An Historical Homeric Society? A.M. Snodgrass Source: Journal of Hellenic Studies vol. 94, 1974, pp. 114-25.
Irene J. F. De Jong (eds.),Homer, Critical Assessments: Vol. II: The Homeric World, London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
the question on which I wish to argue, namely whether the social system is consistent and identical within each poem. (p36)
But, for what it is worth, my inclination is to fall back on the familiar observation that the one poem shows the heroic world on a war footing, while the other shows it at peace; and to attribute the differences rather to this than to any deeper dichotomy.
Do the features of this society show the degree of coherence and mutual appropriateness that Professor Adkins sees, and which is perhaps a necessary precondition of that society’s being historical?
First, there is a subsidiary question which may arise, since a precondition need not be a guarantee: even if the society is shown to be so cohesive, will that necessarily make it historical? (p36)
It is perhaps most fruitful to concentrate on institutions, where the arguments have a better chance of being of a factual nature. (p37)
The field of marriage settlements has long proved an attractive one here.
Homeric marriages present a number of apparently inconsistent features; but scholars have argued that these ‘inconsistencies’ are in part the result of misunderstanding, or alternatively that, though real, they are nevertheless compatible with a single and historical social system. (p37)
Yet Homer, it seems to me, presents all the three features mentioned as being normal in his society. (p43) 也就是说，荷马所描绘的婚姻嫁娶风俗是一种混杂的制度，表明“荷马社会”并非内在一致（unitary and historical）。
Those who maintain that Homeric society is unitary and historical are bound to ask themselves the question, to what time and place that society belongs. (p44)
The two answers which might seem, prima facie, to be the likeliest, can be shown to be improbable on other grounds: namely the historical period in which the story of the poems is ostensibly set, the later Mycenaean age, and the period in which the poems reached their final form and in which the historical Homer most probably lived, the eighth century B.c.
A fully Mycenaean setting is rendered almost impossible by the evidence of the Linear B tablets, whose picture has been shown, by Finley more than anyone else, to be quite inconsistent with Homer, especially in the field of social and political structure.
A purely contemporary origin, though it may not be excluded by the ubiquitous and pervasive presence of formulae, affecting social life as much as other aspects, would surely be in utter conflict with the other evidence that we have for eighth-century society, from Hesiod and from archaeological sources. (p44)
if one is set on an historical explanation, the likely models are narrowed down to two periods, the ‘Age of Migrations’ between the fall of the Mycenaean citadels around 1200, and a lower date in the region of 1000; and the ensuing two centuries, a more settled period which in my view forms the central part of the Dark Age. (p44)
This archaeological evidence has, I fear, been rather summarily presented here. But my aim is the fairly limited one of showing that, in certain aspects of the material world he portrays, Homer, besides in some cases combining features from different historical eras, also displays certain tendencies in the choice of those eras. (p47)
The reasons for these tendencies may be of the simplest kind—perhaps that the poet’s desire is to portray a materially impressive culture, and that this inevitably leads to the choice of either the Mycenaean world which had been impressive in this way, or to the contemporary world which was becoming so, but to avoid the less well-endowed intervening periods. (p47)
两种情况
第一种情况：If Homer really preserved, like a faded sepia photograph, a faithful image of a real society that belonged, not to his own times nor to the period which had provided such historical background as there was for the actual events he described, but to the period which happened to be most influential in the formation of this aspect of the Epic tradition; then indeed he was on a footing with the forgotten and anonymous authors of the Chanson de Roland or the Cattle Raid of Cooley or any one of the numerous epics and sagas of normal type. For an oral poet who adopts, entire, from his predecessors of a certain period, something as pervasive as a social framework, becomes in my view not merely traditional but derivative. (p49)
第二种情况：By contrast, a poet who is also traditional, and ultimately just as indebted to predecessors, but who depends on predecessors of many periods, and admits elements from his own experience and imagination into the bargain, is far freer. He can select, he can conflate, he can idealise. Unless he is pedantically careful, minor inconsistencies will creep in, of the kind we have been discussing; but his scope for creativity, even though the picture he paints is not truly fictional, will be greater.
结论：This is a subjective argument to end with, but the fact that the Homeric poems are attached to a name, and that, even if we doubt the existence of an eighth-century poet called Homer, we are nevertheless aware, in reading the Iliad and Odyssey, of being at least intermittently in the presence of poetic genius, is a strong hint that Homeric Epic conforms to the second of the two pictures sketched above, and not the first. At all events, I offer this as a further argument against the existence of an historical Homeric society. (p49)
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