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the composition and authorship of the Iliad. These
vague and occasional utterances finally assumed a defin-
ite shape suddenly, and at once produced
astonishment and consternation among the
scholars of Europe. It was in 1795 that
Wolf published the famous Prolegomena to
his edition of the Iliad. What had preceded had been
merely the dropping fire of skirmishers; but this was the
opening charge of a great battle which at once ranged
European critics, especially of Germany and England,
on one side or the other in a furious controversy whose
smoke has not yet cleared away.

Wolf comes
out with
his famous
Prolegomena.

Wolf was a man of very great ability; he was earnest,
logical and master of his subject. This it was which
gave such force to his arguments and filled the ranks of
the conservatives with dismay, together with the unques-
tioned fact that there was a certain appearance of truth
in the grounds upon which Wolf based his
theory. This theory was in substance that
the Iliad was not the creation of Homer or
any other one poet, but was made up of a
selection of ballads or detached poems to the number of
seventeen, at least, composed by a cluster of rhapsodists.
These lyrics were selected from a large number of simi-
lar ballads, and aggregated into a somewhat inconsistent
unity by the authority of Peisistratus, before whose time,
therefore, no such epic as the Iliad existed. Wolf based
his arguments first on Pausanias, Josephus, and Cicero,
the only ancient authorities who attribute such import-
ance to the intervention of Peisistratus; but it must be
added, in justice, that these authorities do not hint a
doubt of Homeric authorship.

Theory of
Wolf on the
Homeric
Iliad.

He drew another argument for the atomistic theory, as
it is called, because in his time the earliest known records

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Publication Information: Book Title: Troy: Its Legend, History and Literature. Contributors: S. G. W. Benjamin - author. Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1880. Page Number: 130.
    
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