Pisistratus and Homer

Author(s): T. W. Allen
Source: The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan., 1913), pp. 33-51
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/636126
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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER.

AN aspect of Pisistratus, which has not hitherto been

question (see p. 50), appears to justify another presentment
which connects him with the Homeric tradition. I shall endeavour to be brief
and not to repeat what is common property or irrelevant. The literature and
the bearing of the controversy are given with his usual clearness by P. Cauer,
Grundfragen der Homerkritik,2 pp. 125 sqq. Cauer's private doctrine, that
Homer was for the first time written down by Pisistratus, I consider sufficiently
refuted by C. Rothe, Die Ilias als Dichtung, pp. 5-13. Fantastic views lately
promulgated in England arex dealt with conclusively to my mind by Mr.
A. Lang, The World of Homer, pp. 281 sqq., to whose account nothing for con-
troversial purposes need be added. On looking back over the literature I find
myself most in agreement with Hans Flach, whose treatise, Die litterarische
Thatigkeit des Peisistratos, 1885, has been unduly depreciated. I shall have to
repeat my own views expressed in the Classical Review, 1901, p. 7; 1907, p. 18;
and in the Classical Quarterly, 1909, p. 84.

I.

THE AUTHORITIES.

The passages of ancient authors which bear on this question fall into
groups-those dealing with the Panathenaea, those attesting the transpor
the poems to Athens, those asserting the collection of the lays, those assert
interpolation.
A. Lycurgus in Leocr. p. 102, o0XootpaS 8' i~bv al' T&v 'O/ppov vr

Xratcco ty. oo ic yap er'Xaaov 1t4coy oL 7ra7ipe9 rrovSaiova evat rrosV0pv t7xrTe
VLOW EOevTo icaO' eadTrv 7rreverTqpla rcov IIavaOqval'v pVovov O Ov c-XXov
irotipwv a 8eo6a6 Tr a irr17, e'vLt8 V 7rootPEvo& ' rpb 'roV "EXX,)va9 5T 6rca
cdMXXtora cwy Ipevpy wpopoiv'ro. The festival is named, but not the author of
the law. An Athenian orator could hardly glorify Pisistratus, and Napo-
16on III. is still ignored by the French Republic. The passage implies that
the Hesiodic corpus, Eumelus, etc., were excluded from the Panathenaea.

Isocr. Panegyr. XLII. = 159 op at 86 Ial 7v 'OtpOpov 7roilYo-w pt Xa.elv

S@av o't KaX T0 rob3 kroXeput'avra 'roZ' apidpot invewmPace, at i SA rofrro
RovX'ikq8vat rok wpor'Yvov9 'It'Cv V'rtFOV aa'TroiV rotciat 7E r ,XV"V oT Te. o r6T
1 So I wrote; we must now say ' were.'
NO. I. VOL. VII. C

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 34 T. W. ALLEN

-ovtxA c JOXot? ica' 7T3 ?rat8e'Wet

E'xCavO Le'V TV 'paV Ty 6rdrpXv
'yv orTpaTevoap.ioVwv rCV a'yv pp
vaguer than Lycurgus', inasmuch
To follow Isocrates' argument li
century, not the sixth, if Homer
anti-Persian feeling. Probably Iso
and the vagueness is intentional
regulations are ascribed to anyon

228 B. :U2. ob pevT&v KaX'9 iroto

III. TIt T;oTr ;al 71 ri LXt(Tra; n
S vie' 70 ETO (tXat&8v, 'IrJrdpXV0
xal -oo-7'TaTo9, b, k XXa Te IroX
'O/'pov rp(OT0V EKO/.ttev el69 Tj7v
HavaOlvatot9 dv' biroXi 'fre0 e'4ei; a

r' 'Avacpeov6'a rvw Tiiov 7revTtC

86ov~l8v ' 7iby Kedov repT abv'Tv el dEXe, eydaXotv ptOoZfe alc SW'potv reiOcov.
No political embargo restrained the philosopher; he celebrated the tyrant's
son as the Leone decimo or the Morgan of his day, purchasing treasures and
concentrating men of letters. The author of the Hipparchus is unknown, but
it must belong to the fourth century. The next text rests on the authority of
a historian who may belong to the same century (Wilamowitz, Horn. Untersuch.
240 sqq.). Diogenes Laert. I. 2, 56 (Life of Solon) : :d a TOpspovu E' t roo0X17
ry7pace paf8eZr6EOat, olov 05iov J 0 Tprovj FXAev EKteev apxEa eU Tv EXOI.eIrov.
aXXXov o4v Xo'wv "Oltpov e'~Te 1Crev ' IIHetclyrTpaTro, SW T r410t AtevX8a Qv e'

Melaptelv [FHG. IV. 389]. That Dieuchidas preferred the democrat to the
tyrant or the tyrant's son follows from his national standpoint, which may be
observed elsewhere in his fragments (see p. 50). The account of the regulation,
its author apart, is evidently identical in these two sources. Dieuchidas seems
to have omitted the festival, not a pleasing subject to a Megarian.
There was then, at the end of the fourth century, a tradition believed in
Athens and in Megara by orators philosophers and antiquaries, that Homer
was recited at the Panathenaea exclusively and consecutively, under a regula-
tion ascribed to Solon or Pisistratus.
B. The passage from the Hipparchus cited above contains the next
tradition also: TA 'O#povU irpioiog ICetev etv q 7127v /t CU TauTvl--a remarkable
statement to have been made not more than one hundred and fifty years after
the supposed event. That the Homeric poems were previously unknown in
Greece is disproved by their diffusion and influence at Sicyon under Clisthenes
(Herod. V. 67); that they had already arrived at Athens appears from the
appeal made to them in the matter of Sigeion (see p. 46). Athenian history is
an all but total blank before the affair of Sigeion, and we can make no state-
ment about the early culture of Attica. It is singular that the historical
imagination of the later fourth century conceived an epos-less Attica till the

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 35

time of the Pisistratidae. Hippostratus, the Sic

said that Cynaethus first sang Homer in Syracu
is generally thought incredible.
The same achievement is ascribed to Lycurg

&* A 8Avcoip'yov Aa'xe8atp.6vto; d0pbav rpCrov dE 'r v 'EXXdc8a de'.6,twe 'r1v

'Op'pov w'olvat'w"o \ B\ay' 8 ~tov Vo -ro e'~ 'Iwovtaq i'vlca dJres&po'ev ',,ya'yev.
Vicnepov &8 H6etElc7paTrpro vvayay7ov a7recYlVe Rv 'IXdsa cal 'Os8aoetav ; and
Dio Prus. II. 45, drel 'rot ~ atv aT'rov deratv'rTv 'OV p4pov yeveorOat' ca& 'rparrov
cdirT Kpgry, 4 ) r 'Iov'av xo/l.rat 'vrv Tolrl e'l j'v 'EXX'8a. That Homer
passed from East to West is true, and the legend in both its forms contains
this fact. It is conceivable that the Homeridae, to explain the passing of the
poems from their hands, circulated a legend that they had entrusted them to a
Western lawgiver on his travels. This origin of the Lycurgus legend at least
appears clearly from the older statement in the excerpts from Heraclides'

