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 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. 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 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.”


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