William Gladstone - Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

Disorganization caused by the War.

Again, as Cinyres 38 38 Il. xi. 20. the ruler of Cyprus, and Echepolus 39 39 Il. xxiii. 296. the son of Anchises, obtained exemption by means of gifts to Agamemnon, so may others, both rulers and private individuals, have done. But the two main causes, which would probably operate to create perturbation in connection with the absence of the army, were, without much doubt, first, the arrival of a new race of youths at a crude and intemperate manhood; and secondly, the unadjusted relations in some places of the old Pelasgian and the new Hellenic settlers. Their differences, when the pressure of the highest established authority had been removed, would naturally in many places spring up afresh. In conformity with the first of these causes, the Suitors as a body are called very commonly νεοὶ ὑπερηνορέοντες 40 40 Od. ii. 324, 331, et alibi . The epithet is, I think, exactly rendered by another word very difficult to translate into English, the Italian prepotenti . , ‘the domineering youths.’ And the circumstances under which Ulysses finds himself, when he has returned to Ithaca, appear to connect themselves also with the latter of the above-named causes. But, whatever the reasons, it is plain that his position had become extremely precarious. Notwithstanding his wealth, ability, and fame, he did not venture to appeal to the people till he had utterly destroyed his dangerous enemies; and even then it was only by his promptitude, strength of hand, and indomitable courage, that he succeeded in quelling a most formidable sedition.

Nothing, then, could be more natural, than that, in the absence of the sovereigns, often combined with the infancy of their children, the mother should become the depositary of an authority, from which, as we see by other instances, her sex does not appear to have excluded her: and that if, as is probable, the instances were many and simultaneous, this systematic character given to female rule should have its formal result on language in the creation of the word Queen, and its twin phrase δέσποινα, or Mistress. The extension of the word ἄνασσα from divinities to mortals might result from a subaltern operation of the same causes.

In the very same manner, the diminished force of authority at its centre would increase the relative prominence of such among the nobles as remained at home. On reaching to manhood, they would in some cases, as in Ithaca, find themselves practically independent. The natural result would be, that having, though on a small scale, that is to say, so far probably as their own properties and neighbourhoods respectively were concerned, much of the substance of sovereignty actually in their hands, they should proceed to arrogate its name. Hence come the βασιλῆες of Ithaca and the islands near it; some of them young men, who had become adult since the departure of Ulysses, others of them old, who, remaining behind him, had found their position effectively changed, if not by the fact of his departure, yet by the prolongation of his absence.

The relaxed use, then, of the term βασιλεὺς in the Odyssey, and the appearance of the term βασίλεια and of others in a similar category, need not qualify the proposition above laid down with respect to the βασιλεὺς of the Iliad. He, as we shall see from the facts of the poem, stands in a different position, and presents to us a living picture of the true heroic age 41 41 I need hardly express my dissent from the account given of the βασιλεὺς and ἄναξ in the note on Grote’s History of Greece, vol. II. p. 84. There is no race in Troas called βασιλεύτατον. Every βασιλεὺς was an ἄναξ; but many an ἄναξ was not a βασιλεύς. It is true that an ἄναξ might be ἄναξ either of freemen or of slaves; but so he might of houses (Od. i. 397), of fishes (Il. xiii. 28), or of dogs (Od. xvii. 318). .

Altered idea of the Kingly office.

This change in the meaning of the word King was accompanied by a corresponding change in the idea of the great office which it betokened. It had descended from a more noble to a less noble type. I do not mean by this that it had now first submitted to limitations. The βασιλεὺς of the Greeks was always and essentially limited: and hence probably it was, that the usurper of sole and indefinite power in the state was so essentially and deeply odious to the Greeks, because it was felt that he had plundered the people of a treasure, namely, free government, which they and their early forefathers had possessed from time immemorial.

It is in the Odyssey that we are first startled by meeting not only a wider diffusion and more lax use of the name of king, but together with this change another one; namely, a lower conception of the kingly office. The splendour of it in the Iliad is always associated with duty. In the simile where Homer speaks of corrupt governors, that draw down the vengeance of heaven on a land by crooked judgments, it is worthy of remark, that he avoids the use of the word βασιλεύς 42 42 Il. xvi. 386. :

The worst thing that is even hinted at as within the limits of possibility, is slackness in the discharge of the office: it never degenerates into an instrument of oppression to mankind. But in the Odyssey, which evidently represents with fidelity the political condition of Greece after the great shock of the Trojan war, we find that kingship has come to be viewed by some mainly with reference to the enjoyment of great possessions, which it implied or brought, and as an object on that account of mere ambition. Not of what we should call absolutely vicious ambition: it is not an absolute perversion, but it is a clear declension in the idea, that I here seek to note

This general view of the office as one to be held for the personal enjoyment of the incumbent, is broadly distinguished from such a case as that in the Iliad, where Agamemnon, offering seven cities to Achilles 44 44 Il. ix. 155. , strives to tempt him individually by a particular inducement, drawn from his own undoubtedly rather sordid mind;

οἵ κέ ἑ δωτίνῃσι θεὸν ὣς τιμήσουσιν.

The moral causes of this change are in a great degree traceable to the circumstances of the war, and we seem to see how the conception above expressed was engendered in the mind of Mentor, when he observes 45 45 Od. ii. 230-4. , that it is now useless for a king to be wise and benevolent like Ulysses, who was gentle like a father to his people, in order that, like Ulysses, he may be forgotten: so that he may just as well be lawless in character, and oppressive in action. The same ideas are expressed by Minerva 46 46 Od. v. 8-12. in the very same words, at the second Olympian meeting in the Odyssey. It would therefore thus appear, that this particular step downwards in the character of the governments of the heroic age was owing to the cessation, through prolonged absence, of the influence of the legitimate sovereigns, and to consequent encroachment upon their moderate powers.

Instance of a bad King.

And it is surely well worthy of remark that we find in this very same poem the first exemplification of the character of a bad and tyrannical monarch, in the person of a certain king Echetus; of whom all we know is, that he lived somewhere upon the coast of Epirus, and that he was the pest of all mortals that he had to do with. With great propriety, it is the lawless Suitors who are shown to be in some kind of relation with him; for in the Eighteenth Odyssey they threaten 47 47 Od. xviii. 83-6 and 114. to send Irus, who had annoyed them in his capacity of a beggar, to king Echetus, that he might have his nose and ears cut off, and be otherwise mutilated. The same threat is repeated in the Twenty-first Book against Ulysses himself, and the line that conveys it reappears as one of the Homeric formulæ 48 48 Od. xxi. 308. ;