IloX1'reat (FHG. II. 210) : AvKoiipyoq ev hdge deryve'ro caL t'Tv 'Oi4pov rol t'tv
?rap Tcov rroyyov Kpecoc"Xov Xa\v 7rp(o^rov SteLeCOtev lvW HeXer~rvvoov ;
and in Plutarch Lycurg. 4, who conceives Lycurgus as taking a copy from the

heirs of Creophylus : E7dypd''aro rrpo0Vuo; q Ical rvvYjatyev Ccq Be^po xops@v. '7v
yrdp rte i'8l 86a rCOv wrcov A'pavph 7rapAh roT'v"EXXlytv, 'e"ICECT os roXXoo
tLpr va rr8opdS7rTv ';70 ro06r0eWo c ; 'VXe S taePpo'vrI . Ephorus, on the
other hand (ap. Strab. 482), reports the view that Lycurgus met Homer him-
self at Chios. The story can hardly have been absent in Timaeus (fr. 4) and
Dieuchidas (fr. 5).
C. There is more abundant testimony to what Pisistratus is supposed
to have done to the poems once in Attica. Cicero may take the lead
(de Or. II I. 137) : sed, ut ad Graecos referam orationem, septem fuisse dicuntur uno
tempore qui sapientes et haberentur et uocarentur. hi omnes praeter Milesium
Thalen ciuitatibus suis praefuerunt. quis doctior iisdem illis temporibus, aut cuius
eloquentia litteris instructior fuisse traditur quam Pisistrati ? qui primus Homeri
libros confusos antea sic disposuisse traditur ut nunc habemus. non fuit ille quidem
ciuibus suis utilis, sed ita eloquentia floruit ut litteris doctrinaque fraestaret.
Cicero's source is made out by Flach 1. c. pp. 3 sqq. td have been Pergamene;
the links were Athenodorus son of Sandon, Asclepiades of Myrlea (p. II, n. 3),
Crates. Without insistence on details1 this result may be accepted. Cicero
starts from the Pergamene conception of Pisistratus as one of the Seven Sages
(on which see p. 50); in his further statements he is supported by Pausanias

VII. 26. 13:raAlyelpa

aovoVaoa Xovqp. e vu'
8\? delvero
dv 7T p /
Tavb /avl icv'clorv
inTo ceXX7yV rtoaavarTo,
~,r6 pa nrrXoovr Ze~uVioV
pyPovev 8

xal "Oprlpov de' vca-raXoyp rjV a v 'Ayapp4eov' pauroav caTr;?i

oi'O' 'T7repwflv -re xal a1l'rew)Y Aovbeo'oav.
1 It is difficult to dissociate Athenodorus
Athenodorus Calvus
would be charging Pisistratus with
practices in which he himself indulged, if accord-
(ad A tt. XVI. Ix. 4) from 'AOG1v6iwpos ir&KXl,
Kop8vXlwv. Calvus seems only ing to Isidore of
applicable asPergamus
a in D. L. VII. 34 he
nickname, and only a bald man would be was detected in the expurgation of Zeno.
noticeable for a rop3aXs or lump on the head.

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 36 T. W. ALLEN

Iesiala7paToq 8 ev&ia rl T7r 'Ta"

,wrOievoEte a iOpo4'e T&TE aTOY H
TOb vopa n"r' ryvolag. The stat
Aovo'eoav into rovo&lcoav perhap
a title for its destruction (Classical
Aelian also, quoted p. 35, says P
Here we must add the epigram,
and Anth. Pal. XI. 442, as well as

,pts e -rvpavvravra ro T0oavr

S^ os 'EpEXO1ios Kal rpis nry

?rv / 'yav v 30ovXats IIHurLrt

Opoura cr-roppay1V 7? rpjv dcic

L,.iTepos yap
etrepP eLVOS~ XP1t;xEos
'AOqvat^@ot ,v 7-OXiT7r s
pvav irY(KWaAeLV.

Villoison Diatriba pp. 178 sqq. (A necd. Graec. II. 1781) published scholia
on Dionysius Thrax from two MSS., Ven. 489 and Ven. 652 (reprinted by
Bekker, Anecd. II. 645 sqq).

p. 182: Ven. 489 jv yap 69 s kanv droXXip~eva r& 70v 'OpplovT rorE yap od ypat,,,
7rape(&cSovro, aXXa 'v7w ' aacKaXIt', As t v 4 v / ove [?] 4vXairroLro. TlHeurw paros Se 8 s

'AOvat'ov rpavvos, v &raorw ,v Evyevys, Kay, ToiV() r avaO,,ovao CPovXEv'raToo 7jOEXro

yap 'v "Op4pov r-oo L oyypa4Ov &SLavXarrETOaO. at.OrpoOEls 8' ayOwva 8o-rWEXq, Ka1
K9)p as Ka& oSoN 4&ay ToEs tlO84e KCL d ovKlOVeAoPos Ta' 'O OPpov ie`dEItCKvvTOatL Kai pLOoBV

r,4as oTgxov r&4ro7U PooX6v, Y-vqvyayEv AXoo-XEpeZs ras X esL%, Kal rapE-'&OKEV ,v-pWoLS
ro0oio ,"Kal UrrT1,orv, ( sKa, r birlypapt, a ro0ro 3^,Xot [ ]. &AXws X.y.erat rot
ovvepp?ddcrav cLV erwf urrprov -o70v^ rv 'AOlYvaiwv rvupdvvov r I"O,&pov rolLarat Kalt KaTr
'TcLV ru-VETCO7)Orav' 7 rplV y oropa&)v Kal W1 ,r;)(eV drvayLVAW)Kerva, &th Tb T'v appoyv)V
aivrrv (T XYpovy SLaOurarO(7vat.

Ven. 489 et 652: dvayKa iov 8~Z rAT rev iTvuoXoylav Ts ,ja; ~ as Elnrvl)oqva
KaKELYOV OTt rEVY T XPdvy Ta OpJ)pov rotqAara 7rapC40apquav q t) r rvpSp y -I V rarV7T rfLo
[ b~ra ~67Twov EBrLop& add. 489), Kl X JLAvdLXXwoWs rv pL6AX&rv SaKso8arOEVTWr y Kal

,4OapevTwv VO~reov ' PiO ' 6 / ~Y ~XVE / axbY T K r Tto V O/rvx p oiv~, 0 8E XXtivs, &A, os
&lSKoOs, aXAoXo
flewtorpaTro 'AOnvaiav ovS &v ieTVX,
or7pacTydos, Kal
OeXwv t LACEXXE
CavTj Xe O lr capa8e80r'0Oa
86arv rEpLroipaocrwOa, j roa)T
Kacl ra Tov O/ppov rL rolTs"s JAa.

dvavrawo-a, TsoLOwv T ovAcLwaTro iKqpvV V dv rcO j 'EEXXAdS iv Xovca 'Opk7pKobs

rTXyovv ayayety E pl avprby rtb AwE 0 J pw0 vy T( M Kaf IrKTrov iTLXOV raTvres oh of 0iXovre

arc4pov, ,KaL iaXP3avov astaO7rp6d4s TY OpurOv-raY l rOv. OVK rteaKE 8M oa -rv

44povra o0s ;7181 rpoeLkr)Oe4 OrTLovv iap' irwpov, (AXa KaKELvy Tyv atTby ireot88OV utur0v.

iYLoTe y-ap cv avro&s eva -. 8;o 1-X)ovs EpuT rKe EptL770o%, CYLOT6E 8a K A .lowsV eY 7LTs t0"
r7E Kal l rapel 'ovtf r epe l ro4s4 vvv ) o'oXLOLvv , oKal LpeTarb iivraT orvvyayayetv CrapKadXEUTv
o#' ypafarL7LKOvos
KaXW^ X&serrtv I r&uLrTO?f(ryvOEvaL 7r 701)
7provrYL AoYtKoZS 'OLIPOV,
dvSpaS7L ,CKWrrov
Kad Kar7aZv Kar'jKOoTry
ro7lpyaTIov, Tt8ar,8C&WK(S
,ros av 86, 79 (Tve oEvrO t

raivras 7ro S orIXOIvS KaT' 1Stav &oovs v 'avvayaydcv- Kal tErT 7"b 0'KaOrOV o'vvOeKvav KaTa
r~jv Mavro
dri-Eaqc Yvvr SEls
aQrr JunorvY v vveyTvr I yay.
8vnay rvrasy 7ro0V
ev, raydars 6poG TopoAEX09"ras
ivwr. orpoe oor dypaqppa7MLKOV9,
&poacrdraos, 04E4Aovras
o1 rrpbs rpwy dAXA rphs rb CaLE Kat rTUV 7b Ixj X pC a(pIWCOY, iKPLvay 1rarY7Es KtVY Kal
OYWSp9KPaT7iTpaQa 711 y(ov viOY Kal tSLtp'W LY 'ApTWiPXov Kal Z71vo&Tov. Kal rda'Xy

fKpLvav rTv 7k Sio YOvve We 7t Kat SLop'xewO fiALovYa riv "'ApTrCipXov. 'ret87 Sn 7'eves rTv
a'wvayay vrov 7o'OWup4pov "rlXovs ps "v HeWrT"prov & B 7)T rXe(ova w urObv Xa/3eiv
,'a ,os a."riov 4 ,, ,~ao tpTra, o.rKE.fLVoC r,-poOqeav, Ka vCIb iV ojwy Od EL yYovro "orZ

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 37

dvaytv WrKOVoLV, OVi' Xaleb roof fro vs Kptrae, aoXXa /L v &sh

ac()Kav<r7LXwyl
ro7Tov auo% Ken~rEOa&. b,TOo
rap47TOCperVOL XlatKKovS S EKW
o ZTb E resieavt rq nSLO
? IVTO TT(vt cSOKI
eO 70k atWV Ka . &LpOrat.XX\orptiv
'OjLpovv Kal av.7a v r70
Kat Erlypappa elsT T I1 betrpaTov orovv8aavTa ovvayayetv T 'OjQipov TLroVrov [ ].

