ginning.

"To me it appears, that the architectonic functions ascribed by Wolf to
Peisistratus and his associates, in reference to the Homeric poems, are
nowise admissible. But much would undoubtedly be gained towards that view
of the question, if it could be shown, that, in order to controvert it, we
were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems, in the ninth
century before the Christian aera. Few things, in my opinion, can be more
improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian
hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing
in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian aera, are
exceedingly trifling. We have no remaining inscription earlier than the
fortieth Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully
executed; nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides
of Amorgus, Kallinus, Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and
lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the
practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which
authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of Homer, is in the
famous ordinance of Solon, with regard to the rhapsodies at the
Panathenaea: but for what length of time previously manuscripts had
existed, we are unable to say.

"Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the
beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the
existing habits of society with regard to poetry--for they admit generally
that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,--but upon
the supposed necessity that there must have been manuscripts to ensure the
preservation of the poems--the unassisted memory of reciters being neither
sufficient nor trustworthy. But here we only escape a smaller difficulty
by running into a greater; for the existence of trained bards, gifted with
extraordinary memory, (25) is far less astonishing than that of long
manuscripts, in an age essentially non-reading and non-writing, and when
even suitable instruments and materials for the process are not obvious.
Moreover, there is a strong positive reason for believing that the bard
was under no necessity of refreshing his memory by consulting a
manuscript; for if such had been the fact, blindness would have been a
disqualification for the profession, which we know that it was not, as
well from the example of Demodokus, in the Odysse