510 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



terius Cicero, Pausanias et reliqui omnes qui mentionem rei faciunt, 

 iisdem prope verbis et ut viilgo notissimum perhibent." At first 

 thought this statement seems too sweeping to be literally true, but 

 when one bears in mind that the only statement by an ancient au- 

 thority really contradictory to the idea of a Pisistratean edition of 

 Homer is contained in the pseudo-Plato of doubtful authority, and 

 when one remembers that the accounts, even as old as Cicero, were, as 

 is most probable, drawn from much older authorities which are now 

 lost, then one can see that this statement, though framed in bold lan- 

 guage, was not made without due deliberation. The statement, " pri- 

 mum consignavisse litteris," however, does not seem to have equal 

 justification. On the contrary, available evidence seems to indicate 

 that even before the time of Pisistratus the Homeric poems, at least 

 large portions of them, already existed in writing. 



All our testimony clearly shows, I think, that Pisistratus, who was 

 a Tvpavvos interested in literature, with the help, as is most likely, of 

 several poets or literary men of his court, was the first to make a 

 careful collection or edition (though in no sense of the word a critical 

 edition) of the Iliad and Odyssey, on the basis of what scattered writ- 

 ten copies were available, filling in the gaps (if there were any) in the 

 written Homer from the mouths of the rhapsodes. That this collec- 

 tion was more or less for private use and convenience it is reasonable to 

 suppose, and that it showed no accuracy of critical discrimination is a 

 necessary supposition in consideration of its early date. 



