could not bear to leave the Trojan dogs with the best of it.
Of course in this Ionic Homer there were no 'Athenian interpolations,' no passages like the praise of Menestheus, the claim to Salamis, the mentions of Theseus, Procris, Phædra, Ariadne, or the account of the Athenians in N, under the name of 'long-robed Ionians,' acting as a regiment of heavy infantry. Above all, the language, though far from pure, was at least very different from our vulgate text; it was free from Atticisms.
The Epic Language
We must analyse this language and see the historical processes implied in its growth.
An old and much-scoffed-at division of Greek dialects spoke of Ionic, Æolic, Doric, and 'Epic' The first three denote, or mean to denote, real national distinctions; the last is, of course, an artificial name. But the thing it denotes is artificial too—a language that no Ionians, Dorians, or Æolians ever spoke; a 'large utterance,' rhythmic and emotional, like a complicated instrument for the expression of the heroic saga. As has already been remarked, it is a dialect conditioned at every turn by the Epic metre; its fixed epithets, its formulae, its turns of sentence-connection, run into hexameters of themselves. Artificial as it is in one sense, it makes the impression of Nature herself speaking. Common and random phrases—the torrents coming "down from the hills on their head;" the "high West wind shouting over a wine-faced sea;" "the eastern isle where dwells Eôs the Dawn-child, amid her palaces and her
