Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica

The early Greek epic—that is, poetry as a natural and popular, and not (as it became later) an Artificial and academic literary form—passed through the usual three phases, of development, of maturity, and of decline.

As the supreme perfection and universality of the Iliad and the Odyssey cast into oblivion whatever pre-Homeric poets had essayed, so these same qualities exercised a paralysing influence over the successors of Homer.