122 HISTORY OF GREECE. It has already been stated in a former chapter, that in the early commencements of prose-writing, Hekatseus, Pherekydes, and ether logographers, made it their business to extract from tho ancient fables something like a continuous narrative, chronolog- ically arranged. It was upon a principle somewhat analogous that the Alexandrine literati, about the second century before the Christian era, 1 arranged the multitude of old epic poets into a series founded on the supposed order of time in the events nar- rated, beginning with the intermarriage of Uranus and Gse, and the Theogony, and concluding with the death of Odysseus by the hands of his son Telegonus. This collection passed by the name of the Epic Cycle, and the poets, whose compositions were embodied in it, were termed Cyclic poets. Doubtless, the epical treasures of the Alexandrine library were larger than had ever before been brought together and submitted to men both of learning and leisure : so that multiplication of such compositions in the same museum rendered it advisable to establish some fixed order of perusal, and to copy them in one corrected and uniform edition. 2 It pleased the critics to determine precedence, neither 1 Perhaps Zcnodotus, the superintendent of the Alexandrine library under Ptolemy Philadelphia, in the third century u. c. : there is a Scholion on Plautus, published not many years ago by Osann, and since more fully by Kitschl, " Caecius in commento Comcediarum Aristophanis in Pluto, Alexander ./Etolus, et Lycophron Chalcidensis, et Zenodotus Ephesius, im- pulsu regis Ptolemsei, Philadelphi cognomento, artis poetices libros in unum collegerunt et in ordinem redegerunt. Alexander tragcedias, Lycophrou comoedias, Zenodotus vero Homeri poemata et rcliquorum illustrium poet- arum." See Lange. Ueber die Kyklischen Dichtcr, p. 56 (Mainz. 1837); Wclcker, Der Epische Kyklas, p. 8 ; Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Biblio- thcken, p. 3 (Breslau, 1838). Lange disputes the sufficiency of this passage as proof that Zcnodotus was the framer of the Epic Cycle : his grounds are, however, unsatisfactory to me.
- That there existed a cyclic copy or edition of the Odyssey (ff KVK%,IKTI) is
proved by two passages in the Scholia (xvi. 195; xvii. 25), with Boeckh's remark in Buttmann's edition : this was the Odyssey copied or edited along with the other poems of the cycle. Our word to edit or edition suggests ideas not exactly suited to tho proceedings of the Alexandrine library, in which we cannot expect to find anything like what is now called pvUication. That magnificent establish- ment, possessing a large collection of epical manuscripts, and ample means of every kind at command, would naturally desire to have these compos!
