Endnotes, Part 5

EN5.1 (Endnote to n5.1)

{746|747} In Nestor’s story in Iliad 11, when he routs the Epeians and the Pylians turn for home, the language imitates the language used of the turning point in a chariot race, as exemplified in the chariot race of Iliad 23. But there is a difference between the two passages in that the passage of Iliad 23 occurs after the turning point has already been passed; the phrase πύματον τέλεον δρόμον, “were completing the end of the course,” in Iliad 23.373, which is echoed in the phrase ἄνδρα κτείνας πύματον λίπον, “I killed the last man and left him,” in Iliad 11.759, actually refers to the second half of the race, the “home stretch” (Iliad 23.373–375):

The same phrase, ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ πύματον τέλεον δρόμον, is also used for the second half of the footrace, when Odysseus prays to Athena (Iliad 23.768). As the lines above occur in the chariot race, however, they give the initial impression that the turning point is at hand; the phrase in bold in the first line contributes, I think, to that impression. Nestor’s speech of advice to Antilochus has created anticipation for the turn, and the first part of the chariot race, before the turn, has just been vividly described (lines 362–372; cf. n2.32 above); thus the phrase πύματον τέλεον δρόμον, “they were completing the end of the course,” at first seems to refer to the end of the first part of the race, before the turn, and not to the second part of the race; {747|748} only in the next line, with the phrase “back toward the grey sea” (ἂψ ἐφ’ ἁλὸς πολιῆς), does it become clear that the turn has already been made, and that the real contests are about to begin (τότε δὴ…, “then indeed…”). The passage, I think, misleads deliberately: the phrase πύματον τέλεον δρόμον, in which the repeated final syllable echoes the beating of the horses’ hooves, intensifies anticipation of the turning point, and the word ἄψ at the beginning of the next line, implying that the turn has already been made, is a surprise. This sudden shift of perspective has a purpose: immediately the relevance of Nestor’s speech of advice for executing the turn disappears from the surface of the narrative and remains hidden through the rest of the race. The single word ἄψ effectively takes the place of the turning point in the race of Iliad 23. In Iliad 11 the same word ἄψ marks the turning point in Nestor’s battle, when the victorious Pylians turn back from Bouprasion and head for home. The sound symbolism anticipating the turn is virtually the same in the battle as in the chariot race: ἔνθ’ ἄνδρα κτείνας πύματον λίπον. Thus Iliad 11, in which the context is a battle, straightforwardly evokes the turn in a chariot race, whereas Iliad 23, in which the context is a chariot race, uses similar diction to dispose of the turn quickly after it has already occurred.

EN5.2 (Endnote to n5.12)

Ernst Meyer, an expert on the western Peloponnesus, has steadfastly maintained that in Homer the city of Pylos is in Tripylia, not Messenia. See his RE article ‘Pylos,’ 2143–2146 (completed in 1950, before the Linear-B decipherment, but published only in 1959); the Linear-B decipherment did not change Meyer’s mind, as he states in an addendum to the article, 2520: “On the clay tablets of Ano-Englianos the name Pylos (pu-ro) occurs often, apparently designating the palace, although this is not certain; see Ventris-Chadwick, Documents 141f., Hampe, Gymnasium 63 (1956) 51f. But the fact that the name Pylos is also attested here already for the Mycenaean period changes nothing in the situation” (“In den Tontafeln von Ano-Englianos kommt der Name Pylos (pu-ro) häufig vor, anscheinend den Palast bezeichnend, obwohl das nicht sicher ist, s. Ventris-Chadwick, Documents 141f., Hampe, Gymnasium 63 (1956) 51f. Aber der Umstand, dass der Name Pylos damit auch hier schon für die mykenische Zeit belegt ist, ändert an der Sachlage gar nichts”). See also Meyer 1951:127 and 1957:81–82: in the latter he says: “I have…recently reestablished at length that the understanding won by the Hellenistic Homer interpreters, which was then revived especially by Dörpfeld, is the only correct and possible one, that we must look for the Homeric Pylos in Triphylia, and thus in the palace installation of Kakovatos. Even the most {748|749} brilliant discoveries at Ano-Englianos change nothing in that, including the fact that the clay tablets found there now apparently attest the name Pylos already for this Mycenaean palace too…” (“Ich habe…vor kurzem ausführlich neu begründet, dass die schon von den hellenistischen Homererklärern gewonnene Erkenntnis, die dann besonders von Dörpfeld neu belebt wurde, die allein richtige und mögliche ist, das homerische Pylos in Triphylien und damit in der Palastanlage von Kakovatos zu suchen. Daran ändern auch die glänzendsten Entdeckungen in Ano-Englianos gar nichts, auch nicht der Zustand, dass die dort gefundenen Tontafeln nun offenbar den Namen Pylos auch schon für diesen mykenischen Palast belegen…”). Meyer restated his position again in 1978 in his authoritative article ‘Messenien’ (RE Supplement 15) 228: “That the discovery of the palace of Englianos and the clay tablets there have refuted the thesis of the Triphylian Pylos, as the defenders of the Messenian Pylos suppose, is altogether out of the question; on the contrary, this find has done the opposite and refuted with all clarity the location of the Homeric Pylos in Messenia” (“Davon, dass die Auffindung des Palastes von Englianos und die dortigen Tontafeln die These des triphylischen Pylos widerlegt hätten, wie die Verfechter des messenischen Pylos meinen, kann überhaupt keine Rede sein, im Gegenteil haben umgekehrt gerade diese Funde die Ansetzung des homerischen Pylos in Messenien mit aller Deutlichkeit widerlegt”). As Meyer here indicates, the debate over the location of Homeric Pylos has focused on the two palaces at Ano-Englianos and Kakovatos; Leonard Palmer, an ardent defender of Ano-Englianos as the site of the Homeric city, took Meyer to task for failing to revise his views on the subject (see Palmer 1965:50), but Meyer remained unmoved by such criticism.

EN5.3 (Endnote to n5.13)

The main evidence for the location of Pylos in the Odyssey is the journey of Telemachus and Peisistratos from Pylos to Sparta and back again to Pylos, in which the pair spends a night in Phērai (Φηραί) each way. In antiquity Phērai was understood to be the city so named at the head of the Messenian Gulf (modern Kalamata); this city lies on a direct line between Messenian Pylos and Sparta but is completely out of the way for a journey from Triphylia to Sparta. The defenders of a Triphylian Pylos dispute the Messenian location of Phērai in the Odyssey because of Mount Taygetos, which separates this Phērai from Sparta, and which is said to be impassable by chariot on the routes across the mountain assumed for antiquity (Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2144 citing Bölte RE ‘Sparta [Geographie]’1343–1347). Whether or not Taygetos was impassable (the point is disputed by Kiechle 1960:15n2, citing Valmin 1930:50–51 and McDonald {749|750} 1942:542; Luraghi 2002:53n44 cites more recent work which emphasizes the importance of direct connections between Sparta and Messenia across Taygetos), it is certainly true that the text of the Odyssey takes no notice of a very large impediment to the completion of Telemachus’s journey if Phērai is in Messenia. But what is the conclusion to be drawn from this? If we believe that the Homeric poets had an accurate idea of Peloponnesian geography, including the passage across Mount Taygetos, and that they were concerned to convey such accuracy, we will look for another city named Phērai further north, on the route between Triphylia and Sparta, and a possible candidate has indeed been found: a town Φαραία is attested by Polybius 4.77.5 for somewhere east of Olympia (for the likely location of this town see Meyer 1957:85, who locates it in Arcadia less than twenty kilometers northeast of Olympia on the Erymanthos River; Meyer shows that another location proposed by Bölte is based on a misunderstanding of Strabo 8.3.32; cf. EN5.6). But we will judge the matter differently if we realize that it is Nestor’s story in Iliad 11, and nothing else, that gives the impression that the Homeric poets had measured out the western Peloponnesus step by step; Nestor’s story, with its detailed geography, is thus the crux of the problem (cf. Wilamowitz 2006:330 for the vagueness of Homer’s Peloponnesian geography as the key to the problem of Mount Taygetos). As for the identity of Phērai in the Odyssey, those who deny that it is what it was thought to be in antiquity, namely the city on the Messenian Gulf, must first of all deny the evidence of the Odyssey in an important passage; when Penelope takes Odysseus’s bow from the storeroom we are told where Odysseus acquired it, namely in the house of Ortilokhos “in Messene” (Odyssey 21.13–16):

Telemachus and Peisistratos, when they reach Phērai, spend the night in the same house, except that now Diokles, the son of Ortilokhos, inhabits it (Odyssey 3.488–489 = 15.186–187):

Besides Mount Taygetos there is a further objection to the Messenian location of Phērai in the fact that the Alpheios River is called the father of Ortilokhos in the above passage of the Odyssey and in Iliad 5.544–546; it is argued that Phērai, Ortilokhos’s city, should not be in Messenia but closer to the Alpheios. This argument, however, is outweighed by the passage concerning Odysseus’s bow, which explictly says that Ortilokhos’s house is in Messenia, which means Phērai (cf. Kiechle 1960:63). In Phērai local traditions of Ortilokhos and his family (which included by marriage the hero Makhaon) are found in Pausanias 4.30.3 (cf. Kiechle 1960:50, 61, 62–63; for Makhaon’s presence in Messenia see above n2.20). In Odyssey 21 the additional specification Λακεδαίμονι, “in Lacedaemon,” of the place of Odysseus’s encounter with Iphitos presupposes the Spartan conquest of territory on the Messenian Gulf in the eighth century BC (i.e. before the First Messenian War) by the Spartan king Teleklos (Strabo 8.4.4, on which see Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2144; cf. also Pausanias 3.2.6); the same Spartan conquest perhaps explains Agamemnon’s offer to Achilles in Iliad 9 of seven cities on the Messenian Gulf (ἐγγὺς ἁλός, Iliad 9.153 and 295), one of which is Phērai (Iliad 9.151 and 293; Cartledge 2002:98 speculates that Phērai, which was later regarded as a Spartan colony, was brought into the Spartan sphere by Teleklos; cf. Hammond 1982:327–328). It has been suggested that these seven cities, which are described as νέαται Πύλου, “outermost in Pylos” (Iliad 9.153 and 295), once belonged to Pylos in the Catalogue of Ships (Burr 1944:60–61; Kiechle 1960:63–65; for the word νέαται as properly implying inclusion of the cities within the kingdom of Pylos see Palmer 1965:86n1; against the suggestion Simpson and Lazenby 1970:89n37); a different list of seven cities occurs on the Pylos tablets as constituting the “further province” of the Pylian kingdom in the Mycenaean era (see Palmer 1965:88–91, who locates these cities on the western side of the Messenian Gulf, whereas, of the cities named in Iliad 9, at least Kardamyle lies on the gulf’s eastern shore). {751|752}

EN5.4 (Endnote to n5.24)

