Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/70

46 only does he start from a false conception of what the poems were—they had probably perished before the days of Pausanias, centuries earlier—he also seems to have reached his results by first taking the contents of some handbook, of which we can only say that it often agrees word for word with that of Apollodôrus, and then, by conjecture or otherwise, inserting " Here begins the Little Iliad of Leschês of Mitylênê," or " Here comes the Æthiopis of Arctînus of Milêtus!" It is known from quotations in earlier writers that the individual poems covered much more ground than he allows them. For instance, the Little Iliad* begins in Proclus with the contest of Aias and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, and stops at the reception of the Wooden Horse. But a much earlier beginning is suggested by the opening words of the poem itself, which still survive: " I sing of Ilion and Dardania, land of chivalry, for which the Danaoi, hench-men of Ares, suffered many things ;" and a later ending is proved by the quotations which are made from it to illustrate the actual sack. It is the origin, for instance, of Vergil's story about the warrior who means to slay Helen, but is disarmed by the sight of her loveliness ; only, in the Little Iliad* he is Menelaus, not Æneas. In general, however, Vergil, like Proclus's authority, prefers the fuller version derived from the special epic on the Sack by 'Arctinus of Milêtus,' while Theodôrus again sets aside both epics and follows the lyrical Sack of Stesichorus.

Again, Proclus makes the Æthiopis* and the Sack* two separate poems with a great gap between them. His Æthiopis* begins immediately at the end of the Iliad, gives the exploits of the Amazon Penthesileia and the ÆEthiop Memnon, and ends with the contest for the