[64] Cic. de Or. iii. 34. [65] Paus. vii. 26. p. 594. add Suidas in voc. Ὅμηρος. Eustath. Il. i. 1. [66] Contra Ap. i. 2. [67] Smith’s Dict., Art. ‘Homerus:’ and elsewhere. [68] Ibid. from Ritschl. [69] Hipparchus, § 4. (ii. 228.) [70] Herod. ii. 117. iv. 32. [71] Il. ii. 594-600. [72] Fragm. xxxiv. [73] Op. ii. 268-75. [74] Hymn. Apoll. 166-73; 146-50. [75] Schol. Pyth. vi. 4; Nem. ii. 1. [76] Il. Α. p. 6. [77] Heyne, viii. p. 811. [78] Sup. [79] Pind. Nem. ii. 1, and Strabo, xiv. i. p. 645. [80] Plat. Phædrus, iii. 252, and Republ. B. 1.; ii. 599. [81] Athen. iv. p. 174. [82] Heyne, viii. 814. [83] Plut. Apoph., p. 186 D. [84] Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 5. [85] Athen. xiv. p. 620. [86] Il. ix. 458-61. [87] Lucian, Ver. Hist. ii. 117. [88] Villoison, Proleg. p. xxvii. [89] Od. xiv. 280. [90] Od. xiv. 204, and Buttmann _in loc._ [91] xvi. 195, and Buttmann _in loc._ [92] Achilleis, i. 456. SECT. 6.--_The Place and Authority of Homer in Historical Inquiry._ The principal and final purpose, which I wish to present in the most distinct manner to the mind of the reader, is that of securing for the Homeric traditions, estimated according to the effect of the foregoing considerations, a just measure of relative as well as absolute appreciation. It appears to me that there has prevailed in this respect a wide-spread and long-continued error, assuming various forms, and affecting in very different degrees, without doubt, the practice of different writers, but so extended and so rooted, as at this stage in the progress of criticism to require formal challenge. I mean, that it is an error to regard and accept all ancient traditions, relating to the periods that precede regular historic annals, as of equal value, or not to discriminate their several values with adequate care. Above all, I strongly contend that we should assign to the Homeric evidence a primary rank upon all the subjects which it touches, and that we should make it a rule to reduce all other literary testimony, because of later origin, to a subordinate and subsidiary position. Mere rumours or stories of the pre-historic times are not, as such, entitled to be called traditions. A story of this kind, say in Apollodorus, may indeed by bare possibility be older than any thing in Homer; but if it comes to us without the proper and visible criteria of age, it has no claim upon our assent as a truthful record of the time to which it purports to refer. Traditions of this class only grow to be such, as a general rule, for us, at the time when they take a positive form in the work of some author, who thus becomes, as far as his time and circumstances permit, a witness to them. It is only from thenceforward, that their faithful derivation and transmission can be relied on as in any degree probable.