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The Date of Hesiod1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

T. W. Allen
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Extract

Ogni strada, we are told, ogni strada men' a Roma. The roads which lead to Homer, an older goal than the Shrine of the Apostles, are nearly as many. One of them, not the most followed, runs through the literature of the historical centuries. When I say historical, I must observe that I use a term and make a distinction unknown to antiquity. To the ancients Homer was as historical as Pindar, the people of whom he sang were as historical as Pindar's patrons, often their descendants. The μυθῶδες or untrue element which the Greeks noticed in their poetry did not touch the individuals or the events; it was detected in violations of ascertained natural laws, such as the divine interference in ordinary life and the three daily tides of Charybdis. It is the modern world which has set a gulf the other side of Archilochus or Terpander beyond which persons are not found and all we descry is Gods in the making, bloody rites, and commercial movements which have come down to us under a false anthropomorphic and individualistic guise. It is difficult to shake off these modern prepossessions, to realise that the Greek world before 700 was not lit by corpse-candles, a dim field of legal fictions, eponymous and heraldic ancestors, but as human and positive as Phidon with his weights and measures and Solon with his code—as human and positive as the buildings, jewels and vessels which that world has left us. We are reluctant to admit that our ignorance of Lycurgus differs only in degree from our knowledge of Pisistratus, increasing in proportion to lapse of time and such accidental circumstances as the absence of written records.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 35 , November 1915 , pp. 85 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1915

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References

2 See C.Q. 1908, 64 ff., 81 ff.; 1913, 40 ff.

3 The Hymn to Apollo, work of Cynaethus who, first of rhapsodes, visited Syracuse after its foundation, that is in the eighth century, exhibits Delos and Delphi as parts of one religious system, and in so far agrees with the Hesiodic verses (fr. 265) which represent the Boeotian Hesiod and the Ionian Homer meeting at the Delian agon.

4 Beside the greater Alexandrians and Praxiphanes the Peripatetic, Hesiodic literature includes Amphion of Thespiae (ἐν β´ περὶ τοῦ ἐν ῾Ελικῶνι μουσείου Ath. 629 A) F.H.G. iv. 301, Cleomenes ἐν τψ῀ περὶ ῾Ησιόδου Clem. Alex. strom. i. 61–3, Nicocles and Nicocrates ἐν τψ῀ περὶ τοῦ ἐν ῾Ελικῶνι ἀγῶνος) F.H.G. iv. 464, 465 (perhaps the same), two poets Chersias of Orchomenus and Hegesinous in his Ἀτθίς, both extinct in Pausanias' day and reported by the Corinthian Callippus ἐν τῇ ἐς ᾿Ορχομενίους συγγραφῇ (ix. 29 and 38). Callippus himself has no more mention F.H.G. iv. 352. The verses of Chersias remind one of Lyceas the poetical guide (ὁ τῶν ἐπι- χωρίων ἐξηγητής Paus. i. 13. 8 etc.

5 The author of the Theogony announces that he is not Hesiod.

6 And Diog. Laert. ii. 46.

7 This is natural, if Massilia was not founded till 600 B.C. Timaeus, fr. 38, first mentions the river.

8 Theophr. H. P. v, 8. 3. καὶ πρότερον μὲν οὖν νῆσον εῖναι τὸ Κιρκαῖον, νῦν δὲ ὑπὸ ποταμῶν τινων προσκεχῶσθαι

9 Αὔσων seems to appear first in Pindar, fr. 140 b 60, then in Scymnus 228.

10 Fick saw in Ἄγριος the man of the ager Latinus. But was there such a phrase in the eighth century? and the place is surely covered by Λατĩνος. I have thought that ἄγριος might=campanus, the native behind Cumae. The Καμπανοί occur in the Hesiodic parody of Euthydemus (Ath. 116 A) along with the Bruttians.

11 They introduce to the world the Macedonian, the Arab, the Ligurian and the Scythian, the Hyperboreans, the Eridanus. again with its amber, and Ortygia.

