THE
PETERITE. Voi. . V.
JULY, 1883.
No . 37.
HOMERIC CRICKET.
I
F what Teutonic critics tell us be true, the so-called Homeric poems are merely ingenious specimens of patch-work from ballad-scraps,
and the seven contesting cities seek but an empty honour when they claim an imaginary individuality in the "blind Mxonides ." Without entering into the question as to whether a novel with so well-woven a plot as the Odyssey can be a cunning mosaic of disconnected shreds, whether so perfect a unity can have risen from discord, whether the countless seeds of Epic lore, watered and tended by tyrant, scholiast and commentator, can have developed into the twin stately plants of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we have certainly much to thank the ancient grammarians for, even if we have grave cause of fault-finding with them. But I herewith enclose for the perusal of Peterites a translation of a passage which seems to have escaped the vigilant eye of the scholiast. Why Peisistratus and his coadjutors should have omitted it in his supposed edition I do not know, nor can I pretend to decide where it should have come . It is evidently a narrative told by Odysseus . But it goes far to explain the singular gap in athletic exercise between the effeminate ball-play—not even so manly as modern lawn-tennis—and the dreadful contests of the raw lead-hound cestus . It proves that cricket was more or less developed in the Ilonieric ages, though of football it makes no mention . The scene is apparently before the ships of the Greeks on the Troad . Not being acquainted with Dr. Schliemann 's works, I can give no further guess as to the exact locality ; nor have I heard of any bats, balls, wickets, etc ., having been turned up amid the goodly collection of miscellaneous rubbish that the worthy professor has dug up from the sacred city . The passage begins : " But we snoring heavily awaited the divine morn . Now when the dawn arose from her couch, from the side of the lordly Tithonus, to hear