GRECIAN EPIC. HOMERIC POEMS. Two classes of epic poetry—Homeric—Hesiodic.—Didactic and mystic Hexameter poetry—later as a genus than the epic.—Lost epic poems.—Epic poets and their probable dates.—Epic cycle.—What the epic cycle was—an arrangement of the poems according to continuity of narrative.—Relation of the epic cycle to Homer.—What poems were included in the cycle.—The Iliad and Odyssey are the only poems of the cycle preserved.—Curiosity which these two poems provoke—no data to satisfy it.—Different poems ascribed to Homer.—Nothing known, and endless diversity of opinion, respecting the person and date of Homer.—Poetical gens of the Homêrids.—Homer, the superhuman eponymus and father of this gens.—What may be the dates of the Iliad and Odyssey.—Date assigned by Herodotus the most probable.—Probable date of the Iliad and Odyssey between 850 and 776 B. C.—Epic poems recited to assembled companies, not read by individuals apart.—Lyric and choric poetry, intended for the ear.—Importance of the class of rhapsodes, singers, and reciters.—Rhapsodes condemned by the Socratic philosophers—undeservedly.—Variations in the mode of reciting the ancient epic.—At what time the Homeric poems began to be written.—Prolegomena of Wolf—raised new questions respecting the Homeric text—connected unity of authorship with poems written from the beginning.—The two questions not necessarily connected, though commonly discussed together.—Few traces of writing, long after the Homeric age.—Bards or rhapsodes of adequate memory, less inconsistent with the conditions of the age than long MSS.—Blind bards.—Possibility of preserving the poems by memory, as accurately as in fact they were preserved.—Argument from the lost letter Digamma.—When did the Homeric poems begin to be written?—Reasons for presuming that they were first written about the middle of the seventh century B. C.—Condition of the Iliad and Odyssey down to the reign of Peisistratus.—Theory of Wolf.—Authorities quoted in its favor.—Objections against it.—Other long epic poems besides the Iliad and Odyssey.—Catalogue in the Iliad—essentially a part of a long poem—its early authority.—Iliad and Odyssey were entire poems long anterior to Peisistratus, whether they were originally composed as entire or not.—No traces in the Homeric poems, of ideas or customs belonging to the age of Peisistratus.—Homeric poems. 1. Whether by one author or several. 2. Whether of one date and scheme.—Question raised by Wolf—Sagen-poesie.—New standard applied to the Homeric poems.—Homeric unity—generally rejected by German critics in the last generation—now again partially revived.—Scanty evidence—difficulty of forming any conclusive opinion.—Method of studying the question of Homeric unity.—Odyssey to be studied first, as of more simple and intelligible structure than the Iliad—Odyssey—evidences of