The Rise of the Greek Epic; Being a Course of Lectures Delivered at Harvard University

Murray, Gilbert

ISBN 10: 1230302522 / ISBN 13: 9781230302522

Published by TheClassics.us, 2013

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Rise of the Greek Epic; Being a Course of Lectures Delivered at Harvard University
• Publisher: TheClassics.us
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1230302522
• ISBN 13: 9781230302522
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ...the voice Of loud thanksgiving over slaughtered men (x 412). One cannot help remembering in this connexion that the Iliad in the fifth century occupied a central place in Greek education. All well-born youths were trained upon it. And later Attic writers speak with enthusiasm of the moral superiority of Homer--and when they say ' Homer' they chiefly mean the Iliad--over the other ancient poets. If this educational use of the Iliad began in Ionia as early as the eighth century, which is likely enough, we can hardly help supposing that it had some share in these processes of purification with which we have been dealing. The hand of the schoolmaster certainly seems to have been at work--though of course by different methods--in the case of another poet much used in education, Theognis. Such parts of his poetry as are obviously unedifying are relegated to a sort of appendix at the end of the book, and in many MSS. are omitted altogether.1 But on the whole the probability is that the use of Homer in education was only to a slight extent an influence in producing this general cleaning up of the ancient traditions; it was more largely a result. 1 Edifying passages from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into Homer. See Mulder, as cited below, Lecture VII, p. 169. Also Breal, Pour mieux eonnaitre Homire, pp. 14 f. Further consideration of this subject would lead us too far afield. I am content for the present moment if I have shown the mere fact that there was in the formation of the Iliad, and to a less extent in that of the Odyssey, a strong element of reform and expurgation. The epic tradition of Greece, vast and tangled in its wealth of varied beauty and ugliness as some South American forest, was left by the Homeric...