instance of trial by the uódpos. Heliodorus's story35 of an altar, by which youthful chastity was proved, inasmuch as, if unchaste persons approached it, flames burst forth, is justly classed by Becker among the ordeals.36 It proves, however, nothing for Greece.

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Lastly, we find among the Greeks traces of the ordeal by water. The best known instance of this kind is that of the "lacus," "xpŕn," or two "xpatypes" of Sicily, which had the κρήνη," σε name of “ Παλικοί.” We obtain little information from Strabo37 regarding these, somewhat more from Diodorus, 38 who mentions the ancient sanctity of the temple of the Palici, and speaks of the water bursting forth "¿1⁄2 áμvdýτov Budou" with great force, and to a great height. Macrobius too (Saturn. v. 19.) says something on the subject. Diodorus says: Toαútyg dè θεοπρεπείας οὔσης περὶ τὸ τέμενος, οἱ μέγιστοι τῶν ὅρκων ἐνταῦθα συντελοῦνται, καὶ τοῖς ἐπιορκήσασι σύντομος ἡ τοῦ δαιμονίου κόλασις ἀκολουθεῖ· τινὲς γὰρ τῆς ὁρασέως στερηθέντες τὴν ἐκ τοῦ τεμένους ǎpodov пolouνtal.39 This is certainly brief enough. The followἄφοδον ποιοῦνται.39 ing is equally unsatisfactory: μεγάλης δὲ οὔσης δεισιδαιμονίας, οἱ τὰς ἀμφισβητήσεις ἔχοντες, ὅταν ὑπό τινος ὑπεροχῆς κατισχύωνται, τῇ διὰ τῶν ὅρκων τούτων ἀναιρέσει κρίνονται. Thus we see that the decision of disputes also was referred to the Palici, when any one, being opposed to a wealthy or influential person, expected neither aid nor justice from any earthly tribunal. Macrobius relates: cum furti negati vel ejuscemodi rei fides quæritur, et jusjurandum a suspecto petitur, uterque ab omni contagione

glowing coals. This appears to have been a mere piece of priestcraft. Becker has justly observed that Brunck ought not to have compared the θαυμαστὴ ἱεροTota of the Hirpi with the words of Sophocles.

35 Ethiop. x. c. 8.

36 Ordeals for virgin purity are known to have existed among many nations. Grimm mentions several. Becker mentions, in addition, a grotto of Pan near Ephesus, (Achill. Tat. VIII. 6,) and a dragon's den near Lanuvium, (Aelian Hist. Animal. XI. 6,) where similar ordeals were employed. Vide Böttiger's "Kleine Schriften," edited by Jul. Sillig, 1. 5, pp. 178-182; Comp. p. 129. VI. p. 275.

37

VI.

39 Solinus, in his description of the curiosities of Sardinia, mentions springs possessed of salutary properties in cases of disease of the eye, and adds, Sed qui (fontes) oculis medentur, et coarguendis valent furibus. Nam quisquis sacramento raptum negat, lumina aquis attrectat. Ubi perjurium non est, cernit clarius; si perfidia abnuit, detegitur facinus caecitate, et captus oculis admissum tenebris fatetur, With this may be compared the description of the dwg gxiov near Tyana, given by Philostratus, vit. Apollon. 1. 6, comp. Ammian. Marcellin. XXIII. 6, and that of the Qging laśyxov in Philostratus, 1. c. III.

c. 14.

