The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

cize, from their own individual point of
view, the written words of the Homeric
rhapsodies, just as we are told that
Kallinus both noticed and eulogized the
Thebais as the production of Homer.
There seems, therefore, ground for conjecturing
that (for the use of this newlyformed
and important, but very narrow
class), manuscripts of the Homeric
poems and other old epics,—the Thebais
and the Cypria, as well as the Iliad and
the Odyssey,—began to be compiled towards
the middle of the seventh century
(B.C. 1); and the opening of Egypt to
Grecian commerce, which took place
about the same period, would furnish increased
facilities for obtaining the requisite
papyrus to write upon. A reading
class, when once formed, would doubtless
slowly increase, and the number of
manuscripts along with it; so that before
the time of Solon, fifty years afterwards,
both readers and manuscripts, though