To me it appears that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that view of the question, if it could be shown that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems in the ninth century before the Christian era. Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable: and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself.[250] The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian era, are exceedingly trifling. We have no remaining inscription earlier than the 40th Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed: nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonidês of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground, which authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the famous ordinance of Solôn with regard to the rhapsodes at the Panathenæa; but for what length of time, previously, manuscripts had existed, we are unable to say. [250] Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv. The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.