king that it was bad policy to permit a Grecian
settlement in Thrace, Darius induced Histisus, who
? ? was already founding a city there, to come to Susa,
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? HCMERUS.
HOMKRUS-
lut. by assuming Smyrna as the central point of Ho-
mer'* life and celebrity, the claims of all the other cities
irhich rest on good authority, may be explained and
reconciled in a simple and natural manner. --If one
may venture to follow the faint light afforded by the
dawnings of tradition, and by the memorials that have
come down to us relative to the origin of the bard, the
following may be considered as the sum of our inqui-
ries. Homer was an Ionian, belonging to one of the
families which went from Ephesus to Smyrna, at a
time when . Eolians and Achaeans composed the chief
part of the population of the city, and when, more-
over, their hereditary traditions respecting the expedi-
tion of the Greeks against Troy excited the greatest
interest: whence he reconciles, in his poetical capaci-
ty, the conflict of the contending races, inasmuch as
he treats an Achaean subject with the elegance and
geniality of an Ionian. But when Smyrna drove out
the Ionians, it deprived itself of this poetical renown;
and the settlement of the Homeridae in Chios was, in
all probability, a consequence of the expulsion of the
lonian9 from Smyrna. It may, moreover, be observed,
thai, according to this account, founded on the history
of the colonies of Asia Minor, the time of Homer
would fall a few generations after the Ionic migration
1o Asia; and with this determination the best testi-
monies of antiquity agree. Such are the computa-
tions of Herodotus, who places Homer, with Hesiod,
400 years before his time (Herod. , 2, S3), and that
of the Alexandrean chronologists, who place him 100
years after the Ionic migration, 60 years before the le-
gislation of Lycurgus (Apollod. , Fragm. , 1, p. 410,
ti. Heyne); although the variety of opinions on this
subject, which prevailed among the learned writers of
antiquity, cannot be reduced within these limits. --It
ii said by Tatian (Fabr. , Bibl. Gr. , 2, 1, 3), that
Theagenes of Rhegium, in the time of Cambyses,
Stesimbrotus the Thasian, Antimachus tho Colopho-
nian, Herodotus of Halicamassus, Dionysius the Olyn-
tbian, Ephonis of Cumae, Philochorus the Athenian,
Metaclides and Chamaeleon the Peripatetics, and Zen-
odotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthe-
nes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus, the grammarians,
all wrote concerning the poetry, the birth, and the age
of Homer. Of the works of all these authors nothing
now remains, with the nominal exception of a life ol
Homer attributed to Herodotus, but which, as well on
account of its minute and fabulous details, as of the in-
consistency of a statement in it with the undoubted
language of Herodotus, is now almost universally con-
sidered as spurious. Such as it is, however, the life
of Homer is a very ancient compilation, and the text
from which all subsequent stories have been taken or
altered. There is a short life of Homor, also, bearing
the name of Plutarch, but which is, like the former,
generally condemned as a forgery; a forgery, however,
->( this unusual nature, that there is reason to believe
it more ancient than its supposed author. Thus
Quintilian (10, 1) and Seneca (Ep. , 88), both more
ancient than Plutarch, seem clearly aware of this life
of Homer. Some account of the common traditions
about Homer will probably be looked for here, and
the story will explain the origin of several epithets
which are frequently applied to him, and the meaning
of many allusions to be met with in the Greek and
Latin writers. --There is, then, a general agreement
that the name of Homer's mother was Critheis; but the
? ? accounts differ a good deal as to his father. Ephorus
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? HUMbKLS
<<. es that the poet, being on his voyage to Thebes, to
attend a musical or poetical contest at the feast of Sat-
urn in that city, landed in the island of Io, and, while
sitting on a rock by the seashore, observed some young
fishermen in a boat; that Homer asked them if they
had anything (el ri Ixotev), and that the young wags,
who, having had no sport, had been diligently catch-
ing, and killing as many as they could catch, of cer-
tain personal companions of a race not even yet ex-
tinct, answered, "as many as we caught we left; as
many as we could not catch we carry with us. " The
catastrophe is, that Homer, being utterly unable to
guess the meaning of this riddle, broke his heart out
of pure vexation, and that the inhabitants of the island
buried him with great magnificence. --There has been
as much doubt and controversy about the age of Ho-
mer as about himself and his poems. According to
the argument of Wood (Essay on the Original Ge-
nius, CfC. , of Homer), Haller (Heyne, Exeurs. 4, ad II. ,
84), and Mitford (History of Greece, c. 1), he lived
about the middle of the ninth century before Christ;
which date agrees exactly with the conjecture of He-
rodotus, who wrote B. C. 444, and is founded on the
assumption that Homer must have lived before the re-
turn of the Heraclidas into Peloponnesus, an event
which took place within eighty years alter the Trojan
war. The Newtonian calculation is also adopted,
which fixes the capture of Troy as low as B. C. 904.
