Conclusions

Reviews the basic argument of the book that there existed in ancient Greece a number of short genres of hexametrical poetry, most of them performed in ritual contexts, for example, hymn, oracle, incantation and lament, whose history can be traced to a large degree in how they are embedded in Homeric and (to a lesser degree) Hesiodic poetry, how they are imitated by Hellenistic poets and how they are reflected in other ways in the parodies of comedy and in the survivals of other kinds of texts on papyrus, metal and stone.