A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

HOMERUS. HOMERUS. 507
verse; and besides a reference to the manner of epic mother-country, to write down parts of the Iliad
recitation, as different from that of lyrical poetry, and Odyssey, although we are not disposed to
could only be imparted to the word paav0s at a extend this hypothesis so far as Nitzsch, who
time when lyrical composition and recitation ori- thinks that there existed in the days of Peisistratus
ginated, that is, not before Archilochus. Previous numbers of copies, so that Peisistratus only comto that time the meaning of rhapsodist must have pared and revised them, in order to obtain a correct
been different. In fine, we do not see why pdr- copy for the use of the Athenian festivals. Whom
retw wads should not have been used in the signifi- Peisistratus employed in his undertaking Wolf
cation of planning and making lays, as p&7r'ELtV could only conjecture. The poet Onomacritus lived
cacKcd is to plan or make mischief. But whatever at that time at Athens, and was engaged in similar
may be the right derivation of the word, and pursuits respecting the old poet Musaeus. Besides
whatever may have been the nature and condition him, Wolf thought of a certain Orpheus of Croton;
of the rhapsodists, so much is evident that no sup- but nothing certain was known on this point, till
port can be derived from this point for Wolf's Professor Ritschl discovered, in a MS. of Plautus
position. We pass on, therefore, to the last ques- at Rome, an old Latin scholion translated from the
tion,-the collection of the Homeric poems ascribed Greek of Tzetzes (published in Cramer's Anecto Peisistratus. doia). This scholion gives the name of four poets
Solon made the first step towards that which who assisted Peisistratus, viz. Onomacritus, ZopyPeisistratus accomplished. Of him Diogenes La- rus, Orpheus, and a fourth, whose name is corertius (i. 57) says, r&'OuLpoU e d0roeoArjs rupted, Concylus. (Ritschl, de Alex. Bibl. u. d.
eypacfe pa3ETi;rOat, i. e., according to Wolf's inter- Sammlung d. Horn. Gedichte durch Peisistr. 1838;
pretation, Solon did not allow the rhapsodists to Id. Corollar. Disput. de Bibl. Alex. deque Peisistr.
recite arbitrarily, as they had been wont to do, Curis Homn. 1840). These persons may have insuch songs successively as were not connected with terpolated some passages, as it suited the pride of
one another, but he ordered that they should the Athenians or the political purposes of their
rehearse those parts which were according to the patron Peisistratus. In fact, Onomacritus is partithread of the story suggested to them. Peisistra- cularly charged with having interpolated Od. xi.
tuts did not stop here. The unanimous voice of an- 604 (Schol. Harlei. ed. Porson. ad loc.). The Athetiquity ascribed to him the merit of having collected nians were generally believed to have had no part
the disjointed and confused poems of Homer, and in the Trojan war; therefore II. ii. 547, 552-554,
of having first committed them to writing. (Cic. de were marked by the Alexandrine critics as spurious,
Or. iii. 34; Paus. vii. 26; Joseph, c. Ap. i. 2; and for similar reasons Od. vii. 80, 81, and Od. iii.
Aelian, V. H. xiii. 14; Liban. Paneg. in Julian. 308. But how unimportant are these alterations
i. p. 170, Reisk. &c.)* in comparison with the long interpolations which
In what light Wolf viewed this tradition has been must be attributed to the rhapsodists previous to
already mentioned. He held it to have been the first Peisistratus! It must be confessed that these four
step that was taken in order to connect the loose and men accomplished their task, on the whole, with
iincoherent songs into continued and uninterrupted great accuracy. However inclined we may be to
stories, and to preserve the union which he had attribute this accuracy less to their critical investigathus imparted to these poems by first committing tions and conscientiousness, than to the impossithem to writing. Pausanias mentions associates bility of making great changes on account of the
('raspool) of Peisistratus, who assisted him in his general knowledge of what was genuine, through
undertaking. These associates Wolf thought to the number of existing copies; and although we
have been the 5LaocvcevaC'Ta mentioned sometimes may, on the whole, be induced, after Wolf's exin the Scholia; but in this he was evidently aggerations, to think little of the merits of Peisismistaken. laao'tcevao' a are, in the phraseology tratus, still we must allow that the praise beof the Scholia, interpolators, and not arrangers. stowed on Peisistratus by the ancient writers is
(Heinrich, de Diask. Homericis; Lehrs, Aris- too great and too general to allow us to admit of
tarchi stud. Horn. p. 349.) Another weak point Nitzsch's opinion, that he only compared and exin Wolf's reasoning is, that he says that Peisis- amined various MSS. If, then, it does not follow,
tratus was the first who committed the Homeric as Wolf thought, that the Homeric poems never
poems to writing; this is expressly stated by formed a whole before Peisistratus, it is at the same
none of the ancient writers. On the contrary, it is time undeniable that to Peisistratus we owe the first'
not unlikely that before Peisistratus, persons began written text of the whole of the poems, which,
in various parts of Greece, and particularly in without his care, would most likely now exist only
Asia Minor, which was far in advance of the in a few disjointed fragments. Some traditions attributed to Hipparchus, the son and successor of
* It is ridiculous to what absurdity this tra- Peisistratus, regulations for the recital of the Hodition has been spun out by the ignorance of later meric poems of a kind similar to those which had
scholiasts. Diomedes (Villois. Anecd. Gr. ii. p. been already made by Solon. (Plat. Hipp. p. 228.
182) tells a long story, how that at one time the 6.) He is said to have obliged the rhapsodists
Homeric poems were partially destroyed either by d-7roA54ews fmftis rT'Otnpov Bd'~vat. The
fire or water or earthquakes, and parts were scat- meaning of the words 5 dvsroMK4sews, and their
tered here and there; so that some persons had difference from et mhroeoAts, which wasthe manner
one hundred verses, others two hundred, others a of recitation, ordained by Solon, has given rise to
thousand. He further states that Peisistratus col- a long controversy between Bickh and Hermann
lected all the persons who were in possession of (comp Nitzsch, lWelet. ii. p. 132); to enter into
Homeric verses, and paid them for each verse; and which would be foreign to the purpose of this
that he then ordered seventy grammarians to ar- article.
range these verses, which task was best performed Having taken this general survey of the most
by Zenodotus and Aristarchus. important arguments for and against Wolf's hypo.