Strabo 8.3.14 says that Triphylian Pylos was 30 stades from the sea, but this figure apparently represents the distance of Pylos from Samikon (Bölte 1934:341). According to Strabo 8.3.16 (Apollodorus is his source) Samikon was 100 stades from the Alpheios River to the north and 100 stades from Lepreon to the south: μεταξὺ δὲ τοῦ Λεπρείου καὶ τοῦ Ἀλφειοῦ (Ἀννίου cod.) τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Σαμίου Ποσειδῶνος ἔστιν, ἑκατὸν σταδίους ἑκατέρου διέχον, “The temple of Samian Poseidon is between Lepreon and the Alpheios, 100 stades distant from each.” The scholia to Iliad 11.726 combine the 100 stades from the Alpheios to Samikon with the 30 stades at issue for the location of Pylos to give the distance from the Alpheios to Pylos as 130 stades: δῆλον οὖν ὅτι [Νέστωρ] τοῦ Ἀρκαδικοῦ Πύλου ἄρχει, ὃς ἀπέχει Ἀλφειοῦ ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα σταδίους, “It is clear that [Nestor] rules the Arcadian Pylos, which is 130 stades from the Alpheios.” Strabo 8.3.26 (Apollodorus is again the source) supports the view that this Pylos is the Homeric city by its substantial distance (more than thirty stades) from the sea: καὶ γὰρ δὴ οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι Πύλοι ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ δείκνυνται, οὗτος δὲ πλείους ἢ τριάκοντα σταδίους ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς, “Indeed the other Pyloses [that] are pointed out [are] on the sea, but this one [is] more than thirty stades inland from the sea.” In light of Bölte’s explanation of the distance “inland from the sea” Strabo’s argument for the Triphylian Pylos is overstated. Strabo 8.3.16 treats it as self-evident that the location of the Pylians’ sacrifice to Poseidon in Odyssey 3 was his temple at Samikon, indicating that for Strabo’s Hellenistic sources the temple at Samikon had become an integral part of the case for a Triphylian Pylos (cf. Biraschi 1994:37–42); it is perhaps for this reason that Strabo appears to let Samikon stand for Triphylian Pylos in a measurement of the distance from Messenian Pylos to Triphylian Pylos (cf. n5.45 on Strabo 8.3.21 and Biraschi 1994:40n47). Triphylian Pylos represented the northern half of Lepreon’s territory, and like the southern half (Lepreon itself) it bordered the coast. This is suggested by “Scylax” Periplus 44, who says that the παράπλους τῆς Λεπρεατῶν χώρας (i.e. Lepreon’s whole coastline) was 100 stades, corresponding to the distance from the Neda River (the border between Lepreon and Messenia) and Samikon (Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 200). Pylos continued to be part of Lepreon in later antiquity, as Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2131 infers from this and other evidence: “That it later belonged to Lepreon is indirectly confirmed by Scylax 44, who still inserts between Elis and Messenia the territory of Lepreon with a coastline of 100 stades. This agrees exactly with the distance from the coastal pass of Klidi to the Neda River. Strabo provides direct confirmation with the frequent designation of this Pylos as Λεπρεατικός, ‘Leprean’” (“Die spätere {752|753} Zugehörigkeit zu Lepreon wird indirekt bestätigt durch Skylax cap. 44, der zwischen Elis und Messenien noch das Stadtgebiet von Lepreon einschiebt mit einer Küstenerstreckung von 100 Stadien. Das passt genau auf die Strecke vom Küstenpass von Klidi bis zur Neda. Direkt bestätigt es Strabo mit der häufigen Benennung Λεπρεατικός für dieses Pylos”). Lepreon itself became the political center of Triphylia in the mid-fourth century BC (cf. Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 200: “The region of Triphylia was politically united in the city of Lepreon” [“Die Landschaft Triphylia wurde in Lepreon städtisch geeinigt”]); for Triphylia’s later history see Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 200–201; cf. EN5.18.

EN5.5 (Endnote to n5.30)

The location of the Olenian Rock (Iliad 2.617, 11.757) has been disputed since antiquity (see Rizakis 1995:119 for full details and bibliography; cf. also Dräger’s note in Wilamowitz 2006:322n1115). If the four towns of Elis in the Catalogue of Ships are to be located in the country’s four corners, as has been suggested (see n5.29), this, in addition to a similarity of names, is an argument for associating the Olenian Rock with the town of Olenos in western Achaea, and locating the Olenian Rock in the northeast corner of Elis. The country of the Epeians extended farther north and east, into Achaea, than did the historical region of Elis; Strabo 8.3.9 cites Hecataeus for the fact that Dyme, the westernmost city of historical Achaea, was once part of the Epeians’ country (cf. n5.56), and Olenos lay next to Dyme. Besides its two occurrences in Homer the name Olenian Rock occurs in a fragment of Hesiod, which locates it on the river Peiros (Hesiod fr. 13 MW). Strabo 8.3.11, quoting the fragment, identifies the Peiros with the River Acheloos near Dyme: ὁ δὲ Τευθέας εἰς τὸν Ἀχελῶον ἐμβάλλει τὸν κατὰ Δύμην ῥέοντα, ὁμώνυμον τῷ κατὰ Ἀκαρνανίαν, καλούμενον καὶ Πεῖρον. τοῦ δ’ Ἡσιόδου εἰπόντος, “ᾤκεε δ’ Ὠλενίην πέτρην ποταμοῖο παρ’ ὄχθας / εὐρεῖος Πείροιο,” μεταγράφουσί τινες Πώροιο οὐκ εὖ, “The Teutheas joins the Acheloos, which flows through Dyme and has the same name as the river in Acarnania, and is also called the Peiros. Hesiod says: ‘He inhabits the Olenian Rock by the banks / of the wide Peiros,’ which some wrongly change to Poros.” Herodotus 1.145, in his list of the twelve Achaean cities, says that the Peiros is in Olenos (῎Ωλενος, ἐν τῷ Πεῖρος ποταμὸς μέγας ἐστί, “Olenos, in which is the big river Peiros”), and Strabo 8.7.4 seems to have reported the same information (the name of the river in Strabo is corrupt). Following Strabo 8.3.9, who says that some located both Alesion and the Olenian Rock on the borders of the Pisatis, Bölte 1934:331–333 rejects the location in northeast Elis (he argues that the Hesiodic poet used the Homeric name Olenian Rock arbitrarily to refer to Olenos, which had been abandoned at an early time; cf. Strabo 8.4.7, 8.7.5 end), and confidently identifies the {753|754} Olenian Rock with a striking formation to the east of Karatula, overlooking the Lestenitsa valley: “Here Partsch 5 pointed out east of Karatula and high above the valley a noteworthy natural formation, a narrow sandstone block with 50 meter high walls, from whose western end (325 meters above sea level) one’s view ranges freely over the valley; at the east end remains are preserved of what is probably, at the oldest, a medieval structure. To the west beneath the block lies the village of Olena [Ωλένη]” (“Hier hat Partsch 5 östlich von Karatula und hoch über dem Tal ein merkwürdiges Naturgebilde nachgewiesen, einen schmalen Sandsteinklotz mit 50 m hohen Wänden, von dessen westlichen Ende (325 m ü. M.) der Blick frei über das Tal schweift; am östlichen Ende sind Reste eines wohl erst mittelalterlichen Baues erhalten. Nach Westen zu aber liegt unter dem Klotz das Dorf Olena [Ωλένη]”). Bölte correctly does not attribute great importance to the name of the modern village, but the striking nature of the landmark is highly suggestive, especially for Iliad 11.

EN5.6 (Endnote to n5.35)

Strabo 8.3.32, one of the passages in which Strabo locates Bouprasion between Elis and Dyme, refers to a city Φηραία “in Arcadia: it lies inland from [south of] Dyme, Bouprasion, and Elis” (ἡ δὲ Φηραία ἐστὶ τῆς Ἀρκαδίας· ὑπερκεῖται δὲ τῆς Δυμαίας καὶ Βουπρασίου καὶ Ἤλιδος). Bölte 1934:335 takes this city to be the Arcadian city of Φαραία referred to by Polybius 4.77.5 (for Pharaia see EN5.3), and he interprets the text of Strabo by taking Dyme to be a mistake for Tritaia, which is well to the south. Meyer, on the other hand, takes Φηραία in Strabo to refer to the Achaean city of Pharai (for Pharai see n5.52), which was south and slightly east of Dyme, and thus southeast of Bouprasion (Meyer 1957:84–85); this fits the location given in Strabo. Meineke, in his edition of Strabo, rejects the passage.

EN5.7 (Endnote to n5.44)

To support the idea that Homeric Pylos is in Triphylia Dörpfeld 1913:118–119 argues that Telemachus’s voyage from Ithaca to Pylos, which began at sunset and ended sometime after dawn, had time to reach Triphylian Pylos but not Messenian Pylos, some 60 kilometers further on (cf. also Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2146). Palmer 1965:45–48 neatly disposes of this argument by pointing out that Nestor, on his return from Troy, sailed from Lesbos to Euboea in a day and part of a night, a journey of the same length as that considered impossible by Dörpfeld, and completed in the same time (a day and part of a night as compared with a night and part of a day). Whether or not such a journey was actually possible is thus irrelevant to the question (the point is well {754|755} illustrated by the map in Palmer 1965:46–47; cf. also Visser 1997:526n36). A refinement of the same argument claims that Telemachus, who in one day returns by chariot from Phērai to Pylos and by sunset sails as far as Pheai, past the Alpheios River, can only have done so if he did not have to sail the roughly 60 kilometers between the Messenian Pylos and the Triphylian Pylos (Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2146). In answer to this it is perhaps enough to say that if Mount Taygetos did not stop Telemachus on his way to Sparta, the journey from Phērai to Pheai in one day was also not impossible for him. But we can go further and compare the time spent on Telemachus’s return voyage from Pylos to Ithaca with the full night and part of one day spent on his initial voyage from Ithaca to Pylos: Telemachus arrives back in Ithaca at dawn (Odyssey 15.495–496), so that his whole voyage from Pylos took part of one day and a full night, whereas his initial voyage took a full night and part of one day. The voyage home takes the same time as the voyage out, and the voyage out, as Palmer showed, can perfectly well have been to Messenian Pylos. If the point about the difficulty of reaching Pheai by sunset is pressed, there is an answer to that as well: when the sun sets (Odyssey 15.296), Telemachus’s ship is on its way to Pheai (ἡ δὲ Φεὰς ἐπέβαλλεν, Odyssey 15.297) but has not yet reached it; the vagueness of the ship’s location at this point frees the voyage from the demands of a tight schedule. Cf. Wilamowitz 2006:341.

