Though the late continuators of the _Iliad_ were able, despite certain inadvertencies, to keep up for some four centuries in Asia the harmonious picture of ancient Achaean life and society in Europe, critics can distinguish four separate strata, the work of many different ages, in the _Iliad_. Of the first stratum composed in Europe, say about 1300-1150 B.C. (I give a conjectural date under all reserves), the topic was _THE Wrath of ACHILLES_. Of this poem, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, (a) the First Book and fifty lines of the Second Book remain intact or, perhaps, are a blend of two versions. (b) The _Valour of Agamemnon_ and _Defeat of THE Achaeans_. Of this there are portions in Book XI., but they were meddled with, altered, and generally doctored, "down to the latest period," namely, the age of Pisistratus in Athens, the middle of the sixth century B.C. (c) The fight in which, after their defeat, the Achaeans try to save the ships from the torch of Hector, and the _Valour of Patroclus_ (but some critics do not accept this), with his death (XV., XVI. in parts). (d) Some eighty lines on the _ARMING OF ACHILLES_ (XIX.). (e) Perhaps an incident or two in Books XX., XXI. (f) The _Slaying HECTOR_ by Achilles, in Books XXI., XXII. (but some of the learned will not admit this, and we shall, unhappily, have to prove that, if Mr. Leaf's principles be correct, we really know nothing about the _SLAYING OF HECTOR_ in its original form). Of these six elements only did the original poem consist, Mr. Leaf thinks; a rigid critic will reject as original even the _Valour of Patroclus_ and the _DEATH OF HECTOR_, but Mr. Leaf refuses to go so far as that. The original poem, as detected by him, is really "the work of a single poet, perhaps the greatest in all the world's history." If the original poet did no more than is here allotted to him, especially if he left out the purpose of Zeus and the person of Thetis in Book I., we do not quite understand his unapproachable greatness. He must certainly have drawn a rather commonplace Achilles, as we shall see, and we confess to preferring the _Iliad_ as it stands.