of whom we say nowadays that they are too fine to breathe the common air. If Homer's greatest characters are so discordant with our civilised nature, the similes which he uses are drawn from savage beasts and wild nature generally. If the life which he represents--a life of children in its intellectual futility, of women in its imaginative vigour, and of headstrong youths in the violence of its passion--and the tales of which the _Odyssey_ is full, tales worthy of an old woman engaged in amusing children, prevent our attributing any esoteric wisdom to Homer, the striking success of these wild similes is certainly not characteristic of a mind tamed and civilised by philosophy of any sort. Nor could that truculent and savage style in which he describes the various sanguinary battles, the diverse and extravagantly bloodthirsty species of butchery which especially go to make the sublimity of the _Iliad,_ have originated in a mind humanised and softened by philosophy. But who was Homer? What opinions as to him can we find in ancient writers, and what facts can we draw from his poems? An unprejudiced reader of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is at every step aware of and baffled by extravagant and inconsistent statements. The life portrayed is inconsistent: it takes us now here, now there, over a long period of time; on the one hand we find Achilles the hero of force, on the other Ulysses the hero of wisdom: on the one hand, cruelty, barbarism, ferocity and brutality, on the other the luxury of Alcinous, the delights of Calypso, the pleasures of Circe, the songs of the Sirens and the pastimes of suitors who tempt and even win over the chaste Penelope. On the one hand we are shown boorish and uncivilised manners, on the other jewels, magnificent clothing, exquisite foods and the arts of sculpture in bas-relief and metal-founding; on the one hand a strictly heroic society, on the other some signs of popular liberty. This delicate life fits ill with the savage and cruel life which especially in the _Iliad_ is ascribed to the same heroes at the same time. To regard them thus as contemporaneous is an impossibility. From the customs of the Trojan period we have leapt abruptly into those of the time of Numa, to such an extent that "_ne placidis coeant inmitia_" we are compelled to suppose that the two poems were the work of many hands extending over many ages. The geographical allusions are equally inconsistent. These, no less, bring us into varied and distant physical surroundings. The scene of the _Iliad_ lies to the east of Greece, inclining to the northward: that of the _Odyssey_ in the west, inclining to the southward. The language, again, is inconsistent. The confusion of dialects persists in spite of the revision of Aristarchus, and has been explained by the most extraordinary hypotheses, such as the theory that Homer drew the elements of his vocabulary from all the various Greek nationalities.