Note 261 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.

Joseph, cont. Apion. i. 2; Cicero de Orator, iii. 34; Pausan. vii. 26, 6: compare the Scholion on Plautus in Ritschl, Die Alexandrin. Bibliothek, p. 4. Ælian (V. II. xiii. 14), who mentions both the introduction of the Homeric poems into Peloponnesus by Lykurgus, and the compilation by Peisistratus, can hardly be considered as adding to the value of the testimony: still less, Libanius and Suidas. What we learn is, that some literary and critical men of the Alexandrine age (more or fewer, as the case may be; but Wolf exaggerates when he talks of an unanimous conviction) spoke of Peisistratus as having first put together the fractional parts of the Iliad and Odyssey into entire poems.