12 I refer to the article ‘Βοιωτία’ by F. Cauer in Pauly-Wissowa iii. 1899.

13 Imitated by Aratus Phaen. 108 sq. (gold, silver, bronze). I refer to Mr.Sikes', interesting remarks, Anthropology of the Greeks, 1914, p. 33sqq.Google Scholar

14 E.g. that the Dorians came from Pindus, and Pelops from Asia.

15 The anecdote in Herodotus i. 68 which Mr. Sikes adduces l.c. p. 34, note 22, shews, it seems to me, admiration for the process rather than for the metal. The forge is always attractive. The antiquarian Apollonius of Rhodes ἐν τῷ ἀ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων thought iron was called χαλκός by the ancients (a view we have seen revived): but his commentator was better informed, and quotes Hesiod (schol. Ap. Rh. i. 430). Pausanias, another antiquary, notices Homer's language and confirms it by some evidence (iii. 3. 8).

16 Who is the hawk held out in the apologue 202 sqq.? Thebes ?

17 J.H.S. 1912, p. 257 sqq.

18 Aratus Phaen. 110; it was a source of luxury, Greece having too much coast, Dicaearchus fr. 73. See the authorities in Stobaeus, ecl. iv. 17, περὶ ναυτιλίας καὶ ναυαγίου The elder Cato regretted three things—of which the second was πλεύσας ὅπου δυνατὸν ἦν πεζεῦσαι Plut. Cat. maj. 9. Strabo on the other hand, an Asiatic and a traveller, gives the plain facts: ἀμφίβιοι γὰρ τρόπον τινά ἐσμεν, καὶ οὐ μᾶλλον χερσαῖοι ἦ θαλάττιοι (c. 9).

19 Apoll. fr. 6, ap. Jacoby, , ‘Apollodorus' Chronik’ (Phil. Untersuch. xvi. 1902, 118–120)Google Scholar. The dates are an inference from Solinus, xl. 16. 17, part of whose statement is in auspiciis olympiadis primae obiit.

19a For this and other pedigrees see J.H.S. 1913, 20, or Gruppe in Roscher s.v. Orpheus. In an interesting paper in the Revue Historique 1914, vol. cxvii. M. Pierre Waltz makes out the Hesiodic civilisation later than the Homeric, mainly from economic considerations and the greater distinction of trades and professions.

20 See De Morgan in Hesiod, the Poems and Fragmentsy, done into English prose, with introduction and appendices by A. W. Mair, 1908, p. 135; Pearson, J. B., Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. iii. part iii. (1877)Google Scholar.

21 He continued to expiate his sins, e.g. in the Necyia of the Μινυάς, fr. 3, 4, along with Amphion.

22 ρ 224 sqq. This is the only mention of the word in Homer. B 766; it is a false reading. By the sixth century the Pieree had been pushed as far east as Pangaeum (Herod, vii. 112, Thuc. ii. 99).

23 Hegesinus, Kinkel, E.G.F. p. 208; Callippus, F.H.G. iv. 352; Mimnermus, fr. 13.

24 I refer to the formidable article of Gruppe in Roscher, vol. iii. 1. Whether the statement quoted by Frazer (Pausanias v. p. 154), that there was a Bulgarian poet of the name of Orfen is confirmed I cannot say. The name would correspond to the bye-form Ὀρφήν.

25 C.R. 1912, 249.

26 ᾿Ορθιον νόμον Θαμύρα ὁ κιθαρωδικὸς τρόπος τῆς μελῳδίας, ἁρμονίαν ἔχων ταυτὴν καὶ ῥυθμὸν ὡρισμένον ἦσαν δὲ ζ᾿ ὦν εἶς ὁ ὄρθιος: gloss on Herod, i. 24 (Stein, vol. ii. p. 449). Thamyras is omitted in the fragments of this notice which are scattered in Suidas.

27 Paus. x. 7. 3 λέγεται ἀπελαθῆναι τοῦ ἀγω νίσματος ἄτε οὐ κιθαρίζειν ἄμα τῇ ᾠδῇ δεδιδαγ μένον Chersias or Hegesinus are probably responsible for the story.

28 πρῶτος ἠράσθη οαιδὶς Γμεναίου (Suid. in Θἀμυρις) seems a distant way of stating this. The words ὔμνος ὑμήν ὑμέναιος are clearly connected.

29 Rzach, l.c.

30 ρ 347, 352, O.D. 500.