Note 251 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

See this argument strongly put by Nitzsch, in the prefatory remarks at the beginning of his second volume of Commentaries on the Odyssey (pp. x-xxix). He takes great pains to discard all idea that the poems were written in order to be read. To the same purpose, Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. p. 32), who adopts Nitzsch’s positions,—“Audituris enim, non lecturis, carmina parabant.”