Part 22

HOMER: ‘At no time in the sea: and he opened his mouth said:’

HESIOD: ‘Eat, my guests, and drink, and may no one of you return home to his dear country—’

HOMER: ‘Distressed; but may you all reach home again unscathed.’

When Homer had met him fairly on every point Hesiod said:

‘Only tell me this thing that I ask: How many Achaeans went to Ilium with the sons of Atreus?’

Homer answered in a mathematical problem, thus:

‘There were fifty hearths, and at each hearth were fifty spits, and on each spit were fifty carcases, and there were thrice three hundred Achaeans to each joint.’

This is found to be an incredible number; for as there were fifty hearths, the number of spits is two thousand five hundred; and of carcasses, one hundred and twenty thousand...

Homer, then, having the advantage on every point, Hesiod was jealous and began again:

‘Homer, son of Meles, if indeed the Muses, daughters of great Zeus the most high, honour you as it is said, tell me a standard that is both best and worst for mortal-men; for I long to know it.’ Homer replied: ‘Hesiod, son of Dius, I am willing to tell you what you command, and very readily will I answer you. For each man to be a standard will I answer you. For each man to be a standard to himself is most excellent for the good, but for the bad it is the worst of all things. And now ask me whatever else your heart desires.’

HESIOD: ‘How would men best dwell in cities, and with what observances?’

HOMER: ‘By scorning to get unclean gain and if the good were honoured, but justice fell upon the unjust.’

HESIOD: ‘What is the best thing of all for a man to ask of the gods in prayer?’

HOMER: ‘That he may be always at peace with himself continually.’

HESIOD: ‘Can you tell me in briefest space what is best of all?’

HOMER: ‘A sound mind in a manly body, as I believe.’

HESIOD: ‘Of what effect are righteousness and courage?’

HOMER: ‘To advance the common good by private pains.’

HESIOD: ‘What is the mark of wisdom among men?’

HOMER: ‘To read aright the present, and to march with the occasion.’

HESIOD: ‘In what kind of matter is it right to trust in men?’

HOMER: ‘Where danger itself follows the action close.’

HESIOD: ‘What do men mean by happiness?’

HOMER: ‘Death after a life of least pain and greatest pleasure.’

After these verses had been spoken, all the Hellenes called for Homer to be crowned. But King Paneides bade each of them recite the finest passage from his own poems. Hesiod, therefore, began as follows:

‘When the Pleiads, the daughters of Atlas, begin to rise begin the harvest, and begin ploughing ere they set. For forty nights and days they are hidden, but appear again as the year wears round, when first the sickle is sharpened. This is the law of the plains and for those who dwell near the sea or live in the rich-soiled valleys, far from the wave-tossed deep: strip to sow, and strip to plough, and strip to reap when all things are in season.’ 3703

Then Homer:

‘The ranks stood firm about the two Aiantes, such that not even Ares would have scorned them had he met them, nor yet Athena who saves armies. For there the chosen best awaited the charge of the Trojans and noble Hector, making a fence of spears and serried shields. Shield closed with shield, and helm with helm, and each man with his fellow, and the peaks of their head-pieces with crests of horse-hair touched as they bent their heads: so close they stood together. The murderous battle bristled with the long, flesh-rending spears they held, and the flash of bronze from polished helms and new-burnished breast-plates and gleaming shields blinded the eyes. Very hard of heart would he have 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).]

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.]