This new departure in Homeric criticism brought with it implicitly a complete revolution in the history of ancient literature. But on this subject Vico made only a few scattered remarks. He was no specialist: he did not write from a specialist's point of view, and too often when documentary evidence and thought were unable to solve a difficulty he solved it by means of his fancy, a faculty which was however in his case radiant with gleams of insight. Thus, the cyclic poets were not so called because of the circle of listeners in the centre of which they declaimed their poems, like the "Rinaldi" or ballad-singers whom Vico saw on the quay at Naples, and this circle had no connexion with the _vilem patulumque orbem_ of Horace: but the observation that they differed little from these ballad-singers was sound. In the same way, we need not linger on his guesses at the dates of Homer and Hesiod, nor need we take literally his division of lyric poetry into three periods, namely those respectively of religious hymns, funeral chants for dead heroes and melic lyrics or "musical airs," the last including Pindar, and admired, flourishing as it did at the epoch of the "pompous virtue" of Greece, at the Olympic games where these poets sang. But still Vico has here put his finger on the difference between primitive and refined or cultured lyric poetry. The origin of tragedy he ascribes to the dithyramb or dramatic satire, of which no example has come down to us, and in rural customs compared by him to those which were still in evidence during his own lifetime in Campania at vintage season; and he notes the relation between tragedy and the epic. Tragedy had its rude beginnings at a time when the heroic spirit was already dead: it perfected itself by becoming subordinate to the Homeric poetry, deriving its inspiration from Homeric characters and avoiding original ones. The old comedy was closely related to tragedy. Like the latter it was derived from a chorus, and it preserved its archaic character in that it displayed living persons and real actions. The new comedy on the other hand was marked off by a profound change of spirit. Here the effects of philosophy were directly felt. Imaginative genera were superseded by intelligible and rational universals: and Menander and the other poets of the new comedy, living in the most humane period of Greek history, took their intelligible genera from human life and depicted them in their comedies, over which one feels that the breath of Socratic philosophy has passed. The persons of the new comedy were cast in a mould, and were not public but private characters: and as the chorus represents the public and argues about public affairs only, there is no room for it in the new comedy. About this time began the practice of inserting idealised heroes of perfect morals into poetry. Aristotle, remembering the strongly individualised characters of Homer, still maintained as a principle of poetic composition that