2 D

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mundi ad crateras accedunt, accepto prius fidejussore a persona, quae juratura est, de solvendo eo, quod peteretur, si addixisset eventus: illic invocato loci numine testatum faciebat esse jurator, de quo juraret. Quod si fideliter faceret, discedebat illaesus, si vero subesset mala conscientia, mox in lacu amittebat vitam falsus jurator. We are informed by Polemo, περὶ τῶν ἐν Σικελία θαυμαζομένων ποταμῶν, cited by Macrobius, that the jurator” stepped to the " κρατήρ,” θαλλὸν κραδαίνων, ἐστεμμένος, ἄζωστος, καὶ μονοχίτων. Finally, we may compare Stephanus Byzantius under Παλική: ἔστι δὲ καὶ κρήνη τις ἐν Παλικοῖς τῆς Σικελίας δεκάκλινος· αὕτη δὲ ἀναῤῥίπτει ὕδωρ εἰς ὕψος ἓξ πήχεις, ὥστε ὑπὸ τῶν θεωρούντων νομίζεσθαι κατακλυσθήσεσθαι τὸ πέδιον, καὶ πάλιν εἰς ἑαυτὸ καθίσταται· ἔστι δὲ καὶ ὅρκος ἅγιος αὐτόθι· ὅσα γὰρ ἀμνύει τις, εἰς πινάκιον γράψας, βάλλει αὐτὸς εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ἐὰν μὲν οὖν εὐόρκη, ἐπιπολάζει, ἐὰν δὲ μὴ εὐόρκη, τὸ μὲν πινάκιον ἀφανίζεται, αὐτὸς δὲ πίμπραται.

The Στυγὸς ὕδωρ near Nonacris in Arcadia was another ὕδωρ ὅρκιον.4 It was ice cold, and so powerful a solvent, that nothing but the hoof of a horse or an ass could resist its influence. Its effect was considered fatal.41 That it was a ὕδωρ ὅρκιον is clear from Herodotus, vi. 74. Probably the confirmation of an oath was obtained in this way,-that the person who had sworn was made to drink of the water, which operated fatally if he had perjured himself, but had no injurious effects upon him if he had sworn truly.

Achilles Tatius 42 mentions this tradition, but places the well in a different locality. He considers the well also as an ordeal of virginity. He says : ὅταν τις αἰτίαν ἔχῃ ἀφροδισίων, εἰς τὴν πηγὴν εἰςβᾶσα ἀπολούεται· ἡ δ ̓ ἐστὶν ὀλίγη καὶ μέχρι κνήμης μέσης ἡ δὲ κρίσις · ἐγγράψας τὸν ὅρκον γραμματείῳ μηρίνθῳ δεδέμενον περιεθήκατο τῇ δέρῃ· κἂν μὲν ἀψευδῇ τὸν ὅρκον, μένει κατὰ χώραν ἡ πηγή· ἂν δὲ ψεύδηται, τὸ ὕδωρ ὀρίγζεται καὶ ἀναβαίνει μέχρι τῆς δέρης καὶ τὸ γραμματεῖον ἐκάλυψεν. Α fountain sacred to Artemis, of A similar power is mentioned by Eustathius.43

Although, from what we have here collected, we cannot as

sert that ordeals were as common among the Greeks and Romans, and as deeply rooted in their feelings, or as much a kind of judicial usage as, according to Grimm, they were among the Germans and in India, yet we think we have shewn that it would be very rash to say that the idea was entirely foreign to them.

K. H. FUNKHÄNEL.

XXVII.

HOMER, HIS ART AND HIS AGE.

THE highest productions of genius, as they are in themselves objects of the greatest interest, and sources of the best enjoyment, so they form the great centres and turning points of historical disquisition. Mighty causes, whatever their class, they exert a predominant influence on contemporary and succeeding generations, and the scrutiny of their relation to anterior times, engages the student by every motive of instruction and curiosity.

In the most perfect works of genius, history culminates, but when the most perfect are at the same time, by the accidents of ages, the earliest preserved, the difficulty and interest of the inquiry are enhanced together, and the elucidation of their origin taxes all the resources of the most refined analysis.

