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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 8/12/2018, SPi
A R I S T O T L E ’S LO S T H O M E R I C PR O B L E M S
Aristotle’s Lost
Homeric Problems
Textual Studies
ROBERT MAYHEW
1
3
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To Tore Boeckmann
Preface
Aristotle wrote a work, likely entitled Ἀπορήματα or Προβλήματα

Ὁμηρικά (which I refer to as Homeric Problems),1 in at least six books,
presenting and solving problems related to the epics of Homer.2 The
two most recent collections of the fragments3 of Aristotle each
include nearly forty texts connected to this work (frs. 142–79 Rose/
366–404 Gigon).4 The vast majority of them are drawn from the
numerous scholia in the manuscripts of the Homeric epics5—and
many of these, in turn, originally come from the Homeric Questions of
Porphyry (third century AD).6
Along with Poetics 25 (which I discuss in chapter 1), these texts are
clearly our best source for information about the Homeric Problems.
This material, however, would likely fill, or represents the content of,
less than one book; but Aristotle’s Homeric Problems consisted of
multiple books.7 Therefore, I think it worthwhile to explore other
ways of determining the content of this lost work, beyond Poetics 25
and the scholia and other texts gathered together in the standard
collections of fragments.8
With rare exceptions, the Homeric Problems has received little
attention. Among the exceptions, I would mention three dissertations
1
Both ἀπορήματα and προβλήματα can be rendered ‘problems’ (more on this
later). In some earlier publications I referred to this work as Homeric Puzzles, but that
did not catch on. And it became clear to me from feedback I have received over the
past couple of years that it would not. More on the title of this work in chapter 2.
2
‘Homer’ is shorthand for ‘the poet(s) who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.’
3
It once was a standard practice to distinguish fragmenta and testimonia. But in
most cases (and certainly in dealing with the evidence for Aristotle’s lost work on
Homer) this is rarely if ever possible. I was therefore tempted to use the somewhat
clunky ‘source-texts’ instead; but in the end, I have opted to use ‘fragments’ broadly
understood to include both what used to be called fragmenta and testimonia.
4
Rose (1886) and Gigon (1987). (NB: The former is the third of the collections of
Aristotle’s fragments edited by Rose, and so it is often referred to or cited as ‘Rose3’).
5
See the Note on Sources below for the editions of the scholia.
6
See the Note on Sources below. Porphyry was aware of the work of a number of
Homeric scholars, going at least as far back as the fifth century BC.
7
Moreover, one must use the scholia with caution. See Mayhew (2017b).
8
I do not mean to imply that these standard collections of fragments are, aside
from being incomplete, otherwise reliable. See chapter 3.
viii Preface
(Carroll 1893, Ammendola 1907,9 and especially Hintenlang 1961), a
small (but growing) number of journal articles,10 and most recently,
Breitenberger’s German translation of the fragments, with commen-
tary (2006), and one chapter in Bouchard’s Du Lycée au Musée: théorie
poétique et critique littéraire à l’époque hellénistique (2016, ch. 3). These
works, however, though valuable, do not go that far beyond Poetics 25
and the standard fragments gathered from the scholia and other
sources. I hope that the present set of studies expands our knowledge
of the lost Homeric Problems, especially by going into terrain for the
most part not covered by these earlier works.
The present set of studies on Aristotle’s Homeric Problems is
divided into three parts, the first of which deals with preliminary issues.
In chapter 1 (‘Pre-Aristotelian Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s
Poetics 25’), I set the context for what comes later, first by discussing
approaches to the study of Homer, from the presocratics to Plato
(with allegorical interpretation receiving special attention), and second
by examining Poetics 25, which is the longest extant discussion by
Aristotle of how to approach the interpretation of Homer, and in
particular how to solve Homeric problems. In chapter 2 (‘The Titles
(and Subtitles) of Aristotle’s Lost Work on Homer’), I present the
ancient evidence for a work by Aristotle on Homeric problems, and
the various titles attributed to it (as well as the number of books it was
said to contain, and the possibility of subtitles of its separate books).
In chapter 3 (‘A Reappraisal of Heitz’), as part of my appeal to
scholars not to limit themselves to the fragments in Rose and Gigon
when studying the Homeric Problems, I argue that Heitz (1869) is a
too often overlooked collection of Aristotle’s fragments—and in the
process examine two neglected texts.
In the next two parts of the book, I pursue two different ways
of expanding our knowledge of the Homeric Problems. One way is to
examine in context quotations from (or allusions to) Homer in
Aristotle’s extant works. This I do in Part II. I proceed as follows:
inquire whether such passages were (likely) the subject of debate or
discussion in antiquity; consider whether such debate over or discus-
sion about a particular passage fits Aristotle’s aims and methods in his
9
I have not been able to find a copy of this University of Naples dissertation.
10
See Sodano (1964), (1965), (1966), (1974), Huxley (1979), Bouchard (2010) and
(2018), Fortenbaugh (2015). To these I would add Mayhew (2016), (2017a), (2017b),
and (2017c).
Preface ix
lost Homeric Problems (i.e. is there a problem at the heart of the
debate or discussion, of the sort with which Aristotle was concerned
in Poetics 25 and, from what we know from other texts, in the
Homeric Problems); and finally, does such inquiry and consideration
of the Homeric passage in its Aristotelian context give us a hint at—
allow us to speculate about—how he might have solved the problem
(or alternatively, whether he was critical of Homer). So far as I know,
no one has suggested this source. Now I admit that certainty is rarely
possible to establish here; rather, one can speak only of attaining
degrees of possibility or probability. But I believe I have made some
progress. And at the very least, these studies give us a better idea of
how Aristotle would have approached some of the debates engaged in
by Homeric scholars in antiquity.11 In this part of the book, I consider
the evidence from the History of Animals (chapter 4), the Rhetoric
(chapter 5), and Poetics 21 (chapter 6).
Part III consists of four studies on select (and in most cases
neglected) fragments. I begin (chapter 7, ‘Aristotle on the Meaning
of τάλαντον in Iliad 23’) with a set of fragments that have not been
neglected (in the sense I have been using the term), i.e. they are
included in the standard collections of Aristotle’s fragments, and
have received some scholarly attention. Nevertheless, I have found
that the presentation of this material—in editions of the scholia and
in the collections of the fragments of Aristotle—is not always clear
or complete, and the discussion of it is not entirely satisfactory. So
I take a fresh look at the available evidence, going back to the relevant
scholia in the manuscripts themselves. In chapter 8 (‘Aristotle and
Aristarchus on the Meaning of κέρας in the Iliad’), I examine numer-
ous texts in which Aristotle and/or Aristarchus are said to offer an
interpretation on the specific meaning in context of κέρας (‘horn’).
I treat the two authors together, because one reason that these
Aristotle fragments have been neglected is that earlier scholars have
argued that references to Aristotle are in fact, in most cases, mistakes
for Aristarchus. I reject this conclusion in almost every instance. The
Aristotle fragments, properly identified, provide further evidence for
Aristotle’s views on metaphor in Homer. In chapter 9 (‘Aristotle on
the Theomachy in Iliad 21’), I examine two relatively neglected texts:
one from an Oxyrhynchus papyrus containing a commentary on
11
I use the expression ‘Homeric scholar’ quite loosely as shorthand for anyone in
antiquity who we know expressed opinions about the Homeric epics.
x Preface
Iliad 21, the other from a lengthy scholium in the thirteenth-century
Byzantine manuscript Genavensis gr. 44. These are important frag-
ments in their own right; but in addition, given that the Theomachy
of Iliad 21 was an object of allegorical interpretation from the early
history of Homeric scholarship, an examination of them offers (at
least by implication) insights into whether Aristotle ever engaged in
such interpretation. This issue is continued and dealt with more
explicitly in the final chapter (‘Aristotle’s Naturalistic Interpretation
of Odyssey 12’). The textual evidence for Aristotle’s (possible or
probable) discussions of three episodes in Odyssey 12 are discussed,
namely, concerning the Sirens, the ambrosia-bearing doves, and the
Cattle of the Sun. All three have historically been treated allegoric-
ally. Further, as some contemporary scholars take the fragments on
these doves and cattle to be evidence for Aristotle interpreting
Homer allegorically, this is an appropriate place to return to the
issue of allegorical interpretation in Aristotle—first raised in chapter
1—and as such it serves as an appropriate conclusion to the volume.
I believe these studies confirm and make clearer the close connec-
tion between the Homeric Problems and Poetics 25; provide further
examples and a broader range of the kinds of problems Aristotle
attempted to solve; and cast doubt on the idea that Aristotle, in
solving Homeric problems, sometimes engaged in allegorical inter-
pretation. Most of all, I hope this volume makes clear the need for
further work on the lost Homeric Problems, and prompts other
scholars to undertake that work.
Acknowledgments
I began work on this project during a 2013–14 sabbatical leave: I wish

to thank Seton Hall University for granting me that leave, and the
Ayn Rand Institute for a research grant that made possible a year-
long sabbatical. I also wish to thank Seton Hall for granting me course
release during two semesters (Spring 2015 and Spring 2018), as well
as a 2016 University Research Council Summer Stipend, all of which
contributed to the completion of this project. Many thanks as well to
Gregory Nagy, and the personnel at Harvard University’s Center for
Hellenic Studies (Washington DC), which, during two visits (April
6–12, 2015 and March 6–10, 2017), provided the perfect atmosphere
to work on (inter alia) the Homeric Problems.
It has once again been a pleasure to work with the personnel at
Oxford University Press. Special thanks to Charlotte Loveridge for
her encouragement and support, to Georgina Leighton for her work
on this project in its early stages and to Suryajeet Mullick for seeing it
through to completion, and to Kim Richardson for his superb
copyediting.
I wish to thank the anonymous referees for the press, for their
encouraging words and especially for their critical comments, which
prompted me to make many fruitful revisions. Many thanks as well to
everyone who commented on individual chapters (or parts thereof )
and/or answered various questions connected to my work on this
project: Davide Baldi, Elsa Bouchard, Tiziano Dorandi, Dimitri
Gutas, Richard Janko, Monte Johnson, Michiel Meeusen, Stephen
Menn, Gregory Nagy, Lara Pagani, Ioanna Papadopoulou, Jason
Rheins, and David Sider. I would like to single out for special thanks
Filippomaria Pontani, who, upon receiving the first of many emails,
out of the blue, from an unknown scholar requesting information,
responded (that first time, and many times after) with patience and
generosity (and more often than not, with highly useful attachments).
Of course, none of these scholars should be held responsible for any
remaining errors.
For the past thirty years (and counting), my good friend Tore
Boeckmann and I have discussed esthetics in general, and Aristotle’s
Poetics in particular (as well as its unappreciated influence on
Romantic literature). I dedicate this volume to him.
Contents
List of Figures xvii

List of Abbreviations xix
A Note on Sources xxi
Copyright Acknowledgments xxv
PART I. PRELIMINA RY S TUDIES

1. Pre-Aristotelian Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s
Poetics 25 3
1.1. Homeric Scholarship before Aristotle 3
1.2. Poetics 25 9
2. The Titles (and Subtitles) of Aristotle’s Lost Work
on Homer 25
2.1. Evidence for the Titles of Aristotle’s Lost Work
on Homer 25
2.2. Possible Subtitles 30
3. A Reappraisal of Heitz 35
3.1. The ἀχερωΐς (Heitz fr. 188) 35
3.2. Odysseus’ Scar (Heitz fr. 208) 40
P A RT I I . S T U D I E S B A S E D O N AR I S T OT L E ’S
EX TA NT WORK S
4. The Evidence from the History of Animals 49
4.1. Homeric References in the History of Animals 50
4.1.1. HA 3.3.513b24–8 and Il. 13.545–7 50
4.1.2. HA 3.12.519a18–20 and Il. 20.73–4 53
4.1.3. HA 6.20.574b29–575a1 and Od. 17.326–7 55
4.1.4. HA 6.21.575b4–7 and Il. 2.402–3 and 7.313–15,
Od. 19.418–20 and 10.19–20 58
4.1.5. HA 6.28.578a32–b5 and Il. 9.538–9, Od. 9.190–1 59
4.1.6. HA 7(8).28.606a18–21 and Od. 4.85 62
4.1.7. HA 8(9).12.615b5–10 and Il. 14.289–91 64
4.1.8. HA 8(9).32.618b18–30 and Il. 24.315–16 66
xiv Contents
4.1.9. HA 8(9).44.629b21–4 and Il. 11.552–4
and 17.661–3 69
4.2. The Homeric Problems and the History of Animals 70
5. The Evidence from the Rhetoric 75
5.1. Emotions 75
5.1.1. Lamentation 76
5.1.2. Anger 1 80
5.1.3. Anger 2 83
5.1.4. Indignation 86
5.2. Literary Style 89
5.2.1. Epithets 89
5.2.2. Asyndeton and Repetition 91
5.2.3. Metaphors 95
6. The Evidence from Poetics 21 105
6.1. Standard Words Contrasted with ‘Foreign’
Words (1457b3–6) 106
6.2. Metaphors (1457b6–33) and Ornaments (1457b33?) 110
6.3. Made Up Words (1457b33–5) 110
6.4. Lengthened and Shortened Words (1457b35–1458a5) 111
6.5. Altered Words (1458a5–7) 113
6.6. The Evidence from Strabo 115
PART III. S TUDIES ON SELECT (AND USUALLY

