These opinions of grammarians are not compatible with the hypothesis that _all_ of the _Iliad_, even the "earliest" parts, are loaded with interpolations, forced in at different places and in any age from 1000 B.C. to 540 B.C.; for if that theory were true, the whole of the _Iliad_ would equally be infected with the later Odyssean grammar. According to Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb, it is not.
But suppose, on the other hand, that the later Odyssean grammar abounds all through the whole _Iliad_, then that grammar is not more Odyssean than it is Iliadic. The alleged distinction of early Iliadic grammar, late Odyssean grammar, in that case vanishes. Mr. Leaf is more keen than Mr. Monro and Sir Richard Jebb in detecting late grammar in the _Iliad_ beyond the bounds of Books IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. But he does not carry these discoveries so far as to make the late grammar no less Iliadic than Odyssean. In Book VIII. of the _Iliad_, which he thinks was only made for the purpose of introducing Book IX., [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 332. 1900.] we ought to find the late Odyssean grammar just as much as we do in Book IX., for it is of the very same date, and probably by one or more of the same authors as Book IX. But we do not find the Odyssean grammar in Book VIII.
Mr. Leaf says, "The peculiar character" of Book VIII. "is easily understood, when we recognise the fact that Book VIII. is intended to serve only as a means for the introduction of Book IX...." which is "late" and "Odyssean." Then Book VIII., intended to introduce Book IX., must be at least as late as Book IX. and might be expected to be at least as Odyssean, indeed one would think it could not be otherwise. Yet it is not so.
Mr. Leaf's theory has thus to face the difficulty that while the whole _Iliad_, by his view, for more than four centuries, was stuffed with late interpolations, in the course of oral recital through all Greek lands, and was crammed with original "copy" by a sycophant of Pisistratus about 540 B.C., the late grammar concentrated itself in only some four Books. Till some reasonable answer is given to this question--how did twenty Books of the Iliad preserve so creditably the ancient grammar through centuries of change, and of recitation by rhapsodists who used the Odyssean grammar, which infected the four other Books, and the whole of the _Odyssey?_--it seems hardly worth while to discuss this linguistic test.