Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/173

 AGGREGATE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY. 157 supposing long epics to have begun with the Iliad and Odyssey than with the ./Ethiopia : the ascendency of the name of Homer and the subordinate position of Arktinus, in the history of early Grecian poetry, tend to prove the former in preference to the latter. Moreover, we find particular portions of the Iliad, which expressly pronounce themselves, by the : r own internal evidence, as belonging to a large whole, and not as separate integers. We can hardly conceive the Catalogue in the second book, except as a fractional composition, and with reference to a series of ap- proaching exploits ; for, taken apart by itself, such a barren enu- meration of names could have stimulated neither the fancy of the poet, nor the attention of the listeners. But the Homeric Cata- logue had acquired a sort of canonical authority even in the time of Solon, insomuch that he interpolated a line into it, or was accused of doing so, for the purpose of gaining a disputed point against the Megarians, who, on their side, set forth another version. 1 No such established reverence could have been felt for this document, unless there had existed for a long time prior to Peisistratus, the habit of regarding and listening to the Iliad as a continuous poem. And jwhen the philosopher Xenophanes, contemporary with Peisistratus, noticed Homer as the universal teacher, and denounced him as an unworthy describer of the gods, he must have connected this great mental sway, not with a number of unconnected rhapsodies, but with an aggregate Iliad and Odyssey ; probably with other poems, also, ascribed to the same author, such as the Cypria, Epigoni, and Thebai's. We find, it is true, references in various authors to portions of the Iliad, each by its own separate name, such as the Teichom- achy, the Aristeia (preeminent exploits) of Diomedes, or Aga- memnon, the Doloneia, or Night-expedition (of Dolon as well poem is begun by one author, and continued by another. (Fauricl, Romans de Chevalerie, Ilevue des Deux Mondes, t. xiii. pp. 695-697.) The ancient unwritten poems of the Icelandic Skalds are as much lyric es epic : the longest of them does not exceed eight hundred lines, and they are for the most part much shorter, (Untersuchungen iiber die Geschichte der Nordischen Heldensage, ans P. A. Miiller's Sagabibliothek von G. Lange, Frankf. 1832, Introduct. j xlii.) 1 Plutarch, Solon, 10.