and by omission or alteration accommodated the already strange and foreign habits of a bygone age to their own day; or else the Alexandrian editors have destroyed traces of old customs far more than has hitherto been suspected[xi:1]. It does not therefore appear to me that the antiquity of the Homer which we possess is materially established by these newer researches. That the earliest lays embodied in the _Iliad_ were very old has never been doubted by any sane critic, and has always been maintained by me on independent grounds. But I now think it likely that the great man who brought dramatic unity into the Iliad, and who may have lived near 800 B.C., did far more than merely string together, and make intelligible, older poems. He made the old life of Mycenæ into the newer Ionic life of Asia Minor. I am sorry to disagree with Mr. Leaf when he calls that Ionic society 'democratic to the core.' Any one who will read what even Pausanias records of its traditions will see that it was aristocratic to the core, and quite as likely to love heroic legends as any other Greek society of that day. * * * * * I must not conclude this Preface without acknowledging the constant help of my younger colleagues in correcting and improving what I write. Of these I will here specify Mr. L. Purser and Mr. Bury. TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, _February, 1892_. FOOTNOTES: [vi:1] 'In the whole range of the Mykenæan culture, there have only been found in the later graves of the lower city, and in the beehive tomb of Vaphio, remains of some finger-rings of iron, used for ornaments. Iron tools and weapons were unknown to the Mykenæans--in spite of Beloch's opinion to the contrary. In the Iliad bronze is mentioned 279 times, iron 23; in the Odyssey they are named 80 and 25 times respectively, but the use of the later metal was far more diffused than the conventional style of the Epos betrays. Iron weapons are indeed only mentioned in the Iliad IV, 123; VII, 141, 144; and XVIII, 34. Books IV and VII are undoubtedly of later origin. Still the use of iron for tools was known throughout the whole Homeric age, and was gradually increasing during the growth of the Epos.' [vii:1] Probably, Busolt adds in the sequel, the use of iron weapons by the Dorian invaders may have been one cause of their victory. But it seems to me mainly to have been the victory of infantry over cavalry, and thus a very early type of the decisive day at Orchomenus, when the Spanish infantry of the Grand Catalan Company destroyed Guy de la Roche and his Frankish knights, and seized the country as their spoil. [xi:1] This last clause is suggested by the fragment of the Iliad, published in my Memoir on the Petrie Papyri, which shows, in thirty-five lines, five unknown to modern texts. Cf. Plate III and p. 34 of that Memoir. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I.