Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/163

 THE LETTER DIGAMMA. 147 may be replied, that oral transmission would hand down the text as exactly as in point of fact it was handed down. The great lines of each poem, the order of parts, the vein of Homeric feeling, and the general style of locution, and, for the most part, the true words, would be maintained: for the professional training of the rhapsode, over and above the precision of his actual memory, would tend to Homerize his mind (if the ex- pression may be permitted), and to restrain him within this magic circle. On the other hand, in respect to the details of the text, we should expect that there would be wide differences and numerous inaccuracies : and so there really were, as the records contained in the Scholia, together with the passages cited in ancient authors, but not found in our Homeric text, abundantly testify. '- Moreover, the state of the Iliad and Odyssey, in respect to the letter called the Digarnma, affords a proof that they were recited for a considerable period before they were committed to writing, insomuch that the oral pronunciation underwent during the in- terval a sensible change. 2 At the time when these poems were composed, the Digamma was an effective consonant, and figured as such in the structure of the verse : at the time when they were 1 Villoison, Prolegomen. pp. xxxiv-lvi ; Wolf, Prolcgomcn. p. 37. Diint- zcr, in the Epicor. Graec. Fragm. pp. 27-29, gives a considerable list of the Homeric passages cited by ancient authors, but not found either in the Iliad or Odyssey. It is hardly to be doubted, however, that many of these pas- sages belonged to other epic poems which passed under the name of Homer. Welcker (Der Episch. Kyklus, pp. 20-133) enforces this opinion very justly, and it harmonizes with his view of the name of Homer as coextensive with the whole Epic cycle. 2 See this argument strongly maintained in Giese (Ueber den jEolischen Dialckt, sect. 14. p. 160, seqq.). He notices several other particulars in the Homeric language, the plenitude and variety of interchangeable grammat- ical forms, the numerous metrical licenses, set right by appropriate oral intonations, which indicate a language as yet not constrained by the fixity of written authority. The same line of argument is taken by O. Miillcr (History of the Litera- ture of Ancient Greece, eh. iv. s. 5). Giese has shown also, in the same chapter, that all the manuscricts of Homer mentioned in the Scholia, were written in the Ionic alphabet (with H and 12 as marks for the long vowels, and no special mark for the rough breathing), in so far as the special citations out of them enable us to rerify