the eighth to seventh centuries were, by the theory, busily adding
to and altering the ancient lays of the _Iliad_. How did
_they_ abstain from the new or revived ideas, and from the
new _genre_ of romance? Are we to believe that one set of
late Ionian poets--they who added to and altered the Iliad--were
true to tradition, while another contemporary set of Ionian poets,
the Cyclics--authors of new Epics on Homeric themes--are known to
have quite lost touch with the Homeric taste, religion, and
ritual? The reply will perhaps be a Cyclic poet said, "Here I am
going to compose quite a new poem about the old heroes. I shall
make them do and think and believe as I please, without reference
to the evidence of the old poems." But, it will have to be added,
the rhapsodists of 800-540 B.C., and the general editor of the
latter date, thought, _we_ are continuing an old set of
lays, and we must be very careful in adhering to manners, customs,
and beliefs as described by our predecessors. For instance, the
old heroes had only bronze, no iron,--and then the rhapsodists
forgot, and made iron a common commodity in the _Iliad_.
Again, the rhapsodists knew that the ancient heroes had no
corslets--the old lays, we learn, never spoke of corslets--but
they made them wear corslets of much splendour. [Footnote: The
reader must remember that the view of the late poets as careful
adherents of tradition in usages and ideas only obtains
_sometimes_; at others the critics declare that
archaeological precision is _not_ preserved, and that the
Ionic continuators introduced, for example, the military gear of
their own period into a poem which represents much older weapons
and equipments.] This theory does not help us. In an uncritical
age poets could not discern that their genre of romance and
religion was alien from that of Homer.