H. Munro Chadwick

“ The second of the two principles which we find dominant in early Teutonic society, namely that of personal allegiance, seems at first sight to play by no means so important a part in the life of heroic Greece. But for the lack of prominence assigned to it there are special reasons—a different reason in the case of each poem. In the Iliad, which deals with campaign life, the stage is so crowded with kings that there is little room left for persons of humbler station. The only force indeed of which we have any account at all is that of Achilles. ”

“ Are we then to suppose that Beowulf is based upon the Odyssey? That is a hypothesis which I will gladly leave for others to work out. For my own part I prefer the explanation that similar poetry is the outcome, or rather the expression, of similar social conditions. But in Beowulf and the Homeric poems, as against the Aeneid, we have additional common elements in the fact that the interest is centred in the actual characters—not in the destiny of their descendants—and in the vividness and reality of the narratives, in spite of Grendel, Scylla and the rest. ”

“ It is of course in princes that we find these features most strongly developed. That which they prize above all else is the ability to indulge their desires to the full—in feasting and every form of enjoyment for themselves, in unlimited generosity to their friends, in ferocious vindictiveness towards their foes. The hero of the Odyssey, when his opportunity arrives, sets no limit to the vengeance which he exacts, from prince, goatherd and maidservant. Achilles, the chief hero of the Iliad, is transformed into a savage when he gets possession of the dead body of his enemy. ”

“ But the fact that deities participate in their destruction does not in itself prove that they are themselves products of myth or fiction.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when most of the characters of the Greek Heroic Age were believed to owe their origin to nature-myth—personifications of light, darkness and so forth. At the present time however it is only in some few cases that this view is generally maintained. Its chief stronghold is the case of Achilles; and here we are invariably referred for proof to the story of Sigurðr. ”

“ So also in government the council of the tribe or community has come to be nothing more than a comitatus or court. The result of the change is that the man who possesses a comitatus becomes largely free from the control of his kindred, while the chief similarly becomes free from control within his community. In both cases the only opposition that he now has to fear is from rivals who desire to take his place or from persons outside the kindred or community and in a similar position to himself. Certainly this freedom applies only to the case of kings or princes with followings of their own. ”

“ It must not be overlooked that the Brynhildr and Högni of the Norse version are in the nature of character-studies. Both appeal to our sympathies, though we do not approve of the actions which they commit or allow. Here we are in a region of thought as alien as possible to that of the folk-tale. But it is also alien to that period of thought, which was most open to the influence of folk-tales, the period which we have called Stage III in the history of German poetry. In such a period the person who destroyed the hero must necessarily be a villain as black as Hell. ”

“ Among modern scholars the general tendency has been to assign the chief weight to myth. By many indeed the heroes of the Trojan War are believed to be as mythical in origin as the gods themselves.
One conclusion may safely be drawn from the Northern evidence discussed in the last chapter: we must definitely dismiss the argument that the Homeric heroes cannot have been men of flesh and blood because they are brought into contact with the gods. No one will be so hardy as to suggest that King Haakon or his namesake, the famous earl of Lade, were products of myth or poetic imagination. ”

“ Yet modern discoveries have brought to light abundant evidence for cremation in the early iron age—sometimes in spots which are marked by no external monument—so that the statements of Ynglinga Saga may be regarded as based on good tradition. We are driven to conclude therefore that in their conception of immortality, as in their theology, the inhabitants of the North held two wholly inconsistent views—or, perhaps it would be more correct to say, two entirely opposite views as to the desirability of retaining the souls of the dead. ”

“ From the sixth century onwards poets and philosophers began to regard Zeus as much more than the chief of the gods; but even in popular religion it appears that each state honoured certain deities, while the rest were largely or altogether neglected. Thus at Athens more prominence seems to have been given to Athene, and perhaps also to Poseidon, than to Zeus, while Hera was predominant at Argos and Samos, and Apollo at Delphoi, etc. This is a feature for which the Homeric poems themselves give evidence, as we have seen, and there is no reason whatever for supposing it to be of later growth. ”

“ In Greece itself we have not such clear evidence for the prevalence of a non-Greek language. Here we are dependent on somewhat doubtful inferences from place-names. Yet the majority of scholars would not admit that the language was indigenous. Indeed the tendency at present is to believe that Greece and the Aegean islands were originally inhabited by peoples of one stock, the existence of which can be traced back in Crete for many thousands of years, and that these peoples were ultimately overwhelmed and absorbed—perhaps in the course of the second millennium—by invaders from the north. ”

