life, the _Iliad_ is the work of a single age, of a single
stage of culture, the poet describing his own environment. But
Helbig, on the other hand, citing Wilamowitz Moellendorff,
declares that the _Iliad_--the work of four centuries, he
says--maintains its unity of colour by virtue of an uninterrupted
poetical tradition. [Footnote: _Homerische Untersuchungen_,
p. 292; _Homerische Epos_, p. I.] If so, the poets must have
archaeologised, must have kept asking themselves, "Is this or that
detail true to the past?" which artists in uncritical ages never
do, as we have been told by Helbig. They must have carefully
pondered the surviving old Achaean lays, which "were born when the
heroes could not read, or boil flesh, or back a steed." By
carefully observing the earliest lays the late poets, in times of
changed manners, "could avoid anachronisms by the aid of
tradition, which gave them a very exact idea of the epic heroes."
Such is the opinion of Wilamowitz Moellendorff. He appears to
regard the tradition as keeping the later poets in the old way
automatically, not consciously, but this, we also learn from
Helbig, did not occur. The poets often wandered from the way.
[Footnote: Helbig, _Homerische Epos,_ pp. 2, 3.] Thus old
Mycenaean lays, if any existed, would describe the old Mycenaean
mode of burial. The Homeric poet describes something radically
different. We vainly ask for proof that in any early national
literature known to us poets have been true to the colour and
manners of the remote times in which their heroes moved, and of
which old minstrels sang. The thing is without example: of this
proofs shall be offered in abundance.

Meanwhile, the whole theory which regards the _Iliad_ as the
work of four or five centuries rests on the postulate that poets