§ 6 — W. Leaf's introduction to Homer's Iliad 1 0

That Lachmann's original lay was ever really an independent poem, as he would have us believe, it is hard to think, and few are now found to hold that a great poet, such as he who composed this debate, would have left the quarrel truncated and without a conclusion. That the opening of the book, prologue and all, is the beginning of a poem of the Wrath, which went on through the defeat of the Greeks and the death of Patroklos to the slaying of Hector, seems as certain as anything in this thorny and obscure matter can be certain. But we must not forget that the more ancient any portion of the Iliad is, the more it has been exposed to weathering; and that one effect of the continual process of growth and adaptation has been to obscure and smooth down the rough joints. Hence in this oldest portion critical analysis is peculiarly difficult. But one consideration must be added which lends some weight to Lachmann's separation of ‘continuation (b).’ In the Introduction to book 2 it will be pointed out that there is some evidence of a different continuation of the quarrel scene; a continuation in which the dispute is laid at once before an assembly of the whole army, and the visit of Thetis to Zeus left unnoticed. This version was a parallel one, and book 1, as it stands, may have been adapted from the two. It is not in our power to say which of the two was older; time has effected a union which shews but the slightest scar, yet we cannot deny the mark, and can only interpret it in the way which seems best to account for the facts. And the facts are certainly to be accounted for on this supposition. The first part of book 1 really belongs closely to a certain part of the assembly scene in book 2, especially to the speech of Thersites; it does not belong so closely to the scenes between Achilles and Thetis, and between Thetis and Zeus. In this form of the story it was the mere absence of Achilles from the field, not the interposition of Zeus, which brought about the rout of the Greek army in book 11. This is mere hypothesis, but it is a possible hypothesis, and it agrees with much that we shall find later, all pointing to the gradual composition of the Iliad by more or less perfect fusion of different versions, knitted together from the first by the fact that all alike are outgrowths from the Story of the Wrath, but otherwise independent.