Chapter 21

So much for Hesiod. But Homer, after losing the victory, went from place to place reciting his poems, and first of all the _Thebais_ in seven thousand verses which begins: ‘Goddess, sing of parched Argos whence kings...’, and then the _Epigoni_ in seven thousand verses beginning: ‘And now, Muses, let us begin to sing of men of later days’; for some say that these poems also are by Homer. Now Xanthus and Gorgus, son of Midas the king, heard his epics and invited him to compose a epitaph for the tomb of their father on which was a bronze figure of a maiden bewailing the death of Midas. He wrote the following lines:—

‘I am a maiden of bronze and sit upon the tomb of Midas. While water flows, and tall trees put forth leaves, and rivers swell, and the sea breaks on the shore; while the sun rises and shines and the bright moon also, ever remaining on this mournful tomb I tell the passer-by that Midas here lies buried.’

For these verses they gave him a silver bowl which he dedicated to Apollo at Delphi with this inscription: ‘Lord Phoebus, I, Homer, have given you a noble gift for the wisdom I have of you: do you ever grant me renown.’

After this he composed the _Odyssey_ in twelve thousand verses, having previously written the _Iliad_ in fifteen thousand five hundred verses 3705. From Delphi, as we are told, he went to Athens and was entertained by Medon, king of the Athenians. And being one day in the council hall when it was cold and a fire was burning there, he drew off the following lines:

‘Children are a man’s crown, and towers of a city, horses are the ornament of a plain, and ships of the sea; and good it is to see a people seated in assembly. But with a blazing fire a house looks worthier upon a wintry day when the Son of Cronos sends down snow.’

From Athens he went on to Corinth, where he sang snatches of his poems and was received with distinction. Next he went to Argos and there recited these verses from the _Iliad_:

‘The sons of the Achaeans who held Argos and walled Tiryns, and Hermione and Asine which lie along a deep bay, and Troezen, and Eiones, and vine-clad Epidaurus, and the island of Aegina, and Mases,—these followed strong-voiced Diomedes, son of Tydeus, who had the spirit of his father the son of Oeneus, and Sthenelus, dear son of famous Capaneus. And with these two there went a third leader, Eurypylus, a godlike man, son of the lord Mecisteus, sprung of Talaus; but strong-voiced Diomedes was their chief leader. These men had eighty dark ships wherein were ranged men skilled in war, Argives with linen jerkins, very goads of war.’ 3706

This praise of their race by the most famous of all poets so exceedingly delighted the leading Argives, that they rewarded him with costly gifts and set up a brazen statue to him, decreeing that sacrifice should be offered to Homer daily, monthly, and yearly; and that another sacrifice should be sent to Chios every five years. This is the inscription they cut upon his statue:

‘This is divine Homer who by his sweet-voiced art honoured all proud Hellas, but especially the Argives who threw down the god-built walls of Troy to avenge rich-haired Helen. For this cause the people of a great city set his statue here and serve him with the honours of the deathless gods.’

After he had stayed for some time in Argos, he crossed over to Delos, to the great assembly, and there, standing on the altar of horns, he recited the _Hymn to Apollo_ 3707 which begins: ‘I will remember and not forget Apollo the far-shooter.’ When the hymn was ended, the Ionians made him a citizen of each one of their states, and the Delians wrote the poem on a whitened tablet and dedicated it in the temple of Artemis. The poet sailed to Ios, after the assembly was broken up, to join Creophylus, and stayed there some time, being now an old man. And, it is said, as he was sitting by the sea he asked some boys who were returning from fishing:

‘Sirs, hunters of deep-sea prey, have we caught anything?’

To this replied:

‘All that we caught, we left behind, and carry away all that we did not catch.’

Homer did not understand this reply and asked what they meant. They then explained that they had caught nothing in fishing, but had been catching their lice, and those of the lice which they caught, they left behind; but carried away in their clothes those which they did not catch. Hereupon Homer remembered the oracle and, perceiving that the end of his life had come composed his own epitaph. And while he was retiring from that place, he slipped in a clayey place and fell upon his side, and died, it is said, the third day after. He was buried in Ios, and this is his epitaph:

‘Here the earth covers the sacred head of divine Homer, the glorifier of hero-men.’

