the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to

an age two or three centuries 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 Hesiod--as genuine Homeric matter(29) 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 paitial divergences

of text and interpolations) in 776 B.C., our first trustworthy mark of

Grecian time; and this ancient date, let it be added, as it is the

best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of the

Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history; for they thus

afford us an insight into the anti-historical character of the Greeks,

enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the nation, and to

seize instructive contrasts between their former and their later

condition."(30)

On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the labours of Peisistratus

were wholly of an editorial character, although, I must confess, that I

can lay down nothing respecting the extent of his labours. At the same

time, so far from believing that the composition or primary arrangement of

these poems, in their present form, was the work of Peisistratus, I am

rather persuaded that the fine taste and elegant mind of that Athenian(31)

would lead him to preserve an ancient and traditional order of the poems,

rather than to patch and re-construct them according to a fanciful

The Iliad of Homer