The further we go back in the history of literary forgeries, the
more (as is natural) do we find them to be of a pious or priestly
character. When the clergy alone can write, only the clergy can
forge. In such ages people are interested chiefly in prophecies and
warnings, or, if they are careful about literature, it is only when
literature contains some kind of title-deeds. Thus Solon is said to
have forged a line in the Homeric catalogue of the ships for the
purpose of proving that Salamis belonged to Athens. But the great
antique forger, the "Ionian father of the rest," is, doubtless,
Onomacritus. There exists, to be sure, an Egyptian inscription
professing to be of the fourth, but probably of the twenty-sixth,
dynasty. The Germans hold the latter view; the French, from
patriotic motives, maintain the opposite opinion. But this forgery
is scarcely "literary."

I never can think of Onomacritus without a certain respect: he
began the forging business so very early, and was (apart from this
failing) such an imposing and magnificently respectable character.
The scene of the error and the detection of Onomacritus presents
itself always to me in a kind of pictorial vision. It is night, the
clear, windless night of Athens; not of the Athens whose ruins
remain, but of the ancient city that sank in ashes during the
invasion of Xerxes. The time is the time of Pisistratus the
successful tyrant; the scene is the ancient temple, the stately
house of Athene, the fane where the sacred serpent was fed on cakes,
and the primeval olive-tree grew beside the well of Posidon. The
darkness of the temple's inmost shrine is lit by the ray of one
earthen lamp. You dimly discern the majestic form of a venerable
man stooping above a coffer of cedar and ivory, carved with the
exploits of the goddess, and with boustrophedon inscriptions. In