To return to the puzzle about the careful and precise continuators
of the _Iliad_, as contrasted with their heedless
contemporaries, the authors of the Cyclic poems. How "non-Homeric"
the authors of these Cyclic poems were, before and after 660 B.C.,
we illustrate from examples of their left hand backslidings and
right hand fallings off. They introduced (1) The Apotheosis of the
Dioscuri, who in Homer (_Iliad_, III. 243) are merely dead
men (_Cypria_). (2) Story of Iphigenia _Cypria_. (3)
Story of Palamedes, who is killed when angling by Odysseus and
Diomede (Cypria).

Homer's heroes never fish, except in stress of dire necessity, in
the Odyssey, and Homer's own Diomede and Odysseus would never
stoop to assassinate a companion when engaged in the contemplative
man's recreation. We here see the heroes in late degraded form as
on the Attic stage. (4) The Cyclics introduce Helen as daughter of
Nemesis, and describe the flight of Nemesis from Zeus in various
animal forms, a Marchen of a sort not popular with Homer; an
Ionic Marchen, Mr. Leaf would say. There is nothing like this in
the Iliad and Odyssey. (5) They call the son of Achilles, not
Neoptolemus, as Homer does, but Pyrrhus. (6) They represent the
Achaean army as obtaining supplies through three magically gifted
maidens, who produce corn, wine, and oil at will, as in fairy
tales. Another Ionic non-Achaean Marchen! They bring in ghosts of
heroes dead and buried. Such ghosts, in Homer's opinion, were
impossible if the dead had been cremated. All these non-Homeric
absurdities, save the last, are from the Cypria, dated by Sir
Richard Jebb about 776 B.C., long before the Odyssey was put into
shape, namely, after 660 B. C. in his opinion. Yet the alleged