Excerpt from The Twenty-Second Book of the Iliad: With Critical Notes These mispronunciations constituted, as a matter of course, real and serious faults, and would have sounded ridiculous in a poem meant to be read. But we know from Homer's account of Demodocos that in his day epic poems - or ballads -were not read or recited, but sung or chanted; and in singing or chanting the jarring effect of wrong accentuation was, in all probability, to a great extent disguised. In later times, however, the case was altered. At least as early as the seventh century the Homeric poems became, as it were, text books in the schools, from which reading and writing were taught; and in reading the faults in accentuation inevitably disclosed themselves and became ofi'ensive. It was then that, in order to remedy matters, recourse was had (whether con sciously or unconsciously we cannot tell; probably the latter) to several expedients whereby other forms could be given to the offending words. These forms being new, a new accentua tion in accordance with the exigencies of the rhythm would be given to the words so produwd with comparatively little linguistic shock. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.