Bowdoin Prize Dissertation.

A Bowdoin Prize Dissertation on the "Present Stage of the Homeric Question" was read in Sever 5 last evening by Mr. C. H. Page. After giving a brief sketch of the early history of the question, Mr. Page told how Grote disengaged from the Iliad an Achilleis, representing the earliest form of the poem, and consisting of Books I, VIII, and XI, XXII, of our Iliad. Subsequent scholarship has confirmed Grote's main proposition, while changing considerably the limits of his Achilleis. Within the last decade several eminent German scholars have made a very careful study of the question. Chief among these is Christ, who has brought forward almost conclusive philological evidence in regard to the order of composition of the parts of the Iliad. It is certain that they were composed in an order very different from that in which we have them. The question of authorship is more uncertain. One poet probably conceived the main plan of the Iliad, but the outline was filled in and considerably enlarged by later poets.

The Odyssey was not composed until after the Iliad had attained nearly its present form. At least three-quarters of it was composed by one man. If the Odyssey alone had come down to us, there never would have been any "Homeric question."

All scholars today agree that the Homeric poems are neither the work of one man, as the Greeks believed, non a collection of independent lays collected and arranged by Pisistratus, as the early student of the Homeric question maintained. The questions in regard to the order of the parts, and the number of authors who had a hand in their composition, are still under discussion, and can never be definitely settled.