The argument is based upon the great improbability
that Homer, so minute as he is in his descriptions of
Greece, and so full of the histories of the reigning
dynasties in its various districts, should never notice
so very remarkable an occurrence as the almost total
abolition of the kingly government throughout Greece,
ind the substitution of the republican form in its stead.
Now this national revolution was coincident with, or
immediately consequent on, the return of the descend-
ants of Hercules. It is said, also, that the poet men-
tions the grandchildren of . 'Eneas as reigning in Troy,
in the prophecy of Neptune in the Iliad (20, 308), and
that, in another speech of Juno's, he seems to intimate
the insecure state of the chief existing dynasties of
the race of Pelops; and it is inferred from this, that
he nourished during the third generation, or upward of
sixty years after the destruction of Troy. Upon this
argument Heyneremarks (Exeurs. , ad 11. , 24), that, in
the first place, a poet who was celebrating heroes of
the Pelopid race had no occasion to notice a revolu-
tion by which their families were expatriated and their
kingdoms abolished; and next, which seems an in-
surmountable objection, that the Ionic migration took
place sixty years later than the return of the Herach-
dae; yet that Homer was an Ionian, and a resident in,
or at least perfectly conversant with, Ionian Asia, is
admitted on all hands, and is indeed incontestable;
and as he never notices this migration, though it was
certainly a very remarkable event, and one which he
must have known, he may just as well, for other or
the same reasons, have been silent on the subject of a
revolution by which that migration was caused. The
Arundelian marbles place Homer B. C. 907, the Ionian
migration B. C. 1044, the return of the Heraclidae B. C.
1104, and the capture of Troy B. C. 1184. Heyne
approves of this calculation, as, upon the whole, the
most consistent with all the authorities; but it is at
variance with Newton's Chronology, and is therefore
a calculation, of the exactness of which we can never
feel confident --The vicissitudes to which Homer's
? ? reputation and influence have been subject, deserves
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? HOMiCRUS.
HUMERUS.
? ey Willi briel epic lays; such as in later times were
produced by several poets of the school of Hesiod.
Ii was also possible, if it were desired, to form from
'. ;,rm longer series of adventures of the same hero;
but they always remained a collection of independent
poems on the same subject, and never stained to that
uiiny of character and composition which constitutes
one poem. It was an entirely new phenomenon,
which could not fail to make the greatest impression,
when a poet selected a subject of the heroic tradition.
which (besides its connexion with the other parts of
the same legendary circle) had in itself the means of
? wakening a lively interest and of satisfying the mind;
and, at the same time, admitted of such a development,
that the principal personages could be represented as
acting each with a peculiar and individual character,
without obscuring the chief hero and the main action
of the poem. One legendary subject of this extent
and interest Homer found in the Anger of Achilles,
and another in the Return of Ulysses. The former
of these gave birth to the Iliad, the latter to the
Odyssey. Of the character of these two poems we
will treat in separate articles (vid. Ilias, Odyssea).
Our atteution will now *><< directed to other parts of
the main subject.
Origin and Preservation of the Homeric Poems.
