Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/123

101 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. lU 1 that he treated of certain mythical subjects to which a patriotic interest was attached. His Heraclea, which is very rarely mentioned, may have referred to the descent of the Doric Princes from Hercules ; and also his CEdipodia may have been occasioned by the first kings of Sparta, Procles and Eurysthenes, being, through their mother, descended from the Cadmean kings of Thebes. It is remarkable that the Little Iliad, one of the Cyclic poems, which immediately followed Homer, was by many* attributed to this Cineethon ; and another Peloponnesian bard, Eumelus the Corinthian, was named as the author of a second Cyclic Epos, the Nostoi. Both statements are probably erroneous ; ai least the authors of these poems must, as members of that school who imitated and extended the Homeric Epopees, have adopted an entirely different style of com- position from that required for the genealogical collections of Pelopon- nesian legends. Eumelus was a Corinthian of the noble and governing- house of the Bacchaids, and he lived about the time of the founding of Syracuse (11th Olympiad, according to the commonly received date). There were poems extant under his name, of the genealogical and his- torical kind; by which, however, is not to be understood the later style of converting the marvels of the mythical period into common history, bat only a narrative of the legends of some town or race, arranged in order of time. Of this character (as appears also from fragments) were the Corinthiaca of Eumelus, and also, probably, the Europia, in which perhaps a number of ancient legends were joined to the genealogy of Europa. Nevertheless the notion among the ancients of the style of Eumelus was not so fixed and clear as to furnish any certain criterion; for there was extant a 'i itanomachia, as to which Athenaeus doubts whe- ther it should be ascribed to Eumelus, the Corinthian, or Aretinus, the Milesian. That there should exist any doubt between these two claimants, '.he Cyclic poet who had composed the .Lthiopis, and the author of genealogical epics, only convinces us how uncertain all literary decisions in this period are, and how dangerous a region this is for the inquiries of the higher criticism. Pausanias will not allow anything of Eumelus to be genuine except a prosodion, or strain, which he had composed for the Messenians for a sacred mission to the Temple of Delos ; and it is certain that this epic hymn, in the Doric dialect, really belonged to those times when Messenia was still independent and flourishing, before the first war with the Lacedaemonians, which began in the 9th Olym- piadf. Pausanias also ascribes to Eumelus the epic versen in the Doric is called the author of the vo'rroi in Schol. Pind. Olymp. xiii. 31. f The passage quoted from it by Pausan. iv. 33. 3. TS yag ' lBu/aaTce, xaTa.6vfn.iii stXito Moiffa } A xa.0a.gcc xai iXivhga aa-ftar' (?) i%ovira, appears to say that the muse of Eumelus, which had composed the Prosodion, had aUo pleased Zeus Ithomatas ; that is. had gained a prize at the musical con- tests among lhe [thomseans in Messenia.
 * See ScboL Vatic, ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Eumelus (^corrupted into Eumolpus)