Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/124

102 102 HISTORY OF THE dialect, which were added to illustrate the reliefs on the chest of Cyp- selus, the renowned work of ancient art. But it is plain that those verses were contemporaneous with the reliefs themselves, which were not made till a century later, under the Government of the Cypselids at Corinth*. Asms of Samos, often mentioned by Pausanias, was a third genealogical epic poet. His poems referred chiefly to his native coun- try, the Ionian island of Samos ; and he appears to have taken occasion to descend to his own time ; as in the glowing and vivid description of the luxurious costume of the Samians at a festival procession to the temple of their guardian goddess, Here. Chersias, the epic poet of Orcho- menus, collected Boeotian legends and genealogies : he was, according to Plutarch, a contemporary of the Seven Wise Men, and appears, from the monumental inscription above mentioned, to have been a great admirer and follower of Hesiod. § 3. While by efforts of this kind nearly all the heroes (whose remem- brance had been preserved in popular legends) obtained a place in this endlessly extensive epic l^erature, it is remarkable that the hero on whose name half the heroic mythology of the Greeks depends, to whose mighty deeds (in a degree far exceeding those of all the Achaian heroes before Troy) every race of the Greeks seem to have contributed its share, that Hercules should have been celebrated by no epic poem corresponding to his greatness. Even the two Homeric epopees furnish some measure of the extent of these legends, and at the same time make it probable that it was usual to compose short ep'c poems from single adventures of the wandering hero ; and of this kind, probably, was the " Taking of CEchalia," which Homer, according to a well-known tra- dition, is supposed to have left as a present to a person joined to him by ties of hospitality, Creophylus of Samos, who appears to have been the head of a Samian family of rhapsodists. The poem narrated how Her- cules, in order to avenge an affront early received by him from Eurytus and his sons, takes CEchalia, the city of this prince, slays him and his sons, and carries off his daughter Iole, as the spoil of war. This fable is so far connected with the Odyssey that the bow which Ulysses uses against the suitors is derived from this Eurytus, the best archer of his the little Cypselus was concealed from the designs of the Bacchiads by his mother Labda, which was afterwards, in memory of this event, dedicated by the Cypse- lids at Olympia. But not to say that this whole story is not an historial fact, but probably arose merely from the etymology of the word Ki-^iXo;, (from xu^iXn, a chest.) it is quite incredible that a box so costly and so richly adorned with sculp- tures should have been used hy Labda as an ordinary piece of furniture. It is far more probable that the Cypselids, at the time of their power and wealth (after Olymp. 30), had this chest made among other costly offerings, in order to be dedi- cated at Olympia, meaning, at the same time, by the name of the chest {kv-^'iXv) — quite in the manner of the emblcmes parlanson Greek coins — to allude to themselves as donors. Another argument is, that Hercules was distinguished on it by a pecu- liar costume ((r^jj^a) ; and therefore was not, as in Hesiud's shield, repre-ented in the common heroic accoutrements.
 * Pausanias proceeds on the supposition that this chest was the very one in which