Christopher Rush

Content Summary

In what was once a landmark exploration of Homer and the Iliad (I say that not derogatorily), Gilbert Murray analyzes a vast amount of material related to ancient Greece, the nature of ancient stories and books, the construction and minutiae of the Iliad, and its reception and place in history.  In the four prefaces, one for each edition, Murray has different things to say, mainly about the changing nature of Homeric interpretation during the first half of the twentieth century, when his book was being re-edited and re-released.  Despite the changing nature of the then-current geo-political world, however, Murray’s book did not seem to undergo many revisions.  At best, he seems to have added only some footnotes regarding newer critical works and some appendices.

Murray’s introduction attempts to situate the reader into the nature of the Greece of the Iliad as well as its poetry, commenting on differences in the known Greece with its portrayal in the Iliad, as well as cultural differences between the poem and the world of Murray’s present reader.  His next major section is on “The People,” first the people who became the Greeks (the Achaeans of Homer’s poem and the Greeks of Homer and his followers), secondly some of the major beliefs of the people in the poem and the disintegration caused by wars and migrations.  His second, and longer, major section is “The Literature,” first providing for the reader an understanding of what a book was in Homer’s day and how it is completely unlike what present readers think of as a book.  Next he begins to address the Iliad more specifically (almost one-third of his way into his exploration), highlighting how it fits his earlier definition of a “traditional book,” evidencing it with expurgations, peculiarities, and almost minutiae to support his points.  He then addresses the historical content of the Iliad before assessing whether or not it is a “great poem.”  To close his work, Murray returns to more peripheral arguments such as Homer’s connection to Ionia and Attica, and final comments on what is known and unknown about Homer, the poem, its place, and reception in antiquity.  His appendices are like extended footnotes regarding various issues he addresses throughout the body of his exploration, and he refers the reader to them as needed.

Author’s Perspective and Purpose

Though I referred to “Homer” when summarizing the content of The Rise of the Greek Epic, one of Gilbert Murray’s major points which he makes several times (at least in the first half of the work), is that he believes “Homer” to be almost as fictional as Zeus or Apollo.  Murray believes the Iliad and the Odyssey (though his evidence is mostly concerning the Iliad) to be the work of composite poets and emendators over many years, if not centuries.  That is the essence of his argument in the “nature of the traditional book” section — a traditional book or story was not created to be read, but was kept hidden until the poet could recite it; also, Murray cites several examples of line inconsistencies throughout the Iliad, such as different kinds of armor, to point to multi-generational editorship on the base poem.  The Iliad is too long to be recited as well and must be a composite of different poets/editors over time to produce what we now know as the Iliad.  Much of his support is given in Greek, so those who are not familiar with the language must take his word for it.

Murray’s title is almost the opposite of what his intention seems to be: for most of the work, Murray details what the Iliad is not, almost to the point at which his title should be the fall of the Greek epic — at times it seems he comes to bury Homer, not to praise him.  Murray focuses on many details and incidents whose connection to the poem does not seem readily apparent until much further on, and even then, his purpose is not always clear.  It is evident overall that he wants to accurately ground his audience in what he perceives to be an accurate historical understanding of the nature of the events and culture of the peoples depicted in the Iliad, and the nature and times of the people writing, emending, and receiving the poem — since there are many according to Murray.  Unfortunately for Murray, as he himself must admit toward the end of his exploration, “the argument has rested chiefly on analogies and general considerations, not on documents: it has had to be very cautious, aiming at probability, not certainty, constantly suggesting, not professing to demonstrate” (282): hardly the most persuasive kind of argument, but necessary when dealing with an ill-documented antiquity.

Critical Response and Evaluation

I very much wanted to enjoy Murray’s book more than I did.  His analytic introduction appeared to offer a profundity of Homeric scholarship untouched by the fads and fancies of twentieth-century theory.  Frustratingly, The Rise of the Greek Epic was, for the most part, unsuited to my main purpose for reading them while composing my Master’s thesis in examining the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid: the nature of epic heroes.  Among the issues Murray addresses, the actual characters in the poem are given very little attention.  As mentioned above, Murray spends much more time dissecting apparent historical inconsistencies such as bronze armor, the nature of shields, and what is not in the poem.  Much of Murray’s comments on Homeric expurgations are, as the above quotation admits, mere arguments from absence: because something is not in the copies that exist today, they must have been elided by some editor after the first poets had it in their versions of the poems.  This sort of argumentation was, as I said, frustrating at times, though it was nice to read Murray’s almost-apologetic admission that he was dealing with mostly speculation.

Another disappointing component to Murray’s analysis, similar to my disappointment with Joseph Campbell, is his almost preposterous treatment of various Biblical passages for no useful or accurate reason.  I am not arguing against the possibility that the Bible has had various scribes and translators and editors over the centuries, but Murray’s “analysis” of the Old Testament on pages 107-119, supposedly in an effort to prove what was the nature of “traditional books” — i.e., editors come along and change things to suit the fancies of the day, whether or not they create conflicts with other passages of the text — seemed to be substandard scholarship.  Not only was he not proving his point about traditional books and their connection to the Iliad, but he more readily demonstrated his ignorance about them.  Obviously this is a reaction from my particular worldview, but I am baffled by so many scholars who can argue well when it comes to what they know but then resort to Biblical derision when they want to mask their own ignorance about whatever topic they know they must address but cannot do so well.

With such pervasive reactions against Gilbert Murray’s book, it might seem odd that I am including it in this journal.  I am including it because, more than any other scholarly work on the Iliad I have read recently, it has made me want to be a better Homeric scholar.  As I mentioned above, Murray writes with the supposition that his reading audience is fluent in Greek.  That may have been true a century ago, but I did not have that opportunity growing up in American public schooling in the later-half of the twentieth century.  For years, as I have tried to understand these classical works better, I have had the nagging feeling that the only way I can truly improve in classical scholarship is to understand (read at least, if not write or speak) the classical languages.  The same is true for my Biblical interpretation skills: I can only get so far reading John Nelson Darby or a New American Standard version of what was originally in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  Perhaps Murray was not writing for the average reader for The Rise of the Greek Epic, but his linguistic challenge was effective for me.

That is not the only reason I include it, however.  Murray has several good insights into the poems throughout his work, though “throughout” is a generous concision of “scattered throughout.”  It was not exactly “hit and miss” with Murray, but his good offerings were somewhat sporadic — though, once I found them, they were very helpful.  I do not personally agree with his assessment of a multiplicity of Homers, but that might be my classical scholarship nascence (i.e. utter ignorance) talking.  My own argument in my thesis focuses on what the poems say about heroes, not whether or not the poems are a hodge-podge of multiple insertions, deletions, and revisions.  Even so, Murray’s work provides helpful ideas and a challenge that more recent Homeric criticism does not.