NE GLEC TED) FR AGM EN TS
7. Aristotle on the Meaning of τάλαντον in Iliad 23 123
7.1. The Scholia in F (fol. 197r), B* (fol. 23r), and B*
(fol. 175r) 125
7.2. The Scholia in T (fol. 255r) and B (fol. 308v) 130
7.3. The Scholium in B* (fol. 74v) 134
7.4. Conclusions 136
Appendix: Overview of the τάλαντον Texts in
Collections of the Fragments of Aristotle 140
8. Aristotle and Aristarchus on the Meaning of κέρας
in the Iliad 143
8.1. Five Texts on Iliad 11.385 143
8.2. Plutarch, Whether Land or Sea Animals Are
Cleverer 24 and Iliad 24.80–2 148
Contents xv
9. Aristotle on the Theomachy in Iliad 21 153
9.1. Aristotle on Iliad 21.284–6 in POxy 221 153
9.2. Aristotle, Chamaeleon, and Anonymous in the
Margins of Genavensis gr. 44 157
10. Aristotle’s Naturalistic Interpretation of Odyssey 12 169
10.1. The Sirens 170
10.2. The Ambrosia-Bearing Doves 177
10.3. The Cattle of the Sun 188
10.3.1. The Number of the Cattle 188
10.3.2. The Sun’s Omniscience 191
References 195
Index Locorum 207
Index Nominum 217
General Index 223
List of Figures
8.1. Schol. Genavensis gr. 44 (Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. gr. 44)

(p. 463). Reproduced with the kind permission of Bibliothèque
de Genève, Département des manuscrits. 144
9.1. POxy 221 (col. xiv 27–32). Reproduced with the kind
permission of the British Library. © The British Library Board. 154
9.2. POxy 221 (col. xiv 32–4). Reproduced with the kind permission
of the British Library. © The British Library Board. 156
List of Abbreviations
Aristotle (Arist.) and the Corpus Aristotelicum

Ath. Pol. = Athenaion Politeia = Athenian Constitution
EE = Ethica Eudemia = Eudemian Ethics
EN = Ethica Nicomachea = Nicomachean Ethics
GA = De generatione animalium = On the Generation of Animals
HA = Historia animalium = History of Animals
IA = De incessu animalium = On the Progression of Animals
MA = De motu animalium = On the Movement of Animals
Metaph. = Metaphysica = Metaphysics
Mete. = Meteorologica = Meteorology
Mir. = De mirabilibus auscultationibus = On Marvelous Things Heard
PA = De partibus animalium = On the Parts of Animals
Phys. = Physica = Physics
Poet. = Poetica = Poetics
Pol. = Politica = Politics
Rhet. = Rhetorica = Rhetoric
Soph. El. = Sophistici Elenchi = Sophistical Refutations
Top. = Topica = Topics
For other ancient authors and works, I have used the abbreviations in
LSJ and/or OCD3 (though see p. xxii note 18 for Porphyry’s Homeric
Questions).1
Abbreviations of Modern Works

BDAG F. Montanari et al., The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek. Leiden,
2015
CAG Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Berlin
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th
ed. Berlin, 1952
FGrHist F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin,
1923–99
1
With few exceptions, my practice is to use English titles of Greek works. In the
case of the essays in Plutarch’s Moralia, I use the English titles listed in Lamberton
(2001, 199–210) but standard abbreviations based on the Latin titles.
xx List of Abbreviations
FHS&G W. W. Fortenbaugh, P. M. Huby, R. W. Sharples, and D. Gutas,
eds., Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings,
Thought and Influence, 2 vols. Leiden, 1992
LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, eds., Greek–English
Lexicon, rev. 9th ed. Oxford, 1996
OCD3 S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth eds., The Oxford Classical
Dictionary, 3rd ed. Oxford, 2003
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (www.tlg.uci.edu)
A Note on Sources
For the text of Aristotle’s Poetics, I use Tarán and Gutas (2012).1 For
the Homeric epics, I use West’s edition of the Iliad (1998 and 2000)
and van Thiel’s edition of the Odyssey (1991).
The standard collections of the fragments of Aristotle are Rose
(1886) and Gigon (1987). The latter has not succeeded in superseding
the former, however, in part because of its problematic presentation
of the fragments (especially its lack of an apparatus criticus), and in
part because the former is the edition found in the TLG.2 In present-
ing the fragments of Aristotle’s Homeric Problems included in either
or both of these collections, I refer to both the original source and the
fragment numbers according to these editions. I never rely on the
texts in Rose (1886) and Gigon (1987), however, where better editions
are available.3 (See, for example, the following paragraph, on the
editions of the Homeric scholia.)
The situation in the case of the Homeric scholia is complicated. For
the scholia on the Iliad, I have made use of van Thiel’s second edition
of the D scholia (2014a), and have used Erbse’s edition (1969–88) for
the Viermännerscholia/A scholia and the exegetic/bT scholia (with
the exclusion of scholia taken from Porphyry, on which more below).
(I also occasionally refer to Nicole’s edition of the scholia in Gena-
vensis gr. 44 (1891).) For the scholia on Odyssey 1–6, I have made use
of the superb editions of Pontani (2007), (2010), and (2015); for
Odyssey 7–24, I have used Ernst (2006) for the D scholia and Dindorf
(1855) for the rest.4
1
But see Janko (2013).
2
Both collections, however, are thought to supersede Heitz (1869). For my views
on this, at least with respect to the Homeric Problems, see chapter 3.
3
The various collections of Aristotle fragments often list more than one text under
a given number, and scholars have regularly come to distinguish them with a period
or comma following the fragment number. E.g. ‘164.1 Rose’ is the first text included
by Rose under no. 164.
4
On the Homeric scholia, see Erbse (1969, xi–lxvi), Kirk (1985, 38–43), Janko (1992,
20–8), Nagy (1996), Dickey (2007, 18–23), Pontani (2005b) and (2016), Nünlist (2011),
and Montanari et al. (2017). In citing scholia, I refer either to the (primary) manuscript
from which it comes (e.g. schol. Ge) or to the type of scholia (e.g. schol. D). Further
xxii A Note on Sources

The first book of Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad is
extant in one manuscript (Vaticanus gr. 305); the standard edition is
Sodano (1970).5 For the rest, extracts from Porphyry’s Homeric
Questions (on the Iliad and on the Odyssey) have survived among
the Homeric scholia.6 It is not always clear, however, what material is
Porphyrian, and the opinions of editors have differed. MacPhail’s
edition of Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad (2011) has (in
some respects) replaced Schrader’s much fuller edition (1880).7 In
some cases, however, a scholium was excluded by Erbse on the
grounds that it came from Porphyry, but then also excluded from
MacPhail’s edition (on the grounds that it did not). In these cases
I have had to rely on Schrader (1880). Finally, Schrader (1890) is the
sole edition of the fragments of Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the
Odyssey—though a better text of the Porphyrian scholia on Odyssey
1–6 can be found in Pontani (2007), (2010), and (2015).8
Eustathius of Thessalonica (twelfth century AD) wrote massive
commentaries on the Homeric epics.9 Their value in the present
context “consists particularly in the assemblage of material drawn
information regarding manuscript sources can be found in the various editions of the
scholia.
5
This is unimportant as a source for the Homeric Problems. It includes one
quotation or paraphrase from Aristotle, which comes not from his Homeric Problems
but likely refers to something in the History of Animals. I discuss this in an appendix
in Mayhew (2015), entitled ‘The Corpse-Eating Fish of Iliad 21.’
6
For these two works of Porphyry, I use the abbreviations HQI and HQO and refer
to the relevant manuscripts, as described by the best editions available. Much of the
evidence for Porphyry’s Homeric Questions on the Iliad comes from scholia in Venetus
B (Marc. gr. Z. 453 [= 821]), eleventh century. Venetus B contains two levels of scholia
(eleventh century, and twelfth or thirteenth century). I follow Erbse and others in
using ‘B*’ to refer to the later scholia, which is the most important type in the present
context. On ms. B, and the difference between the B and B* scholia, see Erbse (1969,
xvii–xviii).
7
But see Slater (2012).
8
Given the importance of Porphyry as a source, it is worth keeping in mind Ford’s
word of caution, applicable beyond the reference to Theagenes in a Homeric scholium
which is Ford’s immediate concern (1999, 35–6): “A good deal of caution is required
in evaluating such information. This note has been traced to Porphyry, the Neopla-
tonist philosopher and commentator on Homer of the third century C.E. His account
is thus some eight centuries after the time of Theagenes, who is placed by another
source [i.e. Tatian] in the last quarter of the sixth century B.C.E. Porphyry depends on
intermediary sources now unknown.” As this issue applies to Porphyry as a source for
Aristotle, see Breitenberger (2006, 369–70) and Bouchard (2016, ch. 1).
9
See Wilson (1983, 196–204), Pontanti (2005b, 170–8), Cullhed (2016, 1*–33*),
and Pagani (2017).
A Note on Sources xxiii

from the old scholia and the lost works of earlier scholars and
lexicographers” (OCD3 s.v. Eustathius). I have used van der Valk
(1971–87) for the Iliad, and Stallbaum (1825–6) for the Odyssey.10
I use the following shorthand in citing these works: e.g. “Eust. Od. 12.62
(2.11.14–16)”=Eustathius’ comment on Odyssey 12.62, in volume 2,
page 11, lines 14–16 of Stallbaum’s edition.
10
In the one applicable case, I also consulted Cullhed’s new edition of Eustathius’
commentary on Odyssey 1–2 (2016).
Copyright Acknowledgments
Of the ten chapters in this volume, seven are entirely new (1–3, 5–7,
and 10), two have appeared elsewhere (4 and 8), and one (9) consists
of two parts, one of which has appeared elsewhere. Here are the
details regarding the previously published material:1
• Ch. 4: “Aristotle’s Biology and his Lost Homeric Puzzles,”
Classical Quarterly 65.1 (2015). Reprinted with the kind
permission of Cambridge University Press.
• Ch. 8: “Two Notes on Aristotle and Aristarchus on the Meaning
of κέρας in the Iliad,” Hyperboreus: Bibliotheca Classica
Petropolitana 22.1 (2016). Reprinted with the kind permission
of the editors of Hyperboreus.
• Ch. 9 (2nd part): “Aristotle and Chamaeleon and Anonymous in
the Margins of Genev. gr. 44,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine
Studies 56.1 (2016). Author retains copyright.
1
Each of these has been more or less revised and/or abridged.
Part I
Preliminary Studies
Pre-Aristotelian Homeric Scholarship

and Aristotle’s Poetics 25
1.1. HOMERIC SCHOLARSHIP

BEFORE ARISTOTLE
In Plato’s Republic, the character Socrates speaks of his love and

reverence (φιλία . . . καὶ αἰδώς) for Homer (10.595b), and claims
that people regard Homer as “the poet who educated Greece” (τὴν
Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν οὗτος ὁ ποιητής) (10.606e).1 And it is still said
today that although the ancient Greeks had no sacred texts with the
same status as the Bible or Quran, the epics of Homer came closest to
playing that role.2 Of course, Plato has Socrates speak of this love and
reverence in the midst of a harsh critique of Homer. And his critique
was not the first. Perhaps one indication that the epics were not
quite sacred texts (or not for everyone)—however elevated their
cultural stature (and despite the reference to divine inspiration at
the opening of each)—is how relatively early, historically, Homer
came under attack.3
The earliest recorded criticisms come from the presocratic philo-
sophers Xenophanes (c.570–475 BC) and Heraclitus (b. c.540 BC), who
1
On Homeric scholarship before and contemporary with Aristotle, see Apfel
(1938, 245–58), Pfeiffer (1968, chs. 1–3), Richardson (1992), Lamberton (1997), and
Pontani (2005b, 23–43).
2
I have encountered this most recently in Adamson (2014, 6): “In the ancient
Greek world they [sc. the Iliad and Odyssey] played the sort of role that the Bible did in
medieval Europe, and that Shakespeare does for us—or used to when people knew
their Shakespeare.”
3
See Whitmarsh (2015, ch. 2).
4 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

criticized Homer precisely because of his role in the moral education
of Greece.4 For instance, Xenophanes wrote (21B11 DK):
Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things
which among humans are disgraceful and blameworthy:
stealing, committing adultery, and deceiving one another.5
And according to Diogenes Laertius (9.1 [11–13 Dorandi]=22B42
DK), Heraclitus “claimed that Homer deserved to be thrown out of
the [literary] contests and flogged.”6
A B* scholium on Il. 20.67–75 (part of the Theomachy), the likely
source of which is Porphyry’s Homeric Questions (see MacPhail 2011,
240–1), reports that a standard reply to such criticisms, in defense of
Homer, was to interpret the epics allegorically.7 The gods and heroes
are not (all or necessarily) moral paradigms, according to this manner
of interpretation, but are rather allegorical representations of certain
features of reality, and thus do not necessarily reflect Homer’s own
theological or ethical convictions. For instance, in the Theomachy,
battling gods Apollo and Poseidon represent the opposition of certain
elements, namely fire and water, and Athena and Ares represent a set
of opposite states of character, namely wisdom and folly. This same
scholium reports that Theagenes of Rhegium is considered the first
person to offer this type of defense.8 According to Tatian (Or. 31),
4
Pythagoras (sixth century BC) may have been an early critic as well. Diogenes
Laertius reports (8.21 [229–34 Dorandi]) that according to the Peripatetic Hieronymus
of Rhodes (third century BC), Pythagoras traveled to Hades and saw Homer hanging
from a tree, surrounded by snakes, as punishment for what he said about the gods
(fr. 50 White).
5
πάντα ϑεοῖσ᾽ ἀνέϑηκαν Ὅμηρός ϑ᾽ Ἡσίοδός τε,
ὅσσα παρ᾽ ἀνϑρώποισιν ὀνείδεα καὶ ψόγος ἐστίν,
κλέπτειν μοιχεύειν τε καὶ ἀλλήλους ἀπατεύειν.
Unless indicated otherwise, translations from the Greek are my own.
6
τόν τε ῞Ομηρον ἔφασκεν, ἄξιον ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι.
7
The secondary literature on early allegorical interpretation of Homer is vast. See e.g.
Buffière (1973), Ford (1999), Richardson (2006), Rutherford (2011), Struck (2011), and
Cullhed (2016, 25*–33*), in addition to the sources cited in note 1 above.
8
οὗτος μὲν οὖν τρόπος ἀπολογίας ἀρχαῖος ὢν πάνυ καὶ ἀπὸ Θεαγένους τοῦ
Ῥηγίνου, ὃς πρῶτος ἔγραψε περὶ Ὁμήρου. Theagenes did not merely offer allegorical
interpretations. Schol. A Il. 1.381 reports: “Seleucus says that in Cyprian and Cretan it
(i.e. ‘ἐπεὶ μάλα οἱ φίλος ἦεν’) is ‘ἐπεί ῥά νύ οἱ φίλος ἦεν’. And Theagenes likewise
proposed this.” (Σέλευκός φησιν ἐν τῇ Κυπρίαι καὶ Κρητικῇ ⟨εἶναι⟩ ‘ἐπεί ῥά νύ οἱ φίλος
ἦεν’. καὶ Θεαγένης οὕτως προφέρεται.) That is, Theagenes accepted the variant or
conjecture ῥά νύ for the standard μάλα. The secondary literature on Theagenes is
quite extensive; see e.g. Domaradzki (2011).
Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 5

