plot of the Wrath of Achilles forgotten and obscured in later books; not only is the Odyssey in style and diction visibly later than the main part of the Iliad; but it is possible to trace a progressive variation in customs and ideas, with subsequent interpolation and expurgation, throughout. Both epics seem to have been translated out of an original Æolic version into Ionic Greek. And it must not be forgotten that the ancients applied the term “Homer” to a vast body of epic matter of which our Iliad and Odyssey are only a part. We are forced to conclude that many successive generations of bards had worked over the original nucleus. These Homeridæ, or “sons of Homer,” must have included several men of genius among their number, but they were all trained in a noble school. They were, as has been said, hymning the praises of their patrons’ heroic ancestors--that is, they were Æolians telling the story of traditional Achæan heroes, for the Achæans when driven out of their homes by the Dorian invaders bore the name of Æolians when they migrated to the northern coasts of Asia Minor. Probably the earliest Homer was writing in a consciously antiquarian spirit about heroes long ago; certainly the later writers were deliberately archaising and submitting to an epic convention. Thus the Dorians, except for a single oversight, are studiously ignored; writing, coined money, and sculpture are avoided. Habits of ancient barbarism like human sacrifice, poisoned arrows, and the ill-treatment of the dead have been carefully expunged, though the sharp eye of modern criticism can detect the traces of expurgation. Although the heroes certainly belonged to the Iron Age, they are conventionally represented as “smiting with the bronze,” though iron is often mentioned also. All the named heroes, being somebody’s tribal god and somebody’s ancestor, have to receive the title of king, although in the Iliad they are but captains in Agamemnon’s army. Possibly the earliest Homer lived under a patriarchal monarchy; certainly, as we shall see, the authors of the later parts were familiar with oligarchy or aristocracy. The tradition is probably true which says that Homer was not edited in our “authorised” version until the tyranny of Peisistratus at Athens in the sixth century. It follows that we are not to take the epic story as representing a chapter of the real history of the Achæans in Greece. If we attempted to do so we should constantly be betrayed by the deliberate archaisms of the epic convention. The utmost use to which historians can put their Homer is to take the unconscious background of the poems as picturing the sort of civilisation with which writers of the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries were familiar. It is almost our only evidence for that period. THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES The description of the shield of Achilles in the eighteenth book of the Iliad may be selected as a typical piece of [Illustration: Plate 12.--The François Vase. _Alinari._]