Nothing new has been discovered since Mr. Leaf wrote in this orthodox fashion, nothing new has arisen except the studies of M. Bérard, which, if we accept his view, confirm the accuracy of the Catalogue. But, in 1900, Mr. Leaf abandoned his earlier position.
"The whole perspective of the Catalogue," he says, "is entirely different from that of the Iliad." Heroes, as Niese remarks, appear in the Iliad who do nothing in that poem; but play their parts "in other portions of the Epic Cycle." The conclusion is that "the Catalogue originally formed an introduction to the whole cycle, and was composed for that portion of it which, as worked up into a separate poem, was called the Cypria, and relates the beginning of the tale of Troy, and the mustering of the fleet at Aulis."[4] This contains much debatable matter. What the cycle was before it was "worked up into" separate poems, or whether such a nebulous cycle existed at all, we know not. I must refer the reader to Mr. Allen's essay on the whole subject, which is too condensed to be summarised in briefer space.[5] "The Catalogue was taken by Homer from its time and place in saga to his second Book and to the Troad." I do not quite understand how a long passage in hexameters could be taken from "saga." Mr. Allen's critical remarks on prehistoric Greek topography and territorial divisions, are most valuable; and so is his account of the Dorian and other pretensions which wrought confusion in topographical designations. He has proved, I think, that the Catalogue is a very archaic document, which no later persons were interested in inventing, or would have been able to invent. Beyond that I am unable to go, and we must await the results of excavation on prehistoric sites in Greece. Our information as to the Cypria credits it with no Catalogue of the Achaean ships and men; but it is easy to reply that our accounts are wrong, that the authors spoke of a Cypria made up after the Catalogue was placed in the Iliad.
[1] Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. pp. 465, 466.
[2] Leaf, Note to Iliad, xi. 756; Iliad, ii. 615, 617.
[3] Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, pp. 108-113.
[4] Leaf, vol. i. p. 86.
[5] Classical Quarterly, April 1909.