ENDNOTES

1101 (return) [ sc. in Boeotia, Locris and Thessaly: elsewhere the movement was forced and unfruitful.]

1102 (return) [ The extant collection of three poems, _Works and Days_, _Theogony_, and _Shield of Heracles_, which alone have come down to us complete, dates at least from the 4th century A.D.: the title of the Paris Papyrus (Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Gr. 1099) names only these three works.]

1103 (return) [ _Der Dialekt des Hesiodes_, p. 464: examples are AENEMI (W. and D. 683) and AROMENAI (_ib_. 22).]

1104 (return) [ T.W. Allen suggests that the conjured Delian and Pythian hymns to Apollo (_Homeric Hymns_ III) may have suggested this version of the story, the Pythian hymn showing strong continental influence.]

1105 (return) [ She is said to have given birth to the lyrist Stesichorus.]

1106 (return) [ See Kinkel _Epic. Graec. Frag._ i. 158 ff.]

1107 (return) [ See _Great Works_, frag. 2.]

1108 (return) [ _Hesiodi Fragmenta_, pp. 119 f.]

1109 (return) [ Possibly the division of this poem into two books is a division belonging solely to this ‘developed poem’, which may have included in its second part a summary of the Tale of Troy.]

1110 (return) [ Goettling’s explanation.]

1111 (return) [ x. 1. 52.]

1112 (return) [ Odysseus appears to have been mentioned once only—and that casually—in the _Returns_.]

1113 (return) [ M.M. Croiset note that the _Aethiopis_ and the _Sack_ were originally merely parts of one work containing lays (the Amazoneia, Aethiopis, Persis, etc.), just as the _Iliad_ contained various lays such as the Diomedeia.]

1114 (return) [ No date is assigned to him, but it seems likely that he was either contemporary or slightly earlier than Lesches.]

1115 (return) [ Cp. Allen and Sikes, _Homeric Hymns_ p. xv. In the text I have followed the arrangement of these scholars, numbering the Hymns to Dionysus and to Demeter, I and II respectively: to place _Demeter_ after _Hermes_, and the Hymn to Dionysus at the end of the collection seems to be merely perverse.]

1116 (return) [ _Greek Melic Poets_, p. 165.]

1117 (return) [ This monument was returned to Greece in the 1980’s.— DBK.]

1118 (return) [ Cp. Marckscheffel, _Hesiodi fragmenta_, p. 35. The papyrus fragment recovered by Petrie (_Petrie Papyri_, ed. Mahaffy, p. 70, No. xxv.) agrees essentially with the extant document, but differs in numerous minor textual points.]

1201 (return) [ See Schubert, _Berl. Klassikertexte_ v. 1.22 ff.; the other papyri may be found in the publications whose name they bear.]

1202 (return) [ Unless otherwise noted, all MSS. are of the 15th century.]

1203 (return) [ To this list I would also add the following: _Hesiod and Theognis_, translated by Dorothea Wender (Penguin Classics, London, 1973).—DBK.]

1301 (return) [ That is, the poor man’s fare, like ‘bread and cheese’.]

1302 (return) [ The All-endowed.]

1303 (return) [ The jar or casket contained the gifts of the gods mentioned in l.82.]

1304 (return) [ Eustathius refers to Hesiod as stating that men sprung “from oaks and stones and ashtrees”. Proclus believed that the Nymphs called Meliae (_Theogony_, 187) are intended. Goettling would render: “A race terrible because of their (ashen) spears.”]

1305 (return) [ Preserved only by Proclus, from whom some inferior MSS. have copied the verse. The four following lines occur only in Geneva Papyri No. 94. For the restoration of ll. 169b-c see “Class. Quart.” vii. 219-220. (NOTE: Mr. Evelyn-White means that the version quoted by Proclus stops at this point, then picks up at l. 170.—DBK).]

