A person, putting these questions to Greeks of different towns and ages, would have obtained answers widely discrepant and contradictory. Since the invaluable labors of Aristarchus and the other Alexandrine critics on the text of the Iliad and Odyssey, it has, indeed, been customary to regard those two (putting aside the Hymns, and a few other minor poems) as being the only genuine Homeric compositions: and the literary men called Chorizontes, or the Separators, at the head of whom were Xenôn and Hellanikus, endeavored still farther to reduce the number by disconnecting the Iliad and Odyssey, and pointing out that both could not be the work of the same author. Throughout the whole course of Grecian antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the Hymns, have been received as Homeric: but if we go back to the time of Herodotus, or still earlier, we find that several other epics also were ascribed to Homer,—and there were not wanting[230] critics, earlier than the Alexandrine age, who regarded the whole Epic Cycle, together with the satirical poem called Margitês, the Batrachomyomachia, and other smaller pieces, as Homeric works. The cyclic Thebaïs and the Epigoni (whether they be two separate poems, or the latter a second part of the former) were in early days currently ascribed to Homer: the same was the case with the Cyprian Verses: some even attributed to him several other poems,[231] the Capture of Œchalia, the Lesser Iliad, the Phokaïs, and the Amazonia. The title of the poem called Thebaïs to be styled Homeric, depends upon evidence more ancient than any which can be produced to authenticate the Iliad and Odyssey: for Kallinus, the ancient elegiac poet (B. C. 640), mentioned Homer as the author of it,—and his opinion was shared by many other competent judges.[232] From the remarkable description given by Herodotus, of the expulsion of the rhapsodes from Sikyôn, by the despot Kleisthenês, in the time of Solôn (about B. C. 580), we may form a probable judgment that the Thebaïs and the Epigoni were then rhapsodized at Sikyôn as Homeric productions.[233] And it is clear from the language of Herodotus, that in his time the general opinion ascribed to Homer both the Cyprian Verses and the Epigoni, though he himself dissents.[234] In spite of such dissent, however, that historian must have conceived the names of Homer and Hesiod to be nearly coextensive with the whole of the ancient epic; otherwise, he would hardly have delivered his memorable judgment, that they two were the framers of Grecian theogony. [230] See the extract of Proclus, in Photius Cod. 239. [231] Suidas, v. Ὅμηρος; Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. p. 330. [232] Pausan. ix. 9, 3. The name of Kallinus in that passage seems certainly correct: Τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα (the Thebaïs) Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι· Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν. Ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε Ἰλιάδα καὶ Ὀδύσσειαν ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα.