HOME, John (1722-1808), a Scottish dramatic poet, was born on 20th September 1722 at Leith, where his father, Alexander Home, filled the office of town-clerk. He was educated at the grammar school of his native town, and at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated as M.A. in 1742. Though in his youth he was distinguished for vivacity, and showed a fondness for the profession of arms, he ultimately studied divinity, and was licensed by the presbytery of Edinburgh in 1745. In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk. Along with many others he was carried to the castle of Doune, from which, however, he soon effected his escape. In July 1746 Home was presented to the parish of Athelstaneford in Haddingtonshire, vacant by the death of Robert Blair, the author of The Grave. There he devoted himself to dramatic literature, and his first production, The Tragedy of Agis, was finished in 1749. He took it to London and submitted it to Garrick for representation at Drury Lane, but it was rejected as unsuitable for the stage. Being but little disappointed, he projected a new work, and having heard a lady sing the ballad of Gil Morice, he formed the idea of The Tragedy of Douglas, which after five years’ labour he completed, and took to London for Garrick’s opinion. It also was rejected, but on his return to Edinburgh his friends resolved that it should be brought out in that city, where it met with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the clergy, who suspended one member of the presbytery for a month for having attended its representation. As the author of the tragedy might count on being dealt with yet more severely, Home resigned his charge in 1757, and shortly afterwards he was appointed lecturer in a Presbyterian chapel in Silver Street, London. In 1758 he became private secretary to Lord Bute, then secretary of state; and three years later his patron’s influence procured him a pension of £300 per annum. A Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scotland, in which the manner of public worship in that church is considered, published in 1759, has been attributed to his pen. In 1760 Home brought out another tragedy, The Siege of Aquileia, which was put on the stage, Garrick taking the part of Aemilius. In 1763 he was appointed to the sinecure office of conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere. In 1769 Home’s tragedy of The Fatal Discovery had a run of nine nights; Alonzo also (1773) had fair success in the representation; but his last tragedy, Alfred (1778), was so coolly received that he gave up writing for the stage. From 1767 he resided either at Edinburgh or at a villa which he built at K il luff near his former parish. It was at this time that he wrote his History of the Rebellion of 1745, which appeared in 1802. Home died at Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh, in 1808, in his eighty-sixth year. He was a man of great amiability of character, and numbered among his friends most of the Scottish liter vti of the last century. His writings, while they display fervid feeling, and have less artifici ιlity than the works of the poets of his time, are now, with the exception of Douglas, comparatively little known.

The works of Home were collected and published by Henry Mackenzie in 1822 (3 vols. 8vo), but several of his smaller poems seem to have escaped the editor’s observation. These are—“The Fate of Caesar,” “Verses upon Inveraray,” “Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun,” “Prologue on the Birthday of the Prince of λVales, 1759,’’ and several “Epigrams,” which are printed in vol. ii. of Original Poems by Scottish Gentlemen, 1762.

The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermann’s Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores) are eight in number, including the piece called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. According to Jυh. Schmidt (in the Dissertationes philological Halenses, vol. ii. pp. 97-219), it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz., the 2d century of our era. The other lives are probably not more ancient. They contain a strange medley, ranging from the simplest outgrowth of popular fancy to the frigid inventions of the age which would not confess itself ignorant of the name of Hecuba’s mother. Thus the story that Homer was the son of the Meles (the river on which Smyrna is situated) and the nymph Critheis is evidently a local legend. Another story of a primitive cast describes the manner of Homer’s death in the island of los. Seeing some young fishermen on the beach with their nets, he asked them—

“Fishermen sprung of Arcadia, have we aught ?”

To which they answered in a riddle—

“What we caught we left behind, What we caught not we bear with us.”

Homer could not explain this, and then he remembered an oracle which had told him to beware of the young men’s riddle. He wrote an epitaph for himself, and died on the third day after. This story comes from a lost work of Aristotle. On the other hand, when we are told in the Herodoteanlife that Critheis was a daughter of Melanopus, one of the colonists who came to Cyme from Magnesia, that being found to be with child she was sent with the fresh colony that founded Smyrna, that she there brought forth Homer on the banks ot the Meles, whence he was called Melesigenes,—in this form of the story it is easy to recognize the hand of the critic. There is an evident desire to get rid of the primitive supernatural element, and also to reconcile the claims of two cities, Cyme and Smyrna, to the envied distinction of giving birth to Homer. There are other incidents in the Herodotean life which seem devised merely to fit certain of the minor characters in the Homeric poems. Phemius, we are told, was a schoolmaster of Smyrna, who was kind to the young Melesigenes, and was accordingly immortalized as the singer in the Odyssey; the original of Mentor was a man of Ithaca, who entertained Homer and tended him in illness; and so on.

