Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/32

8 romance which creates the noble bust of Homer in the Naples Museum; the romance which one feels in Callimachus's wonderful story of the Bathing of Pallas, where it is Teiresias, the prophet, not the poet, who loses his earthly sight. Other traits in the tradition have a similar origin—the contempt poured on the unknown beggar-man at the Marriage Feast till he rises and sings; the curse of ingloriousness he lays on the Ky means who rejected him; the one epic (Cypria*) not up to his own standard, with which he dowered his daughter and made her a great heiress.

If we try to find what poems were definitely regarded as the work of Homer at the beginning of our tradition, the answer must be—all that were 'Homeric' or 'heroic'; in other words, all that express in epos the two main groups of legend, centred round Troy and Thebes respectively. The earliest mention of Homer is by the poet Callinus (ca. 660 ), who refers to the Thebais* as his work; the next is probably by Semonides of Amorgos (same date), who cites as the words of 'a man of Chios' a proverbial phrase which occurs in our Iliad, "As the passing of leaves is, so is the passing of men." It is possible that he referred to some particular Chian, and that the verse in our Iliad is merely a floating proverb assimilated by the epos; but the probability is that he is quoting our passage. Simonides of Keos (556-468 ), a good century later, speaks of "Homer and Stesichorus telling how Meleagros conquered all youths in spear-throwing across the wild Anauros." This is not in our Iliad or Odyssey,