The whole tenor of the poems themselves confirms what is here remarked. There is nothing either in the Iliad or Odyssey which savors of _modernism_, applying that term to the age of Peisistratus; nothing which brings to our view the alterations, brought about by two centuries, in the Greek language, the coined money, the habits of writing and reading, the despotisms and republican governments, the close military array, the improved construction of ships, the Amphiktyonic convocations, the mutual frequentation of religious festivals, the Oriental and Egyptian veins of religion, etc., familiar to the latter epoch. These alterations Onomakritus and the other literary friends of Peisistratus, could hardly have failed to notice even without design, had they then for the first time undertaken the task of piecing together many self-existent epics into one large aggregate.[270] Everything in the two great Homeric poems, both in substance and in language, belongs to an age two or three centuries earlier than Peisistratus. Indeed, even the interpolations (or those passages which on the best grounds are pronounced to be such) betray no trace of the sixth century before Christ, and may well have been heard by Archilochus and Kallinus,—in some cases even by Arktinus and Hesiod,—as genuine Homeric matter. As far as the evidences on the case, as well internal as external, enable us to judge, we seem warranted in believing that the Iliad and Odyssey were recited substantially as they now stand, (always allowing for partial divergences of text, and interpolations,) in 776 B. C., our first trustworthy mark of Grecian time. And this ancient date,—let it be added,—as it is the best-authenticated fact, so it is also the most important attribute of the Homeric poems, considered in reference to Grecian history. For they thus afford us an insight into the ante-historical character of the Greeks,—enabling us to trace the subsequent forward march of the nation, and to seize instructive contrasts between their former and their later condition. [270] Wolf allows both the uniformity of coloring, and the antiquity of coloring, which pervade the Homeric poems; also, the strong line by which they stand distinguished from the other Greek poets: “Immo congruunt in iis omnia ferme in idem ingenium, in eosdem mores, in eandem formam sentiendi et loquendi.” (Prolegom. p. cclxv; compare p. cxxxviii.) He thinks, indeed, that this harmony was _restored_ by the ability and care of Aristarchus, (“mirificum illum concentum revocatum Aristarcho imprimis debemus.”) This is a very exaggerated estimate of the interference of Aristarchus: but at any rate the _concentus_ itself was ancient and original, and Aristarchus only _restored_ it, when it had been spoiled by intervening accidents; at least, if we are to construe _revocatum_ strictly, which, perhaps, is hardly consistent with Wolf’s main theory.