nd fragmentary poems are
restored to the order in which they would probably have appeared had
the Hesiodic corpus survived intact, is unusual, but should not need
apology; the true place for the "Catalogues" (for example), fragmentary
as they are, is certainly after the "Theogony".

In preparing the text of the "Homeric Hymns" my chief debt--and it is a
heavy one--is to the edition of Allen and Sikes (1904) and to the series
of articles in the "Journal of Hellenic Studies" (vols. xv.sqq.) by T.W.
Allen. To the same scholar and to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press I
am greatly indebted for permission to use the restorations of the "Hymn
to Demeter", lines 387-401 and 462-470, printed in the Oxford Text of
1912.

Of the fragments of the Epic Cycle I have given only such as seemed to
possess distinct importance or interest, and in doing so have relied
mostly upon Kinkel's collection and on the fifth volume of the Oxford
Homer (1912).

The texts of the "Batrachomyomachia" and of the "Contest of Homer and
Hesiod" are those of Baumeister and Flach respectively: where I have
diverged from these, the fact has been noted.

Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Rampton, NR. Cambridge. Sept. 9th, 1914.

INTRODUCTION

General

The early Greek epic--that is, poetry as a natural and popular, and not
(as it became later) an artificial and academic literary form--passed
through the usual three phases, of development, of maturity, and of
decline.

No fragments which can be identified as belonging to the first period
survive to give us even a general idea of the history of the earliest
epic, and we are therefore thrown back upon the evidence of analogy
from other forms of literature and of inference from the two great
epics which have come down to us. So reconstructed, the earliest period
appears to us as a time of slow development in which the characteristic
epic metre, diction, and structure grew up slowly from crude elements
and were improved until the verge of maturity was reached.

The second period, which produced the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", needs
no description here: but it is very important to observe the effect
of these poems on the course of post-Homeric epic. As the supreme
perfection and universality of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" cast into
oblivion whatever pre-Homeric poets had essayed, so these same qualities
exercised a paralysing influence over the successors of Homer. If they
continued to sing like their