This view was evolved by Greek critics from Herodotus to Aristotle and Aristarchus. On the other hand, according to Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homer and the Cyclic poems were all qualitatively equivalent, and more or less contemporaneous. A statement of this hypothesis, which deliberately rejects the views of Greek criticism, shall be quoted from von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.[8] "The epos" (the whole mass of early epic poetry) "is by Homer," so says tradition. "The criticism of the subsequent centuries broke off from the mass of epos one portion after another: one after another must go, because it is inconsistent with the conception which has been framed of Homer. At last the _Iliad_ alone abides. The only step that remained to be taken was to reject (_athetiren_) the _Iliad_ also: this step the ancients refused to take, for fear of falling into the abyss. But the step has been taken long ago. The _Iliad_, as it stands, is not the work of one man, or of one century: it is not _one_ work at all. The _Iliad_ is nothing but a _κυκλικὸν ποίημα_. But we are in no abyss, no bottomless pit. On the other hand, we regain firm ground, which ancient criticism had in childish rashness abandoned. The _Iliad_ is just as much and as little Homeric as the _Cypria_. There is no qualitative difference between _ὁμηρικόν_ and _κυκλικόν_." Now that careless child, Aristotle, was of a different opinion. He saw that the _Iliad_ varies absolutely in nature from some of the Cyclics, and the fact is conspicuous. The _Iliad_ also varies, as the scholiasts observed, from the Cyclics historically; varies in manners, rites, religion, taste, and geographical knowledge. All these facts are absolutely demonstrable. So great a critic as Aristotle, and, we may add, so unprejudiced a critic, for he lived long before Wolf, could not but remark the essential differences between the _Iliad_, on the one hand, and some of the Ionian Cyclic poems on the other, as far as _quality_ is concerned. Into the differences which archaeology and anthropology detect, Aristotle did not enter, for he was writing on the Art of Poetry. Unity in a poem, he said, is not obtained merely by the selection of a single hero (the _Cypria_ is so far like _Vanity Fair_ that it is a chronicle "without a hero," unless the hero be Paris or Palamedes). _Unity of action_ is, says Aristotle, essential to an Epic, and Homer observes this unity, grouping all the events round one _motif_, the Wrath of Achilles, or the Return of Odysseus. The _Cypria_ has no such unity; it simply ends where the _Iliad_ begins.