Mycenæ preserved in legend only 44 General teaching of the epic poems 44 Social life in Greece 45 Alleged artificiality of the poems 45 Examples from the _Iliad_ 45 not corroborated by recent discoveries 46 Fick's account of the Homeric dialect 46 Difficulties in the theory 47 Analogies in its favour 48 Its application to the present argument 48 Illustration from English poetry 49 The use of stock epithets 49 High excellence incompatible with artificiality 50 The Homeric poems therefore mainly natural 50 but only generally true 51 and therefore variously judged by various minds 52 CHAPTER III. Theoretical Chronology. Transition to early history 53 The Asiatic colonies 53 Late authorities for the details 54 The colonization of the West 54 The original authority 55 What was nobility in early Greece? 55 Macedonian kings 56 Romans 56 Hellenistic cities 56 Glory of short pedigrees 56 The sceptics credulous in chronology 57 The current scheme of early dates 57 The so-called Olympic register 58 Plutarch's account of it 58 The date of Pheidon of Argos 59 revised by E. Curtius 60 since abandoned 60 The authority of Ephorus 61 not first-rate 62 Archias, the founder of Syracuse 62 associated with legends of Corcyra and Croton 63 Thucydides counts downward from this imaginary date 64