[184] “It is difficult to understand how the author could derive from _Works_ _and Days_ a reputation like that enjoyed by Hesiod, especially if we remember that at Thespiæ, to which the village of Ascra, the birthplace and early home of Hesiod, was subject, agriculture was held degrading to a freeman” (Smith, _Dict. Gk.-Rom. Biog. and Myth._, _s. v._ “Hesiod”).
[185] When Pausanias came to Thespiæ on his Bœotian round, the representatives of the Corporation who owned the land told him dogmatically that the _Works and Days_ alone came from the Master’s hand, and showed him the _ne varietur_ copy on lead, wanting the proœmium which we read at the head of the poem (Paus., 9. 31. 4).
[186] The passage, attributed by Euthydemus (in his _Treatise on Pickled Fish_) to Hesiod, which mentions seven fish, does not upset my statement, because the paternity of the work has long been deemed spurious. Even Athenæus brands the verses as “the work of some cook, rather than that of the great accomplished Hesiod,” and concludes from intrinsic evidence, such as the mention of Byzantium, etc., and the Campanians, etc., “when Hesiod was many years more ancient than any of these places or tribes,” that they were written by Euthydemus. See Athen., III. 84.
[187] Ἁλλὰ νέων παίδων αἴνιγμα φύλαξαι. For other epigrammata, see _Anth. Pal._ VII. 1 to 7, and Plutarch, _de vita Homeri_, 1. 4.
Ἐρώτησις Ὁμήρου. Άνδρες ἀπ’ Ἀρκαδίης ἁλιήτορες, ἠ ῥ’ ἔχομέν τι; Ἀνταπόκρισις Ἀρκάδων. Ὄσσ’ ἔλομεν, λιπόμεσθ’, ὄσσ’ οὺχ ούχ ἕλομεν, φερόμεσθα,
“Fishers from Arcady, have we aught? Our catch, we left; we bear, what we ne’er caught!”
[189] It suggests itself to me that in the answer to the riddle there is just possibly a play within a play, or a double latent meaning, for the word φθεὶρ denotes not only a louse, but also a fish of the Remora kind. Perhaps this humour is too subtle even for a class so noted for “calliditas,” or shrewd wit, as Greek fishermen are reputed to have been.
[190] _Anth. Pal._, VII. 3. Κοσμήτορα I prefer to translate “marshal,” its first meaning, rather than “adorner” adopted by Coleridge, as being far stronger, and more fitting for a poet who had “marshalled” on his stage of the _Iliad_ so many heroes. Herodotus states that the people of Ios (not Homer) wrote the epitaph at a subsequent date.