Horst Steinke
260
confluence of their predilections and institutions. In the most
crucial dimension of governance, he feels that his integrated
“philosophical/philological” framework provides the wherewith-
al to locate and identify in the Homeric poems, in the mix of
“realistic” narratives and “mythical” interludes, actual traces of
the first two fundamental cultural developments, consisting of
the “age of gods”, favoring “theocracies”, followed by the “age
of heroes”, tending to be characterized by forms of “aristocratic”
regimen. In Vico’s close reading of the poem(s), he “discovers” a
remote pre-8
th
century world in which deities and human celebri-
ties become «concrete personification[s] of some general feelings
and ideas»
562
. Clearly, this result constitutes something different
from ingeniously applied historicizing “patina”
563
. As commented
above, while each of the three cultural “ages” contains seeds and
elements of the others, in Vico’s view, certain currents predomi-
nate overwhelmingly. In this framework, Vico holds that «[t]he
constancy […] which is developed and fixed by […] the wisdom
of the philosophers, could not have depicted gods and heroes of
such instability» (§ 786)
564
. His first major conclusion and inter-
pretative breakthrough consisted of the realization that the
Iliad
and
Odyssey
consisted of material from entirely different historical
milieux
: «[…] we must suppose that the two poems were com-
posed and compiled by various hands through successive ages»
(§ 804)
565
. It was the fruit of the complex to and from movement
between the literary content, at multiple levels, and his theoreti-
cal suppositions (that we have described as “functorial”, when
viewed separately, and as “adjunction”, when viewed as inter-
locked). What is remarkable is that Vico held to this view in the
face of all the evidence that the Homeric poems had come down
in heavily altered form, as he fully acknowledged:
The fables in their origin were true and severe narrations […]. But be-
cause they were originally for the most part gross, they gradually lost
their original meanings, were then altered, subsequently became im-
probable, after that obscure, then scandalous, and finally incredible.