The chief value of these “Lives,” and especially of the Herodotean life, lies in the curious short poems which they have preserved. These poems are the Epigrams which used to be printed at the end of Homer, but are banished by the somewhat inconvenient purism of modern editors, One of them {Epigr. iv.) is put in the mouth of a native of “Aeolian Smyrna,” whose poetical aid has been spurned by the people of Cyme, and who is accordingly departing to some other city. Epigr. vi. is a prayer to Poseidon for safe arrival at Erythrae; Epigr. vii. describes the rocky soil of that place. There is also an Epigram addressed to the people of Neonteichos {Epigr. i.), and another which brings in the pine woods of Mount Ida and the iron-mines of that district {Epigr. x,). Besides these pieces, the interest of which is topographical, there is an interesting little poem addressed to potters, beginning—

‘ t If you give me hire I will sing, 0 potters,”

and another called Eιp∈σ∙ιωv∙>7, which, according to the author of the life, was sung by the children in Samos when they went round begging at the festival of Apollo; also certain verses addressed to sailors (viit, ix.), to a goat-herd (xi,), &c. All these short poems have a common character. They are “rhymes” such as every country possesses in greater or less number, treasured by the people as a kind of proverbs. Some of them may be fragments of longer poems, but they are certainly not the work of any one poet. The circumstance that they are ascribed to Homer merely shows that his name had gained such a hold on the imagination of the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks as to draw to itself all ancient and popular verse.

Such being the true character of the Epigrams, it follows that, so far from being “occasional verses,” suggested by moments in Homer’s life, they are really the original documents, to which the narrative was afterwards adjusted. Even the leading incident of the Herodotean life—the birth of Homer at Smyrna—may have been originally derived from Epigr. iv. The epithet “Aeolian” indicates high antiquity; for Smyrna (according to Herodotus) was lost by the Aeolians about 688 b.c. Similarly, the claim of Cyme was doubtless supported (not quite so logically) by the mention of that place in Epigr. iv. and i.

The same line of argument may be extended to the Hymns, and even to some of the lost works of the “Cyclic” poets; with the result of making it probable that most of the traditions about Homer rest ultimately on poems commonly ascribed to him. Thus—

1. The hymn to the Delian Apollo ends with an address of the poet to his audience. When any stranger comes and asks who is the sweetest singer, they are to answer with one voice, the “blind man that dwells in rocky Chios; his songs deserve the prize for all time to come.” Thucydides, who quotes this passage to show the ancient character of the Delian festival, seems to have no doubt of the Homeric authorship of the hymn. Hence we may most naturally account for the belief that Homer was a Chian. That it was a general belief is shown by a passage (interesting as the earliest express quotation from Homer) in which Simonides calls him simply the “man of Chios” (fr. 85):—

Ey δ∈ τδ κiKKιστov Xlos ttιπtv αvi ∣ p, O'iη πep φύλλων γeveh, τol-η δ∈ καl àvSpûv.

It was also supported by the Chian family or gens of Homeridae, of whom more will be said hereafter.

2. The Margites— a humorous poem which kept its ground as the reputed work of Homer down to the time of Aristotle—began with the words, “There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo.” Hence doubtless the claim of Colophon to be the native city of Homer—a claim supported in the early times of Homeric learning by the Colophonian poet and grammarian Antimachus.

3. The poem called the Cypria was said to have been given by Homer to Stasinus of Cyprus as a daughter’s dowry. The connexion with Cyprus appears further in the predominance given in the poem to Aphrodite. From the argument preserved by Proclus it is evident that Aphrodite held the same place in the Cypria which Athene has in the Odyssey.

4. The Little Iliad and the Phocais, according to the Herodotean life, were composed by Homer when he lived at Phocaea with a certain Thestorides, who carried them off to Chios and there gained fame by reciting them as his own. The name Thestorides occurs in Epigr. v.

These indications make it probable that the stories connecting Homer with different cities and islands do not rest upon any better foundation than supposed allusions in poems, none of which, to all appearance, can make good the claim to Homeric authorship. And this result is confirmed by the want of positive authority in favour of any one version. The number of opinions is proverbial, and most of them are supported by relatively ancient testimony.

It is plain that the contention for Homer began at a time when his real history had been lost. And since the inevitable legend found no clue in the Iliad and Odyssey, it was driven to seek for one in poems of secondary value.

A singular exception is formed by Miletus, one of the greatest of Ionian cities, for which no legend claims even a visit from Homer. Yet Arctinus of Miletus is said to have been a “disciple of Homer,” and his Aethiopis was a continuation of the Iliad. Another equally exceptional fact is that no poem of Arctinus is ever ascribed to Homer. Are we to suppose that the authorship of the poems of Arctinus never fell into doubt? If so, it is a confirmation, from the negative side, of the theory advanced above, viz., that the stories of Homer’s connexion with different places are suggested for the most part by the poems which came to be assigned to him in popular belief.

