Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 34:135 (Jul 1877)
Article: Characteristics Of Homeric Poetry
Author: Jacob Cooper

BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 546

Characteristics Of Homeric Poetry

Jacob Cooper

If we look at the amount of interest which the Homeric poems keep alive in the highest literary culture of this age, we might easily be led to think that they had but just issued from the press, and not from the lips of a rhapsodist who sang nearly three thousand years ago. Indeed, they are so inwrought in our forms of expression and modes of thought that if they were all taken from us our literature would be like a garden from which most of the choice flowers had been plucked, and little left save the withered stems on which they grew.

How shall we account for this prevailing and self-perpetuating influence? It cannot arise from any transient literary excitement, which, like a contagion, sometimes spreads over a country, and then leaves no trace of itself save in the blighted and sickly condition which it has engendered. Nor can it result from the peculiar taste of any nation, or of many peoples “having a kindred lineage, since the appreciation of these productions is co-extensive with civilization. Nor is it produced by the spirit of the age, except in so far as this is a part of universal humanity; for these poems are emphatically the hymns of the ages, since all generations subsequent to their first appearance have taken up their refrain. Their popularity, then, must be sought for in the roots of human nature, in the sympathy which they have with all that belongs to cultivated man; for thus only can we account for the hold they have retained upon the race.

There are four distinct periods or ages of Greek poetry, which shall be designated by their representative authors.

First, its youth, of which Homer is the all-comprehending exponent.

BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 547

Second, its manhood, wherein Sophocles is the leader.

Third, its green old age, whose representative is Menander.

Fourth, its garrulous senility, led by Apollonius Rhodius.

It is not by accident that the different periods of Grecian song are named after the ages of man; for nations in their intellectual development are the counterpart of human life. That nations in their progressive civilization do resemble the different periods of life is apparent to many who have never seen the profound speculations of Vico on this subject (in his Scienza Nuova); and this correspondence cannot fail to strike any one who bestows upon it even a cursory reflection.

Of the several periods enumerated, the most interesting by all odds is the Homeric, just as childhood and youth are the most delightful parts of life. Our early days always come before us fraught with truthfulness, simplicity, and freshness. W...