Theagenes was born or lived during the time of Cambyses—so, in the
sixth century.9 He was followed in the fifth century by (among others)
Metrodorus of Lampsacus the Elder, who also offered allegorical
interpretations of Homer.10
Both the critique of Homer on moral grounds, and the allegorical
defense of Homer, form part of the background necessary for under-
standing Aristotle’s approach to Homer.
An important fourth-century critic of Homer is Zoilus of Amphi-
polis (c.400–320), who was younger than Plato and older than Aris-
totle.11 He was known as Ὁμηρομάστιξ, the Scourge of Homer, having
written a work in nine books entitled Against Homer’s Poetry (Κατὰ
τῆς Ὁμήρου ποιήσεως). He appears to have focused on and been
hypercritical of what many would regard as non-essentials. For
instance, in the opening of Iliad 5, Athena bestows on Diomedes
strength and daring, and “she kindled from his helmet and shield
tireless fire” (δαῖέ οἱ ἐκ κόρυθός τε καὶ ἀσπίδος ἀκάματον πῦρ) (4).
Whereas other scholars took this to refer to the luster of his armor or to
represent the intensity of his passion, Zoilus denounced the passage as
quite ridiculous (λίαν γελοίως), on the grounds that “the hero would be
in danger of being burned” (ἐκινδύνευσε γὰρ ἂν καταφλεχθῆναι ὁ
ἥρως).12 As described by Matthaios (2006b), Zoilus “endeavoured
to point out errors and contradictions in the Homeric epics in order
9
Cambyses I ruled Persia 580–559, Cambyses II (his grandson) 530–522. Tatian
is likely referring to Cambyses II. We cannot rule out the possibility that Pherecydes of
Syros (sixth century BC, and likely somewhat earlier than Theagenes) also offered
allegorical interpretations of Homeric epic. See the texts presented and discussed in
Kirk, Raven, and Schofield (1983, 50–71), and especially schol. b Il. 2.783a (discussed
therein on pp. 59–60).
10
Metrodorus took both gods and heroes to represent nature allegorically. For
instance, Hesychius α 299: “Metrodorus said allegorically that Agamemnon is the
ether” (Ἀγαμέμνονα τὸν αἰθέρα Μητρόδωρος εἶπεν ἀλληγορικῶς). See also Diogenes
Laertius 2.3.11 and Tatian, Or. 21. The presocratic philosopher Democritus
(c.460–370) as well may have taken an allegorical approach to Homer: see Eust.
Od. 12.62 (2.11.14–16) (= 68B25 DK), Clement Alex. Protrep. 68 (= 68B30), and
Pliny, HN 9.5.14 (= 68A76). He wrote a work entitled On Homer or Correct Diction
and Foreign Words (Περὶ Ὁμήρου ἢ Ὀρθοεπείης καὶ γλωσσέων, Diogenes Laertius
9.48 [208 Dorandi]), which neither suggests nor rules out allegorical interpretation.
11
For a brief account of Zoilus, see Matthaios (2006b). For the fragments with
brief commentary (FGrHist 71), see Jacoby (1926a, 109–12) and (1926b, 103–4). See
also Friedländer (1895).
12
Schol. A Il. 5.7b (pp. 88–9 MacPhail) = FGrHist 71, fr. 7. The description of
Zoilus as Ὁμηρομάστιξ also comes from a scholium the likely source of which is
Porphyry’s work on the Iliad: see schol. B* Il. 10.276 (pp. 178–9 MacPhail) = FGrHist
71, fr. 9.

to achieve a comic effect at the cost of the poet.” He may well have been
known to Aristotle, though he is never mentioned by Aristotle in his
extant works or in the fragmentary remains of his lost works.13
Plato’s Ion provides another part of the fourth-century context out
of which, and in reaction to which, Aristotle’s own approach to
Homer will emerge.14 First, allegorical interpretation of Homer cer-
tainly continued, as Metrodorus of Lampsacus is described at the
beginning of the Ion (530c–d)—and as is clear in a passage from the
Republic (quoted below). Second, the eponymous character Ion, a
professional rhapsode, likely represents (accurately or as a caricature)
a certain type of Homeric scholar of the fourth century and earlier.
Socrates says that Homer is the best and most divine poet, and Ion
agrees (530b–c). Ion states that he knows the Homeric epics intim-
ately, is able to sing them well, and to interpret their meaning
accurately for his audience. In fact, he claims to be the best interpreter
(ἑρμηνέα) of Homer. There is no indication of how he interprets
Homer, but it is likely not allegorically. For he says he is better than
Metrodorus; and, at least before encountering Socrates, he seemed to
regard Homer as a direct (not an allegorical) source of wisdom and
knowledge on every subject dealt with in the epics, e.g. chariot racing,
medicine, and military strategy. (See 536e–537e, 540e–541b.)
But of course it is Plato’s critique of Homer—especially in the
Republic—that constitutes the most immediate context necessary
for understanding Aristotle’s approach to Homer.15 Plato rejected
attempts to defend Homer, allegorically or otherwise:
Stories about Hera being chained by her son, or about Hephaestus being
hurled from heaven by his father when he tried to save his mother from
a beating, or about the battle of the gods in Homer, should not be
admitted into our city, either presented with hidden meanings or
without hidden meanings.16 For the young cannot distinguish what is
13
Although Aristotle never mentions Zoilus, he does seem at times to refer to this
sort of critic (see e.g. Poet. 25.1461b1–3; cf. Metaph. N.6.1093a26–8).
14
For a brief summary of the debate over the dramatic date, and date of compos-
ition, of Plato’s Ion, see Rijksbaron (2007, 1–3). Plato’s dates are roughly 428/7 or 424/3
to 348/7.
15
Specifically, Ion and Republic 2–3 and 10, to which one could also add (perhaps
as revisions of his critique) Phaedrus and Laws 1–2. (On this last, see especially Sauvé
Meyer 2015.)
16
ὑπόνοια refers to a hidden meaning or a work that is presented as having such. It
is often even translated ‘allegory’ and was sometimes used (as it is here) to refer to
allegorical works (or to the allegorical interpretation of certain works, including the

hidden meaning from what is not. And the beliefs they absorb at
that age are difficult to erase and tend to become unalterable.17
(2.378d–e, Reeve trans. revised)
Rather, Plato had an extremely negative view of mimetic or repre-
sentational art generally—and especially literature, and including
Homer—and he did so primarily for four (connected) reasons:
1. Poetry (including epic) is the product of inspiration and mania,
not reason; it does not involve knowledge; it is not a rational
skill. (See the Ion.)
2. Since poetry is mimetic or representational, it is twice removed
from reality, i.e. from the Forms.18 It is thus worse or less
significant or less a bearer of truth than even our perceptual
grasp of physical concretes, and so it is far removed from univer-
sal or philosophical truth. (See Rep. 10.595a–608b.)
3. Poetry is dangerous because it stokes the emotions, which we
should rather be suppressing. (See Rep. 2.376e–3.398b.)
4. It is not surprising, given points 1–3, that poetry as it exists—as
it portrays gods and heroes—is not conducive to the proper
moral development of the young. (Ibid.)
epics of Homer). Note Richardson (2006, 71): “According to Plutarch ([De aud. poet.]
Mor. 19E), ὑπόνοια was the word used in earlier Greek for what was known in his time
as ἀλληγορία (allegory). Plutarch is here talking of extensive allegorical interpret-
ations of poetry, rather than using the word ἀλληγορία as a technical term of rhetoric,
as it was often used. His statement is confirmed by Plato’s Republic (378D).” See also
Ford (1999, 38–42) and Rutherford (2011).
17
Ἥρας δὲ δεσμοὺς ὑπὸ ὑέος καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρός, μέλλοντος τῇ
μητρὶ τυπτομένῃ ἀμυνεῖν, καὶ θεομαχίας ὅσας Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν οὐ παραδεκτέον εἰς
τὴν πόλιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας οὔτε ἄνευ ὑπονοιῶν. ὁ γὰρ νέος οὐχ οἷός τε
κρίνειν ὅτι τε ὑπόνοια καὶ ὃ μή, ἀλλ᾽ ἃ ἂν τηλικοῦτος ὢν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις
δυσέκνιπτά τε καὶ ἀμετάστατα φιλεῖ γίγνεσθαι.
18
Plato held that there are two levels or realms of reality: the quasi-real physical
realm, which is grasped through the senses, producing only opinion or belief (an
imperfect reflection of actual reality); and this higher realm of reality, consisting of the
Forms or Ideas (e.g. the Form of Beauty, the Form of Justice), which seem to play the
role of universals, are grasped by the intellect or reason, independent of sense
perception, and which alone produce knowledge. The quasi-real ‘things’ which
make up physical reality have the characteristics they do—to the extent that they do
(e.g. a human being beautiful or just)—by sharing or participating in the correspond-
ing Forms. For a brief account of the nature of one Form, with a hint at how it is
grasped, see Symposium 210a–211b (on the Form of Beauty, or Beauty Itself ).

So, what kind of poetry will be allowed in the best city of Plato’s
Republic? Not mimetic poetry: “hymns to the gods and eulogies to
good people are the only poetry that ought to be admitted into our
city”19 (10.607a). If Homeric epic is allowed at all, it will have to be in
a highly censored form. Nevertheless, Plato makes the following
challenge at the end of the Republic:
All the same, let it be said that if mimetic poetry, which aims at pleasure,
has any argument to show that it should have a place in a well-governed
city, we would gladly welcome it back, since we are well aware of being
charmed by it ourselves. Still, it is not pious to betray what one believes
to be the truth.20 (10.607c, Reeve trans. revised)
Aristotle’s one surviving poetical work, the first book of the Poetics,
can be viewed in part as a response to Plato. I here summarize his
response to the above four critical points:21
1. Mimetic poetry is a skill or craft (τέχνη), which can be learned,
with principles established and comprehensible by reason.
2. Mimetic poetry is an imitation of reality, but a useful one from
which we can learn. It is not far removed from philosophy and
universals (Aristotle’s answer to Platonic Forms); in fact, it
resembles philosophy, and deals more essentially with univer-
sals and not particulars.
3. Mimetic poetry does arouse the emotions of the audience. But
there is nothing wrong with emotions per se. In fact, in certain
circumstances the arousal of emotions can be beneficial.
4. Mimetic poetry (including Homer’s portrayal of the gods and
heroes, properly understood) can be conducive to—or is not
necessarily detrimental to—proper moral development.
The above provides the background and historical context neces-
sary for understanding Aristotle’s own approach to Homer. In his
poetical works, he endeavored to understand tragedy, epic, and other
19
εἰδέναι δὲ ὅτι ὅσον μόνον ὕμνους θεοῖς καὶ ἐγκώμια τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ποιήσεως
παραδεκτέον εἰς πόλιν.
20
ὅμως δὲ εἰρήσθω ὅτι ἡμεῖς γε, εἴ τινα ἔχοι λόγον εἰπεῖν ἡ πρὸς ἡδονὴν ποιητικὴ
καὶ ἡ μίμησις, ὡς χρὴ αὐτὴν εἶναι ἐν πόλει εὐνομουμένῃ, ἅσμενοι ἂν καταδεχοίμεθα,
ὡς σύνισμέν γε ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς κηλουμένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῆς· ἀλλὰ γὰρ τὸ δοκοῦν ἀληθὲς οὐχ
ὅσιον προδιδόναι.
21
In what follows, I have drawn on Janko (1987, x–xv).

literary works scientifically, i.e. according to rational principles. This
is clear from the opening of his Poetics:
Concerning both poetics itself and its kinds, which power/potential
each has, and how plots should be constructed if the creation is to be
beautiful, and further out of how many and what sort of parts it is
[constituted], and similarly too concerning all of the other [aspects] of
the same method of inquiry, we shall speak beginning according to
nature first from the first [things].22
Aristotle clearly had a great deal of respect for Homer, and sought to
defend his epics against criticism—but without slavishly or unthink-
ingly doing so (à la Ion), and without relying on allegory.23 He
discussed Homer in (at least) three works: One topic of his Poetics
(the first book of which survives) is epic, the paradigm of which is
Homeric epic (see especially chapters 23–6). Homer also received
some attention in Aristotle’s lost On Poets (see especially frs. 63 and
65a–67b Janko).24 And, of course, there is his lost Homeric Problems,
the focus of this volume.25
1.2. POETICS 25
Aristotle’s lost Homeric Problems may well stand at the head of the
genre of Homeric ζητήματα literature (ζητήματα including or being
synonymous with προβλήματα and ἀπορήματα),26 which involves rais-
ing questions, problems, or difficulties about certain passages in Homer,
and then considering and/or offering various solutions (λύσεις).
22
Περὶ ποιητικῆς αὐτῆς τε καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν αὐτῆς, ἥν τινα δύναμιν ἕκαστον ἔχει, καὶ
πῶς δεῖ συνίστασθαι τοὺς μύθους εἰ μέλλει καλῶς ἕξειν ἡ ποίησις, ἔτι δὲ ἐκ πόσων καὶ
ποίων ἐστὶ μορίων, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσα τῆς αὐτῆς ἐστι μεθόδου,
λέγωμεν ἀρξάμενοι κατὰ φύσιν πρῶτον ἀπὸ τῶν πρώτων.
23
Some scholars believe there are exceptional cases, in which Aristotle does
interpret Homer allegorically. I challenge this view, especially in chapter 10.
24
Frs. 63, 66c, 67a–b Janko are ‘new.’ In the case of frs. 65a–e, cf. 76 Rose and
20 Gigon; frs. 66a–b, cf. 75 Rose and 21 Gigon.
25
The evidence for the titles of this work, and the number of its books, is discussed
in chapter 2.
26
The main (relevant) meanings given for these terms in LSJ and BDAG are:
ζήτημα (inquiry, question), πρόβλημα (hindrance, obstacle, problem, difficulty), and
ἀπόρημα (question, problem, puzzle, difficulty; cf. ἀπορία).

