Studies on Homer and the Homeric AgeFour-time prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) was also a prolific author and enthusiastic scholar of the classics. Gladstone had spent almost two decades in politics prior to his writing the three-volume Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. This work and the preceding 'On the place of Homer in classical education and in historical inquiry' (1857), reflect Gladstone's interest in the Iliad and the Odyssey, which he read with increasing frequency from the 1830s onward and which he viewed as particularly relevant to modern society. As he relates, he has two objects in the Studies: 'to promote and extend' the study of Homer's 'immortal poems' and 'to vindicate for them ... their just degree both of absolute and, more especially, of relative critical value'. Volume 3 examines Greek polities of this period before returning to the poems themselves, their plots, characters and the beauty of their language. |
Contents
Their strong development in Heroic Greece | 2 |
Functions of the king in the Heroic Polities | 8 |
8 | 14 |
Shown by analysis of the Catalogue | 15 |
New name of Queen | 21 |
The first instance of a bad King | 27 |
92 | 41 |
94 | 56 |
Glory given to Achilles | 381 |
Conflicting exigencies of the plan | 387 |
Retributive justice in the two poems | 393 |
human animal and inanimate | 397 |
SECT III | 425 |
Greek estimate of the discovery of Number | 431 |
His silence as to the numbers of the armies | 439 |
Case of the Trojan bivouac | 442 |
του | 109 |
How that case bears witness to the popular principle | 126 |
Appeal of Telemachus to the Ithacan Assembly | 132 |
Judicial functions of the Assembly | 139 |
THE TROJANS COMPARED AND CONTRASTED | 145 |
The family of Priam 211 | 159 |
Stricter ideas among the Greeks | 215 |
Paris most probably was his eldest son | 221 |
Extent of his sovereignty and supremacy | 228 |
The greater weight of Age in Troy | 235 |
Trojans less gifted with selfcommand | 243 |
THALASSA | 249 |
Limits of the Inner Geography | 255 |
The Sphere of the Outer Geography | 261 |
Special notices of Eurus and Notus | 267 |
Homeric distances and rates of speed | 275 |
The northward searoute to the Euxine | 281 |
Amalgamated reports of the Oceanmouth | 287 |
Straits of Yenikalè as Oceanmouth | 295 |
Argument from the Πλαγκταὶ | 302 |
From his homeward passage | 308 |
Genuineness of the passage questionable | 315 |
Ææa and the Euxine viviii | 325 |
Tours of Menelaus and Ulysses compared | 331 |
Points of contact with Oceanus | 337 |
Outline of Homers terrestrial system | 342 |
EXCURSUS II | 349 |
Force of ἐπὶ with ἀριστερὰ | 356 |
ii 526 | 362 |
Offer related in the Ninth Book and its rejection | 369 |
Apology needed in particular | 375 |
Case of the three Decades of years | 449 |
Uses of the proposed interpretation | 455 |
Of κύανος and κυάνεος | 463 |
The ῥοδόεις and ῥοδοδάκτυλος | 469 |
Χάροπος σιγαλόεις μαρμάρεος ἠεροειδὴς | 475 |
Especially in the Greek Catalogue 440 | 478 |
In the case of human beauty and of Iris | 482 |
His system one of light and dark | 489 |
Greek philosophy of colour | 493 |
Xaλkos to be understood as hardened copper | 499 |
Catalogue in the Iliad and in the Æneid | 505 |
His false position as to religion liberty and nationality | 511 |
Action of the Twelfth Æneid | 520 |
The woman characters of Homer and Virgil | 527 |
PostHomeric change in the idea of the Poets office | 533 |
Comparison of the Trojan War with the Crusades | 535 |
Intrusion of incongruous elements | 542 |
Obtrusiveness of the amatory element | 548 |
Tassos greatness except as compared with Homer | 554 |
His boastfulness his only moral fault | 561 |
Brightness of his character as to the affections | 567 |
Homers intention with respect to it | 573 |
Homers epithets and simile for Helen | 575 |
For the two first 272 | 577 |
vi Il xxiv Od iv | 581 |
His place in the War | 587 |
General obliteration of the finer distinctions | 593 |
Mutilation of the Ulysses of Homer | 601 |
New relative position of Trojans and Greeks | 607 |
Racines Iphigénie | 613 |
Common terms and phrases
Achilles Ææa Æneas Æneid Agamemnon Ajax Alcinous Apollo appears army Assembly beauty Book Boreas Bosphorus called Calypso Catalogue character chiefs Circe colour command Crete Cyclopes deities described Diomed distance east epithet Eurus Euxine evidence Greece Greek hand Hector Helen hero heroic age Homer Ibid idea Idomeneus Iliad island Ithaca Juno Jupiter king less Lotophagi Lycia means Menelaus mind Minerva moral mouth nature Nestor Notus Ocean Ocean-mouth Odyssey Ogygia Olympus Outer Geography oxen Paris passage Patroclus Pelasgian perhaps person Phæacians Phoenician Pieria plain poem Poet poetical political Priam priest probably race respect route sail Scamander Scheria Scylla seems sense ships simply speak speech Straits Suitors Telemachus Thersites Thrinacie tion tradition Troas Trojan Troy Ulysses Virgil voyage whole wind word worship xxiii xxiv Zephyr δὲ ἐν καὶ οἱ τε