Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/151

 HOMERIC POEMS INTENDED FOR HEARERS. 135 anteiior to Herodotus would be a period commencing with 880 3. c. so that the composition of the Homeric poems would thus fall in a space between 850 and 800 B. c. We may gather from the language of Herodotus that this was his own judgment, opposed to a current opinion, which assigned the poet to an earlier epoch. To place the Iliad and Odyssey at some periods between 850 B. c. and 776 B. c., appears to me more probable than any other date, anterior or posterior, more probable than the latter, be- cause we are justified in believing these two poems to be older than Arktinus, who comes shortly after the first Olympiad ; more probable than the former, because, the farther we push the poems back, the more do we enhance the wonder of their pre- servation, already sufficiently great, down from such an age and society to the historical times. The mode in which these poems, and indeed all poems, epic as well as lyric, down to the age (probably) of Peisistratus, were circulated and brought to bear upon the public, deserves particu- lar attention. They were not read by individuals alone and apart, but sung or recited at festivals or to assembled companies. This seems to be one of the few undisputed facts with regard to the great poet : for even those who maintain that the Iliad and Odyssey were preserved by means of writing, seldom contend that they were read. In appreciating the effect of the poems, we must always take account of this great difference between early Greece and our own times, between the congregation mustered at a solemn festival, stimulated by community of sympathy, listening to a measured and musical recital from the lips of trained bards or rhapsodes, whose matter was supposed to have been inspired by the Muse, and the solitary reader, with a manuscript before him ; such manuscript being, down to a very late period in Greek literature, indifferently written, without division into parts, and without marks of punctuation. As in the case of dramatic per- unknown out of Ionia. The supposed .epoch of Lykurgus has sometimes been emplDyed to sustain the date here f ssigned to the Homeric poems ; but everything respect; ng Lykurgus is too c tubtful to serve as evidence in other Inquiries.