Whether the Homeric poems were w reality the
work of a single bard or not, their intrinsic merit, and,
consequently, their rank in Greek literature, must re-
main the same, and be equally a worthy object of
studious inquiry. The decision of that question can-
not in the slighteat degree affect our estimate of their
quality. Whether all the poems that are now attrib-
uted to Homer were his production; whether the Iliad
and the Odyssey, both, or one of them only, can lay
claim to such parentage; or whether, lastly, any such
person as Homer, or, indeed, any individual author of
the poem ever existed, whichever of these propositions
he true, it seems to be a matter of little importance to
those whose object it is not to spell the inscriptions on
mouldering monuments, but to inhale the breath of an-
cient grandeur and beauty amid the undoubted- ruins
of the great. The Iliad and the Odyssey exist; we
have them in our hands; and we should not set them
the less in honour though we were to doubt the im-
press of any Homer's hand, any more than we should
cease to reverence the genius or the ruins of Rome,
because shepherds or worse may have laid the first
? lone of her walls. It is this very excellence, howev-
er, of the Homeric poetry, and the apparent peculi-
arity of the instance, together with the celebrity of the
controversy, to which the scepticism of some modern
scholars has given birth, that compels us to devote a
portion of this article to a notice of the points in ques-
tion. No trace appears of any doubt having ever been
entertained of the personal existence of Homer, as the
author of the Iliad, till the close of the 17th and be-
ginning of the 18th century, when two French writers,
Hedelin and Perrault, first suggested tho outlines of
a theory respecting the composition of that poem,
which has since been developed with so much learning
and talent by Heyne, Wolfe, and others, that its ori-
ginal authors are now almost forgotten. The substance
of this theory is, that, whether any such person as
Homer lived or not, the Iliad was not composed en-
tirely by him or by any other individual, but is a com-
pilation, methodized indeed and arranged by success-
? ? ive editors, but still a compilation of minstrelsies, the
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? HOMERuS.
HUMERUS.
I vaieil in the Homeric >>ge. It has likewise been
urged, that the structure of the Homeric verses fur-
nishes a decisive proof, that the state of the Greek
language, at the time when these poems were written,
was different from that in which they must have been
composed. And by others it has been thought incon-
sistent with the law of continual change, to which all
languages are subject, that the form in which these
works now appear should differ so slightly as it docs
from that of the Greek literature, if it really belonged
to the early period in which they were first recited.
Tbese difficulties are, it must be owned, in a great
measure removed by the hypothesis that each poem
is an aggregate of parts composed by different authors;
fcr then the poet's memory might not be too severely
taxed in retaining his work during its progress, and
might be aided by more frequent recitations. But this
hypothesis has been met by a number of objections,
some of which are not very easily satisfied. The ori-
ginal unity of each poem is maintained by arguments
derived partly from the uniformity of the poetical char-
acter, and partly from the apparent singleness of plan
which each of them exhibits. Even those who do not
think it necessary to suppose an original unity of de-
sign in the Iliad, still conceive that all its parts are
stamped with the style of the samo author. (Clinton,
Fast. Jit II. u, vol. 3, p. 375, 379. ) But with others,
from the time of Aristotle to our own day, the plan
itself has been an object of the warmest admiration;
and it is still contended, that the intimate coherence of
me parts is such as to exclude the hypothesis of a
multiplicity of authors. (Vid. Ilias. ) If the parts out
of which the Iliad or the Odyssey was formed are
supposed to have been at first wholly independent of
each other, the supposition that they could have been
so pieced together as to assume their present appear-
ance is involved in almost insurmountable difficulties.
For how, it may be asked, did the different poets in
*ach instance happen to confine themselves to the
tame circle of subjects, as to the battles before Troy,
and the return of Ulysses 1 Must wo suppose, with a
modern critic (Hermann, Wiener- Jahrbiicher, vol. 54),
that in the Iliad and Odyssey we see the joint labours
of several bards, who drew their subjects from an ear-
lier Iliad and an earlier Odyssey, which contained no
more than short narratives of the same events, but yet
had gained such celebrity for their author, that the
greatest poets of the succeeding period were forced to
adopt his name, and to content themselves with filling
up his outline! This would be an expedient only to
be resorted to in the last emergency. Or must we
adopt the form which this hypothesis, by giving it a
different turn, has been made by others to assume, that
the Iliad and Odyssey, after the main event in each
had formed the subject of a shorter poem, grew un-
der the hands of successive poets, who, guided in
part by popular tradition, supplied what had been left
wanting by their predecessors, until in each case the
curiosity of their hearers had been gratified by a fin-
ished whole? (Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 1, p. 246. )
This supposition is involved in still greater difficulty
than the former, for we have here a race of bards,
who, though living at different periods, and though
the language was, during all this time, undergoing
changes cf some kind or other, yet write all of them
in a manner so similar, and display so few, if any, dis-
crepances, that their various productiens, when col-
? ? lected together, wear all the appearance of a poem by
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? HOMERUS.
