It was at this period, about four hundred years after the war, that a poet flourished of the name of Melesigenes, or Meonides, but most probably the former. He saw that these ballads might be made of great utility to his purpose of writing a poem on the social position of Hellas, and as a collection he published these lays, connecting them by a tale of his own. This poem now exists under the title of the _Odyssea_. The author, however, did not affix his own name to the poem, which, in fact, was great part of it remodelled from the archaïc dialect of Crete, in which tongue the ballads were found by him. He therefore called it the poem of _Homeros_, or the Collector.[11] But this is rather a proof of his modesty and talent, than of his mere drudging arrangement of other people's ideas, for, as Grote has finely observed, arguing for the unity of authorship, "a great poet might have recast pre-existing separate songs into one comprehensive whole; but no mere arrangers or compilers would be competent to do so."[12] [Footnote 11: Welcker, _Der Epische Cyclus_, p. 127. Professor Wilson, in his _System of Hindu Mythology_ (Introduct. p. lxii.), has the following passage, quoted by Grote: "The sage Vyasa is represented not as the author, but as the arranger and compiler of the Vedas and the Purânas. His name dates his character, meaning the _arranger_ or _distributor_; and the recurrence of so many Vyasas,--many individuals who new-modelled the Hindu Scriptures,--has nothing in it that is improbable, except the fabulous intervals by which their labours are separated."] [Footnote 12: _Hist of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 232.] While employed on the wild legend of Odysseus, he met with a ballad recording the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon; his noble mind seized the hint that there presented itself, and the _Achilleïs_[13] grew under his hand. Unity of design, however, caused him to publish the poem under the same pseudonyme as his former work; and the disjointed lays of the ancient bards were joined together, like those relating to the Cid, into a chronicle history, named the _Iliad_.[14] Melesigenes knew that the poem was destined to be a lasting one; and so it has proved. But first, the poems were destined to undergo many vicissitudes and corruptions, by the people who took to singing them in the streets, assemblies, and agoras. However, Solon first, and then Peisistratos, and afterwards Aristoteles and others, revised the poems, and restored the works of Melesigenes Homeros to their original integrity in a great measure. But that this was of no great avail is evident from the corruption οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, in the opening. _All_ birds are not carnivorous, and therefore the passage must be wrong: besides, the words immediately following, savouring somewhat of interpolation, and, indeed, being condemned by some as such, would lead to the fair assumption that the whole line was corrupted.