1306 (return) [ _i.e._ the race will so degenerate that at the last even a new-born child will show the marks of old age.]

1307 (return) [ Aidos, as a quality, is that feeling of reverence or shame which restrains men from wrong: Nemesis is the feeling of righteous indignation aroused especially by the sight of the wicked in undeserved prosperity (_cf. Psalms_, lxxii. 1-19).]

1308 (return) [ The alternative version is: ‘and, working, you will be much better loved both by gods and men; for they greatly dislike the idle.’]

1309 (return) [ _i.e._ neighbours come at once and without making preparations, but kinsmen by marriage (who live at a distance) have to prepare, and so are long in coming.]

1310 (return) [ Early in May.]

1311 (return) [ In November.]

1312 (return) [ In October.]

1313 (return) [ For pounding corn.]

1314 (return) [ A mallet for breaking clods after ploughing.]

1315 (return) [ The loaf is a flattish cake with two intersecting lines scored on its upper surface which divide it into four equal parts.]

1316 (return) [ The meaning is obscure. A scholiast renders ‘giving eight mouthfulls’; but the elder Philostratus uses the word in contrast to ‘leavened’.]

1317 (return) [ About the middle of November.]

1318 (return) [ Spring is so described because the buds have not yet cast their iron-grey husks.]

1319 (return) [ In December.]

1320 (return) [ In March.]

1321 (return) [ The latter part of January and earlier part of February.]

1322 (return) [ _i.e._ the octopus or cuttle.]

1323 (return) [ _i.e._ the darker-skinned people of Africa, the Egyptians or Aethiopians.]

1324 (return) [ _i.e._ an old man walking with a staff (the ‘third leg’— as in the riddle of the Sphinx).]

1325 (return) [ February to March.]

1326 (return) [ _i.e._ the snail. The season is the middle of May.]

1327 (return) [ In June.]

1328 (return) [ July.]

1329 (return) [ _i.e._ a robber.]

1330 (return) [ September.]

1331 (return) [ The end of October.]

1332 (return) [ That is, the succession of stars which make up the full year.]

1333 (return) [ The end of October or beginning of November.]

1334 (return) [ July-August.]

1335 (return) [ _i.e._ untimely, premature. Juvenal similarly speaks of ‘cruda senectus’ (caused by gluttony).]

1336 (return) [ The thought is parallel to that of ‘O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath.’]

1337 (return) [ The ‘common feast’ is one to which all present subscribe. Theognis (line 495) says that one of the chief pleasures of a banquet is the general conversation. Hence the present passage means that such a feast naturally costs little, while the many present will make pleasurable conversation.]

1338 (return) [ _i.e._ ‘do not cut your finger-nails’.]

1339 (return) [ _i.e._ things which it would be sacrilege to disturb, such as tombs.]

1340 (return) [ H.G. Evelyn-White prefers to switch ll. 768 and 769, reading l. 769 first then l. 768.—DBK]

1341 (return) [ The month is divided into three periods, the waxing, the mid-month, and the waning, which answer to the phases of the moon.]

1342 (return) [ _i.e._ the ant.]

1343 (return) [ Such seems to be the meaning here, though the epithet is otherwise rendered ‘well-rounded’. Corn was threshed by means of a sleigh with two runners having three or four rollers between them, like the modern Egyptian _nurag_.]

1401 (return) [ This halt verse is added by the Scholiast on Aratus, 172.]

1402 (return) [ The “Catasterismi” (“Placings among the Stars”) is a collection of legends relating to the various constellations.]

1403 (return) [ The Straits of Messina.]

1501 (return) [ Or perhaps ‘a Scythian’.]

1601 (return) [ The epithet probably indicates coquettishness.]

1602 (return) [ A proverbial saying meaning, ‘why enlarge on irrelevant topics?’]

1603 (return) [ ‘She of the noble voice’: Calliope is queen of Epic poetry.]

