The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

6 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

linking actual families with legendary heroes1 was
closely allied to the interest in " origins " connecting the foundations of cities with the heroic age.
This interest gave rise to a group of what we
may call local epics, approximating in style and
character to the Hesiodic school, recording the
mythical origins (T/;-eCs) and the pedigrees of
the founders. WVe know, for instance, of the
Corinthiaca, ascribed to Eumelus, which may
have been the source of certain later sections of
the Iliad;2 of the Naupactian poem; of the
Phloronis which took its name from Phoroneus.
reputed the first King of Argos.
In all this intellectual activity, we can recognise
in a crude form the instinct of historical inquiry,
guided by the ideas of consistency and chronological order. The genealogies inevitably brought
chronology into the foreground. We can also
see that the poets possessed a certain kind of
historical sense. They were conscious up to a
certain point of the differences between their own
civilisation and that of the heroic age, and this
consciousness expressed itself in the archaism
which we can observe in the Iliad and Odyssey.
The poets always retained, for instance, the
obsolete bronze armour of antiquity.
One epic poem, belonging to the seventh or
perhaps the sixth century, claims a special mention
1 In this connexion Mahaffy notes an "anxiety to show hereditary
rights in all the usurpers of power throughout early Greek history"
(Prose Writers, i. 10).
2 Cp. Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 162.