haps in a desire to recover ancestral possessions from the Trojans, but it was as disastrous to the conquerors as to the conquered. 55. Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey contains any allusion to a symbolic or mystical religion. Yet coins dated eight or nine centuries before Christ have impressions of the symbols. 56. No coins or letters are mentioned in the Iliad. 57, 58 and 59 relate to coins. 60. The definite article seems to have been used in the Iliad and Odyssey chiefly to accompany the action of the reciter, who indicated by the article what was present in the action. 61. Yet the ordinary usage of the article was ancient, as we see from the Latin words terra from ty og and Turmes from τὸς ἑρμῆς. 62. Hesiod probably lived at the end of the tenth century before Christ. The Odyssey was written one hundred and the Iliad two hundred years before—at the time of the Ionic migration. 63. The glorious exploits of their ancestry would be grateful to the exiles, and the sad results of their quarrels would furnish a profitable lesson. 64. The overthrow of Peloponnesian cities is obscurely intimated.* 65. In no other way can we account for the long catalogue in the second book of the Iliad, than by the peculiar gratification it would afford to those just banished from the scenes described. 66. If we are pointed to the didactic nature of Hesiod's works and days, we remark that an agricultural poem would be more interesting than a geographical one. 67. The Iliad must then have been written between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries before Christ. Pseudo-Herodotus dates it six hundred and twenty-two years before Xerxes' expedition, 1102 B. C. Two emigrations are spoken of by chronographers; one, 1124 B. C., of the Aeolians, and another, 1404 B. C., of the Ionians. But Homer does not recognize this distinction of tribes. 68. The Dorians and the sons of Hercules their leaders who made the incursion, Homer does not mention, as if anxious to deprive his country's enemies of the glory of participating in the Trojan war, and Tlepolemus son of Hercules is an obscure prince, and killed first of the Greeks. * Iliad IV. 51-56. 69. The Doric language was a barbarous relic of the Lacedemonian-different from the Doric dialect, subsequently compiled from various sources for poetic use. The Aeolians and Ionians used one and the same dialect until after the dispersion, when it was variously corrupted. There were four varieties in the age of Herodotus. 70. Of all the dialects the Attic was the most refined and elegant, and the most remote from the simplicity of the original, though its elegance has given it the authority of an original. 71. The true original is the Homeric dialect, which was not compiled, as ancient grammarians supposed, from various dialects, but was the spoken language of the day. 72. At the time when the poems were committed to writing, this dialect had gone out of use, and the copyists, not distinguished for their cultivation of the antique, often varied the language to suit their own modern taste. 73. At that early period the metrical form was used to aid the memory, and the recitations of the rhapsodist took the place of books. The muses were represented as the daughters of Memory, and the poet invokes them as such in his catalogue of ships. 74. The custom of having an άoldós attached to each distinguished family circle, is evident from the Homeric poems; and the more distinguished of these minstrels not content with private patronage traveled from land to land. This was the practice of Homer. 75. Hence the general cultivation and eleganse of the popular dialect. 76. Eloquence too, from the very simplicity of the age, and from the fact that everything was done by speech, was much cultivated. 77. There can be no doubt that poets existed before the period of Homer; although they were entirely eclipsed by him, and the extant productions attributed to them are spurious. 78. Everything is uncertain relative to the origin of the Greek alphabet. We have nothing relative to Cadmus and the Cadmeans. The probability is, that Cadmus was the same as Camilus or Cadmilus, a surname of Mercury.* 79. No mention is made in Homer of Palamedes. No confidence is to be placed in the common impression that the "literae vocales duplicae” were not invented until the year 393 B. C. as the description of those letters in Euripides and Callias, and Apollon. Rhod. I. 917. upon coins of the fifth or sixth century before Christ prove an earlier origin. 80. In the fifth century before Christ, when the Greeks began to write prose histories, the Ionic dialect was in its vigor. Accordingly Herodotus wrote in it. 81. Owing however to the universal superiority of Athens, the Attic dialect subsequently became the prominent one, the one most cultivated by foreigners, and looked upon as the common language of Greece. 82. At this time the Alexandrian grammarians commenced their operations on Homer--discovering and collating old manuscripts. Zenodotus, first Librarian, edited a new edition on the basis of their labors, in the reign of Ptolemy II. 83. Under Ptolemy V, appeared the edition of Aristophanes, and under Ptolemy VII, in the second century before Christ, the celebrated one of Aristarchus, the basis of all subsequent editions. 