he, the veritable
Homer, portrays the total environment, showing the court, the games,
the household, the complete Phaeacian world. Here we come upon the main
distinction: Homer's eye is upon the totality of which the
ballad-singer is but a small fragment; Demodocus appears in but one
Phaeacian Book, and is by no means all of that, though for once the
leading figure.

A step further we may carry the thought. Homer is not only not a
Demodocus, but he very distinctly contrasts himself with Demodocus by
his poetic procedure. If he is at such pains to show himself a
world-builder, and then puts into his world a ballad-singer as a
passing character, he certainly emphasizes the difference between
himself and the latter. It is also to be noticed that Demodocus does
not sing an Iliad, though he chants lays of Troy; the Iliad is an
organized work, not a collection of ballads strung together. Everything
about Demodocus indicates separate songs; everything about Homer (the
Iliad and the Odyssey) indicates unity of song. Hence with the
separatists, dissectors, anatomizers, Demodocus is a greater favorite
than Homer, indeed he has taken the place of Homer.

Moreover the poet has plainly marked another stage, a stage between
himself and Demodocus. In the next Book Ulysses will begin singing and
continue through four Books, giving his adventures in Fableland, which
by itself possesses a certain completeness. Still it is but an organic
part of the total Odyssey, whose poetical architect is Homer. Ulysses
as singer is clearly higher than Demodocus; but Homer is above both,
for he takes both of them up into his unity, which is the all-embracing
poem.

Most emphatically, therefore, Homer shows himself not to be a
Demodocus, not to be a ballad-singer, which is an essential point in
the Wolfian argument. Homer himself refutes Wolf some 2,500 years
beforehand, and his is still the best refutation. A careful study of
this Eighth Book settles the relation between balladist and poet by a
simple presentation of the facts in their proper co-ordination, and
also puts the alert reader on the track of the genesis of the Wolfian
_Prolegomena_. For there can hardly be a doubt that Wolf, consciously
or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, derived his main conception
of Homer from the present Book and from the part that Demodocus, the
bard, plays in it. To be sure, the idea that Demodocus, in a general
way, is Homer, is old, coming down from anti