Chapter I.
IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY—THE STEP’S WHEREBY I WAS LED TO MY CONCLUSIONS—THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK POETESSES REMOVES ANY A PRIORI DIFFICULTY—THE MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS OF LITERATURE—MAN, RATHER THAN WOMAN, THE INTERLOPER,
If the questions whether the Odyssey was written by a man or a woman, and whether or no it is of exclusively Sicilian origin, were pregnant with no larger issues than the determination of the sex and abode of the writer, it might be enough merely