His interference presupposes a certain foreknown and ancient aggregate, the main lineaments of which were familiar to the Grecian public, although many of the rhapsodes in their practice may have deviated from it both by omission and interpolation. In correcting the Athenian recitations conformably with such understood general type, he might hope both to procure respect for Athens, and to constitute a fashion for the rest of Greece. But this step of “collecting the torn body of sacred Homer,” is something generically different from the composition of a new Iliad out of preëxisting songs the former is as easy, suitable, and promising, as the latter is violent and gratuitous.[265] [264] Diogen. Laërt. i. 57.—Τὰ τε Ὁμήρου ~ἐξ ὑποβολῆς~ γέγραφε (Σόλων) ῥαψῳδεῖσθαι, οἷον ὅπου ὁ πρῶτος ἔληξεν, ἔκειθεν ἄρχεσθαι τὸν ἀρχόμενον, ὥς φησι Διευχίδας ἐν τοῖς Μεγαρικοῖς. Respecting Hipparchus, son of Peisistratus, the Pseudo-Plato tells us (in the dialogue so called, p. 228),—καὶ τὰ Ὁμήρου ἔπη πρῶτος ἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν γῆν ταυτηνὶ, καὶ ἠνάγκασε τοὺς ῥαψῳδοὺς Παναθηναίοις ~ἐξ ὑπολήψεως~ ἐφεξῆς αὐτὰ διϊέναι, ~ὥσπερ νῦν ἔτι~ οἵδε ποιοῦσι. These words have provoked multiplied criticisms from all the learned men who have touched upon the theory of the Homeric poems,—to determine what was the practice which Solon found existing, and what was the change which he introduced. Our information is too scanty to pretend to certainty, but I think the explanation of Hermann the most satisfactory (“Quid sit ~ὑποβολὴ~ et ~ὑποβλήδεν~.”—_Opuscula_, tom. v. p. 300, tom. vii. p. 162). Ὑποβολεὺς is the technical term for the prompter at a theatrical representation (Plutarch, Præcept. gerend. Reip. p. 813); ὑποβολὴ and ὑποβάλλειν have corresponding meanings, of aiding the memory of a speaker and keeping him in accordance with a certain standard, in possession of the prompter: see the words ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, Xenophon. Cyropæd. iii. 3, 37. Ὑποβολὴ, therefore, has no necessary connection with a series of rhapsodes, but would apply just as much to one alone; although it happens in this case to be brought to bear upon several in succession. Ὑπόληψις, again, means “the taking up in succession of one rhapsode by another:” though the two words, therefore, have not the same meaning, yet the proceeding described in the two passages, in reference both to Solôn and Hipparchus, appears to be in substance the same,—_i. e._ to insure, by compulsory supervision, a correct and orderly recitation by the successive rhapsodes who went through the different parts of the poem. There is good reason to conclude from this passage that the rhapsodes before Solôn were guilty both of negligence and of omission in their recital of Homer, but no reason to imagine either that they transposed the books, or that the legitimate order was not previously recognized.