But the rhapsodist may be reciting at a festival of Dionysus, about whom there is practically nothing said in the _Iliad_; for it is a proof of the antiquity of the _Iliad_ that, when it was composed, Dionysus had not been raised to the Olympian peerage, being still a folk-god only. The rhapsodist, at a feast of Dionysus in later times, has to introduce the god into his recitation. The god is not in his text, but he adds him. [Footnote:_Ibid_., VI. 130-141] Why should any mortal have made this interpolation? Mr. Jevons's theory supplies the answer. The rhapsodist added the passages to suit the Dionysus feast, at which he was reciting. The same explanation is offered for the long story of the _Birth_ of [blank space] which Agamemnon tells in his speech of apology and reconciliation. [Footnote:_Ibid_., XIX. 136.] There is an invocation to Heracles (Hymns, XV.), and the author may have added this speech to his rhapsody of the Reconciliation, recited at a feast of Heracles. Perhaps the remark of Mr. Leaf offers the real explanation of the presence of this long story in the speech of Agamemnon: "Many speakers with a bad case take refuge in telling stories." Agamemnon shows, says Mr. Leaf, "the peevish nervousness of a man who feels that he has been in the wrong," and who follows a frank speaker like Achilles, only eager for Agamemnon to give the word to form and charge. So Agamemnon takes refuge in a long story, throwing the blame of his conduct on Destiny. We do not need, then, the theory of a rhapsodist's interpolation, but it is quite plausible in itself. Local heroes, as well as gods, had their feasts in post-Homeric times, and a reciter at a feast of AEneas, or of his mother, Aphrodite, may have foisted in the very futile discourse of Achilles and AEneas, [Footnote:_Ibid_., XX. 213-250.] with its reference to Erichthonius, an Athenian hero.