Among inscriptions on tombstones of the end of the seventh century, there is the epitaph of a daughter of a potter. [Footnote: Roberts, vol. i. p. 76.] These writings testify to the general knowledge of reading, just as much as our epitaphs testify to the same state of education. The Athenian potter's daughter of the seventh century B.C. had her epitaph, but the grave-stones of highlanders, chiefs or commoners, were usually uninscribed till about the end of the eighteenth century, in deference to custom, itself arising from the illiteracy of the highlanders in times past. [Footnote: Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii. p. 426. 1888.] I find no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that there were some Greek readers and writers in the eighth century, and that primary education was common in the seventh. In these circumstances my sense of the probable is not revolted by the idea of a written epic, in [blank space] characters, even in the eighth century, but the notion that there was no such thing till the middle of the sixth century seems highly improbable. All the conditions were present which make for the composition and preservation of literary works in written texts. That there were many early written copies of Homer in the eighth century I am not inclined to believe. The Greeks were early a people who could read, but were not a reading people. Setting newspapers aside, there is no such thing as a reading _people_. The Greeks preferred to listen to recitations, but my hypothesis is that the rhapsodists who recited had texts, like the _jongleurs_' books of their epics in France, and that they occasionally, for definite purposes, interpolated matter into their texts. There were also texts, known in later times as "city texts" ([Greek: ai kata poleis]), which Aristarchus knew, but he did not adopt the various readings. [Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. p, 435.] Athens had a text in Solon's time, if he entered the decree that the whole Epic should be recited in due order, every five years, at the Panathenaic festival. [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 395.] "This implies the possession of a complete text." [Footnote: _Ibid_., vol. ii. p. 403.]