EN5.8 (Endnote to n5.62)

In my discussion of Odyssey 15.295–300 (§5.15–§5.17) I argue that two lines of the passage, 295 and 298, were added to the text (so too Bolling 1925:244–245): according to my interpretation an early political controversy featuring an Eleian and a Messenian Pylos led to the addition of line 298, and a later scholarly controversy featuring a Triphylian Pylos led to the addition of line 295. Other solutions to the difficulties of this six-line passage have been proposed, two of which I consider here. In a recent discussion James Diggle (in Bittlestone 2005:517–518) proposes to omit from the original text of the Odyssey the entire passage 15.295–300, which he calls, aptly enough, a “magpie’s nest.” In Diggle’s simplified version Telemachus sets sail from Pylos, Athena sends a following wind, and Telemachus is not mentioned again until he is on the shores of Ithaca in Odyssey 15.495. In my view, with lines 295 and 298 omitted, problems in the rest of the six-line passage are minor, if not entirely negligible. In line 299 a change of subject from the ship to Telemachus is not signaled, but is indicated at the beginning of line 300 by the masculine participle ὁρμαίνων, “pondering.” In line 299 the verb ἐπιπροέηκε, “he struck out for,” is used intransitively whereas it {755|756} takes a direct object elsewhere in Homer; the simple form of this verb (ἵημι, “send”) is also used intransitively (of springs and rivers that “pour forth,” Odyssey 7.130 and 11.239), whereas in Iliad 12.33 and 21.158 the verb has an object ὕδωρ, “water,” in a similar context. Line 299, in which the compound verb occurs, is formulaically related to two lines in the Iliad in which νηυσίν, “ships,” instead of νήσοισιν, “islands,” occurs (in these lines, Iliad 17.708 and Iliad 18.58 = 18.439, someone sends someone else either “to the ships” or “by means of ships”); Odyssey 15.299 (ἔνθεν δ’ αὖ νήσοισιν ἐπιπροέηκε θοῇσιν, “he struck out for the swift islands”) in fact looks like a formulaic transformation of Iliad 17.708 (κεῖνον μὲν δὴ νηυσὶν ἐπιπροέηκα θοῇσιν, “I sent him to the swift ships”), but formulaic transformation is of course nothing unusual in Homer (“swift islands” for “swift ships” is admittedly a striking semantic shift). Line 296, saying that the sun set “and all the roadways became dark” (σκιόωντό τε πᾶσαι ἀγυιαί), is considered inappropriate by Diggle because there are no roadways at sea; but in Odyssey 11.12 the same line occurs when Odysseus’s ship sails from Circe’s island to the streams of Okeanos and the underworld. As far as the passage that Diggle would omit entirely is concerned the real question is whether Pheai belongs in the story. To this I say only that Pheai was part of the story when the Pythian Hymn to Apollo was composed; if it was not in the original text of the Odyssey, I do not know how or why it was added to the text of the Odyssey by so early a date. Matthews 1987 (cf. also 1996:129–134) proposes a solution in the opposite direction from Diggle, arguing that Odyssey 15.295–300 is all Homeric but that the lines are in the wrong order. Matthews starts from the idea that Homer, in Odyssey 15, presented detailed but faulty geography of the western Peloponnesus: he proposes that the following was the text of Odyssey 15 before later hands rearranged it and altered the phrase and name in bold:

In this text Homer’s error (later copied by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo) was to put Dyme before Elis; on the other hand Homer correctly made Telemachus’s ship head for Pherai (this again was copied by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo), for which Pheai was later substituted when further changes to the text were made. In Matthews’ text everything but Dyme is geographically correct, and all problems of language are eliminated. But Dyme, which in this text must be near the Alpheios River between Triphylia and Elis, is wildly out of place. This is a serious error on Homer’s part, especially in view of his assumed correct placement of Krounoi, Khalkis, Elis, and Pherai; in my view simple ignorance cannot well account for part of the picture (Dyme) when it conflicts so completely with the rest of the picture (the four other places, all correctly located). Matthews reaches his conclusions about the text of Odyssey 15 from his analysis of a fragment of the Thebaid of the late-fifth century poet Antimachus of Colophon; in Antimachus fr. 27 it is said that two participants in the war against Thebes threatened to do again what they formerly did when they led the Epeians and sacked Dyme (the dramatic situation seems to be a feast at the palace of Adrastus in Argos before the war against Thebes): ὡς ἐπαπειλήτην ὥσπερ Καυκωνίδα Δύμην / ἐπραθέτην παίδεσσιν Ἐπειῶν ἀρχεύοντες, “Thus the two threatened [to do] as [when] they had led the sons of the Epeians and sacked Cauconian Dyme.” The sack of Dyme is an otherwise unknown mythological event; it is alluded to again in Antimachus fr. 28, where the situation seems to be that another former participant in the sack of Dyme, apparently on the other side, follows up the speech at issue in fr. 27 (cf. Matthews 1996:134): ἐν δέ νυ τοῖσι μάλα πρόφρων ἐπίκουρος ἀμορβέων / ὡμίλησ’, εἵως διεπέρσατε Δύμιον ἄστυ, “I joined their company, following as a very willing ally, until you (pl.) sacked the Dymaean town.” Matthews argues that Antimachus calls Dyme “Cauconian” in fr. 27 (Καυκωνίδα Δύμην) because Antimachus’s text of Odyssey 15 (as reconstructed by Matthews) seemed to locate Dyme in Triphylia, which had strong associations with Cauconians; Antimachus, with such a text before him, inferred that Homer meant a city of Dyme other than the Achaean city, and he indicated as much by calling it Cauconian. Now it is true that the Cauconians are closely associated with Triphylia, and especially with the city of Lepreon; Matthews 1987:93 summarizes the evidence as follows: “The Kaukones in Triphylia near Lepreon are mentioned by Strabo himself (8.3.11), as is a tomb of Kaukon at the city (8.3.16). According to Aelian (Varia Historia 1.24), Kaukon was the father of Lepreus. Herodotus mentions the Triphylian Kaukones at 1.147 and 4.148. Zenodotos too (ap. Athen. 10.412A) puts the Kaukones near Lepreon, and the learned Kallimachos refers to ‘the city of the Kaukones, which is called Lepreon’ (Hymn. {757|758} 1.39).” But the Cauconians were not limited to Triphylia. Strabo 8.3.17 says that there were two opinions as to their location, both of which include more than Triphylia: either they inhabited all of what Strabo knew as Elis, namely from the Messenian border in the south to Achaean Dyme in the northeast, or they were split into two groups, one in Triphylia and the other near Achaean Dyme. Matthews is probably correct in interpreting the second opinion as that of Hellenistic scholars who put Nestor’s Pylos in Triphylia: their spokesman Strabo says that in order for Athena, disguised as Mentor, to part from Telemachus at Pylos and proceed on business to the Cauconians (Odyssey 3.366), the Cauconians had to be somewhere else besides Triphylia, Athena’s presumed location at the outset of the trip (cf. Biraschi 1994:37–42). But this idea, however learned, did not arise out of nothing. There is considerable evidence that Cauconians once occupied a broad area, just as the first opinion outlined by Strabo maintained: Strabo 8.3.11 notes that there was a River Caucon between Achaean Dyme and Tritaia, southeast of Dyme; Strabo 8.3.17 reports that “Aristotle has knowledge of their [the Cauconians] having been established especially at this latter place [i.e. in Bouprasis and Koile Elis near Dyme]”; the same passage, Strabo 8.3.17, associates Antimachus himself with the first of the two opinions concerning the Cauconians’ location: “Some say that the whole of what is now called Eleia, from Messenia as far as Dyme, was called Cauconia. Antimachus, at any rate, calls all the inhabitants both Eleians [MSS. Epeians] and Cauconians” (on “Eleians” as the correct reading for “Epeians” see Matthews 1987:92n3/1996:131n132). Wilamowitz 2006:331–332, who cites the Antimachus fragment for the name Cauconian as belonging particularly to Dyme, cites evidence for a hero Caucon still further east in Arcadia (“Apollodorus” 3.8.1; but Pausanias 4.27.6, which Wilamowitz and Eitrem RE ‘Kaukon 2’ both cite for a cult of Caucon in Megalopolis, does not seem to me to relate to that city). While I do not think that it is possible to reconstruct Odyssey 15.295–298 on the basis of Antimachus as Matthews has attempted to do, the evidence of Antimachus seems to me revealing in another way. The sack of Dyme by the Epeians, though known only from Antimachus, fits well with the tradition found in Strabo 8.3.9 that Dyme was once part of the Epeian realm (cf. n5.56): the evidence of Antimachus suggests that Dyme became part of the Epeian realm through conquest. How was this thought to have happened? The conquest of Dyme could have been carried out from what was historically Elis, to the west of Dyme; in that case the expansion of the Eleian domain to include Dyme was simply nullified when Dyme became part of Achaea. It is also possible, I think, that the Elis that conquered Dyme is the Elis that we see located east of Dyme in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This Elis, {758|759} which is imagined as a stage in the migration of the Eleian people before they reached their ultimate homeland (cf. n5.56), had to pass through Dyme to reach its final destination; if the sack of Dyme belonged to the tradition of an Eleian migration (the tradition presupposed by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo), Elis failed to keep possession of Dyme in this case too, but there was at least a geographical necessity to conquer Dyme in the first place. The question that remains is why Antimachus calls Dyme Cauconian. According to Strabo 7.7.1 the Cauconians were an aboriginal, pre-Greek population (cf. Bölte RE ‘Kaukones’ 65); they seem to have occupied a broad territory before the Eleians arrived, and this territory included Dyme, as discussed above. By referring to the sack of Cauconian Dyme Antimachus, I think, means to indicate an opposition between aboriginal Cauconians on the one hand and later invaders on the other hand. As for the invaders, Antimachus calls them by the mythic name Epeians, but he presumably means the historical Eleians, in line with other sources that equate Epeians and Eleians (cf. Ephorus FGrHist 70 F 115, F 122, F 144, Strabo 8.3.9, 8.3.33, Pausanias 5.1.3–8, 5.3.4–5.4.2; see Castelnuovo 2002:167–168 for discussion and 167n40 for other sources). The poet of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, I suggest, may have had the same scheme as Antimachus in his mind when he put Elis east of Dyme: the Eleians in the hymn are thus in a position to take Dyme one day in battle, the battle later referred to by Antimachus as the sack of Dyme by the Epeians; the tradition for this sack probably first took shape in the seventh century BC when Dyme had already become part of Achaea (cf. n5.56). Dyme, for its part, claimed a different history as the very land of the Epeians to the exclusion of Elis (for Hecataeus, who attests this tradition, cf. n5.56). Dyme, it seems, chose not to remember that it became part of the Epeian realm when invading Eleians conquered its native Cauconian population, but instead elevated its former status as part of the legendary Epeian realm into an exaggerated counterclaim against Elis.

