theory, and of Lachmann's modifications with the character of

Peisistratus. But he has also shown, and we think with equal success, that

the two questions relative to the primitive unity of these poems, or,

supposing that impossible, the unison of these parts by Peisistratus, and

not before his time, are essentially distinct. In short, "a man may

believe the Iliad to have been put together out of pre-existing songs,

without recognising the age of Peisistratus as the period of its first

compilation." The friends or literary employes of Peisistratus must have

found an Iliad that was already ancient, and the silence of the

Alexandrine critics respecting the Peisistratic "recension," goes far to

prove, that, among the numerous manuscripts they examined, this was either

wanting, or thought unworthy of attention.

"Moreover," he continues, "the whole tenor of the poems themselves

confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing, either in the Iliad or

Odyssey, which savours of modernism, applying that term to the age of

Peisistratus--nothing which brings to our view the alterations brought

about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the

habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments,

the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the

Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of religious

festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, &c., familiar to

the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus, and the other literary

friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice, even without

design, had they then, for the first time, undertaken the task of piecing

together many self existent epics into one large aggregate. Everything in

The Iliad of Homer