Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/10

 I CONTENTS. property, and strong local attachments. Means of defence superior ta those of attack. Habitual piracy. Extended geographical knowledge in the Hesiodic poems, as compared with Homer. Astronomy arid physics. Coined money, writing, arts. Epic poetry. Its great and permanent influence on the Greek mind 57-118 CHAPTER XXI. GREC1AX EPIC. HOMERIC 1'OKMS. Two classes of epic poetry Homeric Hesiodic. Didactic and mystic Hexameter poetry later as a genus than the epic. Lost epic poems. Epic poets and their probable dates. Epic cycle. AVhat the epic cycle was an arrangement of the poems according to continuity of nar- rative. Relation of the epic cycle to Homer. What poems were in- cluded in the cycle. The Iliad and Odyssey are the only poems of the cycle preserved. Curiosity which these two poems provoke no data to satisfy it. Different poems ascribed to Homer. Nothing known, and endless diversity of opinion, respecting the person and date of Ho- mer. Poetical gens of the Homerids. Homer, the superhuman epony- mus and father of this gens. What may be the dates of the Iliad and Odyssey. Date assigned by Herodotus "the most probable- Probable date of the Iliad and Odyssey between 850 and 776 B. c. Epic poems recited to assembled companies, not read by individuals apart. Lyric and choric poetry, intended for the ear. Importance of the class of rhapsodes, singers, and reciters. Rhapsodes condemned by the Socratic philosophers undeservedly. Variations in the mode of reciting the ancient epic. At what time the Homeric poems began to be written. Prolegomena of Wolf raised new questions respecting the Homeric text connected unity of authorship with poems written from the be- ginning. The two questions not necessarily connected, though com- monly discussed together. Few traces of writing, long after the Homeric age. Bards or rhapsodes of adequate memory, less inconsistent with the conditions of the age than long MSS. Blind bards. Possibility of preserving the poems by memory, as accurately as in fact they were pre- served. Argument from the lost letter Digamma. When did the Ho- meric poems begin to be written? Reasons for presuming that they were first written about the middle of the seventh century B. c. Con- dition of the Iliad and Odyssey down to the reign of Peisistratus. Theory of Wolf. Authorities quoted in its favor. Objections against it. Other long epic poems besides the Iliad and Odyssey. Catalogue in the Iliad essentially a part of a long poem its early authority. Iliad and Odyssey were entire poems long anterior to Peisistratus, whether they were originally composed as entire or not. No traces in the Ho- meric poems, of ideas or customs belonging to the age of Peisistratus. Homeric poems. 1. W'hether by one author or several. 2. Whether of one date and scheme. Question raised by Wolf Sagen-poesie. New standard applied to the Homeric poems. Homeric unity generally re- jected by German critics in the last generation now again partially revived. Scanty evidence difficulty of forming any conclusive opinion. Method of studying the question of Homeric unity. Odyssey to be studied first, as of more simple and intelligible structure than the Iliad-