EN5.9 (Endnote to n5.64)

Pausanias’s evidence for a Pylian population that survived in Messenia until the end of the Second Messenian War is contained in his overall account of the Second Messenian War, not all of which is reliable. His account of the Second Messenian War derives in part from the third-century BC poet Rhianos, whose tales of the Messenian hero Aristomenes seem to have pertained to events of the early fifth century BC rather than the seventh century BC (see Kiechle 1959:90–93 for this well understood issue). Rhianos’s particular theme was the siege of Mount Hira, and it is in relation to this siege that Pausanias {759|760} 4.23.1 mentions the departure of the Pylians (see n5.64). Kiechle 1959:31–33, cf. also 16, argues persuasively that the departure of the Pylians was known from a source other than Rhianos, as can be inferred from another passage of Pausanias: Pausanias 4.24.4 says that after the Second Messenian War the Spartans settled the Nauplians, who had previously been expelled by the Argives from their own city in the Argolid, in Methone, which had recently been abandoned by its people; the departure of the Methonaians, attested by this passage, entails the departure of the Pylians as well; the two are linked in Pausanias 4.23.1 (see n5.64). Kiechle argues that it was Pausanias’s immediate source (probably a local historian of Messenia according to Kiechle 1959:4n2, citing Schwartz 1899:435–436) who combined the account of Pylos and Methone with Rhianos’s tale of Mount Hira. Thus nothing can be learned from Pausanias about the Pylians’ departure other than that they left by ship. Pausanias 4.23.5–10 says that they went with Messenian refugees to Zancle in Sicily, the name of which the Messenians changed to Messana, but these events belong to the early fifth century BC (486 BC according to Lomas OCD³ ‘Messana’; c. 489 BC according to Kiechle 1959:124) and have nothing to do with Pylians (for the events see Thucydides 6.4.6; Herodotus 6.23; Strabo 6.2.3; and cf. Kiechle 1959:90–91, 119–123). Kiechle 1959:34–45 argues that after the Second Messenian War the Pylians went to Metapontion in southern Italy, where a local cult of Neleids (τὸν τῶν Νηλειδῶν ἐναγισμόν, “the offering to the dead for the Neleids,” Strabo 6.1.15) suggests that the Achaeans said to have settled Metapontion (Antiochus of Syracuse, cited by Strabo 6.1.15) were in fact (or at least included) Pylians. Kiechle 1959:48–49 assigns a date between 630 and 600 BC (depending on the date of the end of the Second Messenian War) for the departure of the Pylians from the Peloponnesus; Huxley 1962:59–60 also supports a date close to 600 BC. For c. 600 BC as the likely date of the end of the Second Messenian War see §5.24 and n5.91.

EN5.10 (Endnote to n5.65)

Strabo 8.4.1–2 says that before the city of Pylos was settled at Koryphasion there was an “old Pylos” seven stades inland from Koryphasion under Mount Aigaleon; this is a puzzle since there is no mountain seven stades from Koryphasion and Mount Aigaleon is unknown apart from this passage of Strabo. For the site of “old Pylos” Marinatos 1955:163 proposes Volimidia, five kilometers northeast of Ano-Englianos (Volimidia is roughly seventy stades from Koryphasion, and Marinatos1955:163n1 proposes seventy as a correction for seven in Strabo); Volimidia lies beneath a mountain to the north, which would be Mount Aigaleon (a photograph taken from Volimidia toward the {760|761} mountain is in Marinatos 1955:142). At Volimidia multiple Mycenaean graves have been found, some of which became cult sites in the eighth century BC. Meyer RE Supplement 15 ‘Messenien’ 207–208 accepts Marinatos’s identification of this site as “old Pylos”: “Marinatos’s conjecture…that this is what could be meant by the ‘old Pylos’ of Strabo 8.4.2 is very obvious. The traditional name of the Mycenaean palace at Englianos would have maintained itself here…. The inhabitants of this ‘old Pylos’ would then have taken the name of their place with them to the newly settled Koryphasion, and this would best explain the name change there. The distance given for Mount Aigaleon, near which this ‘old Pylos’ lay according to Strabo, of course does not agree, but must in any case be emended since there is no mountain near Pylos at the distance given by Strabo…. That according to the observations above the place was still inhabited in Roman times is probably no real counterargument, since not all the inhabitants need to have left” (“Marinatos’ Vermutung, …dass damit das ‘Altpylos’ von Strabo 8.4.2 gemeint sein könnte, ist recht einleuchtend. Die Namenstradition des mykenischen Palastes von Ano-Englianos hätte sich hier erhalten…. Die Bewohner dieses ‘Altpyos’ hätten dann den Namen ihres Orts nach dem neubesiedelten Koryphasion mitgenommen, womit die Namensveränderung bestens erklärt wäre. Die Entfernungsangabe für den Berg Aigaleon, an dem dieses Altpylos nach Strabo lag, stimmt zwar nicht, muss aber in jedem Fall emendiert werden, da es in der von Strabo genannten Entfernung keinen Berg bei Pylos gab…. Dass der Ort nach den obigen Bemerkungen auch noch in römischer Zeit bestand, ist wohl kein wirkliches Gegenargument, da ja nicht alle Bewohner abgewandert sein müssen”). Strabo’s “old Pylos” most likely figures in an oracular verse which is quoted in part by Aristophanes Knights 1059, and is given in full by the scholia to Aristophanes and Strabo 8.3.7: ἔστι Πύλος πρὸ Πύλοιο, Πύλος γε μέν ἐστι καὶ ἄλλος, “there is a Pylos before Pylos, and there is yet another Pylos” (the scholia to Aristophanes have ἄλλη for ἄλλος; see Marinatos 1955:163n1). The verse, which in Aristophanes is called an oracle of Bakis, likely goes back to the sixth century BC (see EN5.22). In the first half of the verse, ἔστι Πύλος πρὸ Πύλοιο (Aristophanes quotes only this much), Marinatos correctly takes the preposition πρό, “before,” in a spatial rather than temporal sense, and proposes that the “Pylos in front of Pylos” refers to Koryphasion, on the sea, in relation to a site inland from Koryphasion, namely the “old Pylos” of Strabo; if this is the meaning, a play on πύλη, “gate,” is also likely part of the riddle. Kiechle 1960:8 has a similar interpretation, and uses it to argue that there was a tradition about Messenian Pylos in the Archaic period (cf. n5.65): “The oracle verse: ἔστι Πύλος πρὸ Πύλοιο, ‘there is {761|762} a Pylos before Pylos,’ which Aristophanes Knights 1059 already parodies, and which can probably only be explained by the assumption that it alludes to two places that lay not far from each other, one on the coast and the other somewhat inland, shows that a tradition may have been maintained for the Messenian Pylos from the Archaic period” (“Der Orakelvers: ἔστι Πύλος πρὸ Πύλοιο, den schon Aristophanes, Ritter 1059, parodierte und der sich wohl nur durch die Annahme erklären lässt, dass er auf zwei unweit voneinander gelegene Orte dieses Namens anspielt, ein Pylos an der Küste und eines etwas im Landesinneren, zeigt, dass sich aus archaischer Zeit eine Tradition über das messenische Pylos erhalten haben dürfte”). For the “yet another Pylos” of the riddle see EN5.22.

EN5.11 (Endnote to n5.68)

Kreophylos, who was said to have entertained Homer in his home (Callimachus Epigrams 6 Pfeiffer; cf. Plato Republic 600b), was also said to be Homer’s son-in-law (scholia to Plato Republic 600b, which say further that he received the Iliad from Homer as a gift; cf. n5.68); this is a contamination with a similar tradition for the Cypria attested by Pindar fr. 265 Schroeder (see Burkert 1972:76n10, Graziosi 2002:186–193). There was also a tradition, followed by Ephorus (but, in Jacoby’s view, doubtless older), that Lycurgus met Homer himself (Ephorus FGrHist 70 F 103, F 149.19; cf. Jacoby on Ephorus F 102 and F 173–F 175 [end], and Jacoby 1902:100–107, especially 101 and 105); Apollodorus, who must have followed Ephorus for the synchronism, had Lycurgus meet Homer when Lycurgus was still a young man (ὥστε ἐπιβαλεῖν αὐτῷ Λυκοῦργον τὸν νομοθέτην ἔτι νέον ὄντα, Clement of Alexandria Stromata 1.21.117.3, citing Apollodorus; cf. Jacoby 1902:100–101, Burkert 1972:77). Aristotle, who dated Lycurgus later than Homer (as did Eratosthenes and Aristarchus; cf. Jacoby 1902:105–106), had Lycurgus receive the poems not from Homer’s contemporary, Kreophylos, but from Kreophylos’s descendants; the earlier version of this tradition would have been that Lycurgus received the poems directly from Kreophylos, who received them from Homer. In this tradition Kreophylos was a mediating figure between Lycurgus and Homer. The tradition that Lycurgus received the poems directly from Homer, without Kreophylos as an intermediary, simplifies the story: it expresses more directly the idea that the Spartans were the first in mainland Greece to receive the Homeric poems. This priority is the point in Aelian Varia Historia 13.14, who says that Lycurgus was the first to bring Homer’s poetry from Ionia to mainland Greece, before Peisistratos collected the poems in Athens; cf. also Dio of Prusa 2.45 (texts quoted by Allen 1924:228). I take {762|763} the more complex tradition, with Kreophylos as an intermediary between Homer and Lycurgus, to be the older one (cf. n5.70). An aberrant tradition that deserves further investigation is that Kreophylos received Homer on the island of Ios just before Homer died (Contest of Hesiod and Homer line 322 [Allen 1912:237], Proclus Chrestomathy lines 30–31 [Allen 1912:100 lines 11–12]; in the Herodotean Life of Homer Homer dies on Ios, but he does not meet Kreophylos there). If the meeting between Homer and Kreophylos on Samos reflects a Spartan agenda, does the change from Samos to Ios reflect a counteragenda on the part of Athens?

EN5.12 (Endnote to n5.73)

Something is known of the grievances that Athens, Sikyon, and Thessaly, the victors in the First Sacred War, had against Delphi in the period before the war. Delphi was then associated primarily with Dorian states (cf. Forrest 1956:48, 1982:316; Davies 1994:204), and when Cleisthenes, the anti-Dorian tyrant of Sikyon, sought Delphi’s support for his campaign against Argos, the oracle rebuffed him: Cleisthenes asked about expelling the Dorian hero Adrastos from Sikyon, and the oracle responded that Adrastos was king of Sikyon while Cleisthenes was a λευστήρ, a “stone-thrower,” i.e. a common skirmisher (Herodotus 5.67.2). In Athens Delphi supported the Cylonian conspiracy (the conspiracy’s failure was attributed to the misunderstanding of an oracle, which had clearly been meant to encourage the conspirators, and which doubtless came from Delphi). Forrest 1956:41 suggests that Delphi was also responsible for declaring the Alcmaeonids to be under a curse (ἐναγεῖς) after the archon Megacles put the Cylonian conspirators to death (cf. §3.13 above); Megacles’ son Alcmaeon (his visit to Croesus is recounted in Herodotus 6.125) was perhaps the Alcmaeon who commanded the Athenian forces in the Sacred War (Plutarch Solon 11.2; cf. Toepffer 1889:243; cf. also n5.87). Forrest 1956:36–42 nicely connects the grievances of Sikyon and Athens with the final passage of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where the warning against a τηΰσιον ἔπος, “rash word,” would apply to the response given to Cleisthenes (λευστήρ, “stone-thrower”), and the warning against a (τηΰσιον) ἔργον, “(rash) deed,” would apply to the support given to the Cylonian conspirators. The motives of the Thessalians in the Sacred War are less clear but must have had to do with their desire to extend their influence southward to the Gulf of Corinth. The Pylaian (Anthelan) Amphictyony, which was centered around Thermopylai in southern Thessaly, and which the Thessalians dominated, was a related factor, for it became part of the Delphic Amphictyony, or Delphi became part of the Pylaian Amphictyony, with meetings alternating between {763|764} Delphi and the sanctuary of Demeter at Anthela; Forrest 1956:42–44 suggests a possible rivalry between Delphi and the Pylaian Amphictyony before the Sacred War. While much remains obscure, it seems probable that the Pylaian Amphictyony appropriated the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, possibly in the seventh century BC or earlier, but more likely as a result of the Sacred War in the early sixth century. On the question of the origins and early development of the Pylaian-Delphic Amphictyony see Tausend 1992:34–47; Lefèvre 1998:13–16; Sánchez 2001:32–37, 41–44; Hall 2002:144–154; cf. also Petrović 2004:265.

