Note 10 — DISSERTATION ON THE LIFE AND ÆRA OF HESIOD, HIS POEMS, AND MYTHOLOGY.

It is strange, however, that a critic like Gibbon should have allowed himself to talk of a definite time when “Homer wrote his Iliad;” in an age when alphabetic characters were not in use; when poets composed only rhapsodies, or such portions as could be recited at one time; which were preserved by oral tradition through the recitations of succeeding bards.