Chapter 24

It is not always remembered that, if things could drop into the interpolations, things could also drop out of the _ILIAD,_ causing _lacunae_, during the dark backward of its early existence.

If the _Doloneia_ be "barely Homeric," as Father Browne holds, this opinion was not shared by the listeners or readers of the sixth century. The vase painters often illustrate the _Doloneia;_ but it does not follow that "the story was fresh" because it was "popular," as Mr. Leaf suggests, and "was treated as public property in a different way" (namely, in a comic way) "from the consecrated early legends" (_Iliad,_ II 424, 425). The sixth century vase painters illustrated many passages in Homer, not the _Doloneia_ alone. The "comic way" was the ruthless humour of two strong warriors capturing one weak coward. Much later, wild caricature was applied in vase painting to the most romantic scenes in the Odyssey, which were "consecrated" enough.