If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still less later Hellenic. It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think in _Homer and the Epic_). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's--this is the regular method of Homeric criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded as a late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been of the opposite opinion. [Footnote: Cf. Monro, _Odyssey_, vol. ii. 313-317.] The method of all parties is to regard repetitions of phrases as examples of borrowing, except, of course, in the case of the earliest poet from whom the others pilfer, and in other cases of prae-Homeric surviving epic formulae. Critics then dispute as to which recurrent passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the _Chansons de Geste_, and Noack also takes this view every now and then. They may well be older, in many cases, than _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; or the poet, having found his own formula, economically used it wherever similar circumstances occurred. Such passages, so considered, are no tests of earlier composition in one place, of later composition in another. We now look into Noack's theory of the Homeric house. Where do the lord and lady sleep? _Not_, he says, as Odysseus and Penelope do (when Odysseus is at home), in a separate chamber (_thalamos_) on the ground floor, nor, like Gunnar and Halgerda (Njal's Saga), in an upper chamber. They sleep _mucho domou_; that is, not in a separate recess in the _house_, but in a recess of the great hall or _megaron_. Thus, in the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the _muchos_, the innermost part (_Odyssey_, VII. 87-96). In the hall of Odysseus, the Wooers retreat to the _muchos_, "the innermost part of the hall" (_Odyssey_, XXII. 270). "The _muchos_, in Homer, never denotes a separate chamber." [Footnote: Noack, p. 45. _Cf_. Monro, Note to Odyssey, XXII. 270.]