EN5.13 (Endnote to n5.94)

Tyrtaeus fr. 4 West, concerning the constitution that Sparta received from the Delphic oracle, has different opening couplets in the two sources for the fragment, Diodorus 7.12.6 and Plutarch Lycurgus 6.5; in Diodorus the fragment begins as follows:

This version conforms with the tradition found in Diodorus (but not attested by Tyrtaeus) that Lycurgus himself received the oracle at Delphi and brought it back to Sparta (ἡ Πυθία ἔχρησε τῷ Λυκούργῳ περὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν οὕτως, “The Pythia prophesied to Lycurgus about state matters as follows”); in Plutarch’s version the plural subject of “they brought back” (οἴκαδ’ ἔνεικαν) conflicts with the Lycurgus tradition, which is presumed to be more recent. Diodorus’s version thus seems to be an adaptation to the Lycurgus tradition, and Plutarch’s version is to be preferred. The two openings have sometimes been combined, most recently by Van Wees 1999:7–8 and n25, who assumes a lacuna between them. Huxley 1962:41–45, 122n295 argues that a historical Lycurgus was one of the Pythioi who brought the oracle back to Sparta at the time of the kings Theopompos and Polydoros, and he combines the two openings as follows (Huxley 1962:55, 127n351):

The traditional view that the two openings are alternatives is in my view to be preferred.

EN5.14 (Endnote to n5.97)

It must be acknowledged that very little is certain with respect to the Great Rhetra, the interpretation of which is notoriously disputed. Van Wees 1999 argues that Tyrtaeus fr. 4 West, contrary to what was mistakenly inferred in the classical period, has nothing to do with the Great Rhetra, but instead calls on the Spartan people to obey the kings and elders during the crisis of the Second Messenian War; the corrupt line 8 according to Van Wees 1999:11 (who follows Hammond 1950:48 for the line’s first half) should be restored and enjambed with line 9 as follows:

In this reading victory is promised to the city and the people if the kings and elders exercise their authority and the people obey them; the people’s obedience consists in saying and doing what is just (line 7) in response to the straight proposals (of the kings and elders) (line 6), and counseling no further (line 8 as emended): the people, in other words, are consulted, but they can only agree with what is proposed and offer no further counsel. In accord with this reading Van Wees (1999:10) takes the phrase εὐθείαις ῥήτραις ἀνταπαμειβομένους, which describes the people in line 6, to mean “responding to straight proposals.” Although Van Wees’s interpretation involves other factors and is closely argued, I continue to think that the traditional explanation in terms of the Great Rhetra is correct. In the traditional {765|766} interpretation in terms of the Great Rhetra εὐθείαις ῥήτραις is best taken as an instrumental dative and not as a true dative: the people respond “with straight pronouncements” to what is proposed (Wade-Gery 1944:1, 6–7 [=1958:55, 62–64] discusses the two possible dative constructions but does not decide between them; for rhē̂trai as “pronouncements of the dē̂mos,” cf. Huxley 1962:120n283).

EN5.15 (Endnote to n5.107)

To compare the language of Tyrtaeus and the Pythian Hymn to Apollo would require a systematic analysis beyond the scope of this study. Instead I make two limited observations. The first concerns the use of unusual Homeric compounds in -γενής, namely Πυλοιγενής, “Pylian-born,” in the Hymn to Apollo (Πυλοιγενέας τ’ ἀνθρώπους, “Pylian-born men,” lines 398 and 424; cf. Πυλοιγενέος βασιλῆος, “Pylian-born king,” Iliad 2.54, Πυλοιγενέες δέ οἱ ἵπποι, “Pylian-born horses,” Iliad 23.303) and πρεσβυγενής, “eldest-born,” in Tyrtaeus (πρεσβυγενέας τε γέροντας, “eldest-born old men,” fr. 4.5 West; cf. πρεσβυγενὴς Ἀντηνορίδης, “eldest-born son of Antenor,” Iliad 11.249). Of course Tyrtaeus’s use of πρεσβυγενέας does not count for much if he simply repeats the wording of the Delphic oracle (see §5.25 and n5.94). But I note that the rider to the Rhetra, as preserved by Plutarch Lycurgus 6.4 (cf. §5.25 and n5.96), contains the word πρεσβυγενέας, and one may wonder whether Tyrtaeus had a hand in crafting the rider’s language. A second possible correspondence between Tyrtaeus and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is equally uncertain, but also intriguing. A papyrus fragment of Tyrtaeus containing only a few scattered words (fr. 18 West) seems to have used the form ἀγαλλομένη, “exulting,” in the same place in the hexameter as Homeric Hymn to Apollo 427, εὔτε Φερὰς ἐπέβαλλεν ἀγαλλομένη Διὸς οὔρῳ, “when it made for Pherai, exulting in Zeus’s wind.” This line, with Φεράς for Homeric Φεάς, is, as I have argued, crucial to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo; in Tyrtaeus there is unfortunately no context for α]γ̣αλλομένη (first letter lost, second letter uncertain), which is the only word preserved in the first line of the fragment (the phrase κα̣ι̣ κροκόεντα, “and saffron-colored,” in the second line does not help, and there is a gap of four lines before another word or two can be read). The verb ἀγάλλομαι has a number of occurrences in various contexts in Greek epic, but the feminine singular participle occurs only in these two instances, in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and in Tyrtaeus. In terms of content I note that just as the Homeric Hymn to Apollo reworks a Homeric model in modifying Telemachus’s voyage, Tyrtaeus fr. 10.21–30 West perhaps also reworks a Homeric model if his exhortation that young men not let old men fight in {766|767} front of them and die, but that they instead stand firm in the front ranks and die themselves, is adapted from Priam’s speech to Achilles in Iliad 22.71–76 (so Bowra 1938:53–55); but in this case it is more likely that both passages adapt a traditional motif (cf. Richardson 1993:113). In any case Tyrtaeus and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo would hardly be alone in the Archaic period in adapting Homeric models, and a comparison between them on this basis does not lead far. While I do not insist on my suggestion that Tyrtaeus composed the Pythian Hymn to Apollo, I know of no better suggestion. Richard Martin (Martin 2000a) proposes that a tradition of competition between Homeric and Hesiodic poetry lies behind the division of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo into two parts; he views the hymn as a unified work whose purpose is to represent such a traditional competition. It is clear that the Delian part of the hymn, with its reference to the blind bard of Chios, qualifies as Homeric. The question is whether the Pythian part of the hymn qualifies as Hesiodic. To connect the Pythian part of the hymn with Hesiod there is nothing to match the overt allusion to Homer in the Delian part. Martin’s case rests rather on indirect evidence. A Hesiodic fragment speaks of a joint hymnic celebration of Apollo by Hesiod and Homer on Delos (Hesiod fr. 357 MW):

Here seems to be a mythic precedent for the kind of joint composition that Martin has in mind. But the evidence does not apply directly to our Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which distinguishes between a Delian and a Pythian Apollo; the Hesiodic fragment surely concerns only the Delian Apollo, unless the unlikely assumption is made that the fragment was composed for Polycrates’ unique celebration of Púthia kaì Dḗlia on Delos (cf. Martin 2000a:419–420). To make the case that the Pythian part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is Hesiodic Martin draws attention to a particular stylistic feature having to do with Hermann’s bridge, the tendency of epic hexameters to avoid a word break after a trochee in the fourth foot. Various factors mitigate violations of Hermann’s bridge, as Martin fully discusses, and the feature is thus hard to define. Since estimates of the frequency with which Hermann’s bridge is violated in any given text {767|768} vary with the definition applied, raw numbers do not mean much. Martin focuses instead on a specific pattern that is exemplified in the first verse of the Hesiodic fragment above: the word break that occurs in the phrase καὶ | Ὅμηρος comes after a trochee in the fourth foot and thus technically violates Hermann’s bridge; but Hermann himself did not include cases like this where a monosyllable joined in sense to what follows precedes the break (“These cases are not at all rare” [“Haec minime rara sunt exempla”], Hermann 1805:693; cf. West 1982:38n18 and Martin 2000a:425). Although violation of Hermann’s bridge is not at issue, Martin points out that correpted καί in this position is relatively frequent in Hesiod (four examples in the Theogony and 12 examples in the Works and Days); it is also found five times in the Pythian part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (lines 176, 194, 350, 423, and 534), and this, Martin suggests, is an indication of the Pythian hymn’s Hesiodic style. One problem with this argument is that there are 68 examples of the same thing (καί before the second short of the fourth foot) in the Odyssey (Martin’s count, which he was able to do for the Odyssey but not for the Iliad; see Martin 2000a:417n54). Frequency of occurrence is higher in the Pythian part of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (one per 74 lines) and in Hesiod (one per 116 lines) than in the Odyssey (one per 178 lines), but the difference hardly seems decisive as a mark of Hesiodic style. One instance of the pattern in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo warrants further comment; Martin draws attention to it, and I have discussed the line in question as well (n5.55). The line is among the several lines in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo that are directly modeled on the text of Homer; Homeric Hymn to Apollo 423 is in fact identical with Iliad 2.592 in the Pylian entry to the Catalogue of Ships: καὶ Θρύον Ἀλφειοῖο πόρον καὶ ἐΰκτιτον Αἶπυ, “and Thryon, ford of the Alpheios, and well-built Aipy.” This line, which in the Catalogue of Ships indicates nothing about the location of Pylos, is deployed in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo to indicate that Pylos, mentioned in the hymn’s next line (424), lay north of the Alpheios River in Elis. In my view this Homeric borrowing in the hymn has to be understood as a very deliberate Homeric borrowing, for the hymn’s core issue is precisely the location of Pylos in the Homeric poems. Martin 2000a:418, on the other hand, suggests that the Pylian entry to the Catalogue of Ships may have been composed by the same rhapsodes who composed the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (“It may be that the same rhapsodes interested in stylizing a hymn-competition between Homer and Hesiod also had a hand in composing this Iliad scene”). For Martin the point of contact between the hymn and the Pylian entry to the Catalogue of Ships is a common interest in poetic competition: this is the situation ex hypothesi in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and Thamyris, {768|769} who rivaled the Muses as a singer, is the subject of a brief account in the Pylian entry to the Catalogue of Ships (Iliad 2.594–600). If I am right that the line ending καὶ ἐΰκτιτον Αἶπυ, “and well-built Aipy,” plays a pivotal role in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, I would argue that it influenced the other lines in the hymn with similar endings beginning καί, “and,” in the fourth foot, namely line 194 (καὶ ἐΰφρονες Ὧραι, “and the merry Seasons”), line 350 (καὶ ἐπήλυθον ὧραι, “and the seasons drew near”), line 534 (καὶ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θήσω, “and I will put in your mind”), and line 176 (καὶ ἐτήτυμόν ἐστιν, “and it is true”). This would be an instance of a particular pattern, known from both Homer and Hesiod, being repeated with unusual frequency in a relatively short space simply because the pattern, in the borrowed phrase καὶ ἐΰκτιτον Αἶπυ, “and well-built Aipy,” was fixed in the poet’s mind at the time.