The infantile legend of the LXXII. is evidently the same as that alluded to
by Tzetzes [below]: the source is held to be Heliodorus, not the metrician,
but a sixth century follower of Choeroboscus, to whom we owe a commentary
on Dion. Thrax (Uhlig, D. Thracis ars grammatica; 1883, praef. XXXIV. sqq.).
He is mentioned in the Latin version (Schol. A r. ed. Diibner, XXII b 42):
Heliodorus multa alia nugatur quae longo conuicio Caecius reprehendit. nam ab
LXXII doctis stiris a Pisistrato huic negotio praepositis dicit Homerum ita fuisse
compositum, etc.
The most explicit statement, however, is in the remarkable treatise by
Tzetzes published by Cramer An. Par. I. 3 from the MS. Paris grec 2677 s.
XVI.(= P) ff. 92 sqq. (repeated by Diibner, Schol. A ristoph. XVII. sqq., and Bergk
Aristophanes, 1853, XXXV.), and by Studemund, Philologus, XLVI. I sqq. from
five more MSS., Paris 2821, Vat. graec. 62 s. XVI., Vat. graec. 1385 s. XV.
(--V), Estensis III. C. 14 (= M), Paris suppldin. grec 655.
The important passage is p. 25 Cramer (XIX. 37 Diibner XXXVIII. 22
Bergk):

KaCTOL r7a 'OpAfIpW& of?38LjKVra o o ypa/loaTtKOe 7rt etLrot'rpc T ov ~'o 'AO0vaLwv

vp Ivvov ~EOrlWcav obTodrVl olropLr8)v oVras Th rrplv. 7rexpl0av S KYa' CrLTbV EKELVOV 7bT

KaLpbv Vr' 'ApEuOTdpXov Ka ZYvoS6ov, aXXOv vrTWVy TroWV TOV rtV II ToXalov SLop*O
ov'vrv., ov r-apTbi T roI ^Iv irr I II w-o-rpdrov 8&'poarov dvas4dpovo-tv, 'Optpd KporTovsidrT,
Zowrs p 'Hpadkfedf, 'OvoLaeKp4~r 'A0rlvaol Kat ErtKOr KoAX (so V and the Cambridge
MS. Bd. I1. 70 s. XV.; Ka't irT KO-YKV'XW M Kai *Kay e7LKOyKVUW, marg.* aOsvoospe(
'E7KX1v KOPSoplJXUv P).

A Latin version of this article discovered by Ritschl (Opusc. I. 5) in a MS.

of the Collegio Romano (4. C. 39. s. XV.) now apparently lost, had the head-
ing ex caecio in commento comoediarum aristophanis in pluto, and preserves the
same corruption uidelicet concyli onomacriti. Cf. also Dziatzko Rh. Mus. XLVI.
349. Giorgio Valla the Placentine in his book Expetendorum et Fugiendorunm
libri XXX VIII. 1501, quoted by Studemund, gives, the name as epitoncylo.t
It seems artificial not to see the source of this statement in Athenodorus head
of the Pergamene library (D.L. VII. 1. 29, Plut. Cat. min. 6), or to deny that
I I have inspected Par. 2677 (which was re-omitted it. It is to be presumed the original
collated by L. Cohn for Studemund). It is of
ran KiCl Kar' O l0bi6opo, irtKXv K, xoplvXlw a sr-u,
the late sixteenth century. The word we printK.r.X., and that when iO. drucX. ~op. got into the
ay ends in a letter which is not certainly y, but
margin (owing to the homoeoarchon of IruLKXS,
more like y than v or r. The scribe copied very
and r=0co-yKX,) without its preposition it was
assimilated to the case of the other proper
accurately, as appears from a mark (- .v-) tonames.-I owe the reading of the Cambridge
indicate a gap inserted after XoyvXW. He appar-
ently intended 40Go&4pw4 Ksr u IcXtop$su0wv as aMS. to Mr. Jenkinson. Paris grec 282T and
correction of cMa 4& Kncoy0rXcO, but it is incon-suppl. grec 655 want this part of the treatise, as
ceivable that it was his own conjecture, and thedo all the Bodleian Aristophanes MSS. (8), those
two phrases stand in no graphical relation toin the British Museum (6), and the other Paris
each other. He must have found the marginale MSS. of the Plutus (about 21). Par. 2677 is
in his original; the scribes of the other MSS. therefore still unique.

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 38 T. W. ALLEN

the same was among Cicero's so

among the Seven, and envisaged
mission.'
The three members whose names are clear, Orpheus,2 Zopyrus, and
Onomacritus, were three of the reputed authors of the Orphic corpus (Clemens
Alex. Strom. I. 2I)," to whom Epigenes v 7ToF 7rep' i T ele 'Opfe'a roo7oew6
ivacepope'Vyv .added Cecrops and Brontinus. We are therefore taken to
Orpheo-Pythagorean circles. Ritschl's conjecture Kbtcpwco is so far justified,
but it lacks graphical probability. Among the Pythagoreans names in -vXow or
-Xoq are frequent. I discover in Diels' Vorsokratiker ZXVXXov, 'Emr'OvXo- , 'AryXov,

'Ard-Xov, "OKxeXov, 9"Ox&XoT, BdOvXXoT. 'Er'ohvXoT is tempting, but leaves

-xoyic- unaccounted for. May we fabricate a name 'E7roKKXo ? Such a
person may have played a part in tlhe school of Pythagoras alongside of Bron-
tinus and Brotinus, and so have attracted the notice of Athenodorus.4 Valla's
epitoncylus is something like 'EFrrt'ryXavo9 -ov, a late name.
D. Solon or Pisistratus is accused of having inserted several passages in
the Homeric text.
(i.) B 558 of Ajax :

aTqre 8' dyov v'"A0valwv 'aravroT ,dahayye.

Strabo 394 Kai v v pev EXovw 'AOr7vaZoL Tjv vqcr'ov, 6b 86 'raXa&bv rpbs Mcyapias
winripcy atrroT ips rept a se' * lir t caorv oK i v IICeItSpcrov ol 8a i Iova rapeyypS ar'aC
iv Tr YEW^$ KaTaXo'yy /Aca Tb rbsTo ToVTO

Alas 8' K YaXapavoV dyrv 8voKal&EKa vtas [557]

f'jSs ToGro

rrioea, 8' aywv i 'AOtval'v orav"Tro 4caayyev

P.Tprvp xpIFOat TV ^rOvJT 70T VTV v? v ioov i dpX' 'AOjvcal'wv rdpp~a. ot rapa8EXovTra

8 T 70o7' o0 KpLTLKOL 8t4 "7 roXa TE7V rG7v dTLapTypeyiv a(tois. 8& 7T y&p vavAXOXWV
oxa,'ov ,rilwTal ALae, o, /e"' AOpBrvai&v &XXa /eTa ?r oiv ,'7rb IIpw~reTLXOdTy O?TTaXGv ; [he
then quotes N 681, A 327-330, A 273, I 230] ol '/Av 8% 'AOBlvaZot TOtav7')v 'rva ETcrKpatOaE
/aprlplav rap' 'Optpov 8oxorrw, ol 8% Meyap c di'T7rapysogaI orTos
Alta 8' IC K aXaphvov ayev vias i K e IIoXIXl'ts
C 7T' Alyetpoivawr Nwa&'s7; Te Tptro'SYv Te,

& 'art Xwpta MeyapuKa, &v ol Tplro8ev TporosOtKLov XAEyeTra, KaO' 8 o7 vGv dyop& 7Tv
MeydpWV Ke7&aL.