Of capital importance, given the focus of the present work, is
Poetics 25, which is devoted to answering objections to Homer and
solving Homeric problems.27 It begins: “Concerning problems and
solutions, from how many [sources] and what kinds they are, it would
become clear by considering them as follows”28 (1460b6–7). I turn to
Poetics 25 now, as it must certainly cast light on the methodology of
the lost Homeric Problems.
Aristotle begins Poetics 25 by presenting three basic principles to
keep in mind in evaluating Homer or solving Homeric problems:
(1) Since the poet is representational, just like a painter or some other
image-maker, he is necessarily always representing some one of three
things in number: either the sorts of thing that were or are, or the sorts
of thing [people] say or think [were or are], or the sorts of thing that
ought to be. (2) These are expressed in speech in which there is unusual
language and metaphors and many modifications of speech; for we
grant these to poets. (3) In addition to these, there is not the same
[conception of] correctness for politics and for poetics, nor [is it the
same] for any other art and for poetics. Now error in poetics itself is
twofold: on the one hand essential [to the art], on the other incidental
[to it]. For if [a painter] chose to represent <a horse correctly, but erred
owing to> inability, the error is in [the art of painting] itself; but if by
choosing [to imitate it] incorrectly, he rather [imitated] the horse with
both right [legs] thrown forward, the error is according to the particular
art—for instance, according to medicine or another art of whatever
sort—not according to the art itself.29 (1460b8–21)
27
Halliwell (1998, 327–8) writes: “Poetics 25 has the look of being a compressed
summary of an already worked out scheme of problems and their solutions. But I am
not aware of any clear evidence for the date of the Homeric Problems . . . The Homeric
Problems, containing a mass of material on a very large number of issues, would in any
case appear a peculiarly suitable work to have been compiled over a protracted period
of time.” See also Janko (2011, 388–9). For this reason, the relative dates of Poetics 25
and the Homeric Problems will not concern me. On the connection between Poetics
25 and the Homeric Problems, see Römer (1884), Carroll (1895), Hintenlang (1961,
106–41), and Verhasselt (forthcoming). On Poetics 25, I would recommend (from
among the vast secondary literature) Rosenmeyer (1973), Halliwell (1987, 176–80),
and Schmitt (2011, 700–23). For accounts of Aristotle on Homer more broadly (and
particularly his references to Homer in the extant works), see Howes (1895) and Sanz
Morales (1994). Sanz Morales (1994, 187–98) contains a useful list of all of the
Homeric references in the extant works of Aristotle.
28
Περὶ δὲ προβλημάτων καὶ λύσεων, ἐκ πόσων τε καὶ ποίων εἰδῶν ἐστιν, ὧδ’ ἂν
θεωροῦσιν γένοιτ’ ἂν φανερόν.
29
ἐπεὶ γάρ ἐστι μιμητὴς ὁ ποιητὴς ὡσπερανεὶ ζωγράφος ἤ τις ἄλλος εἰκονοποιός,
ἀνάγκη μιμεῖσθαι τριῶν ὄντων τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἕν τι ἀεί, ἢ γὰρ οἷα ἦν ἢ ἔστιν, ἢ οἷά φασιν

These principles generate a dozen ways (or so Aristotle claims) of
solving Homeric problems or objections to Homer (which I discuss
and illustrate shortly). Aristotle ends the chapter with a summary of
the five kinds of criticism leveled against Homer, which the twelve
ways of solving problems are meant to answer:
Therefore, people bring criticisms of five kinds: that things are impossible
(ἀδύνατα) or illogical (ἄλογα)30 or harmful (βλαβερά)31 or contradictory
(ὑπεναντία) or contrary to what is right according to [another] art (παρὰ
τὴν ὀρθότητα τὴν κατὰ τέχνην). The solutions, however, must be sought
from the number of those mentioned, and they are twelve.32
(1461b22–5)
I do not believe that each of the twelve kinds of solution falls under
one of these five kinds of criticism, but that the various solutions can
be used to answer one or more of these criticisms.
Here are the twelve, as I see it, organized according to kind (again, as
I see it).33 I have tried where possible to include one example that
Aristotle provides in the Poetics 25 presentation of these solutions, and
one from the remains of the Homeric Problems. (Cf. Carroll (1893).)
καὶ δοκεῖ, ἢ οἷα εἶναι δεῖ. ταῦτα δ’ ἐξαγγέλλεται λέξει ἐν ᾗ καὶ γλῶτται καὶ μεταφοραὶ
καὶ πολλὰ πάθη τῆς λέξεώς ἐστι· δίδομεν γὰρ ταῦτα τοῖς ποιηταῖς. πρὸς δὲ τούτοις οὐχ
ἡ αὐτὴ ὀρθότης ἐστὶν τῆς πολιτικῆς καὶ τῆς ποιητικῆς οὐδὲ ἄλλης τέχνης καὶ ποιη-
τικῆς. αὐτῆς δὲ τῆς ποιητικῆς διττὴ ἁμαρτία, ἡ μὲν γὰρ καθ’ αὑτήν, ἡ δὲ κατὰ
συμβεβηκός. εἰ μὲν γὰρ προείλετο μιμήσασθαι <* *> ἀδυναμίαν, αὐτῆς ἡ ἁμαρτία· εἰ
δὲ τῷ προελέσθαι μὴ ὀρθῶς, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἵππον ἄμφω τὰ δεξιὰ προβεβληκότα, [ἢ] τὸ
καθ’ ἑκάστην τέχνην ἁμάρτημα, οἷον τὸ κατ’ ἰατρικὴν ἢ ἄλλην τέχνην [ἢ ἀδύνατα
πεποίηται] ὁποιανοῦν, οὐ καθ’ ἑαυτήν. I follow Janko’s (1987, xxvi) suggestion for
filling the lacuna, as well as his bracketing of parts of 1460b19–21.
30
This (ἄλογα) often seems to mean ‘implausible.’ See notes 34 and 36.
31
This is usually taken to mean morally harmful to the audience. But Bouchard
(2010) makes a strong case for taking this to mean harmful to (i.e. contrary to the
interests of ) a character undertaking some action.
32
τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐπιτιμήματα ἐκ πέντε εἰδῶν φέρουσιν· ἢ γὰρ ὡς ἀδύνατα ἢ ὡς ἄλογα
ἢ ὡς βλαβερὰ ἢ ὡς ὑπεναντία ἢ ὡς παρὰ τὴν ὀρθότητα τὴν κατὰ τέχνην. αἱ δὲ λύσεις
ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ἀριθμῶν σκεπτέαι, εἰσὶν δὲ δώδεκα.
33
That Aristotle explicitly mentions twelve ways to solve Homeric problems
(see 1461b25) has led to a great deal of scholarly conjecture and debate, as the twelve
ways are not easy to identify. One ‘solution’ has been to bracket εἰσὶν δὲ δώδεκα
(see the previous note) in the text (Tucker 1899) or to ignore it in one’s translation
and discussion of the passage (see e.g. Halliwell 1987, 63 and 68). This is tempting.
For two lengthy discussions of the twelve solutions, with references to alternative
interpretations, see Carroll (1893, 27–55) and De Montmollin (1951, 306–22). See
also Golden and Hardison (1968, 275–7). On the problematic nature of Poetics 25,
see Rosenmeyer (1973).

A. Replies to criticisms involving the art itself, and what is represented
1. To the charge that what is portrayed is impossible (ἀδύνατα),34
one may reply that though this would in most cases be an error, it is
permissible “if it achieves the end of the [art] itself ” (εἰ τυγχάνει τοῦ
τέλους τοῦ αὑτῆς) (1460b22–9).35 Aristotle gives as an example “the
pursuit of Hector” (παράδειγμα ἡ τοῦ Ἕκτορος δίωξις), which he had
earlier said was something marvelous (τὸ θαυμαστόν).36 Now there
are numerous examples from Porphyry and the scholia of problems
based on portrayals that are said to be impossible (ἀδύνατα) or
implausible (ἄλογα).37 For example, in response to a passage (men-
tioned earlier, in connection with Zoilus) in which Athena bestows on
Diomedes strength and daring, and “kindled from his helmet and
shield tireless fire,” Porphyry records the following: “This is impossible;
for how could he live burning from the head and the shoulders?”38
(schol. B* Il. 5.7 = HQI pp. 88–9 MacPhail). But so far as I know, there
are no examples among the fragments of the Homeric Problems of
Aristotle responding to such a problem in the way indicated here. (For
an example of a scene thought to be ἄλογον, which Aristotle responds
to with a different kind of solution, see no. 3 below.)
2. To the charge that what is portrayed is erroneous, one may reply
by pointing out that the error is incidental to the art itself (e.g. to epic or
painting), even though it is an error according to some other discipline
(1460b29–32). Aristotle gives as an example a painter erroneously
portraying a female deer with horns.39 There are unfortunately no
34
It is probable that this solution is meant to apply to both what is said to be
impossible (ἀδύνατα) and illogical or implausible (ἄλογα). See note 36.
35
At the very end of his Preface de Cromwell (1827), Victor Hugo’s manifesto of
the Romantic movement in literature, he quotes a (loose) French translation of this
passage, in order to use Aristotle against those who claimed him as their champion—
i.e. the Classicists: “Si le poëte établit des choses impossibles selon les règles de son
art, il commet une faute sans contredit; mais elle cesse d’être faute, lorsque par ce
moyen il arrive à la fin qu’il s’est proposée; car il a trouvé ce qu’il cherchait.” He then
comments: “On voit à ce seul échantillon que l’auteur de ce drame aurait pu comme
un autre se cuirasser de noms propres et se réfugier derrière des réputations. Mais il a
voulu laisser ce mode d’argumentation à ceux qui le croient invincible, universel et
souverain. Quant à lui, il préfère des raisons à des autorités; il a toujours mieux aimé
des armes que des armoiries.”
36
At Poet. 24.1460a14–17, Aristotle gives Achilles’ pursuit of Hector (Il. 22.131–225)
as an example of what is illogical or unreasonable (τὸ ἄλογον). On stage (i.e. in tragedy)
it would be comical, but it works in epic—in fact, it is marvelous.
37
See Carroll (1895, 19–21).
38
ἀδύνατον τοῦτο· πῶς γὰρ ἂν ἔζησεν ὁ οὕτω καιόμενοςἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς καὶ τῶν ὤμων;
39
For more on this example, see p. 50 n. 2.

examples from the fragmentary evidence for the Homeric Problems that
fall under this category of solution. However, in chapter 4, section 1.3
(pp. 55–7), I argue that there was almost certainly criticism and debate
(in which Aristotle participated) over the age of Argos, Odysseus’ dog
(see Od. 17.290–327), who lived for at least twenty years. (And like the
female deer with horns, Aristotle would have known that this was an
error of biology.) It is a touching scene, and Aristotle would no doubt
have justified on these grounds the stretching of a biological truth. Or to
put it another way, it is an error of biology but not of epic poetry.
3. To the charge that what is portrayed is not true to life, one may
reply that the artist is presenting things not as they are, but as they ought
to be, “even as Sophocles said he himself portrayed people such as they
ought to be, Euripides as they are”40 (1460b32–5). Later in Poetics 25
(1461b12–13), Aristotle gives a similar example from painting: “perhaps
it is impossible that there are such [people] as Zeuxis painted, but [it is]
better [so]; for [the artist] ought to surpass the model.”41 I assume it is
not accidental (though I nevertheless find it surprising) that Aristotle
provides examples from tragedy and painting, but not from epic. Now if
one considers only problems claiming that something is not true to life,
then there survive no examples from the Homeric Problems that fall
under this category of solution.42 But Aristotle does seem to employ this
kind of solution in discussing a scene that some considered improbable
or unreasonable: the Teichoscopy in Iliad 3. Atop the Scaean gates,
Priam asks Helen to identify the principals of the Greek army. She
does so, at one point stopping to say (236–8):
But I am unable to see the two leaders of men,
Castor breaker-of-horses and the good boxer Polydeuces,
my own brothers, the two born with me from a single mother.43
40
οἷον καὶ Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν, Εὐριπίδην δὲ οἷοι εἰσίν.
41
ἴσως γὰρ ἀδύνατον τοιούτους εἶναι οἷον Ζεῦξις ἔγραφεν, ἀλλὰ βέλτιον· τὸ γὰρ
παράδειγμα δεῖ ὑπερέχειν. On ἴσως γὰρ ἀδύνατον, see the apparatus criticus in Tarán
and Gutas (2012, 216), and their notes on the text (301 and 463–4). My translation
follows Janko’s (1987, 40).
42
Verhasselt (forthcoming): “Solutions of this kind don’t recur in the fragments of
the Homeric Problems; the reason for this is probably that idealized representations
were no major problem for the Homer critics who came before Aristotle.” See also
Hintenlang (1961, 52).
43
δοιὼ δ᾽ οὐ δύναμαι ἰδέειν κοσμήτορε λαῶν

Κάστορά θ᾽ ἱππόδαμον καὶ πὺξ ἀγαθὸν Πολυδεύκεα
αὐτοκασιγνήτω, τώ μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ.
We learn a few verses later (243–4) that they are already dead and buried in Sparta.

