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12 It was left for Wilamowitz to show that Dieuchidas was a writer much earlier than the Alexandrians, and to explain his motive. It is part of that general literary revenge which Megara took upon fallen Athens in the fourth century. "Athens had not invented comedy; it was Megara. Nor tragedy either; it was Sikyon. Athens had only falsified and interpolated!" Whether Dieuchidas accepted the Pisistratus recension as a fact generally believed, or whether he suggested it as an hypothesis, is not clear. It appears, however, that he could not find any un-Attic texts to prove his point by. When he wished to suggest the true reading he had to use his own ingenuity. It was he who invented a supposed original form for the interpolated passage in, 671; and perhaps he who imagined the existence of a Spartan edition of Homer by Lycurgus, an uncontaminated text copied out honestly by good Dorians!

The theory, then, that Pisistratus had somehow 'interpolated Homer' was current before Alexandrian times. Why does Aristarchus not mention it? We cannot clearly say. It is possible that he took the fact for granted, as the epigram does. It is certain, at any rate, that Aristarchus rejected on some ground or other most of the lines which modern scholars describe as 'Athenian interpolations'; and that ground cannot have been a merely internal one, since he held the peculiar belief that Homer himself was an Athenian. Lastly, it is a curious fact that Cicero's statement about the recension by Pisisstratus seems to be derived from a member of the Pergamene school, whose founder. Crates, stood almost alone in successfully resisting and opposing the authority of Aristarchus. It is quite possible that the latter tended