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Now these many poems, before Pisistratus took them in hand, had been in the keeping for perhaps three centuries of wandering minstrels Rhapsodoi, Aoidoi, Citharaedi and Homeridae, as they were called who drifted about the Isles of Greece and Asiatic mainland during the long period of Greek insignificance and unculture.
Well; I can imagine the Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi and the rest learning poems from the verbal instruction of other Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi, and so preserving them from generation to generation to generation. But I cannot imagine, and I do think it is past the wit of man to imagine, long poems being composed by memory; it seems to me Homer must have written or dictated them at first.
But genius stirs in him, and he is Greek altogether in the deep enthusiasms proper to genius: so presently he leaves Crete and culture, to wander forth among the islands singing. En delo tote Proton ego Kai Homeros aoidoi Melpomen, says Hesiod: "Then first in Delos did I and Homer, two Aoidoi, perform as musical reciters." Delos, of course, is a small island in the Cyclades.
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