EN5.16 (Endnote to n5.108)

Strabo 8.4.10, whose source is taken to be Apollodorus (FGrHist 244 F 334), says that the Eleians helped the Messenians against Sparta in the Second Messenian War; this has been doubted on historical grounds. The passage names the Argives and the Pisatans as the Messenians’ other allies in the war; the passage goes on to say that the Arcadians provided one of the generals on the Messenian side, namely Aristokrates, the king of Orkhomenos, and from this it is clear that the Arcadians have dropped out of Strabo’s list of Messenian allies and must be restored. The passage says finally that the Pisatans also provided a general, namely Pantaleon. The passage in its entirety is as follows: πλεονάκις δ’ ἐπολέμησαν [sc. οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι] διὰ τὰς ἀποστάσεις τῶν Μεσσηνίων. τὴν μὲν οὖν πρώτην κατάκτησιν αὐτῶν φησι Τυρταῖος ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι κατὰ τοὺς τῶν πατέρων πατέρας γενέσθαι· τὴν δὲ δευτέραν, καθ’ ἣν ἑλόμενοι συμμάχους Ἀργείους τε καὶ Ἠλείους <καὶ Ἀρκάδας> καὶ Πισάτας ἀπέστησαν, Ἀρκάδων μὲν Ἀριστοκράτην τὸν Ὀρχομενοῦ βασιλέα παρεχομένων στρατηγόν, Πισατῶν δὲ Πανταλέοντα τὸν Ὀμφαλίωνος, ἡνίκα φησὶν αὐτὸς στρατηγῆσαι τὸν πόλεμον τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοις, “They [the Spartans] were often at war because of the Messenians’ revolts. Tyrtaeus says in his poems that the Spartans’ first acquistion of the Messenians was in their fathers’ fathers’ time, and that the second was after the Messenians chose as allies the Argives, Eleians, , and Pisatans and revolted, and the Arcadians provided Aristokrates, the king of Orkhomenos, as general, and the Pisatans Pantaleon, the son of Omphalion; this was when Tyrtaeus says that he himself conducted the war for the Spartans” (Strabo 8.4.10). It is the presence of both the Pisatans and the Eleians on the same side in the war that causes doubts. The Pisatans and the Eleians vied for control of {769|770} Olympia and the Olympic games, and Pantaleon in particular is associated with Pisatan dominance at Olympia (he led an army to take over the games in 644 BC according to Pausanias 6.22.2; according to Strabo 8.3.30 [355] the Pisatans controlled the games still earlier, from 672 BC; see Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2388–2390, Maddoli, Nafissi, Saladino 1999:365–368, Taita 1999). The Eleians did not regain control of Olympia until the time of Pantaleon’s second son Pyrrhos, who succeeded an older brother as king of Pisatis sometime after 588 BC (Pausanias 6.22.3–4); the Eleians were demonstrably in control by 580 BC, when they first began appointing two Hellanodikai to oversee the games (Pausanias 5.9.4; cf. Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2390). The rivalry between the Pisatans and the Eleians ended with the complete overthrow of the Pisatans by c. 570 BC; the Pisatis then became part of Elis, and the Eleians thereafter retained control of the games. While the outcome of this rivalry is clear, its earlier stages are less so; there are divergent traditions regarding the period of Pisatan dominance, and they can be harmonized only to a certain extent (see Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2388–2389). We should perhaps not be dogmatic about what took place during the Second Messenian War. Most scholars remove the Eleians from the list of Messenian allies in the text of Strabo 8.4.10 and substitute the Pylians (Schwartz 1899:432n2 first proposed this change; cf. also Jacoby 1902:130; Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2390; Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 196; Kiechle 1959:27). Huxley 1962:129n366, on the other hand, defends the reading of the manuscripts. In either case Schwartz 1899:432 went too far in arguing that the Eleians were not only not enemies of Sparta in the Second Messenian War, but were actually allies. This argument rests on a fragment of Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F 115 = Strabo 8.3.33) which says that an alliance between Elis and Sparta defeated Pheidon of Argos. Pheidon, whose date is uncertain (mid-eighth century according to Pausanias 6.22.2, but now usually lowered by an emendation of Pausanias to the time of the Battle of Hysiai, 669 BC) in any case predates the Second Messenian War, which is now dated to the latter half of the seventh century (640/630–600 BC; cf. n5.91); hence the alliance between Sparta and Elis that defeated Pheidon can no longer be referred to the Second Messenian War. Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2390 rejects the idea that Elis and Sparta were allies in the war, which rests “nur auf der ganz problematischen Erzählung des Ephoros”; cf. also Huxley 1962:129n366, 110n159, who notes that the fragment of Ephorus does not even mention the Messenians.

EN5.17 (Endnote to n5.138)

It is doubtful that Skillous and Makistos in Triphylia were destroyed by the Eleians in the sixth century BC, as Pausanias 6.22.4 says they were. {770|771} Inhabitation of Skillous is attested for the late fifth and early fourth century BC by Xenophon (Hellenica 6.5.2; Anabasis 5.3.9–10); it is also attested somewhat earlier in an inscription, most likely of the mid-fifth century BC (Dittenberger and Purgold 1896 no. 16; see the introduction to the inscription, coll. 42–43, and commentary on line 17, coll. 44–46, for the likely date and the possible circumstances of the inscription). It is thus doubtful whether Skillous was abandoned in the first place (cf. Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2391; Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 197). As for Makistos, Bölte RE ‘Makiston’ 775 gives little historical weight to the tradition about this city: “From all these notices little more can be gained in terms of historical content than that a certain conception of the age and importance of Makiston still existed” (“Aus all diesen Mitteilungen wird sich kaum mehr an historischem Gehalt gewinnen lassen, als dass eine gewisse Vorstellung von dem Alter und der Bedeutung von Makiston vorhanden war”). In the Pisatis cities were destroyed and the land was distributed among the eight Eleian demes established there (the grant of one deme’s land to a newly made citizen of that deme is at issue in Dittenberger and Purgold 1896 no. 11; see the introduction to the inscription, colls. 29–30). The Pisatans themselves continued to live in unfortified settlements (Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2391). We do not hear of later organized unrest in the Pisatis, but Pausanias 5.10.2, saying that Elis paid for the temple of Zeus at Olympia from the spoils of its war with Pisa and its allies, raises a question; the temple of Zeus was built in the fifth century BC, and it is hard to imagine that the spoils from a war a century earlier were used; see Frazer 1913 ad loc.

EN5.18 (Endnote to n5.145)

