Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/93



The end of the traditional epos came with the rise of the idea of hterary property. A rhapsode hke Kynaethus would manipulate the Homer he recited, without ever wanting to publish the poems as his own. Onomacritus would hand over his laborious theology to Orpheus with- out intending either dishonesty or self-sacrifice. This community of literary goods lasted longer in the epos than in the song ; but Homer, Hesiod, and Orpheus had by the sixth and fifth centuries to make room for living poets who stood on their own feet.

The first epic poet in actual history is generally given as PiSANDER of Camirus, in Rhodes, author of an Heradeia.'^ Tradition gives him the hoariest antiquity, but he appears really to be only the Rhodian * Homer.' The fragments themselves bear the brand of the sixth century, the talk of sin and the cry for purification. Pisander is not mentioned in classical times ; he was, perhaps, ' discovered ' by the romantic movement of the third century, as the earliest literary authority for the Heracles of the Twelve Labours, the Lion-skin and the Club.i Heracles was also the hero of the prophet and ' W. M. Herakles, i. 66 seq. (and edition). 6q