_The Contest_, despite the rather laboured thrusts of the antagonists full of curious if not connected touches, makes the funeral solemnities of King Amphidamas the occasion and Chalcis (not Aulis or Delos) the scene of the encounter.
Victory and prize were adjudged to Hesiod, because he “sang of Tilth and Peace, not of War and Gore.”[184]
If left to a jury composed of or even leavened by fishers instead of to the king, the verdict would surely have gone the other way, were it only on the ground that while Homer affords several spirited pictures of fishing, we search in vain all Hesiod’s genuine works for any mention, for even any allusion to fishing.
The word _fish_ occurs only in _Works and Days_, line 277. Even if we allow _The Shield of Heracles_ to be by Hesiod, we find but one passage (lines 214-5) relating to fishing, and this with a Net.[185] Hesiod’s silence on the subject surprises, for (_a_) he boasts himself the poet of country life, (_b_) states that as a youth he fed and led his flocks on the sides and amid the streams of Mount Helicon, and (_c_) passed the rest of his life on the banks of the river Cephissus.[186]
Homer had previously, on consulting the Pythian Priestess as to the country whence he sprang, received a response, which I render—
“Thy mother’s home is Ios, where in time Thou’lt lie; but ’ware the young lads’ riddling rhyme.”[187]
But now let the Ἀγὼν speak. “After the contest the poet sailed unto Ios, and there abode a long time, being already an old man. Sitting one day on the sea-shore, he asked some lads returning from fishing,
‘What caught we, we left; what caught we not, we carry.’[188]
Homer, however, caught not on, until he was told that the key of ‘what’ was not fish, but lice.[189]
“Remembering him of the oracle that the end of life was upon him, he makes the epitaph for his own tomb. Arising thence, he slipped in the mud, falling on his rib, and on the third day, so men say, died. And he was buried in Ios.”
Ἐνθάδε τὴν ἱερὴν κεφαλὴν κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτει, Ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων κοσμήτορα, θεῖον Ὄμηρον.
“Here Earth has hid that holy head of thine, Marshal of heroes, Homer the divine.”[190]
The story of Hesiod after his victory over Homer as set forth in _The Contest_ repays telling.