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[590] The description of the dance stands apart from the rest of the Shield notably in one respect — that while the previous descriptions shew no local, and hardly even a Hellenic, colouring, the dance is emphatically Cretan. Even apart from the explicit words of 591-92, the scholia tell us that the “κυβιστητῆρε” (604) and the armed dance were peculiarly Cretan institutions. It has been confidently concluded that the whole episode 590-605 is an interpolation by a Cretan poet. To me it seems that, though this cannot be refuted, the evidence is quite insufficient to enable us to assert it. There is no doubt that Crete was to the Greeks pre-eminently the home of the dance, especially of the war-dance. For this, in addition to 16.617, we may quote the dances of the Korybantes, the statement of the scholiast on Pindar P. ii. 69 that the hyporcheme was of Cretan origin, Ai. 700 “Νύσια Κνώσι᾽ ὀρχήματα” and still more explicitly Lucian “περὶ ὀρχ”. 8. It is reasonable therefore to suppose that a poet describing a primitive dance would by preference lend it Cretan characters. It must further be remembered that Crete was to early Greece far more characteristically national and important than in historical times. We are just learning (1901) to regard Knosos as the very focus of early culture in the ‘Mykenaean’ period; and the prominence of Crete tends to lead us as much to an early period as to any thought of late interpolation. We must indeed recoguize that 591-92 are unique in the Shi<*> for their local and mythological all<*>sion. If this is taken as a ground for suspicion, as no doubt it may reasonably be, it can apply to these two lines only, <*>ot to what follows.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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