This gave rise to a Homeric problem (schol. B* Il. 3.236 = fr. 147
Rose/371 Gigon):44
Why did [Homer] portray Helen not knowing about her brothers, that
they were not present, though the war was ten years old and many
captives had been taken? For it is implausible (ἄλογον). And yet even if
she did not know, it was not necessary [for her] to be reminded of them,
as she was not asked by Priam about them; for [including] a reminder of
them was not a function of the poet. Therefore Aristotle says: Perhaps
she was prevented by Alexander [= Paris] from meeting the captives; or
perhaps she did not even know where her brothers were, so that her
character would appear better (τὸ ἦθος βελτίων φανῇ), i.e. she would
not be meddling.45
Aristotle gives two solutions: The first seems to deny that the scene is
implausible; the second arguably falls under the present category:
Homer is presenting Helen as a woman ought to be.46
4. To the charge that what is portrayed is false, one may reply that
even so, people believe that it is true. Aristotle gives as an example the
traditional gods (which populate Homeric epic, lyric poetry, and clas-
sical drama): Even if Xenophanes is right and no such gods exist, this is
not grounds for criticizing the poets, as most people do believe in such
gods (1460b35–1461a1).47 Here is an example from the Homeric
Problems: Some critics wondered how the Cyclops Polyphemus could
come from two parents who were not Cyclopes, as his father was
Poseidon and his mother the sea nymph Thoösa (see Od. 1.71–3):
Aristotle inquires how the Cyclops Polyphemus was himself born
a Cyclops, when he was neither [the son] of a Cyclops father—for he
was [a son] of Poseidon—nor [the son] of a [Cyclops] mother.
44
This text is not included in Erbse’s edition of the scholia, as he excluded those
thought to come from Porphyry. But MacPhail excludes it from his edition as well, so
I have used Schrader’s (1880, 70).
45
διὰ τί τὴν Ἑλένην πεποίηκεν ἀγνοοῦσαν περὶ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ὅτι οὐ παρῆσαν,
δεκαετοῦς τοῦ πολέμου ὄντος καὶ αἰχμαλώτων πολλῶν γινομένων; ἄλογον γάρ. ἔτι δὲ
καὶ εἰ ἠγνόει, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἦν ἀναγκαῖον μνησθῆναι τούτων οὐκ ἐρωτηθεῖσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ
Πριάμου περὶ αὐτῶν· οὐδὲ γὰρ πρὸς τὴν ποίησιν πρὸ ἔργου ἦν ἡ τούτων μνήμη. φησὶ
μὲν οὖν Ἀριστοτέλης· ἴσως ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐντυγχάνειν ἐφυλάττετο τοῖς
αἰχμαλώτοις· ἢ ὅπως τὸ ἦθος βελτίων φανῇ καὶ μὴ πολυπραγμονοίη, οὐδὲ τοὺς
ἀδελφοὺς ᾔδει ὅπου εἰσί.
46
For more on this text, see Hintenlang (1961, 113–15), Breitenberger (2006, 385),
Bouchard (2016, 292–3), and Verhasselt (forthcoming).
47
Although Xenophanes believed in a god or gods (21 B 23–7 DK), he held that
these were nothing like the gods of Homer (21 B 11–12, 14–16).

He solved it with another myth. For horses were born of Boreas
[i.e. he sired them] and the horse Pegasus [was born] of Poseidon
and Medusa.48
(schol. V Od. 9.106/schol. T Od 9.311 = fr. 172 Rose/395 Gigon)
The stories about the gods, the nymphs, and their offspring are part of
a world of beliefs held (or once held) to be true, and it is enough that
some claim of Homer’s fits comfortably into that world. That is
sufficient esthetic justification.
5. To the charge that the things portrayed are not better (than they
should be or than they are or than people say they are), one may reply
that “they were that way” (οὕτως εἶχεν) (1461a1–4). Aristotle gives as
an example a line from the Iliad about weapons (10.152–3): “their
spears upright on spikes” (ἔγχεα δέ σφιν | ὄρθ’ ἐπὶ σαυρωτῆρος).
Someone might charge that this is not a prudent way to store weap-
ons, and therefore a flaw in Homer’s portrayal; but Aristotle would
reply that nevertheless this is the way things used to be done (and, he
adds, is still done among the Illyrians).49 Here is another example,
from the Homeric Problems: After the funeral games, still unable to
overcome his grief for the loss of Patroclus, Achilles drags the corpse
of Hector from the back of his chariot three times around Patroclus’
tomb (Il. 24.14–18). This gave rise to a Homeric problem, for which
Aristotle offered a solution:
Why was Achilles dragging Hector around the tomb of Patroclus, acting
contrary to established custom with respect to the corpse? . . . It is
possible to solve [this], Aristotle says, also by referring to the fact that
the existing customs were like that, since even nowadays in Thessaly
they drag [corpses] around tombs.50
(schol. B* Il. 24.15 = Porph. HQI pp. 258–61
MacPhail = fr. 166 Rose/389 Gigon)
48
ζητεῖ Ἀριστοτέλης πῶς ὁ Κύκλωψ Πολύφημος μήτε πατρὸς ὢν Κύκλωπος,
Ποσειδῶνος γὰρ ἦν, μήτε μητρὸς, αὐτὸς Κύκλωψ ἐγένετο. ἑτέρῳ μύθῳ ἐπιλύεται.
καὶ γὰρ ἐκ Βορέου ἵπποι γίνονται καὶ ἐκ Ποσειδῶνος καὶ τῆς Μεδούσης ὁ Πήγασος
ἵππος.
49
Aristotle used the same example in the Homeric Problems (schol. B* Il. 10.153 =
Schrader 1880, 145 = fr. 160 Rose/383 Gigon)—unless the Poetics is the actual source
for this text.
50
διὰ τί ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς τὸν Ἕκτορα εἷλκε περὶ τὸν τάφον τοῦ Πατρόκλου, παρὰ τὰ
νενομισμένα ποιῶν εἰς τὸν νεκρόν; . . . ἔστι δὲ λύειν, φησὶν Ἀριστοτέλης, καὶ εἰς τὰ
ὑπάρχοντα ἀνάγοντ’ ἔθη ὅτι τοιαῦτα ἦν, ἐπεὶ καὶ νῦν ἐν Θετταλίᾳ περιέλκουσι περὶ
τοὺς τάφους. Aristotle is referring specifically to the corpses of murderers, which are
dragged around the graves of their victims.

6. To the charge that a character is portrayed (uncharacteristic-
ally?) saying or doing something beautifully or not beautifully (nobly
or not nobly, καλῶς ἢ μὴ καλῶς),51 one may reply that it is not
enough to look at the action itself, one must keep in mind the context:
who is “doing or saying it, or to whom, or when, or by what means, or
for the sake of what”52—i.e. for the sake of good or evil (1461a4–9).
Aristotle does not give an example here, but there are a few
examples of this kind of solution (or at least of actions done μὴ
καλῶς) among the fragments of the Homeric Problems. For instance,
in Iliad 2, Athena intervenes to stop the Greek army from departing
by rousing Odysseus from his inactivity, which was caused by his
disappointment over the reaction of the Greeks to Agamemnon’s
test. Springing to action, “he set out running, and threw off his
cloak” (βῆ δὲ θέειν, ἀπὸ δὲ χλαῖναν βάλε) (183). This bothered some
Homeric scholars:
It seems to be inappropriate that Odysseus, having thrown down his
cloak, runs through the encampment in a single tunic, and especially
such a man as Odysseus is supposed to be. Now Aristotle says [he did it]
so that by being amazed at this the crowd might turn around and his
voice would reach a greater [distance or number of people], and people
would convene from different places.53
(schol. B* Il. 2.183 = Porph. HQI pp. 40–1
MacPhail = fr. 143 Rose/368 Gigon)
As is often the case, what bothered ancient scholars does not bother
modern scholars in the least. For instance, Kirk comments (1985,
134): “Odysseus’ throwing off of his cloak and its gathering up by
the herald provide a vivid detail to illustrate the hero’s swift and
purposeful response.”
51
There is a controversy over whether Aristotle is here referring to esthetic or
ethical correctness. See Carroll (1895, 33–40) for an excellent discussion, drawing on
both the Poetics and the relevant Homeric scholia. (He favors esthetic correctness:
“whether what has been said or done by someone is poetically good or not.”)
52
ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς τὸν πράττοντα ἢ λέγοντα, ἢ πρὸς ὃν ἢ ὅτε ἢ ὅτῳ ἢ οὗ ἕνεκεν.
53
ἀπρεπὲς εἶναι δοκεῖ τὴν χλαῖναν ἀποβαλόντα μονοχίτωνα θεῖν τὸν Ὀδυσσέα διὰ
τοῦ στρατοπέδου, καὶ μάλιστα οἷος Ὀδυσσεὺς εἶναι ὑπείληπται. φησὶ δ’ Ἀριστοτέλης
ἵνα διὰ τὸ τοῦτο θαυμάζειν ὁ ὄχλος ἐπιστρέφηται καὶ ἐξικνῆται ἡ φωνὴ ὡς ἐπὶ μείζον,
ἄλλου ἄλλοθεν συνιόντος.

B. Solutions involving language54
7a.55 “Some [problems] should be solved by looking at the
diction”56—in one case by pointing out that some word at the center
of a criticism is in fact an unusual or foreign word (γλῶττα)
(1461a9–16). For example: Why, when Apollo shoots his arrows at the
Greeks, would he hit “the mules first” (οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον, Il. 1.50)?57
Aristotle’s suggestion is that “perhaps [Homer] means [by οὐρῆας] not
‘the mules’ but ‘the guards’.”58 Here is an example from the Homeric
Problems: Early in Book 5 of the Odyssey, Zeus sends Hermes to Calypso,
to tell her to release Odysseus. Before he delivers his message, they dine.
She serves him ambrosia and nectar—mixing this latter (5.93), presum-
ably the way the Greeks normally mixed wine, with water. This gave rise
to a problem: “If the gods drink nothing other than nectar, why does
Calypso give it to Hermes mixed?”59 Aristotle’s solution: ‘to mix’ can also
mean ‘to pour’—this latter purportedly being an unusual sense of the
word60 (schol. T Od. 5.93e1 = fr. 170.1 Rose/393.1 Gigon).61
7b. Some problems should be solved by looking at the diction—in
another case by pointing out that some word at the center of a criticism
is in fact a metaphor (μεταφορά) (1461a16–21). For example, Homer
says that the constellation called Bear or Wagon “alone has no share”
(οἴη δ’ ἄμμορος) in Ocean’s baths (Il. 18.489, Od. 5.275)—i.e. it alone
never sinks below the horizon—but this is inaccurate, as some others
54
In schol. EHP1TX Od. 5.334e (= fr. 171.1 Rose; cf. 394 Gigon), Porphyry implies
that textual conjectures or emendations do not count as solutions. Judging by the six
solutions under this heading, Porphyry was likely following Aristotle.
55
One common way of making Aristotle’s list contain twelve items is to combine
the γλῶττα solution and the μεταφορά solution (see e.g. Heath 1996, 44 and Schmitt
2011, 705). I have done this as well, though without much confidence, and I concede
that it is more natural to treat these two separately (see e.g. Janko 1987, 38–9). The
content remains the same in either case.
56
τὰ δὲ πρὸς τὴν λέξιν ὁρῶντα δεῖ διαλύειν.
57
We know that such a criticism was leveled by Zoilus. See Heraclitus, Homeric
Problems 14 (= FGrHist 71, fr. 5).
58
ἴσως γὰρ οὐ τοὺς ἡμιόνους λέγει ἀλλὰ τοὺς φύλακας. There was a word meaning
‘guard’ that was similar to the word for mule. I discuss this and other such criticisms
in chapter 6, section 1 (pp. 106–9).
59
“κέρασσε δὲ νέκταρ ἐρυθρόν”: εἰ μηδὲν ἄλλο πίνουσιν οἱ θεοὶ ἢ τὸ νέκταρ, διὰ τί
αὐτὸ ἡ Καλυψὼ τῷ Ἑρμῇ κεράσασα δίδωσιν.
60
λύων οὖν ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης τὸ “κέρασσε”, φησίν, ἤτοι τὸ μῖξαι ἄλλο ἄλλῳ ὑγρῷ
δηλοῖ, ⟨ἢ⟩ τὸ ἐγχέαι.
61
See also schol. EX Od. 5.93e2 = fr. 170.2 Rose/393.2 Gigon. Porphyry is
said to be the source. I discuss these texts in greater detail in chapter 6, section 1
(p. 109).

