As to the linguistic tests of lateness "there are exceptionally numerous traces of later formation," says Mr. Monro; while Fick, tout _contraire,_ writes, "clumsy Ionisms are not common, and, as a rule, occur in these parts which on older grounds show themselves to be late interpolations." "The cases of agreement" (between Fick and Mr. Monro), "are few, and the passages thus condemned are not more numerous in the _Doloneia_ than in any average book." [Footnote: Jevons, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vii. p. 302.] The six examples of "a post-Homeric use of the article" do not seem so very post-Homeric to an ordinary intelligence--parallels occur in Book I.--and "Perfects in [Greek: ka] from derivative verbs" do not destroy the impression of antiquity and unity which is left by the treatment of character; by the celebrated cap with boars' tusks, which no human being could archaeologically reconstruct in the seventh century; and by the Homeric vigour in such touches as the horses unused to dead men. As the _Iliad_ certainly passed through centuries in which its language could not but be affected by linguistic changes, as it could not escape from _remaniements_, consciously or unconsciously introduced by reciters and copyists, the linguistic objections are not strongly felt by us. An unphilological reader of Homer notes that Duntzer thinks the _Doloneia_ "older than the oldest portion of the Odyssey," while Gemoll thinks that the author of the _Doloneia_. was familiar with the _Odyssey_. [Footnote: Duntzer, _Homer. Abhanglungen_, p. 324. Gemoll, _Hermes_, xv. 557 ff.] Meanwhile, one thing seems plain to us: when the author of Book IX. posted the guards under Thrasymedes, he was deliberately leading up to Book X.; while the casual remark in Book XIV. about the exchange of shields between father and son, Nestor and Thrasymedes, glances back at Book X. and possibly refers to some lost and more explicit statement. It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the interpolations, things could also drop out of the _ILIAD,_ causing _lacunae_, during the dark backward of its early existence. If the _Doloneia_ be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne holds, this opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of the sixth century. The vase painters often illustrate the _Doloneia;_ but it does not follow that "the story was fresh" because it was "popular," as Mr. Leaf suggests, and "was treated as public property in a different way" (namely, in a comic way) "from the consecrated early legends" (_Iliad,_ II 424, 425). The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages in Homer, not the _Doloneia_ alone. The "comic way" was the ruthless humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward. Much later, wild caricature was applied in vase painting to the most romantic scenes in the Odyssey, which were "consecrated" enough. CHAPTER XIV THE INTERPOLATIONS OF NESTOR