There is no good scholion on B 558, owing to the fact that the line is
omitted in A, and the whole catalogue in T. Strabo's language (ol pCrIcKOi)
2The motive is obvious, and excuses their mene librarians of the second does not appear.
credulity, or the reckless use they made of" Cf. the more confused list in Suidas, s.u.
Megarian allegation. They wished for an older
'Op4~es (I).
rival to Ptolemy. 4 This source of emendation I see from Suse-
2 Suidas: 'Opped; Kporwvtsnrs, iroerobr*mihl,
8, Alex. Littraturgesch. II. 246, had occurred
lletwterpdhr .wvrewar'es4 svpdvpW 'Aos&rStds
in x88z to Domenico Comparetti, in his treatise,
La commissions omerica di Pisistrato e il ciclo epico,
<FHG. III. 299> ,/,tb7 v IV 7 & k7^ Y p /PlY # ir,
Torino, z88x, who read Ear' "AO. rbv KopvXlwova
,ypa#eparcciav. As Asclepiades
school, this is considered wasindication
another Pergamene ofin
IcKX)r
the origin of this tradition. What kind distinguished
of 'Oyrb6X. I make
friend, whoevery amends
is equally to my
at home in
connection there was between the Megarean every period of ancient life.
historians of the fourth century and the Perga-

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 39

and his quotations show that he had access to

Aristonicus, and doubtless others) which are n
on P 230 :x
OiT LrXrr)aov 0 'ISofLjeos ACLavros~ o^ TeXa/CEovOv rd'a'
evpWvtWSi- TrapatLTpEOV cpaC IKELVOV 7bV rT&XOV TOY V 7

[B 558]" o 0 yYIp av 7rwXrt'ov AYa'vroT 'AOrqvawo.

cf. schol. A 365 and other exx. collected in the C
and the Odyssey-scholia throughout. The MS
on B .557: ypdet 8' icat Tv ' XdV o Xov & rv~X 'apaX~dyws. E v yp 1j7

'rpcw'-f ob ELX6e TOL/ Es0L TOlJo, aXX' % aoXovOLa oirwr of 8' "Apryoq.
actually omitted by two papyri and about twenty-six mediaeval
cluding Ven. A. The word ?rapaLtEryv is equivalent to d40ErEV.

Aristotle Rhet. I. 15 /LLPTVPIP E dE' 8&TTrol, Oa i&V raoXato o Sc 'rprd0

TOV'7rV o LEV erTEXOVTES 701) KLVVVOV OL 8) E' KT49. )7(0 Se wCaGcuoLEOU V TOV STE 7

Moov A)Xwv 2 7-vowpi`jwv tr xpr;tqS EavEpacl, odov 'AOBrvaZt 'O Ojpp oit'prvp& E XPi-ravro 7rEp4
Zaaqvos2. Plutarch Solon c. io. oI tLv AXX& riiv MCyap'Eow rqVivEv'row roXXa aGa
Kai 0Spovr(s v T; ro XWo(Lp KaL rdooXvrEs iro? travro ros AaK'E8aqLOoviovs tLX XcaKTS KOL
SLKaOL7-as oZ ,?V OPV o' OXXO T T;dVo VvUVL-yWVU'OTa(-cw- XIYOVO-t 717V 'Otpov 80aY'

4pflaX6dvTa yp ar1tv T 'ro vv wvKcLT'rXoyov ~br 1T s crsa vayvwva.c

Alir 8' ir CaXacLtvos cLyEv VOKcLaSK VaS,
UrT^o'e S' ryov iv' 'AO'Ivalwv u o-ravTo c4aXLyyCE.
aGTO 8' 'AOJva4ot TaT^Ta P\ ol o 4raL (vapltcW El"aL, Tvy SeXWVa ovctcwv U`ro&Ei8at ToZ.

StKaorTat 't K.T.X .... 'HpEc. I 8E ME apcLs [FHG. IV. 426, 7] EVardLEros' XYs,
K.T.X. Quintilian V. II. 40. neque est ignobile exemplum [auctoritatis] Megarios ab
A theniensibus cum de Salantine contenderent uictos Homeri uersu qui tamen ifse non in omni
editione reperitur significans Aiacem naues suas Atheniensibus iunxisse. Diog. Laert.
I. 2. 48 Iveot 8 4cL B e cad L yypitt a atbEv [-v 2doXowa] js [-v xarIaoyov '70 'O.&pov
/LECTa TOv

Ata gS'' EcLX 'ASO/LEVOS U 8E SVOKcL`8CKCL Vtal

o'rT^oe S' a~yv 'v' 'A0lval`ov Lravro cdhXayyes.

These mentions of Megara and Megarean authorities (and those which
follow) make Ritschl's supplement in the passage Diog. Laert. I. 2. 5 quoted

p. 34 practically certain: viz. LaXXov obv 'oXnv "Op Lpov 4 (O',rev *) Ilettor-
TpaTro [Cawenp ovXX4asa \r 'Op1'pov devroLrlE ?rtva ev -Tvi 'AOnvalov X dpvj SW
0otr AtevX1Uas dv E' Meryaputcov. v & p/dXUrTa Ta \7 r af j'aa of a ' ap' 'AG~val
eXOV xal \b v. Here a-vXXC'a9 is not absolutely required by cTW-t?-e,
EVEvrolife is required.
(ii.) B 573 o' O' '"Trreprlotv 'N ra V alrewv FPov6eo-o-av. Pisistratus or one of
his friends unwittingly wrote PFovdeOrav for Aovoeaaav, according to Pausanias
VII. 26. 13 quoted p. 36.
1 Strabo has many coincidences with our 2 That the Athenians did actually rely upon
extant scholia: e.g. 3, 328, 348, 367, 413, 424, this verse is quite probable. That it gave them
no real title, and was merely an indication of the
426, 439., 454, 543, 6oi, 616. -Places where he
used commentaries which are unrepresented, or moorings of Ajax' ships at Aulis, like 526 of the
barely represented, in our scholia are 550, 605, Phocians, I have said elsewhere.
fo8, 626.

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 40 T. W. ALLEN

(iii.) X 631:

Plut. Thes. XX. rohXo~ 86 XOyOL Kal m

oii8v 0o?oSk ,yvovo eXOVTEs. ot evya
Oe7o-oI, o 8' elf
d7roXcE4u0va& SE N dovOil'rb
70TO CPOsvavTrv KOltLrTOErav OlvdpTp ~ LEpo 70^ 0 ALSovV~ov o(VVoLKfv,
EpVos iTCpaq.

SELVOE yap tLv TELpEV pos Ilavortl8So AyX'1s. (fr. 105)

rovTo yap 7b ero9 CK 7 V 'Ho-dOov IEto-rTpa7ov e&EXe&v ~(Tv 'Hpa S 1MEyape~s,
Jo7rep aZ r7a'Xd ep/faXv eW rEl v 'OpApov VEKVdUV 7T6

Oqo7'ia IIpELPto6v Te O8Gv dpLStEtea iKVa (A 631)

XaptCo.Evov 'AOrvalvoL9.

Hereas deals with Theseus again ib. XXXII.

(iv.) K of the Iliad. schol. Tad init. caoi 7Ti'v /arep'av b ' 'Op pov 181'a
Tea'Oat sKai 7 elvae itpo9 7go 9 ' IXed'So, ?brb S7 IHetrrpdrov reTrdXOat ele r'TV
7rO77Lotv.

