The correct analogy to this Act is the authorisation of a translation of the Bible in England. No historian attributes that feat to any prince but gentle King Jamie: none says that it was due to Henry VIII., Edward VI., or Elizabeth. The historian cannot assume that when Diogenes Laertius attributes the law on recitations to Solon, and the Hipparchus attributes it to the son of Pisistratus, both authorities mean only that a whole educational movement occurred in the sixth century. The existence of primary education in the Athens of the seventh and sixth centuries is proved by the multitude of inscribed vases with paintings of Homeric, Cyclic, and Attic legends; but Diogenes and the Hipparchus are speaking variously about a single legislative enactment.
Mr. Verrall next supposes that the "Homer" then recited and taught at Athens was probably the whole "Cycle" of Cyclic poems.[19] This question he must settle with Mr. Murray, who, we have seen, says that the poetry selected for recitation at the Panathenaea was none but the still fluid lays of which, as I understand, our two epics are the final result; while the Cyclic poems were rejected.
[1] Prolegomena, 2nd edition, 1859, p. 85.
[2] See Homer and his Age, pp. 44-50.
[3] De Oratore, iii. 34.
[4] Leocr. p. 209.
[5] Panegyr. c. 42.
[6] Diog. Laert. Solon, i. 57.