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This fact of the chermadic weight attached to the good war-stone explains, as Mr. Mure ingeniously remarks, a simile of Homer’s, which ought to have been pure nonsense for Pope and Cowper; viz. that in describing a dense mist, such as we foolishly imagine peculiar to our own British climate, and meaning to say that a man could scarcely descry an object somewhat ahead of his own station, he says, [Greek Text: tosson tis t’ep leussel oson t’epi laan iaesi]: so far does man see as lie hurls a stone. Now, in the skirmish of ‘bickering,’ this would argue no great limitation of eyesight. ‘Why, man, how far would you see? Would you see round a corner?’ ‘A shot of several hundred yards,’ says Mr. Mure, ‘were no great feat for a country lad well skilled in the art of stone-throwing.’ But this is not Homer’s meaning–‘The cloud of dust’ (which went before an army advancing, and which it is that Homer compares to a mist on the hills perplexing the shepherd) ‘was certainly much denser than to admit of the view extending to such a distance. In the Homeric sense, as allusive to the hurling of the ponderous chermadion, the figure is correct and expressive.’ And here, as everywhere, we see the Horatian parenthesis upon Homer, as one, qui nil molitur inepte, who never speaks vaguely, never wants a reason, and never loses sight of a reality, amply sustained. Here, then, is a local resource to the British tourist besides the imported one of the bull-dog. And it is remarkable that, except where the dogs are preternaturally audacious, a mere hint of the chermadion suffices. Late in our own experience too late for glory, we made the discovery that all dogs have a mysterious reverence for a trundling stone. It calls off attention from the human object, and strikes alarm into the caitiff’s mind. He thinks the stone alive. Upon this hint we thought it possible to improve: stooping down, we ‘made believe’ to launch a stone, when, in fact, we had none; and the effect generally followed. So well is this understood in Greece that, according to a popular opinion reported by Mr. Mure, the prevailing habit in Grecian dogs, as well as bitches, of absenting themselves from church, grows out of the frequent bowing and genuflexions practised in the course of the service. The congregation, one and all, simultaneously stoop; the dog’s wickedness has made him well acquainted with the meaning of that act; it is a symbol but too significant to his conscience; and he takes to his heels with the belief that a whole salvo of one hundred and one chermadia are fastening on his devoted ‘hurdies.’

Here, therefore, is a suggestion at once practically useful, and which furnishes more than one important elucidation to passages in Homer hitherto unintelligible. For the sake of one other such passage, we shall, before dismissing the subject, pause upon a novel fact, communicated by Mr. Mure, which is equally seasonable as a new Homeric light, and as a serviceable hint in a situation of extremity.

In the passage already quoted under Pope’s version from Odyssey, xiv. 29, what is the meaning of that singular couplet–

‘Down sate the sage; and cautious to withstand,
Let fall the offensive truncheon from his hand.’ [Footnote 2]

Mr. Mure’s very singular explanation will remind the naturalist of something resembling it in the habits of buffaloes. Dampier mentions a case which he witnessed in some island with a Malay population, where a herd of buffaloes continued to describe concentric circles, by continually narrowing around a party of sailors; and at last submitted only to the control of children not too far beyond the state of infancy. The white breed of wild cattle, once so well known at Lord Tankerville’s in Northumberland, and at one point in the south-west of Scotland, had a similar instinct for regulating the fury of their own attack; but it was understood that when the final circle had been woven, the spell was perfect; and that the herd would ‘do business’ most effectually. As respects the Homeric case, ‘I,’ (says Mr. Mure,) ‘am probably not the only reader who has been puzzled to understand the object of this manoeuvre’ (the sitting down) ‘on the part of the hero. I was first led to appreciate its full value in the following manner:–At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon,’ (then commanding-in-chief throughout the Morea, and the best historian of the Greek revolution, but who subsequently resigned, and died in the spring of 1841, at his seat in Aberdeenshire,) ‘the conversation happened to turn, as it frequently does where tourists are in company, on this very subject of the number and fierceness of the Grecian dogs; when one of the company remarked that he knew of a very simple expedient for appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road, and being overtaken by darkness, he sought refuge for the night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he approached, the dogs rushed out upon him; and the consequences might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old shepherd, (the Eumeus of the fold,) who after pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in his hut. The guest made some remark on the zeal of his dogs, and on the danger to which he had been exposed from their attack. The old man replied ‘that it was his own fault, from not taking the customary precaution in such an emergency; that he ought to have stopped, and sate down until some person came to protect him.’ Here we have the very act of Ulysses; with the necessary circumstance that he laid aside his arms; after which the two parties were under a provisional treaty. And Adam Smith’s doubtful assumption that dogs are incapable of exchange, or reciprocal understanding, seems still more doubtful. As this expedient was new to the traveller, ‘he made some further inquiries; and was assured that, if any person in such a predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying aside his weapon of defence, the dogs will also squat in a circle round him; that, as long as he remains quiet, they will follow his example; but that, as soon as he rises and moves forward, they will renew their assault. This story, though told without the least reference to the Odyssey, at once brought home to my own mind the scene at the fold of Eumeus with the most vivid reality. The existence of the custom was confirmed by other persons present, from their own observation or experience.’ Yet, what if the night were such as is often found even in Southern Greece during winter–a black frost; and that all the belligerents were found in the morning symmetrically grouped as petrifactions? However, here again we have the Homer qui nil molitur inepte, who addressed a people of known habits. Yet quare–as a matter of some moment for Homeric disputes–were these habits of Ionian colonies, or exclusively of Greece Proper?