as well never do this. Aristotle replies that ‘alone’ here is a metaphor
for ‘alone of the well-known ones,’ which would make the statement
true.62 Here is another example: One Homeric problem involved an
apparent contradiction in how Crete is described in the Iliad and in
the Odyssey: in the one epic it is described as “hundred-city Crete”
(Il. 2.649), in the other as having ninety cities (Od. 19.173). Aristotle
offers two or three solutions (depending on how one interprets
the scholium), one involving metaphor: ‘hundred’ may have been
used metaphorically for ‘many’—and ninety (the actual or more
accurate number) is many (schol. B* Il. 2.649 = Porph. HQI pp. 68–9
MacPhail = fr. 146 Rose/370 Gigon).63
8.64 Some problems should be solved according to pronunciation
(κατὰ προσῳδίαν) (1461a21–3).65 Aristotle gives two examples from
Hippias of Thasos, one of which I mention here: In the Iliad (23.328),
people generally took Homer to be referring to a stump made of oak
or pine, “something not rotted away by rain” (τὸ μὲν οὐ καταπύθεται
ὄμβρῳ), which some thought was strange (for why would one point
out that it is not rotted). Hippias’ solution is to pronounce ΟΥ
differently, i.e. (as we would put it) to replace οὐ with οὗ, which
yields “part of which is rotted away by rain.”66 (It is not clear whether
this is a solution Aristotle would accept. Modern scholars do not.) No
examples survive from the Homeric Problems. Five scholia, however,
do attribute such a ‘solution’ to Aristotle, claiming that at Il. 21.252 he
replaced μέλανος τοῦ (in αἰετοῦ οἴματ’ ἔχων μέλανος τοῦ θηρητῆρος,
“with the swoops of a black eagle, the hunter”) with μελανόστου
(“with the swoops of a black-bone eagle, a hunter”)—τοῦ being the
62
I discuss this and other metaphors in chapter 5, section 2.3.
63
I discuss this text in greater detail in chapter 5, section 2.3 (pp. 97–8).
64
Here and in the next entry, one must keep in mind that the ancient Greeks at the
time wrote scriptio continua and without accent marks.
65
‘Pronunciation’ is shorthand. Note Dickey’s entry for προσῳδία (2007, 256–7):
“variation in pitch, pronunciation with a certain pitch, accentuation,” etc.
66
We know from Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations (4.166b1–9) that οὐ is the
supposed problem, and οὗ the solution: “It is not easy to create an argument
according to pronunciation in unwritten discussion, but it is more so in written
discussion and in poetry. For instance, some emend Homer against those who
question as strange his having said ‘τὸ μὲν οὐ καταπύθεται ὄμβρῳ’; for they solve it
by pronunciation, saying the ου with a more acute [accent].” παρὰ δὲ τὴν προσῳδίαν
ἐν μὲν τοῖς ἄνευ γραφῆς διαλεκτικοῖς οὐ ῥᾴδιον ποιῆσαι λόγον, ἐν δὲ τοῖς γεγραμμέ-
νοις καὶ ποιήμασι μᾶλλον. οἷον καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον ἔνιοι διορθοῦνται πρὸς τοὺς
ἐλέγχοντας ὡς ἄτοπον εἰρηκότα “τὸ μὲν οὐ καταπύθεται ὄμβρῳ”· λύουσι γὰρ αὐτὸ
τῇ προσῳδίᾳ, λέγοντες τὸ “ου” ὀξύτερον.
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industry but willing to prepare themselves for war and rapine by the
most laborious apprenticeship”; and over against them “the politicians
... cautious, plausible, deliberate, with an immense capacity for detail,
and an innate liking for routine; conscious in a manner of their moral
obligations, but mainly concerned with small economies and gains;
limited in their horizon, but quick to recognise superior powers and to
use them for their own objects; indifferent for their own part to high
ideals, and yet respectful to idealists; altogether a hard-headed, heavy-
9
handed, laborious and tenacious type of men.”
These contrasting types of life and character it is tempting to refer
to the respective influences of land and water, to the differences
between the peasant and the rider to the sea. One might even attempt
a philosophy of Norman history somewhat on this wise. In its normal
and undisturbed state Normandy is a part of France, in its life as in its
geography, and as such it shows only the ordinary local differences
from the rest of the French lands. So it was under the Romans, so
under the Franks. At the beginning of the tenth century the coming of
the Northmen introduces a new element which develops relations with
the sea and the countries beyond the sea, with Scandinavia and later
with the British Isles. Normandy ceases to be provincial, it almost
ceases to be French; it even becomes the centre of an Atlantic empire
which stretches from Scotland to the Pyrenees. It sends its pilgrims to
Compostela, its chivalry to Jerusalem, its younger sons to Sicily and
southern Italy. Its relations with the sea do not cease with its political
separation from the lands across the Channel in 1204. The English
come back for a time in the fifteenth century; the Normans cross the
Atlantic in the sixteenth and settle Canada in the seventeenth. But the
overmastering influence of the soil prevails and draws its children back
to itself. The sea-faring impulse declines; activity turns inward; the
province is finally absorbed in the nation; Normandy is again a part of
France, and the originality and distinctness of its history fade away in
the life of the whole.
Philosophy or no philosophy, the history of Normandy falls for our
purposes into three convenient periods. The first of these extends from
the earliest times to the coming of the Northmen in 911, the event
which created Normandy as a distinct entity. The second is the history
of the independent Norman duchy from 911 to the French conquest in
1204, the three splendid centuries of Norman independence and
Norman greatness. The third period of seven hundred years deals with
Normandy as a part of France.
* * * * *
The interest and importance of these several periods vary with the
point of view. Many people are of the opinion that the only history
which matters is modern history, and the more modern the better
because the nearer to ourselves and our time. To such everything is
meaningless before the French Revolution or the Franco-Prussian War
—or perhaps the War of 1914. To those who care only for their own
time the past has no perspective; as a distinguished maker and writer
of history has said, James Buchanan and Tiglath-Pileser become
contemporaries. This foreshortened interest in the immediate past
starts from a sound principle, namely, that it is an important function of
history to explain the present in the light of the past from which it has
come. By a natural reaction from the study which stopped with Marcus
Aurelius or the American colonies or the Congress of Vienna, the
demand naturally arose for the history of the day before yesterday,
which was once declared to be the least known period in human
annals. This is quite legitimate if it does not stop here and does not
accept the easy assumption that what is nearest us is necessarily most
important, even to ourselves. Modern Germany owes more to Martin
Luther than to Nietzsche, more to Charles the Great, who eleven
hundred years ago conquered and civilized the Saxons and began the
subjugation of the Slavs, than to many a more modern figure in the
Sieges-allee at Berlin. Our method of reckoning time and latitude by
sixtieths owes less to the contemporaries of James Buchanan than to
those of Tiglath-Pileser. If we must apply material standards to history,
we must consider the mass as well as the square of the distance.
Obviously, too, we must consider distance in space as well as in
time. The Boston fire of 1872 did not rouse Paris, and our hearts do
not thrill at the mention of the Socialist mayors and Conservative
deputies whose names become household words when the streets of
French towns are rechristened in their memory. The perspective of
Norman history is different for a Norman than for other Frenchmen,
different for a Frenchman than for an American.
Now there can be no question that for the average Norman the
recent period bulks larger than the earlier. His life is directly and
constantly affected by the bureaucratic traditions of the Old Régime, by
the new freedom and the land-distribution of the Revolution, by the
coming of the railroad, the steamship, and the primary school. William
the Conqueror, Philip Augustus, Joan of Arc, their deeds and their
times, have become mere traditions to him, if indeed they are that. In
all these changes, however, there is nothing distinctive, nothing
peculiar, nothing that cannot be studied just as well in some other part
of France. Their local and specifically Norman aspects are of
absorbing interest to Normandy, but they are meaningless to the world
at large. With the union with France in 1204 Norman history becomes
local history, and whatever possesses more than local interest it
shares with the rest of France. From the point of view of the world at
large, the history of Normandy runs parallel with that of the other
regions of France. Normandy will contribute its quota of great names to
the world, in art and music and literature, in learning and industry and
politics; it will take its part in the great movements of French history,
the Reformation, the Revolution, the new republic; but it will be only a
part of a larger whole and derive its interest for the general student
from its membership in the body of France.
Much the same is true of the period before the coming of the
Northmen. Under the Celts, the Romans, and the Franks, the region
which was to become Normandy is not distinguished in any notable
way from the rest of Gaul, and it has the further disadvantage of being
one of the regions concerning which our knowledge is particularly
scanty. A few names of tribes in Cæsar’s Gallic War and in the Roman
geographers, a few scattered inscriptions from the days of the empire,
a few lives of saints and now and then a rare document of Frankish
times, this with the results of archæological research constitutes the
basis of early Norman history. After all, Normandy was remote from
Rome and lay apart also from the main currents of Frankish life and
politics, so that we should not look here for much light on general
conditions. Nevertheless it is in this obscure age that the foundations
of Normandy were laid. First of all, the population, Gallo-Roman at
bottom, receiving a Germanic admixture of Saxons and Franks long
before the coming of the Northmen, but still preponderantly non-
Germanic in its racial type. Next, language, determined by the process
of Romanization and persisting as a Romance speech in spite of
Saxon and Frank and Northman, until in the earliest monuments of the
eleventh century we can recognize the beginnings of modern French.
Then law, the Frankish law which the Northmen were to absorb,
perpetuate, and carry to England. Fourth, religion, the Christian faith,
triumphing only with difficulty in a land largely rural and open to
barbarian invasion, but established firmly by the sixth century and
already reënforced by monastic foundations which were to be the
centres of faith and culture to a later age. Finally, the framework of
political geography, resting on the Roman cities which with some
modifications were perpetuated as the dioceses of the mediæval
church, and connected by Roman roads which remained until modern
times the great highways of local communication. A beginning was
also made in the direction of separate organization when, toward the
close of the fourth century, these districts of the northwest are for the
first time set off by themselves as an administrative area, the province
of Lugdunensis Secunda, which coincides with later Normandy. Then,
as regularly throughout Gaul, the civil province becomes the
ecclesiastical province, centring about its oldest church, Rouen, and
the province of the archbishop of Rouen perpetuates the boundaries of
the political area after the political authority passed away, and carries
over to the Middle Ages the outline of the Roman organization. In all
this process there is nothing particularly different from what took place
throughout the greater part of northern Gaul, but the results were
fundamental for Normandy and for the whole of Norman history.
A new epoch begins with the coming of the Northmen in the early
tenth century, as a result of which Normandy was differentiated from
the rest of France and carried into the broader currents of European
history. At first an outpost of the Scandinavian north, its relations soon
shifted as it bred the conquerors of England and Sicily. The Normans
of the eleventh century, Henry Adams maintains, stood more fully in
the centre of the world’s history than their English descendants ever
did. They “were a part, and a great part, of the Church, of France, and
of Europe.” The Popes leaned on them, at times heavily. By the
conquest of England the “Norman dukes cast the kings of France into
the shade.... Normans were everywhere in 1066, and everywhere in
10
the lead of their age.” A century later Normans ruled half of Italy, two
thirds of France, and the whole of England; and they had made a
beginning on Ireland and Scotland. No one can write of European
affairs throughout this whole period without giving a large place to the
Normans and their doings; while events like the conquests of England
and Ireland changed the course of history.
Normandy has also its place in the history of European institutions,
for the Normans were organizers as well as conquerors, and their
political creations were the most efficient states of their time. Masterful,
yet legally minded and businesslike, with a sense for detail and
routine, the Norman princes had a sure instinct for state-building, at
home and abroad. The Norman duchy was a compact and powerful
state before its duke crossed the Channel, and the central government
which the Normans created in England showed the same
characteristics on a larger scale. The Anglo-Norman empire of the
twelfth century was the marvel of its day, while the history of the
Norman kingdom of Sicily showed that the Norman genius for
assimilation and political organization was not confined to the dukes of
Rouen. Highly significant during the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
Norman institutions remained of permanent importance, affecting the
central administration of France in ways which are still obscure, and
exerting a decisive influence upon the law and government of England.
Normandy was the connecting link between the Frankish law of the
Continent and the English common law, and thus claims a share in the
jurisprudence of the wide-flung lands to which the common law has
spread. The institution of trial by jury, for example, is of Norman origin,
or rather of Frankish origin and Norman development.
By virtue, then, of its large part in the events of its time, by virtue of
the decisive character of the events in which the Normans took part,
and by virtue of the permanent influence of its institutions, the
Normandy of the dukes can claim an important position in the general
history of the world. In seeking to describe the place of the Normans in
European history we shall accordingly pass over those periods, the
earlier and the later, which are primarily of local interest, and
concentrate ourselves upon the heroic age of the tenth, eleventh, and
twelfth centuries. We shall begin with the coming of the Northmen and
the creation of the Norman state. The third lecture will consider the
Norman conquest of England; the fourth, the Norman empire to which
this gave rise. We shall then trace the events which led to the
separation of Normandy from England and its ultimate union in 1204
with the French monarchy under Philip Augustus, concluding our
survey of the Normans of the north by a sketch of Norman life and
culture in this period. The two concluding lectures will trace the
establishment of the Norman kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily, and
examine the brilliant composite civilization of the southern Normans
from the reign of the great King Roger to the accession of his still more
famous grandson, the Emperor Frederick II.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There is no substantial general history of Normandy. For a

