THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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close communication with the Phoenicians as early as iioo B. C. The Phoenicians were skilled in writing, and the quick-witted Greeks would not be slow to imitate so useful an art.

Second. Even if writing were unknown, transmission by memory was not at all impossible. Rhapsodists were a professional class, trained purely for the purpose of memorizing, and the public recitations in which each might criticise the other, insured the integrity of the text. Extraordinary feats of memory are not unknown in our own times. Macaulay could, without effort, recite half of “Paradise Lost;” Dr. Bathurst is said to have known the whole Iliad in Greek when a boy. If such performances are possible by non-professional reciters in an era when writing has weakened the power of memory, they certainly were not impossible in a trained and picked class of mem- orizers who could not depend on writing.

Third. There are discrepancies, it is true; but they are only such as might occur in long poems by a single author, especially if not written; and while some interpola­tions may be granted, they are not sufficient to disturb the general integrity of the text.

Fourth. The plots are essentially bound together by an underlying unity; the style and turn of language and thought in both poems are those of the one master; and if the author of the Iliad and he of the Odyssey are not the same, then nature must have produced bountifully the supreme poetic inspiration when the world was young.

This is, in very small mold, the modern Homeric question; its bibliography is enor­mous, although the controversy is really in its incipiency. Its solution will be aided by archaeological researches, by studies in comparative mythologies and folk-lore, by philological investigation. The work ofSchliemann on the Hill of Hissarlik (his Troy), which promised so much in confirmation of the Iliad, is now being taken into question. His so-called tomb of Agamemnon is said to be that of a barbarian woman of a much later age. I shall conclude my paper with two charming fragments of translation. The first, by Dr. Hawtrey, gives to the English ear the swing and meter of the Greek hexameter. Helen has been called by Priam to the walls of Troy to tell him the names of the Greek chieftains. She says:

“Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;

Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;

Two—only two—remain whom I see not among the commanders;

Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeuces brave with the cestus—

Own dear brethren of mine—one parent loved us as infants.

Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedaemon,

Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,

Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes,

All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?

So said she; they long-since in earth’s soft arms were reposing,

There, in their own dear land, their fatherland—Lacedaemon.”

The other is a noble blank verse rendition by Tennyson of one of the loveliest passages in the Iliad:

“So Hector spake; the Trojans roared applause;

Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke,

And each beside his chariot bound his own;

And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine And bread from out the houses brought, and heap’d Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain Roll’d the rich vapor far into the heaven.

And these all night upon the bridge of war Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed;