Page:Ichneutae (Walker 1919).djvu/27

Rh to the falsehoods with which Cyllene delays the finding of the oxen, falsehoods absolutely essential to the dramatic protraction of the interval antecedent to discovery.

These five modifications are incidental to the dramatisation of the legend, and doubtless, unless indeed it had already been dramatised by someone else, were all effected by Sophocles himself. The introduction of the new character, Cyllene, seems at first sight somewhat bolder than the other changes. But there is ground for thinking that this introduction involves no substantial innovation. Though the Nymph in question does not figure in the Homeric Hymn, yet it is in no way inconsistent with the Hymn that she should at some period or other have acted as nurse to Hermes; and Philostephanus (as we learn from a scholium on Pindar, Ol. VI. l. 144) states (a book, I presume, about Mt. Cyllene) that Cyllene and Helice nursed Hermes. If Philostephanus had not added the name of Helice, I should have supposed that he was merely basing himself on this play. As it is, I am inclined to conjecture that some such expression as

occurred in the Megalae Eoeae of Hesiod, where (see Antoninus Liberalis, ch. 23) the legend in question is dealt with. Indeed, seeing that Antoninus (l.c.), speaking of the episode of the informer, an integral part of the story as told in the Homeric Hymn, gives a list of authorities, and seeing that none of those authorities, except Hesiod, is of substantially earlier date than Philostephanus (circa 250 B.C.), it is natural to assume as probable that it is from Hesiod that Philostephanus derives his information.

In the Homeric Hymn, as it has come down to us, Hermes first kills the tortoise and makes the lyre, and afterwards steals the cattle. But Apollodorus (III. 10), while agreeing in the main with the now current Homeric account, transposes the order of events. Sophocles abstains altogether from fixing the order, though it is evident that the ox-hide bag (if it was a bag) must have been made after the theft of the cattle. A good deal of ink has been wasted on Apollodorus. I can hardly