HUMERUS.
eomp<<Hed the rhapsodists to follow one another, ar-
cording to the order of the poem, ant] for having thus
restored these great works, which were falling into
fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is iidccd
true, that some arbitrary additions may have oeen made
to them at this period; which, however, we can only
hope to be able to distinguish from the rest of the
roem, by first coming to some general agreement as
lo the original form and subsequent destiny of the Ho-
meric compositions. {Midler, Hist. Gr. Lit. , p. 62,
Introduction of the Homeric Poena into Greece.
Two different accounts are given on this head. 1.
First, it is said that Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator,
met with the poems of Homer during his travels in
Asia, and, being charmed with them, carried them
with ln. 'ii by some means, ami in some shape or other,
tuck to his native city. The authority for this is a
passage of a fragment of Heraclides Ponticus, in which
he says that Lycurgus, "having procured the poetry
of Homer from the descendants of Creophylus, first
introduced it into the Peloponnesus. " /Elian {V. II,
13, 14) repeats this with advantage: "Lycurgus the
Spartan first carried the poetry of Homer in a mass
into Greece. " Plutarch (Vit. Ltjcurg. ) finishes off the
story in his usual manner. "There (in Asia) Lycur-
fros first fell in with the poems of Homer, probably in
the keeping of the descendants of Cleophylus; he
rrr? : them out eagerly, and collected them together
for the purpose of bringing them hither into Greece;
tor there was already at that time an obscure rumour
of these verses among the Greeks, but <<we few only
possessed some scattered fragments of this poetry,
which were circulated in a chance manner. Lycurgus
had the principal hand in making it known. " This
Creophylus or Cleophylus, a Samian, is said to have
been Homer's host in Samos, and a poet himself.
The nucleus of fact in this story may probably consist
z this; that Lycurgus became more acquainted with
*he Homeric versos among the Ionian rhapsodists, and
succeeded in introducing, by means of his own or oth-
tn' memory, some connected portions of them into
Western Greece. That he wrote them all out is, as
we may sec, so far as the original authority goes, due
to the ingenious biographer alone. But the better
founded account of tho introduction, or, at least, of
? be formal collection of the Homeric verses, though
not inconsistent with the other, is, that, after Solon had
directed that the rhapsodists should, upon public oc-
casions, recite in a certain order of poetical narration,
and not confusedly, the end before the beginning, as
had been the previous practice, Pisistratus, with the
ielp of a large body of the most celebrated poets of
llis age, made a regular collection of the different rhap-
sodies which passed under Homer's name, committed
them all to writing, and arranged them very much in
the terics in which we now possess them. The di-
vision of the rhapsodies into books corresponding with
the letters of the Greek alphabet, was probably the
work of the Alexandrean critics many centuries after-
ward. Now the authorities for attributing this primary
reduction into form to Pisistratus, are numerous and
express, and a few quotations from them will be the
most satisfactory way of putting the student in pos-
session of the opinions of the ancients upon this sub-
|ect--" Who," says Cicero, "was more learned in
that age, or whose eloquence is reported to have been
more refined by literature than that of Pisistratus,
? ? who is said first to have disposed the books of Homer,
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? HOMERUS.
HUMERUS.
> poet oi Colophon; and of another very celebrated
oi. e by Aristotle, which edition Alexander is said to
have himself corrected and kept in a very precious
casket, taken among the spoils of the camp of Darius.
This edition was called 7 Ik tov vupdnnoc. The edi-
tions by any known individual were called oi hot' uv-
tpa, to distinguish them from several editions existing
in different cities, but not attributed to any particular
editors. These latter were called al xaru rtoXeic, or
al rx itoXeav. The Massiliotic, Chian, Argive, Sino-
pic, Cyprian, and Cretan are mentioned. There are
three other names very conspicuous among the mul-
titude of clitics, and commentators, and editors of
the Iliad in subsequent times; these are Zenodotus,
Aristophanes, the inventor of accents, and Aristarchus.
This last celebrated man lived in the reign of Ptolemy
Philometor, B. C. 150, and, after a collation of all the
copies then existing, he published a new edition, or
&top0uoic, of the Iliad, divided into books, the text of
which, according to the general opinion of critics, has
finally prevailed as the genuine diction of Homer.
