It has been remarked that the _Iliad_ is not definitively closed, but that we are left to suppose something both to precede and to follow it.

The bas-relief is equally without limit, and may be continued _ad infinitum,_ either from before or behind, on which account the ancients preferred for it such subjects as admitted of an indefinite extension, sacrificial processions, dances, and lines of combatants, and hence they also exhibit bas-reliefs on curved surfaces, such as vases, or the frieze of a rotunda, where, by the curvature, the two ends are withdrawn from our sight, and where, while we advance, one object appears as another disappears.

Reading Homer is very much like such a circuit; the present object alone arresting our attention, we lose sight of what precedes, and do not concern ourselves about what is to follow."-- "Dramatic Literature," p.

75.
88 "There cannot be a clearer indication than this description -- so graphic in the original poem--of the true character of the Homeric agora.

The multitude who compose it are listening and acquiescent, not often hesitating, and never refractory to the chief.