‘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).]
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.]