ABSTRACT
Aegean society, of which clear traces can be seen in the Homeric epic, and these memories must have been handed down in poetry, since this kind of society did not survive the second millennium. Mycenaean art not only shows singers of various different kinds in action but also represents stories which can be identified with Greek stories, and were therefore presumably handed down in poetry to the classical age. Eastern poetry of the second millen nium is surprisingly like Homeric poetry in manner and matter: the manner is much more suited to an age of great courts than to an age of small cities, and seems therefore to be a survival in Homer; some of the matter is so deeply embedded in our Homer that it is difficult to believe it was recently borrowed.
