The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier and later.

Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later grammar in Iliad and Odyssey. In the Iliad four or five Books are infected by “the later grammar,” while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: “When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The main division, that of Iliad and Odyssey, shows a distinct advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group with the Odyssey four Books of the Iliad whose Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions . . . ” 313 We are here concerned with linguistic examples of “lateness.” The “four Books whose Odyssean physiognomy” and language seem “well marked,” are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the Iliad Mr. Leaf adds Iliad, XI. 664–772: “probably a later addition,” says Mr. Monro. “It is notably Odyssean in character,” says Mr. Leaf; and the author “is ignorant of the geography of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek.” 314 The value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see The Interpolations of Nestor).

The Odyssean notes in this passage of a hundred lines (Iliad, XI. 670–762) are the occurrence of “a purely Odyssean word” (677), an Attic form of an epic word, and a “forbidden trochaic caesura in the fourth foot”; an Odyssean word for carving meat, applied in a non-Odyssean sense (688), a verb for “insulting,” not elsewhere found in the Iliad (though the noun is in the Iliad) (695), an Odyssean epithet of the sun, “four times in the Odyssey” (735). It is also possible that there is an allusion to a four-horse chariot (699).

These are the proofs of Odyssean lateness.

The real difficulty about Odyssean words and grammar in the Iliad is that, if they were in vigorous poetic existence down to the time of Pisistratus (as the Odysseanism of the Asiatic editor proves that they were), and if every rhapsodist could add to and alter the materials at the disposal of the Pisistratean editor at will, we are not told how the fashionable Odysseanisms were kept, on the whole, out of twenty Books of the Iliad.

This is a point on which we cannot insist too strongly, as an argument against the theory that, till the middle of the sixth century B.C., the Iliad scarcely survived save in the memory of strolling rhapsodists. If that were so, all the Books of the Iliad would, in the course of recitation of old and composition of new passages, be equally contaminated with late Odyssean linguistic style. It could not be otherwise; all the Books would be equally modified in passing through the lips of modern reciters and composers. Therefore, if twenty out of twenty-four Books are pure, or pure in the main, from Odysseanisms, while four are deeply stained with them, the twenty must not only be earlier than the four, but must have been specially preserved, and kept uncontaminated, in some manner inconsistent with the theory that all alike scarcely existed save in the memory or invention of late strolling reciters.

How the twenty Books relatively pure “in grammatical forms, in syntax, and in vocabulary,” could be kept thus clean without the aid of written texts, I am unable to imagine. If left merely to human memory and at the mercy of reciters and new poets, they would have become stained with “the defining article”— and, indeed, an employment of the article which startles grammarians, appears even in the eleventh line of the First Book of the Iliad? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Cf. Monro and Leaf, on Iliad, I. 11–12.]

Left merely to human memory and the human voice, the twenty more or less innocent Books would have abounded, like the Odyssey, in [Greek: amphi] with the dative meaning “about,” and with [Greek: ex] “in consequence of,” and “the extension of the use of [Greek: ei] clauses as final and objective clauses,” and similar marks of lateness, so interesting to grammarians. 315 But the twenty Books are almost, or quite, inoffensive in these respects.

Now, even in ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We later refer (Archaeology of the Epic) to the Chancun de Willame, of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willame as taking a place beside the Chanson de Roland in the earliest rank of Chansons de Geste. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear as “the most primitive” of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, “there are traces of change in the language. The word ?o, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article” (li Reis, “the king”), “never occurs in the text after line 2647. Up to that point it is elided or not at pleasure. . . . There is a progressive tendency towards hiatus. After line 1980 the system of assonance changes. An and en have been kept distinct hitherto; this ceases to be the case.” 316

The poem is also notable, like the Iliad, for textual repetition of passages, but that is common to all early poetry, which many Homeric critics appear not to understand. In this example we see how apt novelties in grammar and metre are to steal into even written copies of epics, composed in and handed down through uncritical ages; and we are confirmed in the opinion that the relatively pure and orthodox grammar and metre of the twenty Books must have been preserved by written texts carefully ‘executed. The other four Books, if equally old, were less fortunate. Their grammar and metre, we learn, belong to a later stratum of language.

These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis that all of the Iliad, even the “earliest” parts, are loaded with interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000 B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the Iliad would equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.

But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds all through the whole Iliad, then that grammar is not more Odyssean than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar, late Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the Iliad beyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the Iliad, which he thinks was only made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., 317 we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as much as we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably by one or more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the Odyssean grammar in Book VIII.

Mr. Leaf says, “The peculiar character” of Book VIII. “is easily understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX. . . . ” which is “late” and “Odyssean.” Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX., must be at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet it is not so.

Mr. Leaf’s theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole Iliad, by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with late interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all Greek lands, and was crammed with original “copy” by a sycophant of Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in only some four Books. Till some reasonable answer is given to this question — how did twenty Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably the ancient grammar through centuries of change, and of recitation by rhapsodists who used the Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other Books, and the whole of the Odyssey? — it seems hardly worth while to discuss this linguistic test.

Any scholar who looks at these pages knows all about the proofs of grammar of a late date in the Odyssey and the four contaminated Books of the Iliad. But it may be well to give a few specimens, for the enlightenment of less learned readers of Homer.

The use of [Greek: amfi], with the dative, meaning “about,” when thinking or speaking “about” Odysseus or anything else, is peculiar to the Odyssey. But how has it not crept into the four Odyssean contaminated Books of the Iliad?

[Greek: peri], with the genitive, “follows verbs meaning to speak or know about a person,” but only in the Odyssey. What preposition follows such verbs in the Iliad?

Here, again, we ask: how did the contaminated Books of the Iliad escape the stain of [Greek: peri], with the genitive, after verbs meaning to speak or know? What phrase do they use in the Iliad for speaking or asking about anybody? [Footnote (exact placing uncertain): Monro, Homeric Grammar. See Index, under Iliad, p. 339.]

[Greek: meta], with the genitive, meaning “among” or “with,” comes twice in the Odyssey (X. 320; XVI. 140) and thrice in the Iliad (XIII. 700; XXI. 458; XXIV. 400); but all these passages in the Iliad are disposed of as “late” parts of the poem.

[Greek: epi], with the accusative, meaning towards a person, comes often in the Iliad; once in the Odyssey. But it comes four times in Iliad, Book X., which almost every critic scouts as very “late” indeed. If so, why does the “late” Odyssey not deal in this grammatical usage so common in the “late” Book X. of the Iliad?

[Greek: epi], with the accusative, “meaning extent (without motion),” is chiefly found in the Odyssey, and in the Iliad, IX., X., XXIV. On consulting grammarians one thinks that there is not much in this.

[Greek: proti] with the dative, meaning “in addition to,” occurs only once (Odyssey, X. 68). If it occurs only once, there is little to be learned from the circumstance.

[Greek: ana] with the genitive, is only in Odyssey, only thrice, always of going on board a ship. There are not many ship-farings in the Iliad. Odysseus and his men are not described as going on board their ship, in so many words, in Iliad, Book I. The usage occurs in the poem where the incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be expected? It is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint and cummin. If “Neglect of Position” be commoner — like “Hiatus in the Bucolic Diaeresis”— in the Odyssey and in Iliad, XXIII., XXIV., why do the failings not beset Iliad, IX., X., these being such extremely “late” books? As to the later use of the Article in the Odys............