The World of Homer. Andrew Lang

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СКАЧАТЬ dismounted, their horses being held in reserve, and received the attacks of the heavy French cavalry on foot, with spear, sword, and axe. In case of defeat (which did not occur) or of pursuit, the horses were in readiness. Heavy armed infantry, like the hoplites of historic Greece, were developed later than Homer, and the heavy cavalry then became a separate arm. The changes occurred in the dim age between the date of the Iliad and Odyssey and the dawn of historic Greece. Chariots ceased to be employed in war by the Greek cities of Asia. The chief arm was the heavy drilled infantry, the hoplites. We catch our first glimpses of them on the Warrior Vase of the upper and later stratum at Mycenae, and on an old sculptured Mycenaean stele, later "plastered over and painted in fresco." In the former is a line of swordless spearmen on the march; on the latter, a row of swordless spearmen in the act of brandishing the spear. Their bucklers are worn on the left arm: they appear to wear hauberks, not corslets of plate, but one cannot be certain.[22] In these figures we see the germ of the infantry of historic Hellas. The war chariot becoming obsolete, civic cavalry were employed; the horsemen of Colophon were celebrated for dealing a fatal conclusive charge.

      Nothing could be much less like Homeric than historical Ionian warfare, except in so far as Homer's dismounted men-at-arms resemble the heavy historic infantry, who never mount.

      We have now given a brief sketch of Homer's idea of a general engagement in force. The clash of marshalled lines of heavy dismounted men-at-arms ends in the breaking of the phalanxes, and in the single combats, or combats of small knots of heroes, in which the poet and his audience take special delight.

      We now criticise the modern criticisms of Homeric pictures of battles.

Herr Mülder, in 1906, and Mr. Murray, in 1908, discover that Homeric formations and fighting are a confusion of the methods of historic Greece—with drilled hoplites and cavalry—and the "Mycenaean" system of "a battle of promachoi or champions."[23]

According to the English critic, in the Iliad "the men are, so to speak, advertised as fighting in one way, and then they proceed to fight in another."[24] As we have seen, they are "advertised as fighting in one way," that is, in ordered phalanxes of dismounted men-at-arms, and they do fight in that way, from dawn till noon; and then when "the phalanxes are broken," when "the battle is scattered," they "fight in another way"; there is flight, pursuit, and examples of individual valour; there is a rally, and the lines of men on foot re-form. What else could there possibly be? The charge of the Union brigade, at Waterloo, begins by "fighting in one way," a resistless charge of squadrons, and ends by "fighting in another way," in knots, with individual examples of flight, or of single prowess, when Piré's Red Lancers swoop down on the scattered and broken ranks. At Bannockburn you have the slow advance of the clogged English columns on a narrow front, you have the slow advance in mass of the Scottish spearmen, till "the phalanxes are broken" of England, and then comes the isolated struggle of Edward II., and the charge of d'Argentine—alone.

      It was always thus that men fought, before the invention of modern projectiles. It was thus they fought at Inkerman, nay, for a moment at Waggon Hill, as one who was in the thick of it informs me. Ian Hamilton and de Villiers, Albrecht and Digby Jones were among the promachoi.

      There is no confusion of a "Mycenaean" and a historic mode of battle in Homer; and we have absolutely no evidence as to how a "Mycenaean" or Aegean general engagement was conducted: no Aegean work of art in which it is represented.[25]

      

      There is no confusion of military styles in Homer; the trouble is caused when Herr Mülder chooses to say that there is confusion; that a fight of masses is promised (apparently by an Ionian interpolator), and that single combats are given (apparently by the older minstrel).[26] Both sorts of fighting are given in their proper places: the engagement of masses before, the individual valiances after "the battle is scattered," while in the clash of the massed forces, the conduct of prominent assailants and defenders is noted. Mülder's remarks arise from his eagerness to prove that not only the armature is a muddle of anachronisms, which is not the case, but that the fighting, too, is anachronistic and self-contradictory.

      The aged Nestor remembers and approves of a mode of fighting which, at Troy, has become obsolete, owing to the new system of dismounting the men-at-arms and arraying them in line or in column of attack. He says to his Pylians (Iliad, iv. 303 seqq.), "Neither let any man, trusting to his horsemanship and valour, be eager to fight the Trojans alone before the rest, nor yet let him draw back. … But whensoever a warrior from his own chariot can come at the chariot of the foe, let him thrust forth with his spear, even so is the far better way," the old way. "The style of fighting is not Epic," says Mr. Leaf. It is meant not to be "Epic"; it is old-fashioned, like Nestor.

      We know "the old way" from pictures on Egyptian monuments, showing the charge of squadrons using the bow, and routing an irregular advance of Hittite chariotry, using the spear. But, under Troy, the combatants usually fight dismounted; always, in the opening of a general action. But though Nestor recommends the old chariotry tactics, Herr Mülder says that he is recommending the historic, "the modern method," and attributing it to the old military school of his youth (οἱ πρότεροι).[27] The general purpose is to prove that "edifying passages from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into Homer."[28]

      The tactics and military formations of Homer are as intelligible as those of Chandos and Henry v. They can only be misunderstood by critics under the suggestion of the idea that the Iliad is riddled with Ionian tamperings. The Ionians never touched the matter of the Iliad.

[1] Iliad, xi. 49, αὐτοὶ δὲ πρυλέες σὐν τέύχεσιθωρηχθέντες. Cf. v. 744, πρυλέες "may mean either footmen or champions." Leaf.

[2] Iliad, xi. 59–66.

[3] xi. 67–69.

[4] θαλάγγαι, xi. 90.

[5] Iliad, xii. 3, μάχοντο ὀμιλαδόν. Cf. xii. 35, 36.

[6] xii. 66–107.

[7] Iliad, xiii. 81–124.

[8] xiii. 80–90.

[9] πτύσσοντο, xiii. 134.

[10] xiii. 128–133.

[11] xiii. 144–148.

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