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Pisistratus and Homer.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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An aspect of Pisistratus, which has not hitherto been utilized in this question (see p. 50), appears to justify another presentment of the evidence which connects him with the Homeric tradition. I shall endeavour to be brief and not to repeat what is common property or irrelevant. The literature and the bearing of the controversy are given with his usual clearness by P. Cauer, Grundfragen der Homerkritik,2 pp. 125 sqq. Cauer's private doctrine, that Homer was for the first time written down by Pisistratus, I consider sufficiently refuted by C. Rothe, Die Was als Dichtung, pp. 5–13. Fantastic views lately promulgated in England are1 dealt with conclusively to my mind by Mr. A. Lang, The World of Homer, pp. 281 sqq., to whose account nothing for controversial purposes need be added. On looking back over the literature I find myself most in agreement with Hans Flach, whose treatise, Die litterarische Thdtigkeit des Peisistratos, 1885, has been unduly depreciated. I shall have to repeat my own views expressed in the Classical Review, 1901, p. 7; 1907, p. 18; and in the Classical Quarterly, 1909, p. 84
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References
page 33 note 1 It is difficult to dissociate Athenodorus Calvus (ad Att. XVI. n. 4) from Α
Calvus seems only applicable as a nickname, and only a bald man would be noticeable for a or lump on the head. Athenodorus would be charging Pisistratus with practices in which he himself indulged, if according to Isidore of Pergamus in D. L. VII. 34 he was detected in the expurgation of Zeno.
page 35 note 1 I have inspected Par. 2677 (which was re- collated by L. Cohn for Studemund). It is of the late sixteenth century. The word we print kaγ ends in a letter which is not certainly γ, but more like γ than v or T. The scribe copied very accurately, as appears from a mark to indicate a gap inserted after 
He appar- ently intended 
as a correction of 
but it is incon- ceivable that it was his own conjecture, and the two phrases stand in no graphical relation to each other. He must have found the marginale in his original; the scribes of the other MSS. omitted it. It is to be presumed the original ran 
λk.T.γ., and that when 
got into the margin (owing to the homoeoarchon of 
and 
) without its preposition it was assimilated to the case of the other proper names.—I owe the reading of the Cambridge MS. to Mr. Jenkinson. Paris grec 2821 and suppl. grec 655 want this part of the treatise, as do all the Bodleian Aristophanes MSS. (8), those in the British Museum (6), and the other Paris MSS. of the Plutus (about 21). Par. 2677 is therefore still unique.
page 37 note 1 The motive is obvious, and excuses their credulity, or the reckless use they made of Megarian allegation. They wished for an older rival to Ptolemy.
page 37 note 2 Suidas: 
Π<FHG. III. 299 >
.As Asclepiades was Pergamene in school, this is considered another indication of the origin of this tradition. What kind of connection there was between the Megarean historians of the fourth century and the Pergamene librarians of the second does not appear.
page 37 note 3 Cf. the more confused list in Suidas, s.u. 
page 37 note 4 This source of emendation I see from Susemihl, Alex. Litteraturgesch. II. 246, had occurred in 1881 to Domenico Comparetti, in his treatise, La commissione omerica di Pisistrato e il ciclo epico Torino, 1881, who read 
I make every amende to my distinguished friend, who is equally at home in every period of ancient life.
page 38 note 1 Strabo has many coincidences with our extant scholia: e.g. 3, 328, 348, 367, 413, 424, 426, 439, 454, 543, 601, 616. Places where he used commentaries which are unrepresented, or barely represented, in our scholia are 550, 605, 608, 626.
page 38 note 2 That the Athenians did actually rely upon this verse is quite probable. That it gave them no real title, and was merely an indication of the moorings of Ajax' ships at Aulis, like 526 of the Phocians, I have said elsewhere.
page 41 note 1 And resemble the lines (1021, 2) by which the Theogony was connected with the 
page 41 note 2 C Q. 1908 p 85.
page 42 note 1 Apud Paus. IX. 31. 4.
page 42 note 2 When Herodotus doubts the ascription of the Cypria to Homer he does so on critical artigrounds, not in obedience to authority.
page 42 note 3 This is in substance the older view. Most recent criticism (e.g., Hiller, Homer ah Colletivname, Rh. Mus., 1887, p. 321) seems to me artificial and contrary to nature.
page 44 note 1 Magnes' poem is perhaps the 
Α catalogued among the Homeric works bySuidas. A Smyrnaean at this time promulgated an heroic poem as Homeric.
page 45 note 1 This is not mere surmise; the Hymn to Herntes, though the story is frequent in later literature, is all but never mentioned. Alcaeus country. killed it. The Iliu persis of Arctinus is superseded in the Tabula Iliaca by that of Stesichorus.
page 45 note 2 Pylos in the Hymn to Hermes is Alphean or Triphylian. The Triphylian Pylos seems to have perished from the Greek world in the events which are recorded Herod. IV. 145 sqq. The Minyae expelled the Paroreatae and Caucones and founded six new communes in their country. This was before the colonization of Cyrene. The Hymn must either have been made before Pylos was destroyed or not long after, considering the rapidity with which it was forgotten. The neighbouring Samos is alive in Stesichorus fr. 44.
page 46 note 1 As is stated of γ 602–4; cf. P. 40
page 47 note 1 Yet one of Euripides' new numbers—the contingent from Dodona — did get into one papyrus (see on B 748).
page 48 note 1 Hesiod let in Megara, fr. 96, 8; the Ν
admitted Colophon. The Tauri appear in the Cypria, the island Leuce appears in the Aethiopis
page 48 note 2 Yet N is considered a self-evident Athenian interpolation. I venture to repeat my remarks of 1906 (Classical Review, XX. p. 194): ‘the tangibility of the Catalogue is most striking shown by the insignificant position of Athens.Modern opinion has allowed itself to be dominated by the idle legends of lines added here and there by Pisistratus and others; legends betray the all but total absence of such attempts, and their ill-success. The Athenians in Homer appear as the unimportant tribe they were: a remnant perhaps of the prae-Pelopid inhabitants, at all events brigaded with leavings and effeminate peoples, Locrians, Epeans—bow- men who did not wear armour, and whose position was defined as ‘opposite Euboea.’ If 
is a conglomerate, why did not the Athenians, in whose hands the text is supposed to have lain, and may have lain, give themselves a better place ?’
page 48 note 3 l.c. p. 427. ' Oedipus died at Thebes,ψ 679, quite contrary to Attic tradition; Tydeus was buried at Thebes, ξ 114, while the Athenia prided themselves on his burial at Eleusi Philomela is the daughter of Pandareus, t 518, not of the Athenian Pandion; B 107 shows no traces of the strife between Atreus and Thyestes; II 718, Hecuba is daughter of Dymas, in Attic tradition of Cisseus; H 392 and N 626 seem to show that Homer knew nothing of the relations existing between Theseus and Helen before her marriage with Menelaus; γ 307, Orestes returns to his home from Athens, not from Phocis; I 145 gives names for the daughters of Agamemnon… Bellerophon has no help from Pegasus, and Cassandra is no prophetess….
page 49 note 1 The particular passages which have been detected as Athenian interpolations are discussed by Professor Scott and Mr. Lang. I will only add that if Pisistratus proved his descent from Nestor by the somewhat obscure expedient of inserting the journey of Telemachus (and Pisistratus) to Sparta, then the entry about the Lapiths in the Catalogue, and doubtless the mention of the whole barony is the work of Periander. But the Neleidae of the colonization may be relied upon to have seen to the preservation of their pedigree centuries before Pisistratus appeared upon the scene.
page 51 note 1 The patriotic activity of these Megarians suggests to me a consideration with regard to Theognis. The current hypotheses as to the origin of the actual poems appear to me all incredible, even after the careful account of Professor Hudson Williams. On the other hand, there are certainly difficulties in the way of believing the verses to have come as they stand from the hand of their author, enormously exaggerated as these difficulties are. Moreover, we have to account for the paradox that Theognis, a reactionary Megarian émigré, should have survived while Solon, father of the Athenian democracy, Moses, poet and merchant, instinct with all the qualities which Professor Lehmann-Haupt has given him, a source for history and wisdom, and constantly quoted, has undoubtedly perished, and never a papyrus has brought a line of him, save as a quotation, to light. It occurs to me that the idea of a patriotic or Megarian origin of the edition has not yet been considered. Patriotism sticks at nothing; the indisputable poetical merits of Theognis (Solon had those of our own Tupper) may have suggested to these Irelands in a good cause to fortify him by incorporating bits in the same vein from other elegiacs. If they attempted this they succeeded.