t as the earliest period at
which we can begin to study human society in general and Greek society
in particular, through the medium of literature. But, strictly speaking,
the epoch in question is one which cannot be fixed with accuracy. The
earliest ascertainable date in Greek history is that of the Olympiad
of Koroibos, B. C. 776. There is no doubt that the Homeric poems
were written before this date, and that Homer is therefore strictly
prehistoric. Had this fact been duly realized by those scholars who have
not attempted to deny it, a vast amount of profitless discussion might
have been avoided. Sooner or later, as Grote says, "the lesson must
be learnt, hard and painful though it be, that no imaginable reach of
critical acumen will of itself enable us to discriminate fancy from
reality, in the absence of a tolerable stock of evidence." We do not
know who Homer was; we do not know where or when he lived; and in all
probability we shall never know. The data for settling the question
are not now accessible, and it is not likely that they will ever be
discovered. Even in early antiquity the question was wrapped in an
obscurity as deep as that which shrouds it to-day. The case between the
seven or eight cities which claimed to be the birthplace of the
poet, and which Welcker has so ably discussed, cannot be decided. The
feebleness of the evidence brought into court may be judged from the
fact that the claims of Chios and the story of the poet's blindness rest
alike upon a doubtful allusion in the Hymn to Apollo, which Thukydides
(III. 104) accepted as authentic. The majority of modern critics have
consoled themselves with the vague conclusion that, as between the two
great divisions of the early Greek world, Homer at least belonged to
the Asiatic. But Mr. Gladstone has shown good reasons for doubting this
opinion. He has pointed out several instances in which the poems seem
to betray a closer topographical acquaintance with European than with
Asiatic Greece, and concludes that Athens and Argos have at least as
good a claim to Homer as Chios or Smyrna.

It is far more desirable that we should form an approximate opinion as
to the date of the Homeric poems, than that we should seek to determine
the exact locality in which they originated. Yet the one question is
hardly less obscure than the other. Different writers of antiquity
assigned eight different epochs to Homer, of which the earliest is
separated from the most rece