Achæans to Asia. The most celebrated of the Doric migrations was that conducted by the Argive Althæmenes, a descendant of Temenus, who, after leaving some of his followers at Crete, proceeded with the remainder to the island of Rhodes, where he founded the three cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Camirus. About the same time Dorians settled in the neighbouring island of Cos, and founded the cities of Halicarnassus and Cnidus on the mainland. These six colonies formed a confederation, usually called the Doric Hexapolis. § 11. Doric colonies were also founded in mythical times in the islands of Crete, Melos, and Thera. The colonization of Crete more particularly deserves our attention, on account of the similarity of the institutions of its Doric cities to those of Sparta. There were Dorians in Crete in the time of the Odyssey, but their chief migrations to this island took place in the third generation after their conquest of Peloponnesus. Of these two are expressly mentioned, one conducted under the auspices of Sparta, and the other by the Argive Althæmenes. Of the latter we have already spoken; the former consisted chiefly of Minyans, who had been settled at Amycle by the Achæan Philonomus, to whom the Spartans had granted this city on account of his treachery, as has been already related. These Minyans having revolted against Sparta, were sent out of the country as emigrants, but accompanied by many Spartans. They sailed towards Crete, and in their passage settled some of their number in the island of Melos, which remained faithful to Lacedæmon, even in the time of the Peloponnesian war. In Crete they founded Gortyn and Lyctus, which are mentioned as Spartan colonies. The Doric colonists in Crete were anxious to connect themselves with the mythical glories of Minos, and consequently ascribed their political and social institutions to this celebrated hero. Hence the tradition arose that the Spartan institutions were borrowed by Lycurgus from those of Crete; but it seems more probable that their similarity was owing to their common origin, and that the Dorians of Crete brought from the mother-country usages which they sought to hallow by the revered name of Minos. § 12. The Return of the Heraclidæ and the foundation of the above-mentioned colonies form the conclusion of the Mythical Age. From this time to the commencement of authentic history in the first Olympiad, there is a period of nearly three hundred years, according to the common chronology. Of this long period we have scarcely any record. But this ought not to excite our surprise. The subjects of mythical narrative are drawn, not from recent events, but from an imaginary past, which is supposed to be separated from the present by an indefinite number of years. Originally no attempt was made to assign any particular date to the grand events of the Mythical Age. It was sufficient for the earlier Greeks to believe that their gods and heroes were removed from them by a vast number of generations; and it was not till a later time that the literary men of Greece endeavoured to count backwards to the Mythical Age, and to affix dates to the chief events in legendary Greece. § 1. Importance of the subject. § 2. Rise of poetry in Greece. Epic ballads preparatory to the Epopee. § 3. The poems of the Epic Cycle, in which the Iliad and the Odyssey were included. § 4. Diversity of opinions respecting the life and date of Homer, § 5. Iliad and Odyssey recited to public companies by the Rhapsodists. § 6. A standard text of the poems first formed by Pisistratus. § 7. Modern controversy respecting the origin of the Homeric poems. Prolegomena of Wolf. § 8. The Iliad and the Odyssey were originally not committed to writing. § 9. They were preserved by the Rhapsodists. § 10. They did not consist originally of separate lays, but were composed by one poet, as shown by their poetical unity. § 1. No history of Greece would be complete without some account of the poems of Homer, and of the celebrated controversy to which they have given rise in modern times. Homer was called by the Greeks themselves The Poet. The Iliad and the Odyssey were the Greek Bible. They were the ultimate standard of appeal on all matters of religious doctrine and early history. They were learnt by boys at school, they were the study of men in their riper years, and even in the time of Socrates there were Athenian gentlemen who could repeat both poems by heart. In whatever part of the ancient world a Greek settled, he carried with him a love for the great poet; and long after the Greek people had lost their independence the Iliad and the Odyssey continued to maintain an undiminished hold upon their affections. No production of profane literature has exercised so wide and long continued an influence, and consequently the history of these poems demands and deserves our careful attention. § 2. The origin of the Iliad and the Odyssey cannot be understood without a short account of the rise of poetry in Greece. Among the Greeks, as among all other nations, poetry was cultivated before prose. The first poetical compositions appear to have been hymns addressed to the gods, or simple ballads recounting the adventures and exploits of some favourite hero. We have already seen that the Greeks of the Heroic age were passionately fond of poetry, and that the entertainments of the nobles were enlivened by the songs of the bard. Originally these songs appear to have been short unconnected lays. They may be regarded as epic poems in the more indefinite sense of the term, since they perpetuated and adorned the memory of great men or great deeds. The next important step in the progress of popular poetry was to combine these separate epical songs into one comprehensive whole. Such a poem may be called an Epopee, and presents a much more advanced state of the art. It requires genius of a far higher order, a power of combination and construction, not needed in poems of the former class. Short epical poems appear to have existed before the time of Homer, as we may infer from the Lay of the Trojan Horse, sung by the bard Demodocus in the Odyssey; but the construction of the epopee, or the epic poem in the nobler sense, is probably to be attributed to the genius of Homer. § 3. There was a large number of these epic poems extant in antiquity. We know the titles of more than thirty of them. Their subjects were all taken from the Greek legends. They were arranged by the grammarians of Alexandria, about the second century before the Christian era, in a chronological series, beginning with the intermarriage of Heaven and Earth, and concluding with the death of Ulysses by the hands of his son Telegonus. This collection was known by the name of the Epic Cycle, and the poets whose works formed part of it were called Cyclic poets. The Iliad and the Odyssey were comprised in the Cycle, and consequently the name of Cyclic poet did not originally carry with it any association of contempt. But as the best poems in the Cycle were spoken of by themselves or by the titles of their separate authors, the general name of Cyclic poets came to be applied only to the worst, especially as many of the inferior poems in the Cycle appear to have been anonymous. Hence we can understand why Horace* and others speak in such disparaging terms of the Cyclic writers, and how the inferiority of the Cyclic poems is contrasted with the excellence of the Iliad and the Odyssey, although the latter had been originally included among them. § 4. All these poems are now lost with the exception of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which stood out prominently above all the others. Throughout the flourishing period of Greek literature these unrivalled works were universally regarded as the productions of a single mind. At a later time some of the Alexandrine grammarians attributed the Iliad and the Odyssey to two different authors, but this innovation in the popular belief was never regarded with much favour, and obtained few converts.† Although antiquity was nearly unanimous in ascribing the Iliad and Odyssey to Homer, there was very little agreement respecting the place of his birth, the details of his life, or the time in which he lived. Nor is this surprising. His poems were the productions of an age in which writing was either totally unknown or at all events little practised, and which was unaccustomed to anything like historical investigation. Seven cities laid claim to his birth,‡ and most of them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard acquainted with poverty and sorrow. It cannot be disputed that he was an Asiatic Greek; but this is the only fact in his life which can be regarded as certain. Several of the best writers of antiquity supposed him to have been a native of the island of Chios, where there existed a poetical gens or fraternity of Homerids, who traced their descent from a divine progenitor of this name. Most modern scholars believe Smyrna to have been his birth-place. The discrepancies respecting his date are no less worthy of remark. The different epochs assigned to him offer a diversity of nearly 500 years. Herodotus places Homer 400 years before himself, according to which he would have lived about B.C. 850. This date, or a little "Nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim."-Hor. Ars Poet. 137. The grammarians, who maintained the separate origin of the Iliad and Odyssey, were called Chorizontes (xwplovтes) or Separatists. Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athena, |