(v.) X 602-4. e&8wXov, abb 8s ,TSEPr' Cavcd'rotoYt Oeoat

7epre'at T ' a Oa ee aXXlarvpov"H/,lv

'raZ8a At ieydXov ca't"Hpi7 XpvrowrES`Xov

were added by Onomacritus, an &7a1poT of Pisistratus : ct40erovrat Kal XyovTra

'Ovotaxpp'rov elvat, schol. ad loc. (cf. Hes. Theog. 950 sqq.).

(vi.) Ox. Pap. 412. Julius Africanus, after quoting seven lines as Homeric
which end with X 51, says: ei'r' ov"v ovroTw eXov a7vST 7ro07/T79 eTo replepyov Tin

67reppofewT rTada a a th ob T7 biro9ewe ~otwea elo-errerrev, e'O'' ol IleeatorTpa-

riSat Ta aXXa OVvpa 7ToVTe9 rTal aaTa reXuav, aVXX pa J toXoTv 774;
7rotrtaoe deleva E7rtcpivavnTeT, deri roXXo1q ~rdycWKaTe e KLa 7roXvtrreXdE'a pov.
Here the commission has advanced to the position of the Alexandrines and
extirpates verses on their merits. So Tzetzes, quoted p. 37, invented a Pisistra-
tean Aristarchus and Zenodotus.

II.

This is the evidence upon which Pisistratus is believed nowadays to have

constructed the Iliad and Odyssey out of lays or earlier poetical material; to
have separated these poems from the mass of heroic verse; to have given them
an Athenian colour by the operations of excision, interpolation and the like.
I submit in this paper that this belief, ancient and modern, whatever expression
it takes, is false, and that Solon, Pisistratus and Hipparchus had no dealings
with the Homeric text and could have had none.

A.

The Iliad and Odyssey as we have them stand in an obvious relation to

the poems of the Trojan cycle as they existed during the literary period of
antiquity. The latter appear to presuppose the former. The immense dis-
crepancy in size, and consequently in treatment, between the Iliad and

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 41

Odyssey on the one hand, and the Cypria etc. on t

ascribing the same or similar origins in place or
the presumption is that the shorter poems follow i
fill up the intervals in the story which they left.
Iliad and Odyssey were originally short poems, of th
the A ethiopis and coeval with them, can hardly b
poems are plainly annalistic, and depend for thei

their &KoXovOLa Tiwv 7rparyarwv. The subject of

almost momentary. From an annalistic standpoin
really important episode, which Homer treats lig
and Hector are all that there is to mention. No po
with the ideas of Stasinus or Arctinus would have
these events. They would have either been include
an introduction to the Aethiopis. The subject of
Nostos. This of course would have fallen with
for instance far less historically and dramaticall
Agamemnon. The relation between the Iliad and
clearly, as Greek tradition had it, that the latter is c
of the former. The Cypria has an indeterminate
certainly, but with no end. Its end was made for i
Iliad, which it all but overlaps. The A ethiopis is e
three episodes, which we may represent by Pent
and Achilles' death. That is to say, it began where
means by which it was attached thereto, viz. the m
been preserved1), and ended where it does we do n
reason why it should ever have ended. I have s
fessional covenant determined where Arctinus sho
At all events we find the rest of the Siege divided
The Returns then follows, and this (a natural enou
Agias with one remarkable exception, as I have obs
Ulysses. But that it had been treated already why
it ? Treated annalistically, as Eumelus e.g. would
is, an average book) would have conducted Ulys
omitted this topic, and even more singularly we
prophesied but not related by Homer, detailed in a
books, the Telegonia. It is then plain that the Cycl
time of Proclus, implies the pre-existence of the Ilia
and the compass which belong to them now.
This also was the universal ancient tradition,
relation of Homer to the cyclic and hymnal poets
School. It is only a constitutional aversion-to tr
satisfied with this natural and organic relation

I And resemble the lines.(1021, 2) 2

byC.Q. 1908, p. 85-
which
the Theogony was connected with the 'Holau.

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 42 T. W. ALLEN

antiquity in the corpora of Hipp

the Hesiodic poems, which partly
not survive. I need not do more
and sculptors. The characteristi
of labour between the Master an
out the theme and corrects the
the subject, the pupils, either con
as in the Hesiodic, continue it
leaves. The second characteristic
does not exist. The Master is all in all. In the cases before us this secret has
been preserved in the cases of Hesiod, Plato, Hippocrates and Aristotle.
Tradition in the case of Hesiod,1 later study in the other three instances,
informed the ancient world of the heterogeneity of these corpora; but the self-
denial of the pupils had been complete. Their names were lost. It was
different with the Orphica: Clement of Alexandria has given us the key to
this School (Strom. I. 21.=131): on the authority of Epigenes who had
investigated the subject (v roZ 'rrept 7- eld 'Opbea eva/e poriva roojaecoz)
the authors were Onomacritus, Zopyrus, Prodicus, Cecrops and Brontinus: one
poem, the eld ov Ka'rdflao-tv, was variously given to Cecrops and to Prodicus.
It was different also with the Cycle. Candidates for all the poems are extant,
and about the Cypria and the Mucpa 'IhXtd there were differences of opinion.
How this secret de polichinelle was worked we do not know: the poems clearly
were anonymous: even when the Theogony speaks of Hesiodos the writer
suppresses himself. Cynaethus, the reputed author of the hymn to Apollo,
makes desperate efforts to distinguish himself by all the identification possible
short of his name (H. Apoll. 172 sqq.): country, physical peculiarity, talents.
Yet he had no success: the hymn was used as Homeric by Thucydides, and
all the rhapsode achieved was to fasten his own blindness on his master.
Hippostratus the Sicilian horographer gives us the clue: and the answer to my
question is perhaps this. The poems themselves were anonymous, and the
reader took them for the work of the master.2 The local 6poypdcio9, Artemon
or Hippostratus or the source of schol. Ar. Pax 1270, recorded the claims of
his fellow-countryman to distinction. Campanilismo knows no modesty. The
pupil effaced himself, and the Master took the credit with the general public,
the reader and the collector. The local historian, or the mimoiriste, the Vasari,
kept the truth in many cases, but he was not heard by the public, even by
Aristotle. At last came the critic; but he was often too late to produce more
than an amico di Sandro or an 'Op1npZ<ov rtv.3
If the Iliad and Odyssey are presupposed by the Cycle, if we can find the
date of the Cycle we have found the period which is the last at which the Iliad
and Odyssey can have been put together or materially modified. After the
1 Apud Paus. IX. 31. 4. 3 This is in substance the older view. Most
2 When Herodotus doubts the ascription of recent criticism (e.g., Hiller, Homer als Collec-
the Cypria to Homer he does so on critical tivnamt, Rh. Mus., 1887, p. 321) seems to me arti-
grounds, not in obedience to authority. ficial and contrary to nature.

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 43

Cycle has come into existence none of the feats

or his commission are possible. The traditiona
750-600 in round figures. This has been denie
Homrn. Unt. 348 sqq., and is often disbeliev
Wilamowitz's statement as more than rhetoric,
not stand by it now. It is based on nothing m
recorded statements.

