In reference to the Romances of the Middle Ages, belonging to the Cycle of the Round Table, M. Fauriel tells us that the German Perceval has nearly twenty-five thousand verses (more than half as long again as the Iliad); the Perceval of Christian of Troyes, probably more; the German Tristan, of Godfrey of Strasburg, has more than twenty-three thousand; sometimes, the poem is begun by one author, and continued by another. (Fauriel, Romans de Chevalerie, Revue des Deux Mondes, t. xiii. pp. 695-697.)
The ancient unwritten poems of the Icelandic Skalds are as much lyric as epic: the longest of them does not exceed eight hundred lines, and they are for the most part much shorter (Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Nördischen Heldensage, aus P. A. Müller’s Sagabibliothek von G. Lange, Frankf. 1832, Introduct. p. xlii.).
[267] Plutarch, Solôn, 10.
[268] The Homeric Scholiast refers to Quintus Calaber ἐν τῇ Ἀμαζονομαχίᾳ, which was only one portion of his long poem (Schol. ad Iliad. ii. 220).
[269] Knight, Prolegg. Homer, xxxii. xxxvi. xxxvii. That Peisistratus caused a corrected MS. of the Iliad to be prepared, there seems good reason to believe, and the Scholion on Plautus edited by Ritschl (see Die Alexandrinische Bibliothek, p. 4) specifies the four persons (Onomakritus was one) employed on the task. Ritschl fancies that it served as a sort of Vulgate for the text of the Alexandrine critics, who named specially other MSS. (of Chios, Sinôpê, Massalia, etc.) only when they diverged from this Vulgate: he thinks, also, that it formed the original from whence those other MSS. were first drawn, which are called in the Homeric Scholia αἱ κοιναὶ, κοινότεραι (pp. 59-60).
Welcker supposes the Peisistratic MS. to have been either lost or carried away when Xerxês took Athens (Der Epische Kyklus, pp. 382-388).
Compare Nitzsch, Histor. Homer. Fasc. i. pp. 165-167; also his commentary on Odyss. xi. 604, the alleged interpolation of Onomakritus; and Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellen. Poes. Part i. s. vii. pp. 252-255.
The main facts respecting the Peisistratic recension are collected and discussed by Gräfenhan, Geschichte der Philologie, sect. 54-64, vol. i. pp. 266-311. Unfortunately, we cannot get beyond mere conjecture and possibility.
[270] Wolf allows both the uniformity of coloring, and the antiquity of coloring, which pervade the Homeric poems; also, the strong line by which they stand distinguished from the other Greek poets: “Immo congruunt in iis omnia ferme in idem ingenium, in eosdem mores, in eandem formam sentiendi et loquendi.” (Prolegom. p. cclxv; compare p. cxxxviii.)
He thinks, indeed, that this harmony was restored by the ability and care of Aristarchus, (“mirificum illum concentum revocatum Aristarcho imprimis debemus.”) This is a very exaggerated estimate of the interference of Aristarchus: but at any rate the concentus itself was ancient and original, and Aristarchus only restored it, when it had been spoiled by intervening accidents; at least, if we are to construe revocatum strictly, which, perhaps, is hardly consistent with Wolf’s main theory.