84. The great fault of the Alexandrian critics was that they did not ascertain the true sources of the old Greek, nor cultivate an acquaintance with those foreign languages which contained its elements, but erased whatever was contrary to their own style of speaking. 85. Bentley and his successors did well to restore the digamma, but they erred in not extending their labors to other emendations in the orthography, as the digamma alone creates disproportion. 86. Priscianus makes the Aeolian digamma, a prefix of B to words commencing with P, as BP'HTP for 'PHTOP. But it is evident also that there was a custom of writing AF for AB and Ar. 87. The digamma was called Aeolian, because it continued to be used by that tribe after it had fallen into disuse elsewhere; but there is conclusive evidence that it was used anciently by both Dorians and Ionians. 88. The accents were invented two hundred years before Christ, by Aristophanes a Byzantian grammarian, to teach the pronunciation of the more modern dialect to foreigners. 89. It is difficult to give the precise force of accents in pronunciation. The modulation indicated by them is of so delicate a character, that many disputes have arisen respecting it. Hermann makes the acute accent a sign of emphasis, and the grave a sign of no emphasis; but he is inconsistent with his own theory. 90. The ancient languages, especially the Greek, as they approached nearer to nature, were more melodious in tone than the modern. 91. The peculiar beauty of the Homeric dialect was thought to be essential to epic poetry, and was imitated by others who followed, yet in so bungling a manner as often to obscure the sense and destroy the harmony of their compositions. 92. It can be shown that epenthesis and metathesis, etc. are mere inventions of the grammarians, and did not exist in the Homeric age. 93. The Homeric language was, it is true, an advanced state of the Greek, but from the lack of more ancient monuments, we cannot measure the advancement. Yet we cannot suppose the words to have been modified by arbitrary changes, but rather, in order to be universally understood, to have been the words used in common life. 94. The Alexandrian doctrine, which makes the contract form the primitive one, and derives, for example, σóßw from σ, and Bólo from ßã, is no more proper, than to make the latin words mavolo and mevolo from malo and nolo, by epenthesis of vo. 95, 96. In the ancient language all words seem to have received an augment in the second case, either by the addition of a new syllable or the division of an old one. Example, σῶμα σώματος, τριήρης τριήρος. And all nouns in is anciently made this termination in τos, but they gradually softened down into This last termination is an invention of the grammaηος. rians. 97. The contracted syllable can be resolved only into its original elements-ɛ and ov into ɛa or ɛɛ, and ao or so, not into εi and ov. Το κράτος is resolved into κάρατος, and not into κράατος, etc. 98. Nouns ending in s have their accusative in ɩða or ɩv. The y comes in this way: -ιδεν –ιδαν –ιδν -ιν. The ending of latin genitives in is, results from a modern iwraxioμós. Formerly it was Venerus instead of Veneris. 99. So from this iwtaniouós they write Mithridatis instead of Mithridates; and the modern Greeks make ŋ, v, ɛi, oi, vi the same in pronunciation as ɩ. 100. Aspirated letters or gutturals were frequently interchanged for each other, as σ and ẹ, F and F, musasum and musarum, μουσάFων and μουσάF ων. 101. Afterwards this was expressed simply by a period, μουσάων, etc. The Etruscans knew not the letter o. They wrote for gnaros, gnarures; hence the latin genitive gnarorum. 102. It has always been difficult to explain the genitive termination oLO. Some refer it to the Thessalian, others to the Boeotian dialect. But without doubt the F was used in singular as well as in plural words, and the dot which designated its absence would be changed into . 103. Thus loyo Fo -λóyo.o -λóyoto. The genitive olo never occurs except where the o is short by position as well as by nature, which indicates that or was originally short. 104. Patronymics and verbals in as, a, ns have one origin. The genitives aos, ɛoç, αo, εo all come from a Fos. 105. Nouns in suç or Fs in Homer, retain in the oblique cases the original mode, no contraction occurring except in the dative plural. 106. Patronymics in aons and audaç in Pindar, etc. appear κατὰ διάστασιν in consequence of the digamma. 107. Nouns in us and v, formerly made their genitive in vFos. Hence questuvis and fructuvis for questibus and fructibus. 108. Hence also sibi, tibi, nobis, vobis. So ubi from F ɑFı. 109. r and are often interchanged for each other. In declining nouns in vs, the Attics made sws for vos; hence sos. 110. Masculine adjectives in vs making their genitive in vos, made their feminine in via and ɛɑ—ɛɑ and a being an Attic refinement. II. ANALYSIS OF HUG'S ARGUMENT RESPECTING THE KNOWLEDGE AND USE OF LETTER-WRITING BY HOMER, AND THE UNITY OF THE ILIAD. The shield of Achilles, the cup of Nestor, and the shield of Agamemnon seem to prove a knowledge of the arts of design in the heroic age. But as writing was no more used than among the knights of the middle ages, little or no allusion is made to it throughout the poems. Rousseau's use of this fact in the Odyssey, to show that the possibility of an epistolary correspondence between Ulysses and his wife would destroy the story, loses all its plausibility when we remember that the ar |