Homer and His Age — Reading Companion

The Fallacy of the Analytical Reader

Lang begins by challenging the method of critics who find discrepancies in the narrative. He argues that no long fictitious work can withstand the kind of line-by-line analysis applied to Homer. The poet, he reminds us, did not sing for Aristotle or Aristarchus but for a contemporary audience that found the epics coherent and satisfying. Lang compares this to a test that even Goethe could not endure, implying that the separatist approach is fundamentally unfair. He calls for a criticism that is 'sober, logical, and self-consistent,' and dismisses the opposing school as 'a swamp haunted by wandering fires.'

Shields, Spears, and the Logic of Armor

Lang dives into the technical details of Homeric armor, particularly the shield. He takes issue with scholars like Reichel and Leaf who argue that the large Mycenaean shield was the original and that later references to smaller shields are interpolations. Lang points out that the Homeric shield is often described as large, made of leather, plated with bronze, and suspended by a belt—a perfectly consistent picture. He ridicules the idea that a squire is needed to remove a shield, noting that a warrior could simply 'stoop his head and put it through the belt.' He also observes that the word teuchea is used in the plural for a shield, a grammatical point that critics have misinterpreted.

Bronze Arrowheads and the Mycenaean Gap

Lang highlights a striking archaeological discrepancy: bronze arrowheads, which are 'so common in the Iliad,' are never found in the Mycenaean strata excavated by Schliemann. This suggests that the Homeric poems describe a later stage of military technology than the Mycenaean prime. Lang uses this to argue that the epics cannot be purely Mycenaean survivals but must reflect a later, coherent period. He also notes that defensive gear evolves with offensive weapons: a big leather shield works against stone-tipped arrows, but bronze-tipped arrows necessitate bronze plating and corslets. Homer, Lang contends, describes exactly such a transitional phase.

The Unity of Material Culture

Lang extends his argument beyond armor to other aspects of daily life, though the excerpts focus on military equipment. He insists that the Homeric descriptions are not a patchwork from different centuries but a unified picture. He criticizes the method of cutting out passages that do not fit a preconceived theory, calling it arbitrary: 'Anybody can prove anything by this method.' He draws a parallel with the Mycenaean silver vase showing a siege scene, where the warriors are nearly naked, and asks why critics do not then excise most of the chitons in the Iliad. The point is that the evidence must be taken as a whole, not selectively edited.

Lang's approach is a defense of the poet's craft against the hypercritical tendencies of his day. Readers should attend to the way Lang uses archaeological evidence not as a final arbiter but as a tool to test the coherence of Homer's world. His tone is combative, his arguments detailed, and his loyalty to the unity of the epics unwavering. This book is best approached as a polemic that rewards careful attention to the specific artifacts and lines he discusses.

I keep returning to Lang’s insistence that Homer’s armor and shields belong to one real, coherent moment. Something about that tidy certainty makes me smile now, remembering how his careful comfort in tangible things reminds me of the unease I felt reading Hours with the Ghosts or, Nineteenth Century Witchcraft Illustrated Investigations into the Phenomena of Spiritualism and Theosophy — Reading Notes — a sort of quiet longing for solid ground.