The scholar Friedrich August Wolf brought matters to a head. His review of Villoison's edition of the scholia acknowledged that they proved conclusively the oral transmission of the poems. In 1795, he published his Prolegomena ad Homerum, in which he argued that the poems were composed in the mid-10th century BCE; that they were transmitted orally; that they changed considerably after that time in the hands of bards performing them orally and editors adapting written versions to contemporary tastes; and that the poems' apparent artistic unity came about after their transcription. Wolf posed the perplexing question of what it would mean to restore the poems to their original, pristine, form.
