Much of this theory of expurgation of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ seems to me to rest on the assumption of εὐφημία. This means abstention from ill-omened words in poems recited at a great public festival. It is impossible for me to understand why words referring, for example, to the habitual and legal purification of homicides, or to the established cult of heroes, should be deemed "ill-omened" at the recitations, in no way religious, at a public holiday, and yet be deemed "well-omened" in the performances of Athenian tragedy. If the superstitions of the conquered races were not those of the conquerors, they could not be in the epics of the conquerors. If they were not there, _les intellectuels_ of Athens could not expurgate them. [1] _R. G. E._ p. 134. [2] _Iliad_, xi. 145-147. [3] xiii. 202-204. [4] xviii. 176-177. [5] xiv. 496-505. [6] xvii. 39. [7] xviii. 175-177, xvii. 126. [8] _R. G. E._ p. 131. [9] _Iliad_, vi. 416-419. [10] _R. G. E._ p. 134. [11] _R. G. E._ pp. 245-246. [12] _R. G. E._ p. 173. [13] This archetype, Mr. Murray has just said, is "unknown." [14] _Prolegg. to Study of Greek Religion_, 1903, p. 329. [15] _Ibid_. pp. 327, 328. [16] _Ibid_. p. 329. [17] _R. G. E._ pp. 116, 117. [18] Ajax, 1031. Andromache, 399. [19] _R. G. E._ p. 123. [20] _Ibid_. p. 127. [21] See Roscher's _Lexikon_, s.v. Minos. [22] _R. G. E._ pp. 130, 131. [23] _R. G. E._ p. 131. THE ALLEGED ATHENIAN RECENSION OF HOMER Wolf could not but confess that the _Iliad_, as we possess it, is an unity, better or worse; is a literary structure. How, then, did it come to be what it is, if it were the work of several authors in several ages? Wolf replies, "History speaks! The voice of all antiquity, and, on the whole, the consent of all report bears witness that Pisistratus was the first who had the Homeric poems committed to writing, and brought into that order in which we now possess them."[1]