review of the materials, the literature, and the problems, see the
excellent résumé of H. Prentout, La Normandie (Paris, 1910,
reprinted from the Revue de synthèse historique). For
bibliographical purposes this should be supplemented by the
Catalogue des ouvrages normands de la Bibliothèque municipale
de Caen (Caen, 1910–12). For the general features of Norman
geography, see the brief account by Vidal de la Blache, in the
Histoire de France of Lavisse, republished with illustrations under
the title of La France (Paris, 1908). The subject can best be
followed out in J. Sion, Les paysans de la Normandie orientale
(Paris, 1908), and R. de Félice, La Basse-Normandie (Paris,
1907). Various aspects of Norman genius and character are
delightfully treated by Albert Sorel, Pages normandes (Paris,
1907). The proceedings of the historical congress held in
conjunction with the millénaire of 1911 were to have been printed
in full, but so far only various reprints of individual communications
have appeared. J. Touflet, Le millénaire de Normandie (Rouen,
1913), is not an account of the commemoration, but an illustrated
collection of popular papers. One of the more notable pamphlets
published on this occasion is that of Gabriel Monod, Le rôle de la
Normandie dans l’histoire de France (Paris, 1911).
II
THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN
THE central fact of Norman history and the starting-point for its study is
the event so brilliantly commemorated by the millenary of 1911, the
grant of Normandy to Rollo and his northern followers in the year 911.
The history of Normandy, of course, began long before that year. The
land was there, and likewise in large measure the people, that is to
say, probably the greater part of the elements which went to make the
population of the country at a later day; and the history of the region
can be traced back several centuries. But after all, neither the Celtic
civitates nor the Roman province of Lugdunensis Secunda nor the
ecclesiastical province of Rouen which took its place nor the
northwestern pagi of the Frankish empire were Normandy. They lacked
the name—that is obvious; they lacked also individuality of character,
which is more. They were a part, and not a distinctive part, of
something else, whereas later Normandy was a separate entity with a
life and a history of its own. And the dividing line must be drawn when
the Northmen first established themselves permanently in the land and
gave it a new name and a new history.
It must be said that the date 911, like most exact dates in history, is
somewhat arbitrary. The Northmen first invaded Normandy in 841, and
their inroads did not cease until about 966, so that the year 911 falls
near the middle of a century and a quarter of invasion and settlement,
and marks neither the beginning nor the end of an epoch. It is also true
that this date, like many another which appears in heavy-faced type in
our histories, is not known with entire certainty, for some historians
have placed in 912 or even later the events commonly assigned to that
year. On the whole, however, there is good reason for maintaining 911
—and a thousandth anniversary must have some definite date to
commemorate!
For the actual occurrences of that year, we have only the account
of a romancing historian of a hundred years later, reënforced here and
there by the exceedingly scanty records of the time. The main fact is
clear, namely that the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, granted Rollo
as a fief a considerable part, the eastern part, of later Normandy.
Apparently Rollo did homage for his fief in feudal fashion by placing his
hands between the hands of the king, something, we are told, which
“neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather before
him had ever done for any man.” Legend goes on to relate, however,
that Rollo refused to kneel and kiss the king’s foot, crying out in his
own speech, “No, by God!” and that the companion to whom he
delegated the unwelcome obligation performed it so clumsily that he
overturned the king, to the great merriment of the assembled
Northmen. Rollo did not receive the whole of the later duchy, but only
the region on either side of the Seine which came to be known as
Upper Normandy, and it was not till 924 that the Northmen acquired
also middle Normandy, or the Bessin, while the west, the Cotentin and
the Avranchin, fell to them only in 933.
As to Rollo’s personality, we have only the evidence of later
Norman historians of doubtful authority and the Norse saga of Harold
Fairhair. If, as seems likely, their accounts relate to the same person,
he was known in the north as Hrolf the Ganger, because he was so
huge that no horse could carry him and he must needs gang afoot. A
pirate at home, he was driven into exile by the anger of King Harold,
whereupon he followed his trade in the Western Isles and in Gaul, and
rose to be a great Jarl among his people. The saga makes him a
Norwegian, but Danish scholars have sought to prove him a Dane, and
more recently the cudgels have been taken up for his Swedish origin.
To me the Norwegian theory seems on the whole the most probable,
being based on a trustworthy saga and corroborated by other
incidental evidence. Yet, however significant of Rollo’s importance it
may be that three great countries should each claim him as its own,
like the seven cities that strove for the honor of Homer’s birthplace, the
question of his nationality is historically of subordinate interest, and at
a time when national lines were not yet drawn, it is futile to fit the
inadequate evidence into one or another theory. The important fact is
that Norway, Denmark, and even more distant Sweden, all contributed
to the colonists who settled in Normandy under Rollo and his
successors, and the achievements of the Normans thus become the
common heritage of the Scandinavian race.
The colonization of Normandy was, of course, only a small part of
the work of this heroic age of Scandinavian expansion. The great
emigration from the North in the ninth and tenth centuries has been
explained in part by the growth of centralized government and the
consequent departure of the independent, the turbulent, and the
untamed for new fields of adventure; but its chief cause was doubtless
that which lies back of colonizing movements in all ages, the growth of
population and the need of more room. Five centuries earlier this land-
hunger had pushed the Germanic tribes across the Rhine and Danube
and produced the great wandering of the peoples which destroyed the
Roman empire; and the Viking raids were simply a later aspect of this
same Völkerwanderung, retarded by the outlying position of the
Scandinavian lands and by the greater difficulty of migration by sea.
For, unlike the Goths who swept across the map of Europe in vast
curves of marching men, or the Franks who moved forward by slow
stages of gradual settlement in their occupation of Roman Gaul, the
Scandinavian invaders were men of the sea and migrated in ships.
The deep fjords of Norway and the indented coast of the North Sea
and the Baltic made them perforce sailors and fishermen and taught
them the mastery of the wider ocean. In their dragon ships—shallow,
clinker-built, half-decked craft, pointed at either end, low in the middle,
where the gunwale was protected by a row of shields—they could
cross the sea, explore creeks and inlets, and follow the course of rivers
far above their mouth. The greater ships might reach the length of
seventy-five feet and carry as many as one hundred and twenty men,
but these were the largest, and even these offered but a slow means
of migration. We must think of the whole movement at first as one of
small and scattered bands, terrible more for their fierce, sudden, and
skilful methods of attack, than for force of superior numbers or
organization. The truth is that sea-power, whose strategic significance
in modern warfare Admiral Mahan did so much to make us appreciate,
was in the ninth and tenth centuries, so far as western Europe was
concerned, a Scandinavian monopoly. Masters of the seas, the
Northmen harried the coasts and river-valleys as they would, and there
was none to drive them back.
Outside of the Baltic, where the Danes ravaged the southern coast
and the Swedes moved eastward to lay the foundations of the Russian
state and to penetrate as far as Constantinople, two main routes lay
open to the masters of the northern seas. One led west to the
Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the coast of Scotland, and then either
south to the shores of Ireland, or further west to Iceland, Greenland,
and America. The other led through the North Sea to England, the Low
Countries, and the coast of Gaul. Both were used, and used freely, by
the Vikings, and in both directions they accomplished enduring results:
—Iceland and the kingdoms of the isles in the north, the beginnings of
town life and commerce in Ireland, the Danelaw in England, and the
duchy of Normandy.
When the great northern invasions began at the close of the eighth
century, Charles the Great ruled all the Christian lands of the western
Continent. By fire and sword he converted the heathen Saxons of the
north to Christianity and civilization and advanced his frontier to the
Danish border, so that the pious monk of St. Gall laments that he did
not conquer the Danes also—“be it that Divine Providence was not
then on our side, or that our sins rose up against us.” And this same
gossiping chronicler—not the best of authorities it is true—has left us a
striking picture of Charlemagne’s first experience with the
Scandinavian invaders:—
Once Charles arrived by chance at a certain maritime town of

Gallia Narbonensis. While he was sitting at dinner, and had not
been recognized by the townspeople, some northern pirates came
to carry on their depredations in that very port. When the ships
were perceived some thought they were Jewish merchants, some
that they were Africans, some Bretons. But the wise king, knowing
from the shape and swiftness of the vessels what sort of crews
they carried, said to those about him, “These ships bear no
merchandize, but cruel foes.” At these words all the Franks rivalled
each other in the speed with which they rushed to attack the
boats. But it was useless. The Northmen hearing that there stood
the man whom they were wont to call Charles the Hammer, were
afraid lest all their fleet should be taken in the port, and should be
broken in pieces; and their flight was so rapid, that they withdrew
themselves not only from the swords, but even from the eyes of
those who wished to catch them. The religious Charles, however,
seized by a holy fear, rose from the table, and looked out of the
window towards the East, remaining long in that position, his face
bathed in tears. No one ventured to question him: but turning to
his followers he said, “Know ye why I weep? Truly I fear not that
these will injure me. But I am deeply grieved that in my lifetime
they should have been so near landing on these shores, and I am
overwhelmed with sorrow as I look forward and see what evils
11
they will bring upon my offspring and their people.”
From the actuality of such an invasion the great Charles was

spared, but in the British Isles it had already begun. In 787 the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle tells us there “first came three ships of Northmen out
of Haeretha-land” [Denmark?], whereupon the reeve of the Dorset port
“rode down to the place and would have driven them to the king’s
town, because he knew not who they were; and they there slew him.
These were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the land of the
English nation.” Six years later they fell upon the holy isle of
Lindisfarne, pillaged the church sacred with the memories of
Northumbrian Christianity, and slew the monks or drove them into the
sea. In 807 they first landed in Ireland, and “after this there came great
sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there was not a point
thereof without a fleet.” Then came the turn of the Continent, first along
the coast of Frisia and Flanders, and then in what is now France. In
841, when the grandsons of Charlemagne were quarrelling over the
fragments of his empire at Fontenay, the first fleet of Northmen entered
the Seine; in 843 when they were making their treaty of partition at
Verdun, the Vikings entered Nantes on St. John’s Day and slew the
bishop before the high altar as he intoned the Sursum corda of the
mass. Within two years they sacked Hamburg and Paris. Wherever
possible they established themselves at the mouths of the great rivers,
often on an island like Walcheren, Noirmoutier, or the Ile de Rhé,
whence the rivers opened the whole country to them—Elbe and
Weser, Rhine and Meuse, Scheldt, Seine, Loire, and Garonne, even to
the Guadalquivir, by which the Arabic chronicler tells us the “dark red
sea-birds” penetrated to Seville. One band more venturesome than the
rest, entered the Mediterranean and reached Marseilles, whence
under their leader Hastings they sacked the Italian town of Luna,
apparently in the belief that it was Rome.
About the middle of the ninth century the number of the Norse
pirates greatly increased and their ravages became more regular and
constant, leading in many cases to permanent settlements. In 855 the
Old English Chronicle tells us “the heathen men, for the first time,
remained over winter in Sheppey,” at the mouth of the Thames, and
thereafter, year by year, it recounts the deeds of the Viking band which
wintered in England and is called simply here, the army. It is no longer
a matter of summer raids but of unbroken occupation. In 878 during
midwinter “the army stole away to Chippenham and overran the land of
the West-Saxons and sat down there; and many of the people they
drove beyond sea, and of the remainder the greater part they subdued
and forced to obey them except King Alfred, and he, with a small band,
with difficulty retreated to the woods and to the fastnesses of the
moors.” The following year a similar band, now swollen into “the great
army” made its appearance on the Continent and for fourteen years
ravaged the territory between the Rhine and the Loire. Year after year
“the steel of the heathen glistened”; in 886 they laid siege to Paris,
which was relieved not by the king’s valor but by his offering them
Burgundy to plunder instead. A century later the English began to buy
them off with Danegeld. “All men,” laments a chronicler, “give
themselves to flight. No one cries out, Stand and fight for your country,
your church, your countrymen. What they ought to defend with arms,
they shamefully redeem by payments.” There was nothing to do but
add a new petition to the litany, “From the fury of the Northmen, good
Lord, deliver us.”
* * * * *
To the writers of the time, who could not see the permanent results
of Viking settlement, the Northmen were barbarian pirates, without
piety or pity, “who wept neither for their sins nor for their dead,” and
their expeditions were mere wanton pillage and destruction. Moreover,
these writers were regularly monks or priests, and it was the church
that suffered most severely. A walled town or castle might often
successfully resist, but the monasteries, protected from Christian
freebooters by their sacred character, were simply so many
opportunities for plunder to the heathen of the north. Sometimes the
monks perished with their monastery, often they escaped only with
their lives and a few precious title-deeds, to find on their return merely
a heap of blackened ruins and a desolate countryside. Many religious
establishments utterly disappeared in the course of the invasions. In
Normandy scarcely a church survives anterior to the tenth century. As
the monasteries were at this time the chief centres of learning and
culture throughout western Europe, their losses were the losses of
civilization, and in this respect the verdict of the monastic chroniclers is
justified. There is, however, another side to the story, which
Scandinavian scholars have not been slow to emphasize. Heathen still
and from one point of view barbarian, the Northmen had yet a culture
of their own, well advanced on its material side, notable in its artistic
skill, and rich in its treasures of poetry and story. Its material treasures
have been in part recovered by the labors of northern archæologists,
while its literary wealth is now in large measure accessible in English
in the numerous translations of sagas and Eddic poems.
After all barbarism, like culture, is a relative thing, and judged by
contemporary standards, the Vikings were not barbarians. They rather
show a strange combination of the primitive and the civilized—
elemental passions expressing themselves with a high degree of
literary art, barbaric adornment wrought with skilled craftsmanship,
Berserker rage supplemented by clever strategy, pitiless savagery
combined with a strong sense of public order, constant feuds and
murders coexistent with a most elaborate system of law and legal
procedure. Young from our point of view, the civilization of the Vikings
had behind it a history of perhaps fifteen centuries.
On its material side Viking civilization is characterized by a
considerable degree of wealth and luxury. Much of this, naturally, was
gained by pillage, but much also came by trade. The northern warriors
do not seem to have had that contempt for traffic which has
characterized many military societies, and they turned readily enough
from war to commerce. In a Viking tomb recently discovered in the
Hebrides there were found beside the sword and spear and battle-axe
of all warriors, a pair of scales, fit emblem of the double life the chief
had led on earth and may have hoped to continue hereafter! Of trade,
and especially trade with the Orient, there is abundant evidence in the
great treasures of gold and silver coin found in many regions of the
north. The finely wrought objects of gold and silver and encrusted
metal, which were once supposed to have been imported from the
south and east, are now known to have been in large part of native
workmanship, influenced, of course, by the imitation of foreign models,
but also carrying out traditions of ornamentation, such as the use of
animal forms, which can be traced back continuously to the earliest
ages of Scandinavian history. Shields and damascened swords, arm-
rings and neck-rings, pins and brooches—especially brooches, if you
find an unknown object, says Montelius, call it a brooch and you will
generally be right—all testify, both in their abundance and their beauty
of workmanship, to an advanced stage of art and handicraft.
This love of the north for luxury of adornment is amply seen in
chronicle and saga. When the Irish drove the Vikings out of Limerick in
968 they took from them “their jewels and their best property, and their
saddles beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their
beautifully woven cloth of all kinds and colors—satin and silk, pleasing
and variegated, both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth in like
manner.” “How,” asks the Valkyrie in the Lay of the Raven, “does the
generous Prince Harold deal with the men of feats of renown that
guard his land?” The Raven answers:—
They are well cared for, the warriors that cast dice in Harold’s
court. They are endowed with wealth and with fair swords, with the
ore of the Huns, and with maids from the East. They are glad
when they have hopes of a battle, they will leap up in hot haste
and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes.
Fiercely, I ween, do they churn the water with their oars at the
king’s bidding.
Quoth the Walkyrie: I will ask thee, for thou knowest the truth
of all these things, of the meed of the Poets, since thou must know
clearly the state of the minstrels that live with Harold.
Quoth the Raven: It is easily seen by their cheer, and their
gold rings, that they are among the friends of the king. They have
red cloaks right fairly fringed, silver-mounted swords, and ring-
woven sarks, gilt trappings, and graven helmets, wrist-fitting rings,
12
the gifts of Harold.
As regards social organization, Viking society shows the Germanic