1604 (return) [ Earth, in the cosmology of Hesiod, is a disk surrounded by the river Oceanus and floating upon a waste of waters. It is called the foundation of all (the qualification ‘the deathless ones...’ etc. is an interpolation), because not only trees, men, and animals, but even the hills and seas (ll. 129, 131) are supported by it.]

1605 (return) [ Aether is the bright, untainted upper atmosphere, as distinguished from Aer, the lower atmosphere of the earth.]

1606 (return) [ Brontes is the Thunderer; Steropes, the Lightener; and Arges, the Vivid One.]

1607 (return) [ The myth accounts for the separation of Heaven and Earth. In Egyptian cosmology Nut (the Sky) is thrust and held apart from her brother Geb (the Earth) by their father Shu, who corresponds to the Greek Atlas.]

1608 (return) [ Nymphs of the ash-trees, as Dryads are nymphs of the oak-trees. Cp. note on _Works and Days_, l. 145.]

1609 (return) [ ‘Member-loving’: the title is perhaps only a perversion of the regular PHILOMEIDES (laughter-loving).]

1610 (return) [ Cletho (the Spinner) is she who spins the thread of man’s life; Lachesis (the Disposer of Lots) assigns to each man his destiny; Atropos (She who cannot be turned) is the ‘Fury with the abhorred shears.’]

1611 (return) [ Many of the names which follow express various qualities or aspects of the sea: thus Galene is ‘Calm’, Cymothoe is the ‘Wave-swift’, Pherusa and Dynamene are ‘She who speeds (ships)’ and ‘She who has power’.]

1612 (return) [ The ‘Wave-receiver’ and the ‘Wave-stiller’.]

1613 (return) [ ‘The Unerring’ or ‘Truthful’; cp. l. 235.]

1614 (return) [ _i.e._ Poseidon.]

1615 (return) [ Goettling notes that some of these nymphs derive their names from lands over which they preside, as Europa, Asia, Doris, Ianeira (‘Lady of the Ionians’), but that most are called after some quality which their streams possessed: thus Xanthe is the ‘Brown’ or ‘Turbid’, Amphirho is the ‘Surrounding’ river, Ianthe is ‘She who delights’, and Ocyrrhoe is the ‘Swift-flowing’.]

1616 (return) [ _i.e._ Eos, the ‘Early-born’.]

1617 (return) [ Van Lennep explains that Hecate, having no brothers to support her claim, might have been slighted.]

1618 (return) [ The goddess of the _hearth_ (the Roman _Vesta_), and so of the house. Cp. _Homeric Hymns_ v.22 ff.; xxxix.1 ff.]

1619 (return) [ The variant reading ‘of his father’ (sc. Heaven) rests on inferior MS. authority and is probably an alteration due to the difficulty stated by a Scholiast: ‘How could Zeus, being not yet begotten, plot against his father?’ The phrase is, however, part of the prophecy. The whole line may well be spurious, and is rejected by Heyne, Wolf, Gaisford and Guyet.]

1620 (return) [ Pausanias (x. 24.6) saw near the tomb of Neoptolemus ‘a stone of no great size’, which the Delphians anointed every day with oil, and which he says was supposed to be the stone given to Cronos.]

1621 (return) [ A Scholiast explains: ‘Either because they (men) sprang from the Melian nymphs (cp. l. 187); or because, when they were born (?), they cast themselves under the ash-trees, that is, the trees.’ The reference may be to the origin of men from ash-trees: cp. _Works and Days_, l. 145 and note.]

1622 (return) [ _sc_. Atlas, the Shu of Egyptian mythology: cp. note on line 177.]

1623 (return) [ Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream enclosing the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.]

1624 (return) [ The conception of Oceanus is here different: he has nine streams which encircle the earth and then flow out into the ‘main’ which appears to be the waste of waters on which, according to early Greek and Hebrew cosmology, the disk-like earth floated.]

1625 (return) [ _i.e._ the threshold is of ‘native’ metal, and not artificial.]

