New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-09-18

persons whom we already Know, anu lh'rouuco
but few fresh figures. They bear throughout the
stamp of creations composed solely for the sake
Of delight in beautiful poetry" The poems in
this division are those parts of the Had known
a. the embassy TO Achilles, the capture Of the
wall, the deccving of Zeus by IIera, the making
of the arms of Achilles, the funeral of Patrocius
and the games, and the ransoming Of the BODY
of Hector and some less important pieces like the
story OF Doon, the fight with the River, the pat-
tie of the gods, the catalogue Of the ships ana 80
on. The whole of the eighth book is instanced as
a connecting narrative introduced only to lead up
to the scene OF the embassy to Achilles lhese
parts the present commentator declares eAem-
pity the development Of epic poetry ana cohse-
quently of the civilization which nourlshed ITO
use modern forms Of speech-from the CLASSIC "
the romanti stage II is in this part of the lliad
that we reach the height Of pathos in the scene
between Priam and Achilles in the last book 'he
full bloom Of rhetoric in the account OF the embassy
to Achilles while the meeting OF Zeus ana fiera vi
Ida and the blossomng Of earth about thelr loves
is as near an approach as epic poetry couiu ever
/ make 10 romance in the modern sense tAl0
romantic phase of the Had MI Lear "ouio ""oc
between l 900 and 500 B. c., while he supposes
that The other parts belong to a time az ie's' do
early az 050 B. G.
Surprising Mr. Leaf to be right, it is an attrac-
tive thought to consider what effect his scheme
NAV have on modern views of the earliest "reeK
forms of religious belief and their development
into the varied mythology Of later times. Does IL
not look as II one might trace his formula pacK-
ward, not to primitive polytheism OF
| fetchism, Int to primitive mono
theism. or ut least monoatry? his
proceeding would not be by any means 90
absurd as some Of science seem to imagine.
II is said by those competent TO know that Oh
all the divine names that have persisted among
the Aryan 1aces, the only ore that can DC 'r"c'o
in all directions is that which emerged In Oreeoe
as Zeus the name of the supreme deity. I'M
personally the Zeus Of the Greeks. the Jupiter
of the Romans, the Dyaus of the ancient INDIANS
and possibly the TYR of the ancient 1eutonic
tribes was the sky OF the earliest Aryan re-
ljgion there are only two notices in all ancient
| literature which has come down to us that are
worth the paper they are written upon one
Of these is what Iierodotus says respecting the
| Ancient Persans the other what Caesar says OF
the Germans These brief nOu-es though wiUcy
separated in point of time and place bcspeak q
religion and therefore social condition prac-
tically the same In the hotbcd of Oriental life
Persian civilization was forced to Its fuiI
development and to premature decay In the
forests of Northern Europe the old Aryan ideas
persisted down 10 the period of the Roman con-
quest. "They," says lIcrodotus Of the Pcrsians,
raise no statues build no temples and erect
no affairs and they look upon such things as
fooishDess. as I think, because they do not sup
pose like the Greeks that the gods have human
forlr. They worship Icus, going up to the tops
| Of mountains TO offer kacrlices. cdlh7g tie
whole circle Of the heavens Ieus: they sacrifice
to the sur and moon and earth and fire and
water and winds: to these only they oner
sacrifice from Of old but they have learned from
the Assyrians and the Arabians to reverence
Urania"; and of the Germans Caesar said They
have a very different custom from the Gauls.
For they have no Druids to take care Of divine
things and TO offer sacrifices. In the number Of
the gods they reckon those only which they see
and by whose powers they are helped, the sun,
the moon and the planet Vulcan"
| If IIerodotus and Caesar knew what they were
talking about, every shred Of human Likeness is
removed from the simple nature worship OF the
| prebistOric Aryans. The eupnatic WORDS OF
Schradar are no doubt true that these passages
contain what we are to regard as the kernel of
the Indo-European and also of the IndoIranan
belief in the gods' Tacitus show US how
the simplicity OF Teutonic beliefs subse
| quently modified in the direction Of the Viking
polytheism. In both primitive Persia and print
tive Germany, then, the movement was from the
less complex TO the more complex. 1t is fair TO
infer that if could trace the movement to its
beginning, he would find the slIy-god worshipped
alone.
Now Mr.. Leafs division Of the Had represents
civilization past its primo and verging toward
decay. When the poems maze up INTO the
| whole with which the world is familiar, culture
| had reached the point where scepticism and
cynical shade Of thought took the place OF the
| simple reverence OF the oldest time Icus has
become capable of going TO sleep he can he
cgregously fooled, and the whole Pantheon is
pable OF making spectacle at which Ieus laughs
like fulfilled old baron who cherishes q taste for
rough sport. If Grippe is right in his analysis,
the whole story Of the decevng Of Zeus is II
knavish serio-comic parody on Orplic theogony,
| the very ono which was quoted with more or less
| approval by Plato in tho Cratylus. II certainly
was humorous enough 20 represent Zeus as max
ing love to IIcra by carefully telling her Of all
| his previous cscapades This late portion Of the
epic period was characterized by the influx Of a
grosser Orientalism which led the Greek imagina-
ton to accept in its mythology mere monsters
| like Briareus Going back 70 the second division
Of Mr. Leafs scheme we find that, while the
gods preserve their dignity to a degree, they are
| invoked in numbers and characterized by an
abundance of titles, and that the whole conception
| Of them is only less anthropomofphic than that
of the later parts Of the poem. But in the first
part they practically invisible Achaan hui
mainly at its best plainly took the Olympic names
rather as descriptive Of forms Of the divine in
| 0uence than rs the designations OF persons
| Does not this line Of thought carry the mind
| back TO something very like monolatry, tho
worship Of some one visible sign OF the Deity?
| While Mr.. Leafs work is confcsscdly merely
body Of notes on the Had, it will be found
not only useful to the reader Of Homer hut in
itself extremely interesting The paragraphs refer
| by numbers not only to the Greek text, but also
! to the welknown translation made by Lang,
| Myers and Leaf some years ago.