Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
been, who could then have seen that strife with joy and felt no pang.’
3704
Here, again, the Hellenes applauded Homer admiringly, so far did the
verses exceed the ordinary level; and demanded that he should be
adjudged the winner. But the king gave the crown to Hesiod, declaring
that it was right that he who called upon men to follow peace and
husbandry should have the prize rather than one who dwelt on war and
slaughter. In this way, then, we are told, Hesiod gained the victory
and received a brazen tripod which he dedicated to the Muses with this
inscription:
‘Hesiod dedicated this tripod to the Muses of Helicon after he had
conquered divine Homer at Chalcis in a contest of song.’
After the gathering was dispersed, Hesiod crossed to the mainland and
went to Delphi to consult the oracle and to dedicate the first fruits
of his victory to the god. They say that as he was approaching the
temple, the prophetess became inspired and said:
‘Blessed is this man who serves my house,—Hesiod, who is honoured by
the deathless Muses: surely his renown shall be as wide as the light of
dawn is spread. But beware of the pleasant grove of Nemean Zeus; for
there death’s end is destined to befall you.’
When Hesiod heard this oracle, he kept away from the Peloponnesus,
supposing that the god meant the Nemea there; and coming to Oenoe in
Locris, he stayed with Amphiphanes and Ganyetor the sons of Phegeus,
thus unconsciously fulfilling the oracle; for all that region was
called the sacred place of Nemean Zeus. He continued to stay a somewhat
long time at Oenoe, until the young men, suspecting Hesiod of seducing
their sister, killed him and cast his body into the sea which separates
Achaea and Locris. On the third day, however, his body was brought to
land by dolphins while some local feast of Ariadne was being held.
Thereupon, all the people hurried to the shore, and recognized the
body, lamented over it and buried it, and then began to look for the
assassins. But these, fearing the anger of their countrymen, launched a
fishing boat, and put out to sea for Crete: they had finished half
their voyage when Zeus sank them with a thunderbolt, as Alcidamas
states in his “Museum”. Eratosthenes, however, says in his “Hesiod”
that Ctimenus and Antiphus, sons of Ganyetor, killed him for the reason
already stated, and were sacrificed by Eurycles the seer to the gods of
hospitality. He adds that the girl, sister of the above-named, hanged
herself after she had been seduced, and that she was seduced by some
stranger, Demodes by name, who was travelling with Hesiod, and who was
also killed by the brothers. At a later time the men of Orchomenus
removed his body as they were directed by an oracle, and buried him in
their own country where they placed this inscription on his tomb:
‘Ascra with its many cornfields was his native land; but in death the
land of the horse-driving Minyans holds the bones of Hesiod, whose
renown is greatest among men of all who are judged by the test of wit.’
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).]