It is true that he begs the Muses to inform him, because they were omnipresent and omniscient, whereas he is dependent on report only (κλέος) for information. Now this was equally true of the whole material of the poem: but the reason why he introduces the statement of this truth in so marked a manner, must be from the arduous nature of the task he was beginning; nor could it be arduous in any other way, than as an effort of memory. The invocation contains another proof that the poems were composed for recitation in the words (vv. 489, 90) οὐδ’ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι, δέκα δὲ στόματ’ εἶεν φωνὴ δ’ ἄρρηκτος, χαλκέον δέ μοι ἦτορ ἐνείη. Nothing can be more proper than to refer to the insufficient ability of the bodily organs of recitation, if he were about to recite: but nothing less proper, if he were engaged on a written poem. It has been a fashion however with poets to copy Homer in this passage, although the reason and circumstances on which it is founded had become wholly inapplicable: and their abusive imitation has blinded us to the significance of the passage as it stands in the Iliad. Now as regards the list itself. _The Greek Array._ In this Catalogue, he had to go through the different States of Greece, furnishing twenty-nine contingents of various strengths, all indicated by the number of ships, to the army. These contingents are under forty-five leaders, many of them with genealogies, and coming from one hundred and seventy-one Greek towns. The proper names of the Greek Catalogue, strictly so called, are three hundred and ninety-six, and those of the Trojan one hundred and five, making in all five hundred and one. These must have been a selection from a larger number, for there were Greek towns (for example Φηραὶ of the Peloponnesus, Od. iii. 488, and the various towns named Ἐφύρη) not named in the Catalogue; and this again increased the difficulty of keeping by memory to the list throughout. Again, it was difficult to adopt any arrangement that should not be wholly arbitrary, in displaying to us the parts of an army which comprised so many divisions, and which was drawn from sources so numerous, and dispersed over a territory of such extremely irregular formation. _The principle of arrangement._ Homer has however with great ingenuity adopted a geographical arrangement in the Greek Catalogue, which, so far as the various divisions were concerned, has enabled him to combine them into a kind of whole. The territory, which supplied the army, consisted partly of continent, and partly of islands: and the islands again were partly such as, lying about the coast of the mainland, might be most conveniently remembered in conjunction with it, partly such as formed a group of themselves.