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| Chapter XXVIII.—Homer’s obligations to the sacred writers.
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Chapter XXVIII.—Homer’s obligations
to the sacred writers.
And not only Plato, but Homer also, having
received similar enlightenment in Egypt, said that Tityus was in like
manner punished. For Ulysses speaks thus to Alcinous when he is
recounting his divination by the shades of the dead:2565
| 2565 Odyssey, xi, 576 (Pope’s
translation, line 709). | —
“There
Tityus, large and long, in fetters bound,
O’erspread
nine acres of infernal ground;
Two
ravenous vultures, furious for their food,
Scream
o’er the fiend, and riot in his blood,
Incessant
gore the liver in his breast,
Th’
immortal liver grows, and gives th’ immortal feast.”
For it is plain that it is not the soul,
but the body, which has a liver. And in the same manner he has described
both Sisyphus and Tantalus as enduring punishment with the body. And that
Homer had been in Egypt, and introduced into his own poem much of what he
there learnt, Diodorus, the most esteemed of historians, plainly enough
teaches us. For he said that when he was in Egypt he had learnt that
Helen, having received from Theon’s wife, Polydamna, a drug,
“lulling all sorrow and melancholy, and causing forgetfulness of
all ills,”2566
| 2566
Odyssey, iv. 221; [Milton’s Comus, line 675]. |
brought it to Sparta. And Homer said that by making use of that drug
Helen put an end to the lamentation of Menelaus, caused by the presence
of Telemachus. And he also called Venus “golden,” from what
he had seen in Egypt. For he had seen the temple which in Egypt is called
“the temple of golden Venus,” and the plain which is named
“the plain of golden Venus.” And why do I now make mention of
this? To show that the poet transferred to his own poem much of what is
contained in the divine writings of the prophets. And first he
transferred what Moses had related as the beginning of the creation of
the world. For Moses wrote thus: “In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth,”2567
then the
sun, and the moon, and the stars. For having learned this in Egypt, and
having been much taken with what Moses had written in the Genesis of the
world, he fabled that Vulcan had made in the shield of Achilles a kind of
representation of the creation of the world. For he wrote thus:2568
—
“There
he described the earth, the heaven, the sea,
The
sun that rests not, and the moon full-orb’d;
There
also, all the stars which round about,
As
with a radiant frontlet, bind the skies.”
And he contrived also that the garden of Alcinous
should preserve the likeness of Paradise, and through this likeness he
represented it as ever-blooming and full of all fruits. For thus he
wrote:2569
| 2569 Odyssey,
vii. 114 (Pope’s translation, line 146.). | —
“Tall
thriving trees confess’d the fruitful mould;
The
reddening apple ripens here to gold.
Here
the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows,
With
deeper red the full pomegranate glows;
The
branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,
And
verdant olives flourish round the year.
The
balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal
breathes on fruits, untaught to fail;
Each
dropping pear a following pear supplies,
On
apples, figs on figs arise.
The
same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The
buds to harden, and the fruits to grow.
Here
order’d vines in equal ranks appear,
With
all th’ united labours of the year.
Some
to unload the fertile branches run,
Some
dry the blackening clusters in the sun,
Others
to tread the liquid harvest join.
The
groaning presses foam with floods of wine.
Here
are the vines in early flower descry’d
Here
grapes discoloured on the sunny side,
And
there in autumn’s richest purple dy’d.”
Do not these words present a manifest and clear
imitation of what the first prophet Moses said about Paradise? And if any
one wish to know something of the building of the tower by which the men
of that day fancied they would obtain access to heaven, he will find a
sufficiently exact allegorical imitation of this in what the poet has
ascribed to Otus and Ephialtes. For of them he wrote thus:2570
| 2570 Odyssey, xi. 312
(Pope’s translation, line 385). | —
“Proud
of their strength, and more than mortal size,
The
gods they challenge, and affect the skies.
Heav’d
on Olympus tottering Ossa stood;
On
Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood.”
And the same holds good regarding the enemy of mankind
who was cast out of heaven, whom the Sacred Scriptures call the
Devil,2571
| 2571 The false accuser;
one who does injury by slanderous accusations. | a name which
he obtained from his first devilry against man; and if any one would
attentively consider the matter, he would find that the poet, though he
certainly never mentions the name of “the devil,” yet gives
him a name from his wickedest action. For the poet, calling him Ate,2572
says that he was hurled from heaven by their god,
just as if he had a distinct remembrance of the expressions which Isaiah
the prophet had uttered regarding him. He wrote thus in his own
poem:2573
—
“And,
seizing by her glossy locks
The
goddess Ate, in his wrath he swore
That
never to the starry skies again,
And
the Olympian heights, he would permit
The
universal mischief to return.
Then,
whirling her around, he cast her down
To
earth. She, mingling with all works of men,
Caused
many a pang to Jove.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
