Alexander Pope

THE ILIAD OF HOMER TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER POPE, WITH NOTES BY THE REV. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, M.A., F.S.A. AN ELECTRONIC CLASSICS SERIES PUBLICATION The Iliad of Homer, trans. Alexander Pope with notes by the Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, M. A., F. S. A. is a publication of The Electronic Classics Series. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State University nor Jim Manis, Editor, nor anyone associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way. The Iliad of Homer, trans. Alexander Pope with notes by the Rev. Theodore Alois Buckley, M. A., F. S. A., The Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Editor, PSU-Hazleton, Hazleton, PA 18202 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Jim Manis is a faculty member of the English Department of The Pennsylvania State University. This page and any preceding page(s) are restricted by copyright. The text of the following pages are not copyrighted within the United States; however, the fonts used may be. Cover Design: Jim Manis; Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Prosperine (1874) Copyright © 2004 - 2012 The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. Pope must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, THE ILIAD OF knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old no- tions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small HOMER labour and anxiety to acquire. And this difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in TRANSLATED BY which progress has gained a strong ascendency over preju- dice, and in which persons and things are, day by day, find- ALEXANDER POPE, ing their real level, in lieu of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, WITH NOTES BY THE and which are making rapid havoc among the revenues of REV. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, M.A., sinecurists, and stripping the thin, tawdry veil from attrac- F.S.A. tive superstitions, are working as actively in literature as in 1899 society. The credulity of one writer, or the partiality of an- other, finds as powerful a touchstone and as wholesome a INTRODUCTION chastisement in the healthy scepticism of a temperate class of antagonists, as the dreams of conservatism, or the impos- SCEPTICISM is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge tures of pluralist sinecures in the Church. History and tradi- is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, tion, whether of ancient or comparatively recent times, are is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; subjected to very different handling from that which the in- since, from the very gradual character of our education, we dulgence or credulity of former ages could allow. Mere state- 3 The Iliad of Homer ments are jealously watched, and the motives of the writer “is the natural root of loyalty as distinguished from such mere form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his his- selfish desire of personal security as is apt to take its place in tory, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and civilized times, but that consciousness of a natural bond troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that among the families of men which gives a fellow-feeling to a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is whole clans and nations, and thus enlists their affections in no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to behalf of those time-honoured representatives of their an- write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Hu- cient blood, in whose success they feel a personal interest? man nature, viewed under an induction of extended experi- Hence the delight when we recognize an act of nobility or ence, is the best help to the criticism of human history. His- justice in our hereditary princes torical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, whether actual or traditionary, has fur- “‘Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo, Projice tela manu sanguis meus’ nished. To form correct views of individuals we must regard them as forming parts of a great whole—we must measure “So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted influ- them by their relation to the mass of beings by whom they ence even when history witnesses that vast convulsions have are surrounded, and, in contemplating the incidents in their rent and weakened it and the Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts lives or condition which tradition has handed down to us, has been rekindled in our own days towards the grand daugh- we must rather consider the general bearing of the whole ter of George the Third of Hanover. narrative, than the respective probability of its details. “Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition to idol- It is unfortunate for us, that, of some of the greatest men, ize those great lawgivers of man’s race, who have given ex- we know least, and talk most. Homer, Socrates, and pression, in the immortal language of song, to the deeper Shakespere [Note: “What,” says Archdeacon Wilberforce, inspirations of our nature. The thoughts of Homer or of 4 Pope Shakespere are the universal inheritance of the human race. Socrates; when we have fairly read and examined both, we In this mutual ground every man meets his brother, they feel convinced that we are something worse than ignorant. have been bet forth by the providence of God to vindicate It has been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, for all of us what nature could effect, and that, in these rep- to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose resentatives of our race, we might recognize our common life and condition were too much for our belief. This sys- benefactors.’—Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 9, 10.] have, tem—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and perhaps, contributed more to the intellectual enlightenment substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New of mankind than any other three writers who could be named, Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical and yet the history of all three has given rise to a boundless theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the ocean of discussion, which has left us little save the option of existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable choosing which theory or theories we will follow. The per- act, than to believe in that of Romulus. To deny a fact re- sonality of Shakespere is, perhaps, the only thing in which lated in Herodotus, because it is inconsistent with a theory critics will allow us to believe without controversy; but upon developed from an Assyrian inscription which no two schol- everything else, even down to the authorship of plays, there ars read in the same way, is more pardonable, than to believe is more or less of doubt and uncertainty. Of Socrates we in the good-natured old king whom the elegant pen of Florian know as little as the contradictions of Plato and Xenophon has idealized—Numa Pompilius. will allow us to know. He was one of the dramatis personæ in Scepticism has attained its culminating point with respect two dramas as unlike in principles as in style. He appears as to Homer, and the state of our Homeric knowledge may be the enunciator of opinions as different in their tone as those described as a free permission to believe any theory, pro- of the writers who have handed them down. When we have vided we throw overboard all written tradition, concerning read Plato or Xenophon, we think we know something of the author or authors of the Iliad and Odyssey. What few 5 The Iliad of Homer authorities exist on the subject, are summarily dismissed, al- was the first fruit of her juvenile frailty, and received the though the arguments appear to run in a circle. “This can- name of Melesigenes, from having been born near the river not be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, be- Meles, in Bœotia, whither Critheis had been transported in cause it cannot be true.” Such seems to be the style, in which order to save her reputation. testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is “At this time,” continues our narrative, “there lived at consigned to denial and oblivion. Smyrna a man named Phemius, a teacher of literature and It is, however, unfortunate that the professed biographies music, who, not being married, engaged Critheis to manage of Homer are partly forgeries, partly freaks of ingenuity and his household, and spin the flax he received as the price of imagination, in which truth is the requisite most wanting. his scholastic labours. So satisfactory was her performance Before taking a brief review of the Homeric theory in its of this task, and so modest her conduct, that he made pro- present conditions, some notice must be taken of the treatise posals of marriage, declaring himself, as a further induce- on the Life of Homer which has been attributed to ment, willing to adopt her son, who, he asserted, would be- Herodotus.

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