“ Secondly, it is in our power, probably far more than it was in that of Thucydides and his contemporaries, to compare the Homeric stories with others of the same type. It is here that our great advantage lies. But can it be said that this advantage has been turned to account by modern writers? Many works contain no reference to any poetry other than Greek and Latin—the latter of which, owing to its dependence upon Greek, is of little value for our purpose. Many others, it is true, have used the evidence of Teutonic heroic poetry. ”

“ We find that the use of fiction appears to be shown not only in the presentation of the stories (as in Teutonic poetry) but also in the invention of minor characters. The extent to which it is used is a problem which requires further investigation. The last remark applies also to the fourth group. In principle it is only reasonable to expect that both characters and incidents may have been transferred from one story to another. But the instances which have been suggested are tainted with the 'tribal hero' hypothesis and the evidence on which they rest is altogether inconclusive. ”

“ But then we should only be repeating the old error of building hypothesis upon hypothesis. For it is a hypothesis, and nothing more, that the original poems were concerned with tribal or national interests; the poems which have come down to us deal with the fortunes of individuals. Moreover we should not thereby save the theory that the Iliad is a reflection of the Greek settlement of the north-western coast of Asia Minor; for that settlement was not Achaean but Aeolic. ”

“ To all these the typical folk-tale presents a marked contrast. Some of the leading characters, including either the hero or the heroine or both, are usually persons of humble birth. The opponents of the hero or heroine tend to be represented as monsters of cruelty or vice, even when they are of royal rank, as is often the case. There is no inclination to avoid horrible or coarse subjects. Above all we miss those detailed descriptions of court life upon which the heroic poems are so fond of dwelling. ”

“ Dragons endowed with supernatural or at least unnatural characteristics figure in the folk-tales of many nations throughout the world; and such stories are by no means restricted to maritime populations. Very frequently no doubt they are handed on from one people to another, and their currency is perhaps assisted by works of art. We have to remember that the word draca is derived from Latin. Yet the conception itself is probably much older; at all events the association of such monsters with hoards of gold can be traced back in northern regions to a very remote antiquity [187] . ”

“ No one will deny that the personification of tribes and nationalities is to be found in both the poetry and the prose literature of many peoples. In certain passages of the Old Testament this principle of interpretation has been recognised from ancient times. But the authorities in which these passages occur cannot be described as heroic poems. Again Greek literature itself also yields plenty of obvious examples, such as the stories of Hellen and his sons and Danaos, several of which can be traced back to quite early poems. ”

“ The Heroic Age, both Greek and Teutonic, presents us with the picture of a society largely free from restraint of any kind. In the higher ranks tribal law has ceased to maintain its force; and its decay leaves the individual free from obligations both to the kindred and to the community. He may disregard the bonds of kinship even to the extent of taking a kinsman's life; and he recognises no authority beyond that of the lord whose service he has entered. The same freedom is exhibited in his attitude to the deities. ”

“ It is true that under certain conditions one name occasionally does displace another in heroic stories; but we have seen no reason for believing that the conditions favourable to such changes ever prevailed in the history of Greek heroic poetry. Neither the name Ἀγαμέμνων nor the later inferences to Ζεύς Ἀγαμέμνων seem to me to afford any valid ground for doubting that Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae originally concerned in the story. ”

“ We saw in the last chapter that the speech in which Patroclos exhorts his men to battle is entirely in the spirit of the Teutonic comitatus. The appeal which he makes to them is not to any feeling of patriotism, but entirely to the effect that they should show their devotion to their own lord. We may note that several of the chief men, at all events Patroclos, Automedon and Phoinix, seem to share Achilles' hut. The passionate friendship of Achilles and Patroclos appears to be a stronger bond than any other relationship that we meet with in the Homeric poems. ”

“ The higher artistic level of the Greek poems cannot but pre-dispose us in favour of the view that their use of fiction is of a more advanced type. This expectation is fully realised in the elaborate presentation of many of the scenes, whether the actors be human beings who may or may not have taken part in the events described, or divine beings whose mythical origin no one will dispute. In the σύστασις τῶν πραγμάτων the art of poetic invention is developed to a high degree of perfection. ”

“ It must not escape notice that those scholars who most strongly uphold the mythical interpretation base their arguments chiefly on such works as the Seyfridslied and Thiðreks Saga af Bern. The explanation is that myth is a growth which requires time to develop. Even Beowulf is no real exception to the general rule, for in the latter part the hero is probably confused with a namesake whose story may have been of considerable antiquity, while the only character in the poem who is quite clearly of mythical origin is the first ancestor of the Danish royal family [220] . ”

