204 HISTORY OF GREECE. we could only infer that the author of the OJy$i.vy .h<K heard the Achilleis or the Iliad ; we could not infer that Ivj lived one or two generations afterwards. 1 On the whole, the balance of probabilities ctmiu ia favor of distinct authorship for the two poems, but the same age, and that age a very early one, anterior to the first Olympiad. And they may thus be used as evidences, and contemporary evidences, lor the phenomena of primitive Greek civilization ; while they also show that the power of constructing long premeditated epics, without the aid of writing, is to be taken as a characteristic of the earliest known Greek mind. This was the point controverted by Wolf, which a full review of the case (in my judgment) decides against him : it is, moreover, a valuable result for the historian of the Greeks, inasmuch as it marks out to him the ground from which he is to start in appreciating their ulterior progress.' 2 1 The arguments, upon the faith of which Payne Knight and other critics have maintained the Odyssey to be younger than the Iliad, are well stated and examined in Bernard Thiersch, Quaestio de DiversA Iliadis et Odys seaa JEtate, in the Anhang (p. 306) to his work Ueber das Zeitalter und Vaterland des Homer. He shows all such arguments to be very inconclusive ; though the grounds upon which he himself maintains identity of age between the two appear to me not at all more satisfactory (p. 327) : we can infer nothing to the point from the mention of Telemachus in the Iliad. Welcker thinks that there is a great difference of age, and an evident difference of authorship, between the two poems (Der Episch. Kykirs, p. 295). O. Miiller admits the more recent date of the Odyssey, but considers it " difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite conclu- sions as to the person and age of the poet." (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. v. s. 13.) 2 Dr. Thirlwall has added to the second edition of his History of Greece a valuable Appendix, on the early history of the Homeric poems (vol. i. pp. 500-516); which contains copious information respecting the discrepant opinions of German critics, with a brief comparative examination of their reasons. I could have wished that so excellent a judge had superadded, to his enumeration of the views of others, an ampler exposition of his own. Dr. Thirlwall seems decidedly convinced upon that which appears to me tho most important point in the Homeric controversy : " That before the appear- ance of the earliest of the poems of the Epic Cycle, the Iliad and Odyssey, even if they did not exist precisely in their present form, had at least reached
