The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

the narrowest reading class in Greece, is
the middle of the seventh century before
the Christian aera (B.C. 660 to B.C. 630),
the age of Terpander, Kallinus, Archilochus,
Simonides of Amorgus, &c. I
ground this supposition on the change
then operated in the character and tendencies
of Grecian poetry and music—the
elegiac and the iambic measures having
been introduced as rivals to the primitive
hexameter, and poetical compositions
having been transferred from the epical
past to the affairs of present and real life.
Such a change was important at a time
when poetry was the only known mode
of publication (to use a modern phrase
not altogether suitable, yet the nearest approaching
to the sense). It argued a new
way of looking at the old epical treasures
of the people as well as a thirst for new
poetical effect; and the men who stood
forward in it, may well be considered as
desirous to study, and competent to criti-