large number of different poems about the siege of Troy.

And the Odyssey? Well, the tradition was that he wrote it in his
old age. Its mood is very different from that of the Iliad; and
many words used in it are used with a different meaning; and
there are words that are not used in the Iliad at all. Someone
says, it comes from the old age of the Greek epic, rather than
from that of Homer. I do not know. It is a better story than
the Iliad; as if more nearly cast at one throe of a mind. Yet
it, too, must be said not to hang together; here also are
discrepant and incompatible parts.

There is all tradition for it that the Homeric poems were handed
down unwritten for several centuries. Well; I can imagine the
Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi and the rest learning poems from the
verbal instruction of other Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi, and so
preserving them from generation to generation to generation. But
I cannot imagine, and I do think it is past the wit of man to
imagine, long poems being composed by memory; it seems to me
Homer must have written or dictated them at first. Writing in
Greece may have been an esoteric science in those times. It is
now, anywhere, to illiterates. In Caesar's day, as he tells us,
it was an esoteric science among the Druids; they used it, but
the people did not. It seems probable that writing was not in
general use among the Greeks until long after Homer; but, to me,
certain that Homer used it himself, or could command the services
to those who did. But there was writing in Crete long before the
Greco-Phoenician alphabet was invented; from the time of the
first Egyptian Dynasties, for example. And here is a point to
remember: alphabets are invented; systems of writing are lost