1626 (return) [ According to Homer Typhoeus was overwhelmed by Zeus amongst the Arimi in Cilicia. Pindar represents him as buried under Aetna, and Tzetzes reads Aetna in this passage.]

1627 (return) [ The epithet (which means literally _well-bored_) seems to refer to the spout of the crucible.]

1628 (return) [ The fire god. There is no reference to volcanic action: iron was smelted on Mount Ida; cp. _Epigrams of Homer_, ix. 2-4.]

1629 (return) [ _i.e._ Athena, who was born ‘on the banks of the river Trito’ (cp. l. 929l)]

1630 (return) [ Restored by Peppmuller. The nineteen following lines from another recension of lines 889-900, 924-9 are quoted by Chrysippus (in Galen).]

1631 (return) [ _sc_. the aegis. Line 929s is probably spurious, since it disagrees with l. 929q and contains a suspicious reference to Athens.]

1701 (return) [ A catalogue of heroines each of whom was introduced with the words E OIE, ‘Or like her’.]

1702 (return) [ An antiquarian writer of Byzantium, c. 490-570 A.D.]

1703 (return) [ Constantine VII. ‘Born in the Porphyry Chamber’, 905-959 A.D.]

1704 (return) [ “Berlin Papyri”, 7497 (left-hand fragment) and “Oxyrhynchus Papyri”, 421 (right-hand fragment). For the restoration see “Class. Quart.” vii. 217-8.]

1705 (return) [ As the price to be given to her father for her: so in _Iliad_ xviii. 593 maidens are called ‘earners of oxen’. Possibly Glaucus, like Aias (fr. 68, ll. 55 ff.), raided the cattle of others.]

1706 (return) [ _i.e._ Glaucus should father the children of others. The curse of Aphrodite on the daughters of Tyndareus (fr. 67) may be compared.]

1707 (return) [ Porphyry, scholar, mathematician, philosopher and historian, lived 233-305 (?) A.D. He was a pupil of the neo-Platonist Plotinus.]

1708 (return) [ Author of a geographical lexicon, produced after 400 A.D., and abridged under Justinian.]

1709 (return) [ Archbishop of Thessalonica 1175-1192 (?) A.D., author of commentaries on Pindar and on the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.]

1710 (return) [ In the earliest times a loin-cloth was worn by athletes, but was discarded after the 14th Olympiad.]

1711 (return) [ Slight remains of five lines precede line 1 in the original: after line 20 an unknown number of lines have been lost, and traces of a verse preceding line 21 are here omitted. Between lines 29 and 30 are fragments of six verses which do not suggest any definite restoration. (NOTE: Line enumeration is that according to Evelyn-White; a slightly different line numbering system is adopted in the original publication of this fragment.—DBK)]

1712 (return) [ The end of Schoeneus’ speech, the preparations and the beginning of the race are lost.]

1713 (return) [ Of the three which Aphrodite gave him to enable him to overcome Atalanta.]

1714 (return) [ The geographer; fl. c.24 B.C.]

1715 (return) [ Of Miletus, flourished about 520 B.C. His work, a mixture of history and geography, was used by Herodotus.]

1716 (return) [ The Hesiodic story of the daughters of Proetus can be reconstructed from these sources. They were sought in marriage by all the Greeks (Pauhellenes), but having offended Dionysus (or, according to Servius, Juno), were afflicted with a disease which destroyed their beauty (or were turned into cows). They were finally healed by Melampus.]

1717 (return) [ Fl. 56-88 A.D.: he is best known for his work on Vergil.]

1718 (return) [ This and the following fragment segment are meant to be read together.—DBK.]

1719 (return) [ This fragment as well as fragments #40A, #101, and #102 were added by Mr. Evelyn-White in an appendix to the second edition (1919). They are here moved to the _Catalogues_ proper for easier use by the reader.—DBK.]

1720 (return) [ For the restoration of ll. 1-16 see “Ox. Pap.” pt. xi. pp. 46-7: the supplements of ll. 17-31 are by the Translator (cp. “Class. Quart.” x. (1916), pp. 65-67).]