Recitation of the Poems.— The recitation of epic poetry was called in historical times “rhapsody” (ραψωδία). The word ραψωδός is post-Homeric, but occurs in Pindar, who gives two different explanations of it—“singer of stitched verse” {ραπτών iπεωv aocδoi), and “singer with the wand” {paβδo<s). Of these the first is etymologically correct (except that it should rather be “stitcher of verse ”); the second agrees with the fact, for which there is early evidence, that the reciter was accustomed to hold a wand in his hand—perhaps, like the sceptre in the Homeric assembly, as a'symbol of the right to a hearing. 1

The first notice of rhapsody meets us at Sicyon, in the reign of Clisthenes (600-560 b,c.), who, as Herodotus tells us (v. 67), “put down the rhapsodists on account of the poems of Homer, because they are all about Argos and the Argives.” This description applies very well to the Iliad, in which Argos and Argives occur on almost every page. It may have suited the Thebaid still better, but there is no 1 Compare the branch of myrtle at an Athenian feast (Aristoph., Nub., 1364).

need to understand it only of that poem, as Mr Grote does (Part i. c. 21). In any case the incident shows that the poems of the Ionic Homer had gained in the 6th century b.c., and in the Doric parts of the Peloponnesus, the ascendency, the national importance, and the almost canonical character which they ever afterwards retained.

At Athens there was a law that the Homeric poems should be recited {paψωδcισθaι) on every occasion of the Panathenaea. This law is appealed to as an especial glory of Athens by the orator Lycurgus {Leocr., 102). Perhaps therefore the custom of public recitation was exceptional, and unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was introduced. The Platonic dialogue Hipparchus attributes it to Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus. This, however, is part of the historical myth, in the Platonic style, of which the dialogue mainly consists. The choice of a member of the tyrant family as the type of an enlightened despot was evidently made, not on grounds of evidence, but merely as a sign of reaction against popular sentiment. Moreover, the author of the dialogue makes (perhaps wilfully) all the historical mistakes which Thucydides notices in a well-known passage (vi. 54-59). In one point, however, his testimony is valuable. He tells us that the law required the rhapsodists to recite “taking each other up in order (t£ ύττολ^ως ∈φe⅞i}ς), as they still do.” This recurs in a different form in ths statement of Diogenes Laertius (i. 2, 57) that Solon made a law that the poems should be recited “with prompting” (so we must understand υποβολής). The question as between Solon and Hipparchus cannot be settled; but it is at least clear that a due order of recitation was secured by the presence of a person charged to give the rhapsodists their cue (iποβαλλeιv). It was necessary, of course, to divide the poem to be recited into parts, and to compel each contending rhapsodist to take the part assigned to him. Otherwise they would choose favourite or show passages.

The practice af pcete or rnapsodists (we cannot always teil which) contending for the prize at the great religious festivals is of considerable antiquity, though apparently post-Homeric. It is brought vividly before us in the Hymn to Apollo (see the passage mentioned above), and in two Hymns to Aphrodite (v. and ix.). The latter of these may evidently be taken to belong to Salamis in Cyprus and the festival of the Cyprian Aphrodite, in the same way that the hymn to Apollo belongs to Delos and the Delian gathering. The germ of such contests may, however, be found in the story of Thamyris, the Thracian singer, who boasted that he could conquer even the Muses in song (II. ii. 594#.).

Much has been made in this part of the subject of a family or clan (γ⅛oς) of Homeridae in the island of Chios. On the one hand, it seemed to follow from the existence of such a family that Homer is a mere “eponymus,” or mythical ancestor; on the other hand, it became easy to imagine the Homeric poems handed down orally in a family whose hereditary occupation it was to recite them, possibly to add new episodes from time to time, or to combine their materials in new ways, as their poetical gifts permitted. But, although there is no reason to doubt the existence of a family of “Homeridae,” it is far from certain.that they had anything to do with Homeric poetry. The word occurs first in Pindar {Hem. 2, 2), who applies it to the rhapsodists {'Oμηρlδαι pα7rτωv ∈τreωv doιδoi). On this a scholiast says that “Homeridae” denoted originally the descendants of Homer, who sang his poems in succession, but afterwards the rhapsodists who did not claim descent from him. He adds that there was a famous rhapsodist, Cynaethus of Chios, who was said to be the author of the Hymn to Apollo, and to have first recited Homer at Syracuse about the 69th Olympiad. Nothing here connects the Homeridae with Chios. Our knowledge of Chian Homeridae comes chiefly from the lexicon of Harpocration, where we are told that Acusilaus and Hellanicus said that they were so called from the poet, but that Seleucus pronounced this to be an error. Strabo, also, says that the Chians put forward the Homeridae as an argument in support of their claim to Homer. These Homeridae, then, belonged to Chios, but there is no indication of their being rhapsodists. On the contrary, Plato uses the word to include interpreters and admirers—in short, the whole “spiritual kindred ”—of Homer {Pep., 599 E; Phaεdr., 252 B; Ion, 530 D). And although we hear of “descendants of Creophylus” as in possession of the Homeric poems, there is no similar story about descendants of Homer himself. Such is the evidence on which so many inferences are based.

