p.298: "The poet's method of introducing his episode, also, illustrates in a curious manner his tact in the dramatic department of his art.

Where, for example, one or more heroes are despatched on some commission, to be executed at a certain distance of time or place, the fulfilment of this task is not, as a general rule, immediately described.

A certain interval is allowed them for reaching the appointed scene of action, which interval is dramatised, as it were, either by a temporary continuation of the previous narrative, or by fixing attention for a while on some new transaction, at the close of which the further account of the mission is resumed." 168 -- _With tablets sealed._ These probably were only devices of a hieroglyphical character.

Whether writing was known in the Homeric times is utterly uncertain.

See Grote, vol ii.p.192, sqq.
169 -- _Solymaean crew,_ a people of Lycia.
170 From this "melancholy madness" of Bellerophon, hypochondria received the name of "Morbus Bellerophonteus." See my notes in my prose translation, p.112.The "Aleian field," _i.e._ "the plain of wandering," was situated between the rivers Pyramus and Pinarus, in Cilicia.
171 -- _His own, of gold._ This bad bargain has passed into a common proverb.