Such, and so situated in history, are the Homeric Epics; monuments of human progress, at a stage where progress was most momentous, and its conditions most obscure, they are at once the earliest and most perfect poetic compositions bequeathed to us by antiquity. It is not too much to say, that the people capable of producing and appreciating such works was, by the genial originality and capacity of education so evinced, equal to any career, to the achievement of any step in civilization, since made by the race. At the date of these poems, in one section of the species, all the preliminary work for the discipline of the independent and adult intellect of man had been successfully gone through, and the fortunes of progressive humanity were finally assured. Here, then, lies the great problem

of the history of Greece; the Homeric poems and their conditions assumed, no difficulty of consequence remains in accounting for all forms and stages of Greek development, and its consequence, the abiding manifestation of the civilized elements of society as distinguished from, and dominating, the merely barbarian. The Greek historian, therefore, is bound not to assume, but to apply himself to the task of accounting for, these crowning productions of imaginative and intellectual activity and moral experience.

This is not the work of one man, nor of one generation; directly and indirectly it has been advanced by a vast application of industry and sagacity, but opinion approaches unanimity but tardily, and students who have rendered best service at one point, have frequently done damage by discrediting the acquisitions of competitors at others; for the rest, as the discussion is now left, there is perhaps more excuse for recurring to it than there would be had either more or less been settled.

Isolated as the poems stand in time, with a chasm between them and the utmost verge of history, and dark chaos beyond, our first chance of obtaining some glimpse of the form and nature of the materials of the poet, and thus the antecedent stages by which he and his audience had been advanced so far, is the examination and comparison of various parts of the poems themselves, which, from variety of subject and extensive plan, may well lead us to hope for decisive indications. And few critics have denied that such are not entirely wanting,—that, notwithstanding the power of poetical genius in using and metamorphosing its adopted materials, vestiges of an earlier creation and fragments of anterior formations remain detectable by contrast of character, or incongruousness of structure, from whatever cause admitted by the poet, whether in carelessness, indifference, or by design.

These incongruities, however, thus assumed as instructive, are, it must be said, open to another construction; they may be interpreted, and have been, not as relics of an earlier, but intrusions of a later age, confounded with spurious interpolations or completions of another hand. To such liabilities all ancient literature is exposed, and the most ancient can scarcely claim exemption; the two classes must, therefore, be characterised, and their limits ascertained. This is no easy task in itself; and in a short time the extension of the charge of spuriousness

seriously compromises the individuality of the authorship of the poems, and this given up, their historical relations are shifted at once. Thus is opened the vexed question of Homeric unity. Are the two poems the work of the same author? Is each poem the work of a single author, or of more than one, and if of more than one, by what plan of co-operation, or at what intervals of succession ?

Vexed as these questions have been, they can no more be avoided here; my special purpose will explain the necessity of abbreviation, but something must be attempted to establish a few defensible positions as a base of farther operation. As regards the general discussion, nothing less is in question than to decide whether the Homeric Epics are in reality works of art or haps of accident; do they indeed represent an epoch, or are they the common heritage of undefined ages ?

There is nothing in questions as to the mode of preservation of the poems from the earliest assigned age, it may now be said to be admitted, that is inconsistent with individual authorship; they may have been preserved in writing from the first, for anything that can be shewn to the contrary; and, for anything that can be shewn to the contrary, it is quite within the limits of possibility, that they were composed in the first instance, and preserved, and transmitted for centuries, quite independently of the art. The historical authorities, again, once much relied on in evidence for the earliest form of the poems, may be said now to be quite discredited, and by common agreement set aside.

The multifarious hypotheses of mixed authorship range under one or other of two leading types. According to the first, the epics were constructed at a late period,-even it may be as late as Peisistratus,-out of a number of earlier disconnected lays; according to the second, an early poet gave the outline and plan of the poems in short compositions, which were afterwards enlarged by a succession of poets till they reached their present dimensions.

The objection to the first view is, that the uniformity of poetic style throughout the poems is marked to such a degree, and the relevance of the parts to a general scheme is so decided, that it is inconceivable how poets of such equal merit composing without concert and at distant intervals, should furnish materials capable of being put together coherently—of