A2 
phon, who is recorded to have been an “editor” of Homer in 
the age of Pericles, may have had more to do with the actual 
authorship than is commonly thought. This theory was shown 
to be supported by the very modern style of a great deal of our 
Homeric Greek, combined, as might be expected, with archaic 
forms retained from the earlier epics. Evidence to the same 
effect was adduced from the early Greek Vases. | 
The PUBLIC OraToR (Rev. W. G. Clark, Trinity) stated that 
Hipparchus was said to have introduced the Homeric poems into 
Greece, and to have had them committed to writing; that it was 
very improbable that a work of such magnitude should have 
been introduced without detection at an age such as that assigned 
by Mr Paley as its probable date. The impression produced 
upon his mind by reading the Iliad and Odyssey (which he 
had done on the spot) was that they were poems belonging either 
to different ages or to different states of society. He accounted 
for the occurrence of modern forms in the poems by supposing 
that they might have crept in from time to time until the text 
became fixed. Writing had been in use in Egypt at a very 
early date; for instance, there was a Hieratic papyrus in the 
British Museum to which the date 1100 B.c. was assigned. 
Good subjects for Tragedies were not to be found in the Homeric 
poems, and this was sufficient to account for the rarity of Tra- 
gedies founded on them. 
Mr Patey replied that he did not suppose that the Homeric 
poems mentioned in connexion with Hipparchus were those 
which we possess ; and that there were no words for ‘reading’ 
and ‘ writing’ in early Greek, so that although they might be 
known in Egypt, they were not in Greece. 
