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| | Homer |
 | | The Ionic dialect used by Homer is, in fact, a highly cultivated shoot of the old Hellenic stock, and which was in the poet's hands so perfect for the highest poetical purposes as to have remained the model for the epic style during the whole period of the literature of the Greeks. |
 | | In order to understand Homer, we must look on him as the culmination of the minstrel or ballad poetry, in the shape of the minstrel epos; a grand combination of popular ballad materials and ballad tone, elevated to the highest pitch of which it is capable, with the architectural form and structure of the epos. |
 | | But it is not for the Greeks alone that Homer possesses an important historical value; he is for all ages an important record of the earliest stages of human society, second only to the books of Moses, and some of the very oldest of the Vedas. |
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