We welcome this conclusion, and note that (whatever may be the case with the oldest parts of the poems which say nothing about funerals) the latest expansions must be of about 1100-1000 B.C. (?). The poem is so early that it is prior to hero worship and ancestor worship; or it might be more judicious to say that the poem is of an age that did not, officially, practise ancestor worship, whatever may have occurred in folk-custom. The Homeric age is one which had outgrown ancestor and hero worship, and had not, like the age of the Cyclics, relapsed into it. Enfin, unless we agree with Helbig as to essential variations of custom, the poems are the work of one age, and that a brief age, and an age of peculiar customs, cremation and barrow burial; and of a religion that stood, without spirit worship, between the Mycenzean period and the ninth century. That seems as certain as anything in prehistoric times can be, unless we are to say, that after the age of shaft graves and spirit worship came an age of cremation and of no spirit worship; and that late poets consciously and conscientiously preserved the tradition of thisperiod into their own ages of hero worship and inhumation, though they did not preserve the tradition of the shaft-grave period. We cannot accept this theory of adherence to stereotyped poetical descriptions, nor can any one consistently adopt it in this case.
The reason is obvious. Mr. Leaf, with many other critics, distinguishes several successive periods of "expansion." In the first stratum we have the remains of "the original kernel." Among these remains is The Slaying of Hector (XXII. 1-404), "with but slight additions." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. xi.} In the Slaying of Hector that hero indicates cremation as the mode of burial. "Give them my body back again, that the Trojans and Trojans' wives grant me my due of fire after my death." Perhaps this allusion to cremation, in the "original kernel" in the Slaying of Hector, may be dismissed as a late borrowing from Book VII. 79, 80, where Hector makes conditions that the fallen hero shall be restored to his friends when he challenges the Achaeans to a duel. But whoever knows the curious economy by way of repetition that marks early national epics has a right to regard the allusion to cremation (XXII, 342,343) as an example of this practice. Compare La Chancun de Williame, lines 1041-1058 with lines 1140-1134. In both the dinner of a knight who has been long deprived of food is described in passages containing many identical lines. The poet, having found his formula, uses it whenever occasion serves. There are several other examples in the same epic. {Footnote: Romania, xxxiv. PP. 245, 246.} Repetitions in Homer need not indicate late additions; the artifice is part of the epic as it is of the ballad manner. If we are right, cremation is the mode of burial even in "the original kernel." Hector, moreover, in the kernel (XXII. 256-259) makes, before his final fight with Achilles, the same proposal as he makes in his challenge to a duel (VII. 85 et seqq.). The victor shall give back the body of the vanquished to his friends, but how the friends are to bury it Hector does not say—in this place. When dying, he does say (XXII. 342, 343).
In the kernel and all periods of expansion, funeral rites are described, and in all the method is cremation, with a howe or a barrow. Thus the method of cremation had come in as early as the "kernel," The Slaying of Hector, and as early as the first expansions, and it lasted till the period of the latest expansions, such as Books XXIII., XXIV.
But what is the approximate date of the various expansions of the original poem? On that point Mr. Leaf gives his opinion. The Making of the Arms of Achilles (Books XVIII., XIX. 1-39) is, with the Funeral of Patroclus (XXIII. 1-256), in the second set of expansions, and is thus two removes later than the original "kernel." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. xii.} Now this is the period—the Making of the Shield for Achilles is, at least, in touch with the period—of "the eminently free and naturalistic treatment which we find in the best Mycenaean work, in the dagger blades, in the siege fragment, and notably in the Vaphio cups," (which show long-haired men, not men close-cropped, as in the daggers and siege fragment). {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p, 606.} The poet of the age of the second expansions, then,' is at least in touch with the work of the shaft grave and ages. He need not be contemporary with that epoch, but "may well have had in his mind the work of artists older than himself." It is vaguely possible that he may have seen an ancient shield of the Mycenaean prime, and may be inspired by that. {Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 606, 607.}
Moreover, and still more remarkable, the ordinary Homeric form of cremation and howe-burial is even older than the period which, if not contemporary with, is clearly reminiscent of, the art of the shaft graves. For, in the period of the first expansions (VII. 1-3 I 2), the form of burial is cremation, with a barrow or tumulus. {Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. p. xi. and pp. 606, 607.} Thus Mr. Leaf's opinion might lead us to the conclusion that the usual Homeric form of burial occurs in a period PRIORto an age in which the poet is apparently reminiscent of the work of two early epochs—the epoch of shaft graves and that of THOLOSgraves. If this be so, cremation and urn burial in cairns may be nearly as old as the Mycenaean shaft graves, or as old as the THOLOSgraves, and they endure into the age of the latest expansions.
We must not press, however, opinions founded on the apparent technical resemblance of the free style and coloured metal work on the shield of Achilles, to the coloured metal work and free design on the daggers of the Mycenaean shaft graves. It is enough for us to note that the passages concerning burial, from the "kernel" itself, and also from the earliest to the latest expansions, are all perfectly harmonious, and of a single age—unless we are convinced by Helbig's objections. That age must have been brief, indeed, for, before it arrives, the period of tholosgraves, as at Vaphio, must expire, on one hand, while the blending of cremation with inhumation, in the Dipylon age, must have been evolved after the cremation age passed, on the other. That brief intervening age, however, was the age of the ILIADand Odyssey. This conclusion can only be avoided by alleging that late poets, however recent and revolutionary, carefully copied the oldest epic model of burial, while they innovated in almost every other point, so we are told. We can go no further till we find an unrifled cairn burial answering to Homeric descriptions. We have, indeed, in Thessaly, "a large tumulus which contained a silver urn with burned remains." But the accompanying pottery dated it in the second century B.C. {Footnote: Ridgeway, Early Age Of Greece, vol. i. p. 491; Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx. pp. 20-25.} It is possible enough that all tumuli of the Homeric period have been robbed by grave plunderers in the course of the ages, as the Vikings are said to have robbed the cairns of Sutherlandshire, in which they were not likely to find a rich reward for their labours. A conspicuous howe invites robbery—the heroes of the Saga, like Grettir, occasionally rob a howe—and the fact is unlucky for the Homeric archaeologist.
We have now tried to show that, as regards (1) to the absence from Homer of new religious and ritual ideas, or of very old ideas revived in Ionia, (2) as concerns the clear conception of a loose form of feudalism, with an Over-Lord, and (3) in the matter of burial, the Iliadand Odyssey are self-consistent, and bear the impress of a single and peculiar moment of culture.