Note 260 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

“Homer wrote a sequel of songs and rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at festivals and other days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, the Odysseus for the other sex. These loose songs were not collected together into the form of an epic poem until 500 years after.”

Such is the naked language in which Wolf’s main hypothesis had been previously set forth by Bentley, in his “Remarks on a late Discourse of Freethinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,” published in 1713: the passage remained unaltered in the seventh edition of that treatise published in 1737. See Wolf’s Proleg. xxvii. p. 115.

The same hypothesis may be seen more amply developed, partly in the work of Wolfs pupil and admirer, William Müller, Homerische Vorschule (the second edition of which was published at Leipsic, 1836, with an excellent introduction and notes by Baumgarten-Crusius, adding greatly to the value of the original work by its dispassionate review of the whole controversy), partly in two valuable Dissertations of Lachmann, published in the Philological Transactions of the Berlin Academy for 1837 and 1841.