According to Herodotus, Homer died at Io, on his way to Athens, and was buried near the sea-shore. Proclus says he died in consequence of falling over a stone. Plutarch tells a different story. He preserves two responses of an oracle to the poet, in both of which he was cautioned to beware of the young men’s riddle; and relates that the poet, being on a voyage to Thebes, to attend a musical or poetical contest at the feast of Saturn, in that city, landed in the island of Io, and, whilst sitting on a rock by the sea-shore, observed some young fishermen in a boat. Homer asked them if they had anything, and the young wags, who, having had no sport, had been diligently catching and killing as many as they could, of certain personal companions of a race not even yet extinct, answered,—“As many as we caught, we left; as many as we could not catch, we carry with us.” The catastrophe of this absurd story is, that Homer, being utterly unable to guess the riddle, broke his heart, out of pure vexation; and the inhabitants of the island buried him with great magnificence, and placed the following inscription on his tomb:— Here Homer, the divine in earthly bed, Poet of Heroes, rests his sacred head. The general theory in regard to the poems of Homer, is that they were composed and recited by him, to the people living upon the islands and the main land along the coasts of Asia Minor. At that time books were unknown, and it is a question whether even the art of writing was then practised. Homer, therefore, published his poems in the only way he could do it—by oral delivery. Whether his verses were sung, or only recited, we cannot determine; but there is no doubt that he obtained both fame and maintenance by his performances. So deep was the impression made by the poet, that his verses were learned by heart, and preserved in the memories of succeeding rhapsodists and minstrels. His reputation was diffused over all Greece; and Lycurgus, who had heard of his compositions, is supposed to have taken pains, during his travels, to have them written down, and to have brought them in a collected form to Greece. They were, however, still in fragments, and the task of arranging and uniting them was performed by Pisistratus, with the help of the poets of his time. In this way, they received nearly the form they now possess; the division of each of the two epics into twenty-four books, corresponding with the letters of the Greek alphabet, being the work of the Alexandrian critics, some centuries after. It must be remembered, however, that although the poems of Homer were thus committed to writing in the time of Pisistratus, they continued to be recited by the rhapsodists, who were much favored in Greece, and in this way alone, for several centuries, were popularly known. It is probable that in these recitations, there was a good deal of dramatic action, and that they possessed something of the interest which belongs to theatrical representation.