disturbed and corrupt to a great degree; it is commonly said to

have been a juvenile essay of Homer's genius; others have

attributed it to the same Pigrees, mentioned above, and whose

reputation for humour seems to have invited the appropriation of

any piece of ancient wit, the author of which was uncertain; so

little did the Greeks, before the age of the Ptolemies, know or

care about that department of criticism employed in determining

the genuineness of ancient writings. As to this little poem being

a youthful prolusion of Homer, it seems sufficient to say that

from the beginning to the end it is a plain and palpable parody,

not only of the general spirit, but of the numerous passages of

the Iliad itself; and even, if no such intention to parody were

discernible in it, the objection would still remain, that to

suppose a work of mere burlesque to be the primary effort of

poetry in a simple age, seems to reverse that order in the

development of national taste, which the history of every other

people in Europe, and of many in Asia, has almost ascertained to

be a law of the human mind; it is in a state of society much more

refined and permanent than that described in the Iliad, that any

popularity would attend such a ridicule of war and the gods as is

contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed three

other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see,

with as much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe

that none of them were of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the

usage of the word deltos, "writing tablet," instead of diphthera,

"skin," which, according to Herod. 5, 58, was the material

The Iliad of Homer