It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer on the strength of such considerations; but is there no rashness in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of this kind?
2.

Thus the three old Oriental forms of the -- "id:i" (-- "id:S"), -- "id:l" (-- "id:/\") and -- "id:r" (-- "id:P"), for which as apt to be confounded with the forms of the -- "id:s", -- "id:g", and -- "id:p" the signs -- "id:I") -- "id:L" -- "id:R") were early proposed to be substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant use among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at any rate chiefly the more recent forms.
3.

E.g.the inscription on an earthen vase of Cumae runs thus:----Tataies emi lequthos Fos d' an me klephsei thuphlos estai--.
4.

Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his materials), and the writer known as Scylax.

The first of these sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old; so that the origin of these legends may, on the whole, be confidently placed in the regal period of Rome.
5.