Fick uses the device to date the transformation. Old Ionic lēos, “people,” is used in post-Homeric lyric poetry, but the Iliad uses lāos, an Aeolic form. Lēos was displaced by Ionic leōs after Hipponax, c. 540 BCE. Lēos and lāos have the same meter, long and short (or two longs before a word beginning with a consonant), but leōs is short, long. In Fick's view, lāos was left to prevent change to leōs. The opposition, therefore, dates to after 540 BCE, corresponding to the period of the Peisistratean edition. This coincidence suggests that the modern Iliad, which descends from a text the Alexandrian scholars called “the Vulgate,” is linked to the Peisistratean edition. Proving it, however, is another issue.