Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/327

 MURDER OF PALAMEDES. 295 tuucuement, of night-watches, as well as with other useful sug- gestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamedes was drowned while fishing, by the hands of Odysseus and Diomedes. 1 Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palamedes occur : the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those poems noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pin- dar, who described Palamedes as the wiser man of the two is sufficient to explain the omission. 2 But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palamedes, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting persona- ges in the Trojan legend. ^Eschylus, Sophokles and Euripides each consecrated to him a special tragedy ; but the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnon and the Grecian chiefs that Palamedes had received it from the Trojans. 3 He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion 1 Argum. Cypr. 1. 1.; Pausan. x. 31. The concluding portion of the Cypria seems to have passed under the title of TiaXa^rideia (see Fragm. 16 and 18. p. 15, DUntz. ; Welcker, Der Episch. Cycl. p. 459; Eustath. ad Horn. Odyss. i. 107). The allusion of Quintus Smyrnams (v. 197) seems rather to point to tho story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 368) appears not to have read. 2 Pindar, Nem. vii. 21 ; Aristides, Orat. 46. p. 260. 3 See the Fragments of the three tragedians, Ha^a^^f Aristeides, Or. xlvi. p. 260 ; Philostrat. Heroic, x. ; Hygin. fab. 95-105. Discourses for and against Palamedes, one by Alkidamas, and one under the name of Gorgias, are printed in Reiske's Orr. Graec. t. viii. pp. 64, 102 ; Virgil, JEneid, ii. 82, with the ample commentary of Servius Polyaen. Prooe. p. 6. Welcker (Griechisch. Tragod. v. i. p. 130, vol. ii. p. 500) has evolved with ingenuity the remaining fragments of the lost tragedies. According to Diktys, Odysseus and Diomedes prevail upon Palamedes to he let down into a deep well, and then cast stones upon him (ii. 15). Xenophon (De Venatione, c. 1) evidently recognizes the story in tho Cypria, that Odysseus and Diomedes caused the death of Palamedes ; but he cannot believe that two such exemplary men were really guilty of sc iniquitous an act KOKOI 6e ZirpaS-av TO Hpyov. One of the eminences near Napoli still bears the name of Palamidhi.