Strabo 8.3.30 (end) gives a brief account of how Triphylian Pylos was annexed to Lepreon as the result of a war. In what seems to be a related account Thucydides 5.31.2 says that a war between Lepreans and Arcadians led to Lepreon’s gaining permanent possession of half its land, which may have been Pylos, in return for an annual payment of tribute. If the two accounts concern the same war there are differences between them that must be reconciled. In Thucydides Elis bargains for half of Lepreon’s land in exchange for help against the Arcadians and then accepts tribute in place of the land, which Lepreon is allowed to keep; this makes it appear that Pylos, if Pylos is at issue, belonged to Lepreon before the war as well as after it. In Strabo Elis rewards Lepreon with Pylos after Lepreon has been victorious in a war; here Lepreon acquires Pylos for the first time as a result of the war. I suggest that Strabo is right that Lepreon acquired Pylos after a war, and that Thucydides makes it appear otherwise by compressing events. Before considering {771|772} Thucydides, however, there are problems in Strabo that have a bearing on the question of the historical context. The relevant passage in Strabo begins by saying that Elis helped Sparta put down the Messenian revolt of 464 BC, and that in return Sparta helped Elis conquer all of Triphylia; as a result Triphylia became known only by the name Elis and continued to be called by that name down to Strabo’s time: συνέπραξαν δὲ καὶ οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι μετὰ τὴν ἐσχάτην κατάλυσιν τῶν Μεσσηνίων συμμαχήσασιν αὐτοῖς τἀναντία τῶν Νέστορος ἀπογόνων καὶ τῶν Ἀρκάδων συμπολεμησάντων τοῖς Μεσσηνίοις· καὶ ἐπὶ τοσοῦτόν γε συνέπραξαν ὥστε τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν τὴν μέχρι Μεσσήνης Ἠλείαν ῥηθῆναι καὶ διαμεῖναι μέχρι νῦν, Πισατῶν δὲ καὶ Τριφυλίων καὶ Καυκόνων μηδ’ ὄνομα λειφθῆναι, “The Spartans cooperated with the Eleians after the last defeat of the Messenians because they had been allies, as opposed to the descendants of Nestor and the Arcadians, who fought on the side of the Messenians; they cooperated to such an extent that the whole country as far as Messenia was called Elis and is still so called today, but of the Triphylians and Cauconians not even the name is left (Strabo 8.3.30).” This account of Elis’s conquest of Triphylia is grossly oversimplified; it attributes Elis’s successful expansion southward as much to Spartan help as to Elis itself, ignoring the fact that Sparta forced Elis to free all the cities of Triphylia at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the further fact that these cities remained free for a century and a half until c. 245 BC (for Sparta’s war against Elis in 402–400 BC see Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.23–31; cf. Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 196–197, 198–199, who attributes the confusion in this passage to Strabo, and not to his source Apollodorus; on this point Bölte corrects his own earlier view in Bölte 1934). There is probably some truth in the role ascribed to Sparta in Elis’s expansion, but there is no agreement as to when Sparta may have played such a role: Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2391 argues that Sparta may have helped Elis against Pisa and its allies c. 570 BC in order to gain Elis’s help in Arcadia and against any future trouble in Messenia; Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 197 thinks that Sparta cooperated with Elis in the fifth century in the overthrow of Triphylian cities at the end of the Messenian revolt of 464 BC; Swoboda RE ‘Elis’ 2393–2394 doubts that Sparta would have helped Elis in the overthrow of Triphylia, which he dates to after the start of the First Peloponnesian War (457 BC), when Sparta’s attention was diverted. It is at the end of this loosely conceived passage on Elis’s expansion into Tripylia that Strabo tells how Pylos was incorporated into Lepreon; as already discussed (see n5.142), there is confusion here in that the Eleians should be the subject of Strabo’s sentence, but the Spartans appear to be, as they are of preceding sentences. But apart from this the sentence and its content seem sound: καὶ αὐτὸν δὲ {772|773} τὸν Πύλον τὸν ἠμαθόεντα εἰς τὸ Λέπρειον συνῴκισαν, χαριζόμενοι τοῖς Λεπρεάταις κρατήσασι πολέμῳ, καὶ ἄλλας πολλὰς τῶν κατοικιῶν κατέσπασαν, ὅσας γ’ ἑώρων αὐτοπραγεῖν ἐθελούσας, καὶ φόρους ἐπράξαντο, “They joined sandy Pylos itself with Lepreon, gratifying the Lepreans who had prevailed in a war, and they destroyed as many of the other communities as they saw wishing to act independently, and they exacted tribute” (Strabo 8.3.30 [end]). The question of date for the incorporation of Pylos into Lepreon depends on the earlier part of the passage, where the phrase μετὰ τὴν ἐσχάτην κατάλυσιν τῶν Μεσσηνίων, “after the last defeat of the Messenians,” indicates some time after the Messenian revolt of 464 BC, and the looseness of the passage as a whole makes this chronology uncertain. It is probably correct that Elis helped Sparta put down the Messenian revolt of 464, as Strabo says in the first sentence of the passage. Bölte and Meyer see this as the occasion for the synoecism of Lepreon and Pylos, arguing that Lepreon helped Elis and Sparta against Pylos and was awarded Pylos as a result: “In 459 BC, after the end of the helots’ revolt, the Spartans supported the Eleians in the suppression of the Pylians, who were attacked in the rear by the Lepreans” (“459, nach dem Ende des Helotenaufstandes, unterstützen die Lakedaimonier die Eleier bei der Niederwerfung der Pylier, denen die Lepreaten in den Rücken fallen,” Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 197); “After the last Messenian revolt of 464 BC Pylos was subjugated by the allied Eleians and Lepreans with Spartan help, and was incorporated into Lepreon” (“Nach dem letzten messenischen Aufstand von 464ff. wurde Pylos von den verbündeten Eleern und Lepreaten mit spartanischer Hilfe unterworfen und in Lepreon einverleibt,” Meyer RE ‘Pylos’ 2131). This interpretation has in its favor the idea that Lepreon was rewarded with Pylos after winning a war (cf. Strabo’s phrase χαριζόμενοι τοῖς Λεπρεάταις, “gratifying the Lepreans”). But the evidence of Thucydides suggests another interpretation, namely that Pylos became part of Lepreon not in connection with the Messenian revolt of 464 BC, but as the result of a war in which Elis helped Lepreon against the Arcadians. Thucydides may simplify a more complicated series of events when he says that the Lepreans pledged half their land to Elis in return for help against the Arcadians. As the outcome shows, what Elis wanted in this case was not land but tribute. After dealing with the Arcadians Elis perhaps joined a previously independent Pylos to Lepreon in return for yearly tribute; the synoecism could have been discussed in advance, but would more likely have resulted from the war. The Lepreans must have called in the Eleians because the Arcadians had invaded their land and threatened their existence; neighboring Pylos was presumably also threatened, and Elis, when it had played the decisive role against the {773|774} Arcadians, would have been in a position to settle matters as it saw fit. This scenario would accord with Strabo’s statement that Pylos was added to Lepreon after a war. Dates are hard to fix. As discussed above, the synoecism may have followed the Messenian revolt of 464, but the Strabo passage leaves room for doubt, and if the Thucydides passage is a guide the war that led to the synoecism did not have to do with that revolt, but with an Arcadian attack on Lepreon. As for the date of the Arcadian attack, which led to Lepreon’s subjection to Elis in the form of tribute payments, all that can be said for sure is that it occurred after the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, when Lepreon still acted independently of Elis (Lepreon sent its own contingent of 200 to Plataea in 479, whereas the Eleians arrived too late for the battle; see Andrewes [Gomme et al. 1970] on Thucydides 5.31.2). The overthrow of the other Minyan cities of Triphylia (Herodotus 4.148.4), which Bölte RE ‘Triphylia’ 197 also dates to the years after the Messenian revolt, may not have occurred until the Archidamian War; such a late date is possible if Herodotus, who says that these cities were overthrown in his lifetime, was still at work on his Histories during the Archidamian War, and this was almost certainly the case (Jacoby RE Supplement 2 ‘Herodot’ 229–232, followed by Cobet 1977, dates the publication of the Histories to the earlier part of the Archidamian War, 430–424 BC; Fornara 1971 and 1981 dates the publication of the Histories still later, to 421–415 BC, arguing that the work contains references to the end of the Archidamian War in 421 BC). How and Wells 1928 on Herodotus 4.148.4 report that Eduard Meyer, who originally dated Elis’s overthrow of the Triphylian cities to the period after 470 BC, later changed his mind and dated it to the Archidamian War (the reference in How and Wells is Meyer [Geschichte des Altertums] iii 285, but the edition is not made clear). For the Arcadian attack on Lepreon, and the imposition of tribute by Elis, we must think in terms of a period of time before the Peloponnesian War, but how long before we simply do not know. I note as a final detail Bölte’s suggestion (RE ‘Triphylia’ 197–198) that when the Arcadians attacked Lepreon they may also have conquered Epion, another of the six Minyan cities of Triphylia, for the Arcadians seem later to have sold Epion to the Eleians (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.30); according to Xenophon Epion lay between Heraia and Makistos.

EN5.19 (Endnote to n5.168)

Davison 1962:232n37 cites Wackernagel 1916 to make the point that the Homeric text from Aristarchus on was based on an Athenian text, but he hesitates to call the Athenian text a Panathenaic text because of the latter term’s associations with the Peisistratean recension: “J. Wackernagel’s Sprachliche {774|775} Untersuchungen zu Homer made a contribution of first-class importance to the establishment of this point; but his arguments have now been superseded in some vital respects (especially by the decipherment of Linear B), and should not be used any longer to support ancient allegations and modern superstitions about the ‘Peisistratean recension’.” Noting that the Homeric text seems to have been transliterated from an earlier Ionic alphabet into the late Ionic alphabet of twenty-four letters, and that this alphabet became official at Athens in 403/2 BC, Davison concludes: “Thus there is a certain degree of possibility that Aristarchus, who, we are told, believed Homer to have been an Athenian and to have lived about 140 years after the Trojan war…, based his second and final revision of the text of Homer upon the Panathenaic text, which had either not been available to or not been so highly valued by his predecessors…. But whether or not it is true that (as has been shown to be possible) the text which became current in the late second century B.C. was based upon the Panathenaic text, …there is no doubt at all that the second-century text is the ancestor of almost all our surviving witnesses to the text of Homer since that time” (Davison 1962:224–225). For the period before Aristarchus Davison 1962:223 says: “So far as we can see Aristophanes, like Zenodotus, was still struggling to make critical sense of the many divergent texts in the library, and had failed to find an Ariadne’s clue to guide him through the labyrinth. It seems that the finding of this clue was left to Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 215–c. 145 BC), to whose outstanding work as a Homeric critic it is reasonable to ascribe the great change which came over the text of Homer in the latter part of the second century BC. Henceforward ‘wild’ papyri (i.e., those which differ in length, or materially in wording, from the text on which our editions are based) are the exception rather than the rule; and though variations in wording persist, as is inevitable in a text with such a mixed ancestry as Homer’s, we can at last speak with some confidence of a ‘standard’ text of the Iliad and Odyssey.” The Alexandrian concept of a koínē text is connected to the Athenian state text by Nagy 1996a:187–191; see also Nagy 2004:54. For what Nagy calls the definitive period in Homeric transmission, from the mid-sixth century to the later part of the fourth century in Athens, see his 1996a:110, and more specifically, 1992:39–52. For the Homeric text of Aristarchus and Zenodotus cf. also EN5.23.

EN5.20 (Endnote to n5.184)

Thucydides 6.88.9 says that Alcibiades remained in Elis before he defected to Sparta; Isocrates 16 gives a different account, that after reaching the Peloponnesus Alcibiades made his way to Argos and remained there {775|776} quietly, but when he was outlawed in Athens he was forced to flee to Sparta. This version was presented by Alcibiades’ son many years later at a trial concerning one of the chariots raced by Alcibiades at the Olympics of 416 BC (cf. n5.185 for the date of these Olympics). Alcibiades bought the chariot for another Athenian when he was in Argos before the Olympics of 416 BC, but he proceeded to race it as his own. His son was later sued by the rightful owner, and Isocrates 16 (what remains of this speech) is his son’s defense. The speech is essentially a defense of the character of the elder Alcibiades, and the assertion that he was staying quietly in Argos when his enemies in Athens demanded his return is part of that defense (Isocrates 16.9): ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνος μὲν τοσαύτην πρόνοιαν ἔσχεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μηδὲ φεύγων μηδὲν ἐξαμαρτεῖν εἰς τὴν πόλιν ὥστ’ εἰς Ἄργος ἐλθὼν ἡσυχίαν εἶχεν, οἱ δ’ εἰς τοσοῦτον ὕβρεως ἦλθον ὥστ’ ἔπεισαν ὑμᾶς ἐλαύνειν αὐτὸν ἐξ ἁπάσης τῆς Ἑλλάδος καὶ στηλίτην ἀναγράφειν καὶ πρέσβεις πέμποντας ἐξαιτεῖν παρ’ Ἀργείων. ἀπορῶν δ’ ὅ τι χρήσαιτο τοῖς παροῦσιν κακοῖς καὶ πανταχόθεν εἰργόμενος καὶ σωτηρίας οὐδεμιᾶς ἄλλης αὐτῷ φαινομένης τελευτῶν ἐπὶ Λακεδαιμονίους ἠναγκάσθη καταφυγεῖν, “He had such great concern not to do any wrong to the city even in exile that he went to Argos and remained quietly, but they reached such a point of insolence that they persuaded you to exile him from all Greece, to have his banishment inscribed on a stele, and to send ambassadors to demand his return from the Argives. At a loss what to do in these evil circumstances, blocked on all sides, and with no other safety available to him, he was forced in the end to take refuge with the Spartans.” The main problem with this version of events, which Plutarch Alcibiades 23.1 also follows, is that it conflicts with Thucydides; if Alcibiades was Thucydides’ direct informant for his own activities in the war (see n5.180), it is hard to explain why Thucydides should be misinformed on this point (Brunt 1952:91–92, who believes the Argos story, acknowledges the problem). In the Isocrates passage, which has the task of explaining away Alcibiades’ worst act of treason toward Athens, namely his defection to Sparta, the picture of a quiet Alcibiades being forced into this act is the rhetorical key. This does not mean that the Argos story is false, but that it may be; in the Isocrates passage there is an incontrovertible fact (the Athenian banishment decree set up for all to see) together with an assertion that ambassdors were sent to Argos to demand Alcibiades’ return. The latter claim could have been built up over time from something less (suspicion in Athens that Alcibiades, who had escaped his escort in southern Italy, was now with his friends in Argos; official inquiries sent to Argos and elsewhere to try to find him) into something more. Isocrates’ reliability as a witness is a controversial question with respect to another passage of this {776|777} speech: in Isocrates 16.32–33 the younger Alcibiades says that his father disdained competition in events other than the chariot race because of low-class participants in such events; for those who do and do not accept this passage as evidence for Greek sport see Pritchard 2003:326–328 and 342n182.

