Homer and Hesiod: The Foundations of Ancient Greek Literature. Homer

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СКАЧАТЬ it was of course intolerable. There is real grandeur in the account of the Titan War, which doubtless would be intelligible if we had the Homeric Titan War* before us. And there is a great sea-feeling in the list of Nereids (347 ff.).

      The Theogony ends ( 967-1020) with a list of the goddesses who lay in the arms of mortals and bore children like the gods. In the very last lines the poet turns from these -- "Now, sweet Muses, sing the race of mortal women." Of course, the Muses did sing of them, but the song is lost. It is referred to in antiquity by various names -- 'The Catalogue of Women,' 'The Poems about Women,' 'The Lists of Heroic Women'; particular parts of it are quoted as 'The Eoiai,' 'The Lists of the Daughters of Leukippos,' 'of the Daughters of Proitos,' and so on.

      Why were lists of women written? For two reasons. The Locrians are said to have counted their genealogies by the woman's side; and if this, as it stands, is an exaggeration, there is good evidence, apart from Nossis and her fellow-poetesses, for the importance of women in Locris. Secondly, most royal houses in Greece were descended from a god. In the days of local quasimonotheistic religion this was simply managed: the local king came from the local god. But when geographical boundaries were broken down, and the number of known gods consequently increased, these genealogies had to be systematised, and sometimes amended. For instance, certain Thessalian kings were descended from Tyro and the river Enîpeus. This was well enough in their own valley; but when they came out into the world, they found there families descended from Poseidon, the god of the great sea, perhaps of all waters, and they could not remain content with a mere local river. In Odysseyλ we have the second stage of the story: the real ancestor was Poseidon, only he visited Tyro disguised as the river! The comparatively stable human ancestresses form the safest basis for cataloguing the shifting divine ancestors. There were five books in the Alexandrian edition of the Catalogues of Women,* the last two being what is called Eoiai.* This quaint title is a half-humorous plural of the expression ᾔ οι+’′η, 'Or like,' . . . which was the form of transition to a new heroine, "Or like her who dwelt in Phthia, with the Charites' own loveliness, by the waters of Pênêus, Cyrene the fair." There are one hundred and twenty-four fragments of the Catalogue* and twenty-six of the 'Or likes.'* If they sometimes contradict each other, that is natural enough, and it cannot be held that the Alexandrian five books had all the women there ever were in the Hesiodic lists. When once the formula 'Or like' was started, it was as easy to put a new ancestress into the list as it is, say, to invent a new quatrain on the model of Edward Lear's. Further more, it was easy to expand a given Eoiê* into a story, and this is actually the genesis of our third Hesiodic poem, the Shield of Heracles, the ancestress being, of course, the hero's mother, Alcmênê.

      The Shieldbegins: "Or like Alcmênê, when she fled her home and fatherland, and came to Thebes;" it goes on to the birth of Heracles, who, it proceeds to say, slew Kyknos, and then it tells how he slew Kyknos. In the arming of Heracles before the battle comes a long description of the shield.

There were rejected poems in Hesiod's case as well as in Homer's. The anonymous Naupactia,* a series of expanded genealogies, is the best known of them; but there were Hesiodic elements in some of the Argive and Corinthian collections attributed to 'Eumêlus.' His main rival rejoices in the fictitious name of Kerkêps ('Monkey-face') of Miletus. The Ergais Hesiod's Iliad,the only work unanimously left to him. The people of Helicon showed Pausanias, or his authority, a leaden tablet of the Ergawithout the introduction, and told him that nothing else was the true Hesiod.6

      The Bridal of Keyx,* about a prince of Trachis, who entertained Heracles, was probably also an expanded Eoiê'very like the Shield; and the same perhaps holds of the Aigimios,* which seems to have narrated in two books the battle of that ancestor of the Dorians against the Lapithæ. The Descent to Hades* had Theseus for its hero. The Melampodia* was probably an account of divers celebrated seers. More interesting are the scanty remains of the Advices of Chiron* to his pupil Achilles. The wise Centaur recommended sacrificing to the gods whenever you come to a house, and thought that education should not begin till the age of seven.

      The Ergawas known in an expanded form, The Great Erga.* There were poems on Astronomy* and on Augury by Birds,* on a journey round the World,* and on the Idæan Dactyli,* who attended Zeus in Crete. The names help us to realise the great mass of poetry of the Bæotian school that was at one time in existence. As every heroic story tended to take shape in a poem, so did every piece of art or knowledge or ethical belief which stirred the national interest or the emotions of a particular poet.

6 Paus. ix. 31, 4.

      The Contest of Homer and Hesiod

       Table of Contents

This curious work dates in its present form from the lifetime or shortly after the death of Hadrian, but seems to be based in part on an earlier version by the sophist Alcidamas (c. 400 B.C.). Plutarch (Conviv. Sept. Sap., 40) uses an earlier (or at least a shorter) version than that which we possess 1118. The extant Contest, however, has clearly combined with the original document much other ill-digested matter on the life and descent of Homer, probably drawing on the same general sources as does the Herodotean Life of Homer. Its scope is as follows: (1) the descent (as variously reported) and relative dates of Homer and Hesiod; (2) their poetical contest at Chalcis; (3) the death of Hesiod; (4) the wanderings and fortunes of Homer, with brief notices of the circumstances under which his reputed works were composed, down to the time of his death.

      The whole tract is, of course, mere romance; its only values are (1) the insight it give into ancient speculations about Homer; (2) a certain amount of definite information about the Cyclic poems; and (3) the epic fragments included in the stichomythia of the Contest proper, many of which—did we possess the clue—would have to be referred to poems of the Epic Cycle.

      1118 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.

      Works of Homer

       Table of Contents

      Iliad

       Table of Contents

       BOOK I

       BOOK II

       BOOK III

       BOOK IV

       BOOK V

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