Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/177

 LATER INTEGRATION IMPOSSIBLE. 161 substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three cen- turies earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those passages which on the best grounds are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus, in some cases even by Arktinus and Ilesiod, as genuine Homeric matter. As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand, (always allowing for partial divergences of text, and inter- polations,) in 776 B. c., our first trustworthy mark of Gre- cian time. And this ancient date, let it be added, as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attri- bute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history. For they thus afford us an insight into the ante-histor- ical character of the Greeks, enabling us to trace the sub- sequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive, contrasts between their former and their later condition. Rejecting, therefore, the idea of compilation by Peisistratus, and referring the present state of the Iliad and Odyssey to a period more than two centuries earlier, the question still remains, by what process, or through whose agency, they reached that state ? Is each poem the work of one author, or of several ? If the latter, do all the parts belong to the same age ? What ground is there for believing, that any or all of these parts existed before, as separate poems, and have been accommodated to the place in which they now appear, by more or less systematic alteration ? The acute and valuable Prolegomena of Wolf, half a century ago, powerfully turned the attention of scholars to the necessity of considering the Iliad and Odyssey with reference to the ago and society in which they arose, and to the material differences in this respect between Homer and more recent epic poets. 1 of Aristarchu., (' ; mirificum ilium concentum revocatum Aristarcho impri- mis dcbemus.") This is a very exaggerated estimate of the interference of Aristarchus : but at any rate the concentus itself was ancient and original, and Aristarchus only restored it, when it had been spoiled by intervening accidents ; at least, if we are to construe revocatum strictly, which, perhaps, is hardly consistent with Wolf's main theory. 1 See Wolf, Prolegg. c. xii. p. xliii. "Nondum enim pvordiis ejecta el VOL. II. HOC.