EN5.21 (Endnote to n5.190)

Use of the formula ἔστι δέ τις, “there is a (certain),” to begin each of the first two expansions of Nestor’s story in Iliad 11 (lines 711 and 722) shows a close knowledge of the poetic medium that the expansions are meant to imitate; in both cases specific Homeric lines seem to have been in the mind of the poet who used the formula (see n5.190). It is worth examining a few other points in the language of the expansions in Iliad 11 in relation to Homeric models. The phrase εἰς ἅλα βάλλων, “flowing into the sea,” used of the Minyan river in Iliad 11.722 has close equivalents in Iliad 11.495 (εἰς ἅλα βάλλει) and in an oracle of Bakis reported by Herodotus 8.20.2 (εἰς ἅλα βάλλῃ), but in these examples the verb has the transitive meaning “throw” and there is a direct object; for the intransitive usage and meaning the only comparison in Homer is Iliad 23.462 of horses “racing around the turn,” περὶ τέρμα βαλούσας. With εἰς ἅλα βάλλων in Iliad 11.722 may also be compared the intransitive use of normally transitive ἵημι, “send,” in a similar context in Odyssey 11.239: ὃς πολὺ κάλλιστος ποταμῶν ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἵησι, “which is much the most beautiful of rivers to pour forth on the earth.” The intransitive use of βάλλω is somewhat unusual but it hardly draws attention to itself. The name Θρυόεσσα in Iliad 11 differs from the form Θρύον in Iliad 2 (see n5.3), and this too might be thought to draw unwanted attention as non-Homeric. But there are many place-names in Greek like Θρυόεσσα, in which the ending -εσσα signifies a feminine adjective: e.g. Δρυοῦσσα (uncontracted Δρυόεσσα), “oak-covered” (a place on Cape Mykale, cf. n4.75 and n4.84 above); Αἰγειροῦσσα, “poplar-covered” (Strabo 9.1.10); Πιτυοῦσσα, “pine-covered” (Strabo 9.1.9); Ποιήεσσα, “grassy” (a city on Keos, Strabo 10.5.6); Σκοτοῦσσα, “dark, gloomy” (a city in Thessaly, cf. n5.118). In Homer one of the Messenian cities offered by Agamemnon to Achilles, traditionally read as Ἱρὴν ποιήεσσαν, “grassy Hire,” should perhaps be read as ἱρὴν Ποιήεσσαν, “sacred Poieessa” (Iliad 9.150 and 292; see Kiechle 1960:62n2 for this suggestion). The form Θρυόεσσα, “reedy” would thus be easily accepted as a doublet for Θρύον. In Iliad 11.712 Thryoessa is described as νεάτη Πύλου ἠμαθόεντος, “at the end of sandy Pylos”; the same expression is used in the plural to describe the seven cities offered by Agamemnon to Achilles in Iliad 9. As noted earlier (EN5.3 end), the phrase implies that the seven cities are part of Pylos, as they perhaps once were; but {777|778} in Iliad 9 the cities are Agamemnon’s to dispose of, and the phrase is taken to mean “below (i.e. beyond) sandy Pylos.” In Iliad 11, on the other hand, the phrase is used correctly inasmuch as the besieged town of Thryoessa (like the town of Thryon in the catalogue) is part of Pylos. The poet of the expansions has corrected Homer in this case: it must have been obvious from the meaning of the word νέαται, “lowest, bottommost,” that something was wrong in Iliad 9. Correcting a Homeric mistake in this way surely did not undermine the expanded story’s pretense of being itself genuinely Homeric. I note finally that the Attic/Ionic form ὀφείλω of the Aeolic/Homeric verb ὀφέλλω, “owe,” occurs three times in Nestor’s story in Iliad 11 and nowhere else in Homer; Palmer 1962:106 argues from this “enigmatic” fact, which puzzled Wackernagel (1916:176n4/1970:16n4) and Chantraine (1958:314), that Nestor’s entire story was the product of the Peisistratean recension and was first added to the Homeric text in the late fifth or early fourth century BC (the earliest Attic inscription with the spelling ὀφείλω is from 428 BC; the old Attic alphabet was officially replaced with the Ionic alphabet in 403/2 BC). I suggest a less drastic explanation. One of the three instances of the Attic/Ionic form is in an expansion of Nestor’s story (line 698), the other two are in the older version of the story (lines 686, 688). Did the text of the expansion, composed in the Ionic alphabet in c. 415 BC, affect the spelling of the two other instances of the verb? The context of all three instances of the verb is the same (the “debt” owed by the Epeians to the Pylians), and the spelling of all three would naturally have been made consistent.

EN5.22 (Endnote to n5.199)

In the riddle about three cities named Pylos (see EN5.10) the third Pylos can only have been the city in Elis. The line in Aristophanes quoting the first half of the riddle, namely Knights 1059, belongs to Paphlagon (Cleon), who says earlier (line 1003) that he will recite oracles of Bakis. The attribution to Bakis need not be taken at face value, but the fact that the riddle was well known in 424 BC indicates that it was old. Oracles of Bakis quoted in Herodotus belong to the early fifth century and pertain to the Persian Wars (Herodotus 8.20, 8.77, and 9.43); these oracles may have originated in the sixth century (Herodotus 8.96, dating an oracle of an Athenian prophet named Lysistratos many years before the Battle of Salamis, refers to an oracle of Musaeus and Bakis in the same context). In any case there were certainly oracles of Bakis in the sixth century: the name Bakis was an epithet of the tyrant Peisistratos, who was much interested in oracular poetry, and who seems to have adopted the epithet for that reason (scholia to Aristophanes Peace 1071; Suda s.v. {778|779} Βάκις; cf. Kern RE ‘Bakis’ 2802, Dillery 2005:180). The verse about Pylos, whether or not it was an oracle of Bakis, makes most sense if it refers to the sixth-century controversy about the location of the Homeric city. Marinatos 1955:163 came to a similar conclusion (cf. EN5.10): “It now becomes clear that by ‘Pylos before Pylos’ the coastal city (Koryphasion) and the city lying behind it (Englianos-Volimidia) are meant. The ‘other Pylos’ is the third city of the same name, which can only be the Eleian city, if Professor Hampe is right that the Triphylian Pylos was of a hypothetical kind and existed only in the fantasy of the Homērikṓteroi” (“Es wird jetzt klar, dass mit ‘Pylos vor Pylos’ die Küstenstadt [Koryphasion] und das dahinterliegende ‘alte Pylos’ [Englianos-Volimidia] gemeint sind. Das ‘andere Pylos’ ist die dritte gleichnamige Stadt, die nur die elische sein kann, falls Prof. Hampe darin recht hat, dass das triphylische Pylos hypothetischer Art war und nur in der Phantasie der ὁμηρικώτεροι existierte”).

EN5.23 (Endnote to n5.201)

Strabo gives no indication that the controversy in Hellenistic times over the location of Homeric Pylos involved two versions of Nestor’s story in Iliad 11; had Strabo indicated as much, my argument that our version of Nestor’s story goes back only to the late fifth century BC might well have suggested itself already. Since Strabo indicates nothing of the kind, I am bound to ask why. Strabo is a late witness who allies himself with the position of those whom he calls Homērikṓteroi, and these scholars naturally would not have wanted to remove Triphylia from Nestor’s story by pointing to a shorter alternative text; they would have assumed that the Athenian state text was authoritative. We can be reasonably sure that Apollodorus, who collaborated with Aristarchus in Alexandria, would have held this view, since Aristarchus very likely made the Athenian state text his base text (for Apollodorus cf. n5.9; for Aristarchus cf. n5.168 and EN5.19); I must assume that Apollodorus’s predecessor Demetrius of Scepsis, in taking Triphylia to be Nestor’s home, came to this view because he too believed that the Athenian state text contained the authoritative version of Nestor’s story. A century earlier Zenodotus, dealing with rampant expansions of the Homeric poems in manuscripts from many sources, reduced the size of his text by omitting some verses and athetizing others. If comparison of manuscripts was one of Zenodotus’s criteria for what to omit (his criteria are uncertain; see Davison 1962:222), such a comparison did not lead him to omit the expansion of Nestor’s story in Iliad 11: not only do the Homeric scholia not say that Zenodotus omitted or athetized the passages in question; they say that Zenodotus read δεῖπνον for δόρπον in Iliad 11.730, {779|780} thus proving that his text included one of the expansions (Iliad 11.722–736; the disagreement between Aristarchus and Zenodotus as to this reading had to do with whether the Pylian army ate a noon meal or an evening meal on the banks of the Alpheios; cf. Iliad 7.380 and Odyssey 6.97 for alternative versions of the formula in Iliad 11.730, one with δόρπον, “evening meal,” and the other with δεῖπνον, “noon meal”). In fourth-century BC Athens a basis at least for the later vulgate must have existed to judge by the degree of agreement between Plato’s Homeric quotations and the later vulgate (see Lohse 1964, 1965, 1967), but expanded texts also existed (see Pasquali 1962:220–221). It is thought that Zenodotus may have had an early form of the vulgate at his disposal, but it is not permissible simply to equate his base text with the later vulgate (see Nickau 1977:32). My argument fits this picture if it is assumed that Zenodotus did in fact have an early form of the vulgate at his disposal, and that he paid particular attention to it. It should also be borne in mind that we do not know all the lines that Zenodotus athetized, and that we therefore cannot exclude the possibility that he athetized the passages in question. With so much unclear, the lack of traces in the Homeric scholia of an older version of Nestor’s story does not constitute an argument against a late fifth-century expansion of the story; this is of course not to deny that such an argument may present itself as Homeric transmission becomes better understood. I note that J. A. Davison, in arguing against Denys Page’s thesis that the Achaean wall in Iliad 7 postdates Thucydides, corrects Page’s tacit assumption that there was only one text of the Iliad “current in Thucydides’ day,” but does not make what he calls “the relative fluidity of the ‘Homeric’ canon in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC” an argument in its own right against Page’s thesis (Davison 1965:14–15). It does not seem to me that such an argument can be made at present; in the case of Nestor’s story in Iliad 11 the fact that we do not have certain knowledge of an older and shorter version does not rule out, or even make improbable, that such a version existed. {780|781}