color_, prevails in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, which must therefore be the product of one age. But to this some adverse critics reply that harmony, indeed, there may be, but that it results, first from the influence of tradition--each new poet adhered to the old formulae without conscious effort--and, next, that the later poets deliberately and learnedly _archaized_, consciously studied the descriptions, and maintained the tone of their predecessors, while at the same time they as deliberately introduced the novelties of their own time. This is their logic. Their double theory is untenable--first, because it is self-contradictory; next, because in all known early art and literature the poet or painter, treating ancient themes, dresses the past in the costume of the present with which he is familiar. To archaize is a very modern effort in art, as all early literature and every large picture-gallery prove. As for unconscious adherence to tradition, it leads to the repetition of epic formulae and standing epithets; but later poets, and uncritical ages, when they describe a more ancient life, always copy the life of their own time. We see too that late learned poets who archaized--Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil, even Quintus Smyrnaeus--while they do their best to imitate Homer, cannot keep up the _unus color_, but betray themselves in a myriad details: for example, Virgil arms his Greeks and Trojans with iron weapons, and Apollonius introduces the ritual purification of blood with blood, ignored by Homer.