The result of the notices now collected is-to show that the early history of epic recitation consists of (1) passages in the Homeric hymns showing that poets contended for the prize at the great festivals, (2) the passing mention in Herodotus of rhapsodists at Sicyon, and (3) a law at Athens, of unknown date, regulating the recitation at the Panathenaea. Let us now compare these data with the account given in the Homeric poems. The word “rhapsode” does not yet exist; we hear only of the “singer” (άοιδόν), who does not carry a wand or laurelbranch, but the lyre {φορμιγξ), with which he accompanies his “song.” In the Iliad even the epic “singer” is not met with, but Achilles himself sings the stories of heroes (κλ∈α avδpwv} in his tent, and Patroclus is waiting apparently to take up the song in his turn {II. ix. 191). Again we do not hear of poetical contests (except in the story of Thamyris already mentioned) or of recitation of epic poetry at festivals. The Odyssey gives us pictures of two great houses, in Ithaca and in Phaeacia; and each has its singer. The song is on a subject taken from the Trojan war, at some point chosen by the singer himself, or by his hearers. Thus Phemius pleases the suitors by singing of the calamitous return of the Greeks; Demodocus sings of a quarrel between Ulysses and Achilles, and then, on being asked to change the theme, of the wooden horse and the capture of Troy.

It may be granted that the author of the Odyssey can hardly have been just such a singer as he himself describes. The songs of Phemius and Demodocus are too short, and have too much the character of improvisations. Nor is it necessary to suppose that epic poetry, at the time to which the picture in the Odyssey belongs, was confined to the one type represented. Yet in several respects the conditions under which the singer finds himself in the house of a chief like Odysseus or Alcinous are more in harmony with the character of Homeric poetry than those of the later rhapsodic contests. The subdivision of a poem like the Iliad or Odyssey among different and necessarily unequal performers must have been injurious to the effect. The highly theatrical manner of recitation which was fostered by the spirit of competition, and by the· example of the stage, cannot have done justice to the even movement of the epic style. It is not certain indeed that the practice of reciting a long poem by the agency of several competitors was ancient, or that it prevailed elsewhere than at Athens; but as rhapsodists were numerous, and popular favour throughout Greece became more and more confined to one or two great works, it must have become almost a necessity. That it was the mode of recitation contemplated by the author of the Iliad or Odyssey it is impossible to believe.

The difference made by substituting the wand or branch of laurel for the lyre of the Homeric singer is a slighter one, though not without significance. The recitation of the Hesiodic poems was from the first unaccompanied by the lyre, i.e., they were confessedly said, not sung; and it was natural that the example should be extended to Homer. For it is difficult to believe that the Homeric poems were ever “sung” in the strict sense of the word. We can only suppose that the lyre in the hands of the epic poet or reciter was in reality a piece of convention, a “survival” from the stage in which narrative poetry had a lyrical character. Probably the poets of the Homeric school—that which dealt with war and adventure—were the genuine descendants of minstrels whose “lays” or “ballads” were the amusement of the feasts in an earlier heroic age; whereas the Hesiodic compositions were non-lyrical from the first, and were only in verse because that was the universal form of literature.

It seems, then, that if we imagine Homer as a singer in a royal house of the Homeric age, but with more freedom regarding the limits of his subject, and a more tranquil audience than is allowed him in the rapid movement of the Odyssey, we shall probably not be far from the truth.

Time and Place of Homer.— The oldest direct references to the Iliad and Odyssey are in Herodotus, who quotes from both poems (ii. 53). The quotation from the Iliad is of interest because it is made in order to show that Homer supported the story of the travels of Paris to Egypt and Sidon (whereas the Cyclic poem called the Cypria ignored them), and also because the part of the Iliad from which it comes is cited as the “Aristeia of Diomede.” This was therefore a recognized part of the poem.

The earliest mention of the name of Homer is found in a fragment of the philosopher Xenophanes (of the 6th century b.c., or possibly earlier), who complains of the false notions implanted through the teaching of Homer (<⅛ άρχί}? κα ^ "Όμηρον επει μεμaθηκασι τrdvτeς). The passage shows, not merely that Homer was well known at Colophon in the time of Xenophanes, but also that the great advance in moral and religious ideas which forced Plato to banish Homer from his...