{Coleridge, Introduction, &. c, p. 37-55. ) In the
preface to Gronovius' Thesaurus (vol. 5), there is a
particular and curious account of the manner in which
Pisistratus put together the poems of Homer. It is
taken from the Commentary of Diomedes Scholasticus
on the grammar of Dionysius the Thracian, and was
first published in the original Greek by Bekker, in the
second vol. of his Anecdota Grctca (p. 767, seqq. ). It
is in substance as follows: The poems of Homer
were in a fragmentary state, in different hands. One
man had a hundred verses; another two hundred; a
third a thousand, &c. Thereupon Pisistratus, not
being able to find the poems entire, proclaimed all
over Greece, that whoever brought to him verses of
Homer, should receive so much for each line. All
who brought any received the promised reward, even
those who brought lines which he had already obtained
from others. Sometimes people brought him verses
of their own for those of Homer, now marked with an
obelus (roi>c vvv o6eXi(o/ievovc). After having thus
made a collection, he employed 72 grammarians to
pu' together the verses of Homer in the manner they
I'. iought best. After each had separately arranged the
verses, he brought them all together, and made each
show to the whole his own particular work. Having
all in a body examined carefully and impartially, they
with one accord gave the preference to the composi-
tions of Aristarchus and Zenodotus, and determined
still farther, that the former had made the better one of
the two. (Bekker, Anec. Grac. , I. c. )
Iliad and Odyssey.
For an account of these two poems, and the discus-
sions connected with them, consult the articles Ilias
and Odyssea. The remainder of our remarks on the
present occasion will be confined to a brief consider-
ation of a few minor productions that are commonly
attributed to Homer.
1. Margites.
This poem, which was a satire upon some Strenuous
blockhead, as the name implies, does not now exist;
but it was so famous in former times that it seems
proper to select it for a slight notice from among the
score of lost works attributed to the hand of Homer.
It is said by Harpocration that Callimachus admired
ths Margites, and Dio Chrysostom says (Diss. 53)
that Zeno the philosopher wrote a commentary on it.
? ? A genuine verse, taken from this poem, is well known:
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? HOM
HON
m great reputation at Syracuse about 500 B. C. . was
supposed by many to be the real Homer of this par-
ticular poem. One thing, however, is certain, that
these hymns are extremely ancient, and it is probable
that some of them only yield to the Iliad and Odyssey
in remoteness of date. They vary in character and
poetical merit; but there is scarcely one among them
that has not something to interest us, and they have
ill of them, in a greater or less degree, that simple
Homeric liveliness which never fails to charm us
wherever we meet with it.
4. Epigrams.
Under the title of Epigrams are classed a few verses
on different subjects, chiefly addresses to cities or
private individuals. There is one short hymn to Nep-
tune which seems out of its place here. In the fourth
epigram, Homer is represented as speaking of his
blindness and his itinerant life. As regards the gen-
eral character of the Greek Epigram, it mav here be
remarked, that u is so far from being the same with,
or even like to, the Epigram of modern times, that
sometimes it is completely the reverse. In general,
the songs in Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Waller, and,
where he writes with simplicity, in Moore, give a better
notion of the Greek Epigrams than any other species
of modern composition.
5. Fragments.
The Fragments, as they are called, consist of a few
scattered lines which are said to have been formerly
found in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the other sup-
posed works of Homer, end to have been omitted as
spurious or dropped by chance from their ostensible
context. Besides these, there are some passages from
toe Little Iliad, and a string of verses taken from Ho-
mer's answers in the old work, called the Contests of
Homer and Hesiod. {Coleridge, Introduction, dec,
p. 235. )
Conclusion.
Since the Homeric question was first agitated by
Wolf and Heyne, it has been placed on a very differ-
ent footing by the labours of more recent scholars.
The student may consult with advantage the following
works: Xitzsch, de Hisloria Homeri Meletemata. --
Kreuser, Vor/ragen Other Homcros. --Id. , Homerisehe
Rkaptodcn. -- Miillcr, Homerisehe Vorschulc. -- Hci-
ncckc, Homer und Lt/eurg. --Knight, Prolegomena ad
Homerum. -- London Quarterly Review, No. 87. --
Miller's Review of Nitzsch's work, in the GStlingen,
Gel. Anteigen, for Fcbr. , 1831. --Hermann's remarks
m the Wiracr Jahrbiieher, vol. 64. --Hug, Erfindung
der Buchstabenschrift. --An argument which confines
itself to the writings of Wolf and Heyne, can now add
hut little to our means of forming a judgment on the
Homeric question, and must keep some of its most
impoitant elements out of sight. (ThirlwaU's Greece,
vol. 1, p 248, t'n notis. )--The best edition of the Iliad
is that of Heyne, Lips. , 1802-1822,9 vols. 8vo. The
most popular edition of the entire works is that of
Clarke, improved by Ernesti, Lips. , 1759, 1824,
Glasg. , 1814, 5 vols. 8vo. The most critical one,
however, is that of Wolf, Lips. , 1804-1807, 4 vols.