“ On the other hand it has what we may call a Heroic Age of its own—namely the Viking Age. We have no poems—and few stories of any kind—dealing with persons of Norwegian nationality who lived before that period. The remoteness, poverty and mountainous nature of the country doubtless retarded its development, not only politically but also in the cultivation of poetry. The strophic character of all Norse poetry is generally held to point to a choric origin, and it may very well be that this primitive type of poetry was the only one used in Norway when the heroic stories first became known there. ”

“ If we examine the history of the Teutonic Heroic Age we shall see that this analogy holds good both for individual princes and for the class as a whole. From the first century to the fifth—we may take the cases of Italicus the son of Flavus and of Theodric the Ostrogoth—it was customary for the Romans to demand the youthful sons of Teutonic kings as hostages. That the accession of such persons to power in later life would open up a channel for the introduction of foreign ideas needs probably no demonstration. ”

“ One of these is the fact that wars are generally represented as arising out of the personal quarrels or jealousies of princes, or out of wrongs perpetrated by one prince upon another. Thus it has been assumed by many scholars that the story of the abduction of Helen is of mythical origin, not on account of any intrinsic improbability contained in it, but because it is founded on a motif which is extremely common in folk-tales. ”

“ No impartial observer can fail to have been struck by the immense strides made within the last generation by Greek archaeology, as compared with the very small amount of progress made from the literary side—at least if progress is to be judged by the attainment of any general consensus of opinion. Experienced archaeologists can now very soon determine whether the remains which they find are those of a village or a palace, and whether they belong to (let us say) the classical or the geometrical or the Mycenean period. ”

“ In Anglo-Saxon poems—even in those which were not entirely dependent on oral tradition—modernisation prevailed to such an extent that archaic forms disappeared practically everywhere, while substitutions of one word for another were very frequent. The more elaborate character of Greek metre doubtless acted as a check on this tendency to change, but at the same time I cannot help thinking that its importance in the history of Homeric poetry has been greatly underrated. ”

“ The story of Offa is an instance of heroism in single combat. In the various stories connected with Dietrich von Bern attention is centred chiefly on the bravery, loyalty and resourcefulness of the hero and his knights.
It will be seen that throughout the heroic poetry of the Teutonic peoples, in episodes as well as in the main stories, the chief motif is almost invariably love or revenge or personal bravery. The same remark applies obviously enough to Greek heroic poetry—to the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as to the stories of Heracles, Iason and the rest. ”

“ THE USE OF FICTION IN THE HEROIC POEMS.
The question how far the use of fiction was permitted in heroic poetry is of course one to which we cannot possibly hope to give a definite answer. All poetry which deserves the name claims to do something more than provide a bare record of facts. ”

“ With both [Pg 326] these passages we may compare the dying words of Beowulf (v. 2802 ff.) : "After the pyre is consumed command my famous warriors to construct a splendid grave-chamber where the headland juts into the sea. It shall tower aloft on Hrones Naes as a memorial for my people—so that in after days the name of 'Beowulf's Barrow' shall be familiar to mariners who ply their tall ships from afar over the dark waters."
The summit of a hero's ambition is to have his glory celebrated everywhere and for all time. Odysseus himself says (Od. IX 20) that his glory reaches to heaven. ”

“ Now the feature which will probably strike any one most forcibly from a careful study of Northern religion is an extraordinary discrepancy between the mythical stories contained in the Edda and elsewhere on the one hand and references to actual religious observances on the other. In the former we find the gods grouped together in an organised community, of which Othin is the recognised head. Frigg is his wife, Thor and many of the other gods his sons. Most of the mythical stories deal with Othin's exploits and adventures, and serve to illustrate his power and wisdom. ”

“ It is not unlikely that in the days of Turkish supremacy—the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the provincial nobility were much more wealthy and influential than they now are; and it may be that some Begs then had minstrels attached to their own personal following. But their position can never have been comparable with that of even petty Teutonic princes. Hence, if we are entitled to suggest the previous existence of court-poetry at all, it can only be in a very restricted sense—so far at least as the extant poems are concerned. ”

“ The course of our investigations has led us to conclude that there is no reason for regarding the Greek Heroic Age as an exception to the general rule applying to such phenomena. Neither here nor in any other case are we justified in believing that the Heroic Age was a native outgrowth from an ancient and highly developed civilisation. It does not appear that a Heroic Age can arise from such conditions, any more than from conditions which may properly be called primitive. ”