Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/77

55 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 55 also known in later times*, that Phyleus, the father of Meges, quarrelled with his father Augeas, and left his home on this account. Medon, a natural son of Oileus, is described in the Catalogue as commanding the troops of Philoctetes, which come from Methone ; but in the Iliad as lead- ing the Phthianst, inhabiting Phylace, who, in the Catalogue, form quite a different kingdom, and are led by Podarces instead of Protesilaus. With such manifest contradictions as these one may venture to attach some weight to the less obvious marks of a fundamental difference of views of a more general kind. Agamemnon, according to the Iliad, governs from Mycenae the whole of Argos (that is, the neighbouring part of Peloponne- sus), and many islands}: ; according to the Catalogue, he governs no islands whatever ; but, on the other hand, his kingdom comprises iEgialeia, which did not become Achaean till after the expulsion of the Ionians§. With respect to the Boeotians, the poets of the Catalogue have entirely forgotten that they dwelt in Thessaly at the time of the Trojan war ; for they describe the ichole nation as already settled in the country after- wards called Bceotia||. That heroes and troops of men joined the Achaean army from the eastern side of the /Egean Sea and the islands on the coast of Asia Minor, is a notion of which the Iliad offers no trace ; it knows nothing of the heroes of Cos, Phidippus and Antiphus, nor anything of the beautiful Nireus from Syme ; and as it is not said of Tlepolemus that he came from Rhodes, but only that he was a son of Hercules, it is most natural to understand that the poet of the Iliad conceived him as a Tirynthian hero. The mention in the Catalogue of a whole line of islands on the coast of Asia Minor destroys the beauty and unity of the picture of the belligerent nations contained in the Iliad, which makes the allies of the Trojans come only from the east and north of the iEgean Sea, and Achaean warriors come only from the west^[. The poets of the Catalogue have also made the Arcadians under Aga- penor, as well as the Perrhaebians and the Magnetes, fight before Troy. The purer tradition of the Iliad does not mix up these Pelasgic tribes (for, among all the Greeks, the Arcadians and Perrhaebians remained most Pelasgic) in the ranks of the Achaean army. If the enumeration of the Achaean bands is too detailed, and goes beyond the intention of the original poet of the Iliad, on the other hand, the Catalogue of the Trojans and their allies is much below the notion f II. xiii. 693 ; xv. 334. t D. ii. 108. § Here, in particular, the verse (II. ii. 572), in which Adrastus is named as first king of Sicyon, compared with Herod, v. 67 — 8, clearly shows the objects of the Arrive rhap^odist. speaks of Boeotians in Bceotia. II. v. 709. For this reason Thucydides assumed that an aTtdarpls of the Boeotians had at this time settled in Bceotia; which, however, is not sufficient for the Catalogue. ^[ The account of the Rhodwm in the Catalogue also, by its great length, betrays the intention of a rhapsodist to celebrate this island.
 * Callimachus ap. Schol. 11. ii. 629. Comp. Theocrit. xxi.
 * There is, likewise, in the Iliad a passage ("not, indeed, of much importance) which