division into three classes, thrall, churl, and noble. Their respective
characters and occupations are thus described in the Rigsmal:—
Thrall was of swarthy skin, his hands wrinkled, his knuckles

bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad, his heels long.
He began to put forth his strength, binding bast, making loads, and
bearing home faggots the weary long day. His children busied
themselves with building fences, dunging plowland, tending swine,
herding goats, and digging peat. Their names were Sooty and
Cowherd, Clumsy and Lout and Laggard, etc. Carl, or churl, was
red and ruddy, with rolling eyes, and took to breaking oxen,
building plows, timbering houses, and making carts. Earl, the
noble, had yellow hair, his cheeks were rosy, his eyes were keen
as a young serpent’s. His occupation was shaping the shield,
bending the bow, hurling the javelin, shaking the lance, riding
horses, throwing dice, fencing, and swimming. He began to waken
13
war, to redden the field, and to fell the doomed.
Both churl and earl were largely represented in those who went to
sea, but the nobility naturally preponderated, and it is particularly their
exploits which the sagas and poems celebrate. Viking warfare was no
mere clash of swords; they conducted their military operations with skill
and foresight, and showed great power of adapting themselves to new
conditions, whether that meant the invasion of an open country or the
siege of a fortified town. Much, however, must be credited to their furor
Teutonicus, to that exuberance of military spirit which they had
inherited from far-off ancestors. Not all were wolf-coated Bearsarks,
but all seemed to have that delight in war and conflict for their own
sakes which breathes through their poetry:—
The sword in the king’s hand bit through the weeds of Woden
[mail] as if it were whisked through water, the spear-points
clashed, the shields were shattered, the axes rattled on the heads
of the warriors. Targets and skulls were trodden under the
Northmen’s shield-fires [weapons] and the hard heels of their hilts.
There was a din in the island, the kings dyed the shining rows of
shields in the blood of men. The wound-fires [blades] burnt in the
bloody wounds, the halberds bowed down to take the life of men,
the ocean of gore dashed upon the swords’-ness, the flood of the
shafts fell upon the beach of Stord. Halos of war mixed under the
vault of the bucklers; the battle-tempest blew underneath the
clouds of the targets, the lees of the sword-edges [blood] pattered
in the gale of Woden. Many a man fell into the stream of the
14
brand.
Again:—
Brands broke against the black targets, wounds waxed when

the princes met. The blades hammered against the helm-crests,
the wound-gravers, the sword’s point, bit. I heard that there fell in
the iron-play Woden’s oak [heroes] before the swords [the sword-
belt’s ice].
Second Burden: There was a linking of points and a gnashing
of edges: Eric got renown there.
Second Stave: The prince reddened the brand, there was a
meal for the ravens; the javelin sought out the life of man, the gory
spears flew, the destroyer of the Scots fed the steed of the witch
[wolves], the sister of Nari [Hell] trampled on the supper of the
eagles [corses]. The cranes of battle [shafts] flew against the walls
of the sword [bucklers], the wound-mew’s lips [the arrows’ barbs]
were not left thirsty for gore. The wolf tore the wounds, and the
wave of the sword [blood] plashed against the beak of the raven.
Third Burden: The lees of the din of war [blood] fell upon
Gialf’s steed [ship]: Eric gave the wolves carrion by the sea.
Third Stave: The flying javelin bit, peace was belied there, the
wolf was glad, and the bow was drawn, the bolts clattered, the
spear-points bit, the flaxen-bowstring bore the arrows out of the
bow. He brandished the buckler on his arm, the rouser of the play
of blades—he is a mighty hero. The fray grew greater everywhere
15
about the king. It was famed east over the sea, Eric’s war-faring.
Or listen to the weird sisters as they weave the web of Ireland’s fate
under Brian Boru:—
Wide-stretched is the warp presaging the slaughter, the

hanging cloud of the beam; it is raining blood. The gray web of the
hosts is raised up on the spears, the web which we the friends of
Woden are filling with red weft.
This web is warped with the guts of men, and heavily weighted
with human heads; blood-stained darts are the shafts, iron-bound
are the stays; it is shuttled with arrows. Let us strike with our
swords this web of victory!
War and Sword-clasher, Sangrid and Swipple, are weaving
with drawn swords. The shaft shall sing, the shield shall ring, the
16
helm-hound [axe] shall fall on the target.
And those who met their death in battle had reserved for them a similar
existence in the life to come, not doomed like the ‘straw-dead’ to tread
wet and chill and dusky ways to the land of Hel, but—I am quoting
17
Gummere —as weapon-dead faring “straightway to Odin, unwasted
by sickness, in the full strength of manhood,” to spend their days in
glorious battle and their nights in equally glorious feasting in the courts
of Valhalla.
In his cradle the young Viking was lulled by such songs as this:—
My mother said they should buy me a boat and fair oars, and
that I should go abroad with the Vikings, should stand forward in
the bows and steer a dear bark, and so wend to the haven and cut
down man after man there.
When he grows up the earl’s daughter scorns him as a boy who “has
never given a warm meal to the wolf,” “seen the raven in autumn
scream over the carrion draft,” or “been where the shell-thin edges” of
the blades crossed; whereupon he wins a place by her side by
replying:—
I have walked with bloody brand and with whistling spear, with
the wound-bird following me. The Vikings made a fierce attack; we
raised a furious storm, the flame ran over the dwellings of men, we
18
laid the bleeding corses to rest in the gates of the city.
And at the end, like Ragnar Lodbrok captured and dying in the pit of
serpents, he can tell his tale of feeding the eagle and the she-wolf
since he first reddened the sword at the age of twenty, and end his life
undaunted to the ever-recurring refrain, “We hewed with the sword”:
Death has no terrors. I am willing to depart. They are calling

me home, the Fays whom Woden the Lord of Hosts has sent me
from his hall. Merrily shall I drink ale in my high-seat with the
19
Anses. My life days are done. Laughing will I die.
Politically, Viking society was aristocratic, but an aristocracy in

which all the nobles were equal. “We have no lord, we are all equal,”
said Rollo’s men when asked who was their lord; and men thus
minded were not likely to spend their time casting dice in King Harold’s
court, even if their independence meant the wolf’s lot of exile. What
kind of a political organization they were likely to form can be seen
from two examples of the Viking age. One is Iceland, described by
20
Lord Bryce as “an almost unique instance of a community whose
culture and creative power flourished independently of any favoring
material conditions,”—that curiously decentralized and democratic
commonwealth where the necessities of life created a government with
judicial and legislative duties, while the feeling of equality and local
independence prevented the government from acquiring any
administrative or executive functions,—a community with “a great deal
of law and no central executive, a great many courts and no authority
to carry out their judgments.” The other example is Jomburg, that
strange body of Jomvikings established in Pomerania, at the mouth of
the Oder, and held by a military gild under the strictest discipline. Only
men of undoubted bravery between the ages of eighteen and fifty were
admitted to membership; no women were allowed in the castle, and no
man could be absent from it for more than three days at a time.
Members assumed the duty of mutual support and revenge, and
plunder was to be distributed by lot.
Neither of these types of Viking community was to be reproduced
in Normandy, for both were the outgrowth of peculiar local conditions,
and the Northmen were too adaptable to found states with a rubber-
stamp. A loose half-state like Iceland could exist only where the
absence of neighbors or previous inhabitants removed all danger of
complications, whether domestic or foreign. A strict warrior gild like that
of Jomburg could arise only in a fortress. Whatever form Viking society
would take in Normandy was certain to be determined in large
measure by local conditions; yet it might well contain elements found in
the other societies—the Icelandic sense of equality and independence,
and the military discipline of the Jomvikings set in the midst of their
Wendish foes. And both of these elements are characteristic of the
Norman state.
Such, very briefly sketched, were the Northmen who came to
Normandy. We have now to follow them in their new home.
We must note in the first place that the relations between
Normandy and the north were not ended with the grant of 911. We
must think of the new Norman state, not as a planet sent off into space
to move separate and apart in a new orbit, but as a colony, an outpost
of the Scandinavian peoples in the south, fed by new bands of
colonists from the northern home and only gradually drawn away from
its connections with the north and brought into the political system of
Frankish Gaul and its neighbors. For something like a hundred years
after the coming of Rollo the key to Norman history is found in this fact
and in the resulting interplay of Scandinavian and Frankish influences.
The very grant of 911 was susceptible of being differently regarded
from the point of view of the two parties. Charles the Simple probably
thought he was creating a new fief with the Norman chief as his vassal,
bound to him by feudal ties, while to Rollo, innocent of feudal ideas,
the grant may well have seemed a gift outright to be held by himself
and his companions as land was held at home. From one point of view
a feudal holding, from another an independent Scandinavian state, the
contradiction in Normandy’s position explains much of its early history.
The new colony was saved from absorption in its surroundings by
continued migration from the north; before it became Frankish and
feudal it thus had time to establish itself firmly and draw tightly the lines
which separated it from its neighbors. At once a Frankish county and a
Danish colony, it slowly formed itself into the semi-independent duchy
which is the historic Normandy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Although Rollo was baptized in 912 and signalized his conversion
by extensive grants of land to the great churches and monasteries of
his new territories, his Christianity sat lightly upon him and left him a
Norse sea-rover at heart till the end, when he sought to appease the
powers of the other world, not only by gifts of gold to the church, but by
human sacrifices to the northern gods. His legislation, so far as it can
be reconstructed from the shadowy accounts of later historians, was
fundamentally Scandinavian in character, and his followers guarded
jealously the northern traditions of equality and independence. His son,
William Longsword, was a more Christian and Frankish type, but his
death, celebrated in a Latin poem which represents the earliest known
example of popular epic in Normandy, was the signal for a
Scandinavian and pagan reaction. We hear of fresh arrivals on the
Seine, Vikings who worshipped Thor and Odin, of an independent
band at Bayeux under a certain Haigrold or Harold, and even of
appeals for reënforcements from the Normans to the Northmen
beyond the sea. The dukes of Rouen, says the Saga of St. Olaf,
“remember well their kinship with the chiefs of Norway; they hold them
in such honor that they have always been the best friends of the
Norwegians, and all the Norwegians who wish find refuge in
Normandy.” Not till the beginning of the eleventh century does the
Scandinavian immigration come to an end and Normandy stand fully
on its own feet.
Not until the eleventh century also does the history of Normandy
emerge from the uncertain period of legend and tradition and reach an
assured basis of contemporary evidence. Throughout Europe, the
tenth century is one of the most uncertain and obscure of all the

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Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems:

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List of Figures xvii

PART I. PRELIMINA RY S TUDIES

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8.1. Schol. Genavensis gr. 44 (Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. gr. 44)

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xxii A Note on Sources

A Note on Sources xxiii

Pre-Aristotelian Homeric Scholarship

1.1. HOMERIC SCHOLARSHIP

In Plato’s Republic, the character Socrates speaks of his love and

4 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 5

6 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 7

8 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 9

10 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 11

12 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 13

δοιὼ δ᾽ οὐ δύναμαι ἰδέειν κοσμήτορε λαῶν

14 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 15

16 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

Homeric Scholarship and Aristotle’s Poetics 25 17

18 Aristotle’s Lost Homeric Problems

There is no substantial general history of Normandy. For a

Once Charles arrived by chance at a certain maritime town of

From the actuality of such an invasion the great Charles was

As regards social organization, Viking society shows the Germanic

Thrall was of swarthy skin, his hands wrinkled, his knuckles

Brands broke against the black targets, wounds waxed when

Wide-stretched is the warp presaging the slaughter, the

Death has no terrors. I am willing to depart. They are calling

Politically, Viking society was aristocratic, but an aristocracy in

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