12mo. A good edition of the Odyssey is still needed,
though the want may in a great measure be supplied
by the excellent commentary of Nitzsch, Hannor. ,
1826-1831, 2 vols. 8vo. --II. A poet, surnamed, for
distinction' sake, the Younger. He was a native of
Hierapolis in Caria, and flourished under Ptolemy
? ? Philadelphia. Homer the Younger formed one of the
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? HOR
HOUaTILS.
nus died of the dropsy at Ravenna, in August, 423,
leav'ng no issue. {Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 39,
teqq. --Encycl. Vs. Knowl. , vol. 12, p. 281. )
Horapollo, or Hobus Apollo, a grammarian of
Alexandrca, according to Suidas, in the time of the
Roman emperor Theodosius. He taught, first in his
native city, and afterward in Constantinople, and
wrote, under the title of Te/tevixu, a work on conse-
crated places. Several other writers of this name are
mentioned by Suidas, by Stephanus of Byzantium
(j v. *eve6j;6't{->, by Photins (p. 536, ed. Bekker), and
by Eustathius (ad Od. 4). It is doubtful to which one
of the whole number a treatise which has come down
tc us on Egyptian Hieroglyphics is to be ascribed.
According to the inscription that is found in most
MSS. , the work was originally written in Egyptian,
and translated into Greek by a person named Philip.
Bit, whatever opinion we may form respecting the
author, it is evident that the work could not have been
written before the Christian era, since it contains allu-
sions to the philosophical tenets of the Gnostics. Its
merits are differently estimated. The object of the
writer appears to have been, not to furnish *a key to
the Hieroglyphic system, but to 'explain the emblems
and attributes of the gods. Champollion, and Lee-
mans in his edition of the work, are disposed to at-
tribute greater importance to it than former critics had
been willing to allow. The best edition is that of Lee-
mar. s, Amsl. , 1834, 8vo. Previous to the appearance
of this, the best edition was that of De Pauw, Traj. ad
Rhen. , 1727, 4to.
HoRi? ('ilpai), the Seasons or Hours, who had
charge of the gates of Heaven. Hesiod says that they
were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis; and he
names them Eunomia (Order), Dike (Justice), and
Eirene(Peace). "They watch," adds the poet, "over
the works of mortal man" (ipy' upaiovoi Karathnrotat
QpoToioi. --Thcog. , 903). By an unknown poet (ap.
Htobaum. --Lobeck, Aglaoph. , p. 600), the Hone are
called the daughters of Time; and by late poets they
were named the children of the year, and their num-
ber was increased to twelve. . (Nonnus, 11, 486. --Id. ,
12, 17. ) Some made them seven or ten in number.
(Hygin. , fab. , 183. )--The Hora seem to have been
originally regarded as presiding over the three seasons
into which the ancient Greeks divided the year.
(Wclcker, Tril. , p. 500, not. ) As the day was simi-
larly divided (11. , 21, 111), they came to be regarded
as presiding over its parts also; and when it was far-
ther subdivided into hours, these minor parts were
placed under their charge, and were named from them.
(Quint. , Smyrn , 2, 595. --Nonnus, I. c. ) Order and
regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transi-
tion was easy from the natural to the moral world;
and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were re-
garded as presiding over law, justice, and peace, the
great producers of order and harmony among men.
(Keighlley's Mythology, p. 190, seq. )
Horatu, the sister of the Horatii, killed by her
surviving brother for deploring the death of her be-
trothed, one of the Curiatii, and for reproaching him
with the deed by which she had lost her lover. (Vid.
Horatius II. )
Horatios, I. Quintus Flaccds, a celebrated Ro-
man poet, born at Venusia or Venusiurn, December
8ih, B. C. 65, during the consulship of I,. Aurclius
Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. (Od. , 3, 21 1.
? ?
