Now much confusion is caused by the term "old." The poems earlier _in composition_ may represent Achaean ideas then new to Greece; the poems later in composition may, and do, contain ideas old in Greece, but alien to Homer's Achaeans. Meanwhile, Mr. Monro, as we saw, regards the actual Cyclic poems as works of poets of the eighth to seventh centuries B.C., who carried "on the traditions of Homeric art" in Ionia. This means that they take up Achaean themes and traditions and heroic characters, and use them in new poems "composed with direct reference to the _Iliad_."[6] They lead up to the _Iliad_ by a long chronicle of previous events in the _Cypria_, and continue the Homeric narrative in their other epics. But they interlard the narrative with their own rites, beliefs, their own Attic goddess (Nemesis of Rhamnus), and their own non-Achaean heroes, such as the Attic sons of Theseus, and the great Nauplian, Palamedes. They also add silly elements of _Märchen_, and pseudo-historic genealogies. They carve and cook the great Achaean joint, and serve up with Attic and Ionian sauce and trimmings. This is natural, for the Attic people, of the pre-Achaean population, had not, as far as I know, any epic tradition of their own. They knew that they were not engaged in any one of the alleged great collective efforts and expeditions with which the Achaeans credited themselves. Some legends were dynastic adaptations of _Märchen_, with kings and princesses changed into birds; or accounts of their relations with Thrace, or explanations of the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries. They had, too, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, an adventure of an individual hero of _Märchen_; but that ran contrary to all Achaean and Cretan traditions, as we have seen. The Cyclic poets were mere imitators of the Achaean epic: _epic_ tradition of their own, the people of Attica and their Ionian colonists (confessedly mixed with a mongrel multitude) had none. Mr. Leaf takes the same view. He speaks of the Cyclic epics as "the imitative poems which dealt with the old Tale of Troy, and essayed to complete Homer."[7] But a contradictory opinion seems to be held by von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, and, as I understand, by Mr. Murray. The celebrated German scholar argued thus: Before criticism arose in Greece, almost all ancient Epic poetry, and the Hymns, were attributed to "Homer." As early as Herodotus, however, we find that historian regarding the _Cypria_ (a chronicle of the whole events before the opening of the _Iliad_) as not by the author of the _Iliad_. As time went on, and criticism advanced, the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ alone were assigned to Homer, while the Cyclic poems were attributed to various authors, such as Arctinus, Stasinus, and Lesches. The attributions are late, various, perhaps never "evidential"; but criticism came to recognise our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ as alone Homeric. The other epics, the Cyclics, were thought to be of a later age, and by inferior hands.