1721 (return) [ The crocus was to attract Europa, as in the very similar story of Persephone: cp. _Homeric Hymns_ ii. lines 8 ff.]

1722 (return) [ Apollodorus of Athens (fl. 144 B.C.) was a pupil of Aristarchus. He wrote a Handbook of Mythology, from which the extant work bearing his name is derived.]

1723 (return) [ Priest at Praeneste. He lived c. 170-230 A.D.]

1724 (return) [ Son of Apollonius Dyscolus, lived in Rome under Marcus Aurelius. His chief work was on accentuation.]

1725 (return) [ This and the next two fragment segments are meant to be read together.—DBK.]

1726 (return) [ Sacred to Poseidon. For the custom observed there, cp. _Homeric Hymns_ iii. 231 ff.]

1727 (return) [ The allusion is obscure.]

1728 (return) [ Apollonius ‘the Crabbed’ was a grammarian of Alexandria under Hadrian. He wrote largely on Grammar and Syntax.]

1729 (return) [ 275-195 (?) B.C., mathematician, astronomer, scholar, and head of the Library of Alexandria.]

1730 (return) [ Of Cyme. He wrote a universal history covering the period between the Dorian Migration and 340 B.C.]

1731 (return) [ _i.e._ the nomad Scythians, who are described by Herodotus as feeding on mares’ milk and living in caravans.]

1732 (return) [ The restorations are mainly those adopted or suggested in “Ox. Pap.” pt. xi. pp. 48 ff.: for those of ll. 8-14 see “Class. Quart.” x. (1916) pp. 67-69.]

1733 (return) [ _i.e._ those who seek to outwit the oracle, or to ask of it more than they ought, will be deceived by it and be led to ruin: cp. _Hymn to Hermes_, 541 ff.]

1734 (return) [ Zetes and Calais, sons of Boreas, who were amongst the Argonauts, delivered Phineus from the Harpies. The Strophades (‘Islands of Turning’) are here supposed to have been so called because the sons of Boreas were there turned back by Iris from pursuing the Harpies.]

1735 (return) [ An Epicurean philosopher, fl. 50 B.C.]

1736 (return) [ ‘Charming-with-her-voice’ (or ‘Charming-the-mind’), ‘Song’, and ‘Lovely-sounding’.]

1737 (return) [ Diodorus Siculus, fl. 8 B.C., author of an universal history ending with Caesar’s Gallic Wars.]

1738 (return) [ The first epic in the “Trojan Cycle”; like all ancient epics it was ascribed to Homer, but also, with more probability, to Stasinus of Cyprus.]

1739 (return) [ This fragment is placed by Spohn after _Works and Days_ l. 120.]

1740 (return) [ A Greek of Asia Minor, author of the “Description of Greece” (on which he was still engaged in 173 A.D.).]

1741 (return) [ Wilamowitz thinks one or other of these citations belongs to the Catalogue.]

1742 (return) [ Lines 1-51 are from Berlin Papyri, 9739; lines 52-106 with B. 1-50 (and following fragments) are from Berlin Papyri, 10560. A reference by Pausanias (iii. 24. 10) to ll. 100 ff. proves that the two fragments together come from the _Catalogue of Women_. The second book (the beginning of which is indicated after l. 106) can hardly be the second book of the _Catalogues_ proper: possibly it should be assigned to the EOIAI, which were sometimes treated as part of the _Catalogues_, and sometimes separated from it. The remains of thirty-seven lines following B. 50 in the Papyrus are too slight to admit of restoration.]

1743 (return) [ sc. the Suitor whose name is lost.]

1744 (return) [ Wooing was by proxy; so Agamemnon wooed Helen for his brother Menelaus (ll. 14-15), and Idomeneus, who came in person and sent no deputy, is specially mentioned as an exception, and the reasons for this—if the restoration printed in the text be right—is stated (ll. 69 ff.).]