The passages bearing on the dates of the poems of the Cycle are the
following. A ethiopis: an article in Suidas; 'Aprt'ivog T7Xeo w -oi) Nai'rew
daroyfovov, MItX'o to, 'orotoL, tpaOepr 'OpjLpov, co X7ye't KXhao#vto
'ApTE'pCOv &v t 7repl Oprjpov, 7e7ov0o ? KaTa 'Tv 0''OXvprtd~&aa ie-a r paKcata
n rc Tov TpOciK^Ov. Artemo (FHG. IV. 341) was a Clazomenian horographer,
and with professional accuracy guarantees his date by two eras, the Trojan
and the Olympiadic. Lesches rests on Phanias the Peripatetic (FHG. II. 299),
who arrives at his epoch by a description, 'he contended with Arctinus and
beat him,' i.e. he stood to Arctinus in the relation of Sophocles to Aeschylus.
The Thebais is older than Callinus (fr. 6) ; for Callinus we have, as the ancients
had, only an inferential date, but he cannot be later than the early seventh
century. Nothing has survived upon Agias and the rest, but similar descriptive
dates exist for two other poets of this period. Eumelus the Corinthian
genealogist 'fell in the time of Archias founder of Syracuse,' Clem. Alex.
Strom. I. 21, and Cynaethus, reputed author of the Hymn to Apollo, is dated
on the same method (' he was the first to recite the Homeric poems in
Syracuse, 01. 69') by the local Sicilian historian Hippostratus (FHG. IV. 432).
Hippostratus by his Olympiad contradicts his statement, for we cannot suppose
Syracuse did not hear Homer till Pindar's time. His figures therefore are
wrong (for the contents of the Hymn also show it was much earlier than the
end of the sixth century), as in his date for Abaris (fr. 3) his MSS. vary
between r' and vy'. The same has happened in many of Eusebius' entries.
These graphical variants do not invalidate the sources.
Of these authors Artemon and Hippostratus are annalists. Artemon
compiled copot, Hippostratus dealt in yeveaXoytat. Their dates therefore are
not critical, matters of inference, but traditional. They constitute better
evidence than constructed dates. Cynaethus and his visit were only an
incident in the history of Syracuse, Arctinus was only an incident, if a more
important and lasting one, in the almanac of Miletus. Eumelus must have
been connected with Archias by some entry in a calendar. Phanias it is true
belongs to the class of learned historians; he arranges writers in a sequence.
Still he was a compatriot of Lesches, and though he did the best he could for
his fellow-countryman, he must as a Lesbian have had access to local chrono-
logical sources. He is not bound to have exaggerated and invented. The
author of the Parian chronicle is indifferent to Paros (Jacoby, Rh. Mus. 59. 78);
he does not exalt Archilochus. And generally speaking local rivalry cuts two
ways; it tends to invention and to exaggeration, but tari passu exercises a

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 44 T. W. ALLEN

check upon these tendencies in

Propertius; whichever is right it
sight of Monte Subasio; Foligno
that the truth of Homer's career
Cyme, Smyrna, Chios and Ios. The
go back to documentary non-infer
upon statements made in the po
Homer down to the seventh cent
hymn or cyclic epos, and Plutarc
from a reference to an eclipse i
records.

Next the period to which the older part of the Cycle (viz. Arctinus' two
poems, Lesches' 'IhXts pucpd, presumably the Cypria, besides the Thebais and
the Epigoni) belongs, viz. 730-680 or thereabouts, is supported by the scanty
information we have about other epic work.
Archilochus lived Ol. 20, Callinus was older than he, ob ptaxpvr; Callinus
mentioned the Thebais as Homeric (fr. 6). The Thebais clearly goes into the
eighth century (see Strabo 647, Clem. Alex. Strom. I. 131). Magnes' Lydian
epos was written at the court of Gyges, when the Greek coast towns were
free (Nicolaus Damasc. FHG. III. 395, 6). Gyges reigned 'about 660 B.C.'
I read in Lehmann-Haupt's Solon of Athens, p. 23.1 Aristeas, the mage-poet
of Proconnesus, is located by Herodotus IV. 15 after calculation at about
670 B.C. Another calculation in Plutarch, as we have seen, made Antimachus
of Teos (perhaps author of the Epigoni) live in 01. 6. 3. These statements,
tradition or calculation, are in harmony with the annalistic tradition which
puts the oldest Cyclics into the eighth century, and in so far support it. And
when we find that the latest cyclic poem in order of subject, the Telegonia, was
written by a native of Cyrene (colonized B.c. 640-631), it appears reasonable to
assign the period of the production of the Cycle to 750-600 in round figures.
Another consideration supports this date. It appears to agree with the
general development of Greek literature. We cannot theorize as to when the
Cycle must or should have begun, seeing that it is itself the first documentary
fact in Greek literature: the Herodotean or Parian date for Homer would suit
the period 750-600 for its development, but the anterior limit had better be left
alone. It is unlikely however that an important movement such as the Cycle
and other late epic work (the Corinthian school, the Hymns, etc.) were, should
have found its inception later than 700 B.C. There is so to speak no room in
the seventh, even less in the sixth century for such a birth. It is likely enough
that post-Homeric epos, once started, dragged its length through these two
centuries to end in heraldic and genealogical poems only distinguishable by
metre from the first prose logographoi, into which they passed by a silent
process; but to start the movement, let. us say at 650, seems out of keeping
1 Magnes' poem is perhaps the 'AA aovia, A Smyrnaean at this time promulgated an heroic
catalogued among the Homeric works by Suidas. poem as Homeric.

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 45

with what we know of the birth and rate of prog

The forms of art which came to the birth in the
and iambic satire, the music of the Terpandrian lyre
and the refreshed melic epos of Stesichorus. These
rhapsode and his epos eventually off the field;' it
we must place the post-Homeric revival, the subst
Cynaethus, Eumelus, Arctinus and Stasinus. Stil
suitable. Lesbian lyrics open it, and a new visibl
the actor and his boards. These centuries are suitable for the continuance and
decay of the Homerid. We may easily assign the Hymn to Hermes2 and the
Telegonia to the end of the seventh century, but the beginnings of the art of
which these were the last specimens must be far earlier; and that they were
earlier is confirmed as well by the analysis of the literature which exists-the
larger Homeric Hymns and Hesiod-as by the tradition which we have noticed.
The traditional date therefore for the Epic Revival, the years following 01. ii,
appears to correspond to the necessities of the case. The comparatively clear
field of the eighth century is required to account for the confidence of poets,
who depended on public taste and the vogue of the heroic past, in undertaking
works which gave them, as in the case of Cynaethus, an international
position.
Now, if the received date for the Cycle holds, and the cyclic poems pre-
suppose, as we have seen, the Iliad and Odyssey in their actual compass, it is
evident that none of the operations upon Homer ascribed to Solon, Pisistratus,
or Hipparchus, can have taken place. If about Ol. 10, or 750 B.c., the Iliad
and Odyssey existed and had monopolized certain episodes in the Tale of Troy,
so that the epigonoi, like Arctinus and Stasinus, had the choice between events
anterior to the Iliad and subsequent to the Iliad, then the idea that Homer
was brought to Greece in the sixth century, or constructed out of lays into
poems in the sixth century, or written down in the sixth century, vanishes.
We have still to ask how the legend arose; but the legend itself, unless the
Cycle can be successfully post-dated, is dead.

B.

This argument appears to me convincing, and for eristic purposes nothing

need be added. Still, there is another order of considerations which bears on
the question, and should be stated. The poems, and especially the Catalogue,
are said to have been made use of on several occasions as historical evidence.
1 This is not mere surmise; the Hymn to The Minyae expelled the Paroreatae and Cau-
Hermes, though the story is frequent in later cones and founded six new communes in their
literature, is all but never mentioned. Alcaeus country. This was before the colonization of
killed it. The Iliu persis of Arctinus is super-Cyrene. The Hymn must either have been made
seded in the Tabula Iliaca by that of Stesichorus.before Pylos was destroyed or not long after,
2 Pylos in the Hymn to Hermes is Alphean orconsidering the rapidity with which it was for-
Triphylian. The Triphylian Pylos seems togotten. The neighbouring Samos is alive in
have perished from the Greek world in theStesichorus fr. 44.
events which are recorded Herod. IV. 145 sqq.

