And there were, doubtless, many old bards and rhapsodes in ancient Greece, of whom the same might be said which Saxo Grammaticus affirms of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was “literis quidem tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientiâ apprime eruditus.” (Dahlmann, Historische Forschungen, vol. ii. p. 176.)
[260] “Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, the Odysseus for the other sex. These loose songs were not collected together into the form of an epic poem until 500 years after.”
Such is the naked language in which Wolf’s main hypothesis had been previously set forth by Bentley, in his “Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” published in 1713: the passage remained unaltered in the seventh edition of that treatise published in 1737. See Wolf’s Proleg. xxvii. p. 115.
The same hypothesis may be seen more amply developed, partly in the work of Wolfs pupil and admirer, William Müller, Homerische Vorschule (the second edition of which was published at Leipsic, 1836, with an excellent introduction and notes by Baumgarten-Crusius, adding greatly to the value of the original work by its dispassionate review of the whole controversy), partly in two valuable Dissertations of Lachmann, published in the Philological Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1837 and 1841.
[261] Joseph, cont. Apion. i. 2; Cicero de Orator, iii. 34; Pausan. vii. 26, 6: compare the Scholion on Plautus in Ritschl, Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, p. 4. Ælian (V. II. xiii. 14), who mentions both the introduction of the Homeric poems into Peloponnesus by Lykurgus, and the compilation by Peisistratus, can hardly be considered as adding to the value of the testimony: still less, Libanius and Suidas. What we learn is, that some literary and critical men of the Alexandrine age (more or fewer, as the case may be; but Wolf exaggerates when he talks of an unanimous conviction) spoke of Peisistratus as having first put together the fractional parts of the Iliad and Odyssey into entire poems.
[262] Plato, Hipparch. p. 228.
[263] “Doch ich komme mir bald lächerlich vor, wenn ich noch immer die Möglichkeit gelten lasse, dass unsere Ilias in dem gegenwärtigen Zusammenhange der bedeutenden Theile, und nicht blos der wenigen bedeutendsten, jemals vor der Arbeit des Pisistratus gedacht worden sey.” (Lachmann, Fernere Betrachtungen über die Ilias, sect. xxviii. p. 32; Abhandlungen Berlin. Academ. 1841.) How far this admission—that for the few most important portions of the Iliad, there did exist an established order of succession prior to Peisistratus—is intended to reach, I do not know; but the language of Lachmann goes farther than either Wolf or William Müller. (See Wolf, Prolegomen. pp. cxli-cxlii, and W. Müller, Homerische Vorschule, Abschnitt vii. pp. 96, 98, 100, 102.) The latter admits that neither Peisistratus nor the Diaskeuasts could have made any considerable changes in the Iliad and Odyssey, either in the way of addition or of transposition; the poems as aggregates being too well known, and the Homeric vein of invention too completely extinct, to admit of such novelties.
I confess, I do not see how these last-mentioned admissions can be reconciled with the main doctrine of Wolf, in so far as regards Peisistratus.
[264] Diogen. Laërt. i. 57.—Τὰ τε Ὁμήρου ἐξ ὑποβολῆς γέγραφε (Σόλων) ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι, οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἔκειθεν ἄρχεσθαι τὸν ἀρχόμενον, ὥς φησι Διευχίδας ἐν τοῖς Μεγαρικοῖς.
Respecting Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, the Pseudo-Plato tells us (in the dialogue so called, p. 228),—καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ἐξ ὑπολήψεως ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διϊέναι, ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι οἵδε ποιοῦσι.