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 46 T. W. ALLEN

Herodotus informs us, V. 94, t

Mitylene for the possession of Sig

their participation in the Trojan

AloXe'iot I.MEvT "^i? 'IXtd'8o9 X''qlpl * o' Ica, ao0icbo Kal T ro-ti acXXoio' 0"o0
'EXX4vwov o-ve6rpl5avwro Meve>XU, rte 'EXvi 6 6prra'yd9. Herodotus represents
these events as taking place in the reign of Pisistratus. If this were the case,
the Athenians put forward the passages in the Iliad which, according to
modern criticism, had been inserted by their sovereign, and more than that,
appealed to a document compiled at Athens out of loose lays, and even written
down there for the first time. This would be a very curious title to rely upon
in any period of International Law, and the Lesbians would have had a plain
answer to give. If, on the other hand, we believe with modern historians
(e.g., Lehmann-Haupt, Solon, p. 50 n. 13) that the events in question took
place a generation earlier, i.e. about 600oo B.C., then the Athenian entry in the
Catalogue is seen to have been appealed to about the time that Pisistratus was
getting born. It was not fabricated by him at least.
If it were advanced that, notwithstanding other difficulties, people in the
sixth century were simple and unacquainted with fraud-a supposition quite
gratuitous in itself-we have the curious instance of Onomacritus to the
contrary. Onomacritus, entrusted with the custody of the Pisistratean corpus
of oracles (Herod. VII. 6), added one thereto upon the disappearance of
Lemnos. Tradition does not give the intention of the forgery (v. Macan,
ad loc.), but it can hardly have been other than political, and connected with
Athenian designs upon the Hellespont. He was detected in this fraud by
Lasos, a professional brother, and banished. If such a comparatively venial
crime was both detected and punished, how could Pisistratus' supposed
operations on the Homeric text (whibh must have been carried out through
this expert and his colleagues1) have escaped notice, and how could such a
falsified witness have been produced in international matters ?
For it was again appealed to in -the generation after Hipparchus, when
before Gelo (Herod. VII. 161) the Athenians claimed naval precedence on the
ground that their leader at Troy was distinguished for his skill at moving
bodies of men. This, of course, is a direct allusion to the most patent of
Athenian interpolations, B 552-5, athetized (though not on this ground) by
Zenodotus. The Syracusans, who had known the Ionic poet for two hundred
years since Cynaethus imported him, must have smiled at the Athenian version
of the libro d'oro, and at their shamelessness in quoting it. And even when the
unhappy Phocians in the fourth century based their claim to Apollo's treasury
on another entry in the Catalogue, though their impiety was abominated, their
document was not attacked. Yet the fourth century is the century of
Dieuchidas, and perhaps of Hereas also, who charged Pisistratus with adapting
the Catalogue to his country's interest. A document appealed to in inter-State
matters from the seventh to the fourth century must have been safe from
1 As is stated of X 602-4; c. p. 40.

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 47

alteration by interested parties. It must have be

This is a long way from interpolating, compiling,
in Pisistratus' chanceries.

C.

Pisistratus having composed, edited, and interpolated Homer, it follows

that the actual poems contain his interpolations. The ancients detected K,
B 558 and a few more lines (see p. 40); the moderns, with perfect consistency
and larger views, have seen further, and the present state of opinion is
practically that all mentions of Athens, Athena, Attica, and Athenians are
interpolated. I refer for details to Dr. Leaf, who has made himself the
receptacle of this as of most other current views.
It is difficult to understand the mental attitude of German critics and
their English followers. Do they understand what interpolation means ?
Interpolation of a document, alteration of a legend, like all conscious human
action, is dictated by motive-by the motive of your own honour, glory, or
profit. You do not finger documents and colour legends for the fun of the
thing. Let us take an example or two. The oldest version of Apollo's
invasion of Greece made him alight on land opposite to Chalcis and proceed
along the later ' pilgrims' way' to Delphi. The Theban Pindar set him down
at Tanagra, the Athenian Aeschylus landed him direct at Piraeeus. In the
pro-Athenian Dares of Phrygia Agamemnon collects his fleet not in Boeotian
Aulis, but at the port of Athens; Menestheus is allowed to wound Hector.
There are signs that the Athenians were discontented with Homer as he
stands; the absence of the children of Theseus at Troy stuck in their throats.
The Athenian family Acamantidae asserted that Homer said Acamas was
really at Troy (Demosth. Epitaph. 29); we do not know if they aspired to alter
the Iliad, or were content with a place in the Cypria. Euripides (Iph. A ul.
248), with some tact, disguised the Athenian leader as ' 7,o-47w raig, but
ejected Menestheus whom the envoys vaunted to Gelo, and increased the
Athenian contingent by ten at the expense of Argos. The awkward Menes-
theus was got rid of, we do not know by whom (Eusebius, Canon. p. 128 Scal.),
by being made to die at Melos on his nostos. The Cycle had already allowed
Demophon and Acamas to be present at Troy, probably as private combatants.
These are cases of proved interference with history, for intelligible reasons, if
without success so far as the Homeric text is concerned.'
If we now look at the Pisistratean Homer-that is to say, the text which
we possess-compiled, copied, edited, and interpolated by Pisistratus and his
board of experts, where are the signs of the Athenian interests served by all
this apparatus ? I can be shorter here because the subject is receiving the
attention of Professor John A. Scott ('Athenian Interpolations in Homer*
part I., Classical Philology, 1911, pp. 419 sqq.). I will first ask what we should
expect to find in the Attic Homer, next what we do find. In an ancient
1 Yet one of Euripides' new numbers-the papyrus (see on B 748).
contingent from Dodona --did get into one

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 48 T. W. ALLEN

historical document edited in the

find (a) the community in a front
in question; (b) forecasts, prophec
allusions to the actual position of
less in these respects (like Shakesp
pressure of their times." Now und
of Athens is not at all prominent
by Homer. The armament starts f
Menestheus, the leader of the c
practically gets no mention. Th
between Agamemnon (ioo) and Ni
better than that of the Locrians o
level with Thebes. In book N it
inferentially it bore the Ionian na
and clearly without glory. This is
a document. It is not a heraldic p
If we ask what the Athenians wo
him, the most obvious prophecy w
of the colonization of Asia in an
natives, etc.), and especially as h
in whose hands Homer was at his
sidered Athens their mother. Solon calls Athens the oldest land of 'Iaovia;
in his day this relation to Ionia was Athens' whole political past, all she could
point to besides Menestheus. If she thought this entry in the Catalogue
enough to justify her claim to Sigeion, what would she not have inferred from
a forecast of the hearth from which the Ionian settlers started ? And if she
could interpolate Homer, so as to in-ert Menestheus and Erectheus, why did
she not insert this essential title ? Some reference to Aegina also might have
been expected. Other allusions we should have found are detailed by Mr.
Scott, a portion of whose list I venture to reproduce.3
1 Hesiod let in Megara, fr. 96, 8 ; the N6&Tro Athenians, in whose hands the text is supposed
admitted Colophon. The Tauri appear in the to have lain, and may have lain, give themselves
Cypria, the island Leuce appears in the Aehkiopis. a better place ?'
2 Yet N is considered a self-evident Athenian SI.c. p. 427. ' Oedipus died at Thebes, * 679,
interpolation. I venture to repeat my remarks quite contrary to Attic tradition; Tydeus was
buried at Thebes, Z 114, while the Athenians
of 9go6 (Classical Review, XX. p. 294): ' the in-
tangibility of the Catalogue is most strikingly prided themselves on his burial at Eleusis;
shown by the insignificant position of Athens. Philomela is the daughter of Pandareus, r 518,
Modern opinion has allowed itself to be domin- not of the Athenian Pandion; B 107 shows no
ated by the idle legends of lines added here andtraces of the strife between Atreus and Thyestes;
there by Pisistratus and others; even these II 7x8, Hecuba is daughter of Dymas, in Attic
legends betray the all but total absence of suchtradition of Cisseus; H 392 and N 626 seem to
attempts, and their ill-success. The Athenians show that Homer knew nothing of the relations
in Homer appear as the unimportant tribe they existing between Theseus and Helen before her
were: a remnant perhaps of the prae-Pelopid marriage with Menelaus; 'Y 307, Orestes returns
to his home from Athens, not from Phocis;
inhabitants, at all events brigaded with leavings
and effeminate peoples, Locrians, Epeans--bow- I 145 gives names for the daughters of Agamem-
men who did not wear armour, and whose posi- non different from the names given by the
Athenians .. . Bellerophon has no help from
tion was defined as ' opposite Euboea.' If the
Pegasus, and Cassandra is no prophetess. ...
&dxKoreto is a conglomerate, why did not the

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 49

The position of Athens in the poems appears to

position in the heroic age. Attica we know was in
period, not only the hill of Athens but the country
and perhaps mines must have given it a substantial
in the Mycenaean world. No reason can be given
have been worshipped in her name-town (among o
pre-Olympian, one of the early daimones in favour a
religion. He is therefore a valuable survival, not an
No more chicken-hearted scheme of aggrandisem
by a monarch and his advisers. If the legend was d
malevolence of the ancients, it owes its continuanc
the modern historian.1

III.

We have now seen that the manufacture or compilation of the Ilia

Odyssey by Pisistratus or anyone else of his period is inconsistent with t
of the Epic Cycle; that the editing or interpolation of the poems b
is inconceivable in view of the use made of them in international law;
that the position given to Athens in Homer is correct and historical, w
interpolation in the national interest must have made that position
different ; and finally that the ascertainable efforts at interpolation were
unsuccessful. We therefore conclude that Homer was canonical and in
before the sixth century.
We have next to explain how the Pisistratus legend arose. If i
evidently at issue with the truth, how do we account for its existence ?
This question may be answered at once and without mystery. The
legend, saving the statements about the recitation at the Panathena
fabricated by Megarian antiquaries. This was seen by Flach, l.c. pp.
and I put it as clearly as I could in the Classical Review, 1907, p. 18.
Megara, as we all know, lost Salamis to Athens in the time of Pisist
she was despised and oppressed by Athens throughout the next centur
material revenge was possible to her. She did what she could by sland
misrepresentation. Thus, as Aristotle tells us, she claimed to be the m
of the comedy which had said such hard things about her. She wish
many other states, to get herself a position in the heroic age. The ' Meg
Is it reasonable to suppose that the Athenians Nestor by the somewhat obscure expedient of
had such control of these poems as to insert inserting the journey of Telemachus (and Pisis-
Pisistratus and to glorify Athena, yet never tratus)
tookto Sparta, then the entry about the
the pains to reshape these traditions, so easily
Lapiths in the Catalogue, and doubtless the men-
changed ?' tion of the whole barony is the work of Periander.
I The particular passages which have been But the Neleidae of the colonization may be
detected as Athenian interpolations are discussed relied upon to have seen to the preservation of
by Professor Scott and Mr. Lang. I will only their pedigree centuries before Pisistratus ap-
add that if Pisistratus proved his descent from peared upon the scene.
NO. I. VOL. VII. D

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 50 T. W. ALLEN
says Strabo 394, offered as the orig
the lines:

e T' Alfetpoi'aa; x Ntaifl9 Tre Tptoro'Sov re

& hare Xopla Mayaptec.
They accused Pisistratus of expelling these lines. A more definite source,
Hereas of Megara (FHG. IV. 426, 7), appears in Plutarch, Theseus 20, for
Pisistratus' removal of fr. 1o5 from Hesiod, and his insertion of X 631 into
the Odyssey (Xapt ei'vov 'AOqvato&t). Dieuchidas (FHG. IV. 388) is agreed
to be another authority for the legend of the insertion of B 568 (see pp. 34, 36).
A thorough-going Dorian, he also claimed -,yveedT and the bones of Adrastus
fr. 2 and 3). Megarian writers' ((Me.apBOev vvyypa sF) took away the
credit of Theseus' feat in killing Sciron. Sciron, who was of course a
Megarian, was no brigand, but an honest man. Theseus' deed was mere
murder, not a public service (Plut. Thes. io). Philochorus, fr. 42, had

explained Athena's title of #epdat as from one Scirus of Eleusis; Praxion v f/9'
MeyapteiWo (FGH. IV. 483) referred it to the Megarian Sciron. Natural
jealousy and hereditary dislike account for these accusations and polemics,
and dislike of Athens was not limited to Megara. Daphidas of Telmisa, a
grammarian of the time of Attalus, charged Homer himself with falsehood:

'AOrratoe 'typ osiC dErp~tevTaJ, d 'IXjov. (Suidas s.u. Aa 0'av.) Her enemies
would not allow her even a contingent. Daphidas may have had relations
with the anti-Athenian Pergamenes.
The Megarians, then, full of prejudices and determined to make their way
into the heroic age, declared statements in Homer which hindered their claim
and exalted their neighbours to be false. They did not succeed in their claim,
but by one means or another they did dislodge the offending line B 558 from
many MSS, at least by Quintilian's time; and we find them seated within the
less canonical Hesiod (fr. 96, 8). They took as a scapegoat Pisistratus.
' Pisistratus undertook the character of forger, an embodied rev.' That he did
so is plain, but the reason the Megarians had for pitching on him more than
another had not been clear. This I think I now see.

Pisistratus, who to us and in ordinary Athenian literature is a statesman

and despot, at best a. patron-another Polycrates or Gelo-bore another
character in some ancient paths of opinion. He was regarded as a philosopher;
he competed, not without success, for one of the seven chairs of the Sages, and
a work by him was held to lurk under the name of a rival Sage. Diogenes in
his preface says (13) Tovroet rpoaapcOpofItrv 'AvdXapCoCr o'v x78 yv, Mivawva
obv Xllv'a, c epexd ~v 1 v '~V tpov, 'EvrueLevis bv rv Kp-,ra" e'vo x Kai Iletwa'-
rpaTO V7b ri'pavvov. He uses similarly vague language I. io8, and Hermippus
who wrote 7repl rwv d'rth aoj6rv (VIII. 88) lends no countenance to Pisistratus;
the best authority for the legend is Aristoxenus, who repeats it again without

definite origin: I. io8 4ovat 8' 'Apitrrevo9 [e'v rot aropdcany, fr. 89] 5 e&vOev,

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 PISISTRATUS AND HOMER 51

xal 628oo40 v (sc. Myson) &Ts 48a TwXear ciX41 xax(0

0Oev St.I T)V J oflaaoa av aTOxa1 aT aV4roTO wTVa9 IletcuraTp
The two statements, that Pisistratus took Myson's s
published a book under his name, or at all events wa
book, evidently go back to the same sources, leg
recognized-that is to say, to the fourth century.
Pisistratus founded the first public library, accordi
Gellius VII. 17 makes him a book-collector. This a
from Pergamos, and Pisistratus again takes the wi
Who is responsible for the next I do not know, b
Peace 1071 on the word Bdicts we read lcrt Sa xal ar
is difficult to see what Ietdal'rpaTo9 T Bdxe~ can ha
except that Pisistratus himself was the author of par
oracles which was among his instrumenta regni.
There was, therefore, as early as the fourth cent
Pisistratean mythology in existence, according to wh
a writer under an assumed name, and an oracle-po
accepted at a later period by the grammarians of Pe
versatile monarch a rival to the founder of their enemi
When the fourth-century Megarian antiquaries se
a pedigree for their country, and were estopped by
alleged the falsification of that authority, they f
Athenian monarch in whose period Salamis had bee
about whom already a mist of tradition had begun t
been brought down to the world of the pen; the
pseudo-Bakis would have no difficulty in editing an
Ships. As the monarch Pisistratus took Salamis, Pisis
and poet forged his title.'
1 The patriotic activity ofthe
these Megarians
qualities which Professor Lehmann-Haupt
haswith
suggests to me a consideration given regard
him, a source
to for history and wis-
Theognis. The current hypotheses as to thequoted, has undoubted!y
dom, and constantly
origin of the actual poems perished,
appear to andme all
never a papyrus has brought a
incredible, even after the careful account of line of him, save as a quotation, to light.
Professor Hudson Williams. On the other It occurs to me that the idea of a patriotic
orthe
hand, there are certainly difficulties in Megarian
way origin of the edition has not yet
of believing the verses to have comebeen as they
considered. Patriotism sticks at nothing;
the indisputable poetical merits of Theognis
stand from the hand of their author, enormously
(Solon had those of our own Tupper) may have
exaggerated as these difficulties are. Moreover,
we have to account for the paradox that Theognis, to these Irelands in a good cause to
suggested
a reactionary Megarian EmigrE, should fortify
have sur.him by incorporating bits in the same
vived while Solon, father of the Athenian
veindemo.
from.other elegiacs. If they attempted this
they
cracy, Moses, poet and merchant, instinct withsucceeded.
all

T. W. ALLEN.
QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD.

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