Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

CHAPTERIIIthe contest between homer and hesiod —homer's deathThe cause and circumstances of Homer's death remain uncertainand disputed.For them some writers hold fisherfolkresponsible.Midway between (A) the tradition that Homer took so toheart his impotency to read—be it remembered he had beenacclaimed " of mortals far the wisest "—the riddle of thefisher boys, that he took also to bed and shortly after died,and (B) the absolute assertion by Herodotus the Grammarian{Vita Homeri) that the poet " died at los of disease contractedon his arrival there, and not of grief at failing to understandthe riddle of the fishers," lies the account of the death givenin the Wyihv 'HatoSou Kui 'Ofxijpov, or The Contest betweenHesiod and Homer.'^The Contest, despite the rather laboured thrusts of theantagonists full of curious if not connected touches, makes thefuneral solemnities of King Amphidamas the occasion andChalcis (not Aulis or Delos)the scene of the encounter.Victory and prize were adjudged to Hesiod, because he" sang of Tilth and Peace, not of War and Gore." 21 The 'hyoov is found in only a few of the editions of Hesiod. I havefollowed the text of C. Goettling, 1843. The author Herodotus, who wroteprobably about 60 to 100 a.d., lived of course centuries after Hesiod, who isgenerally dated some 100 to 200 years subsequent to Homer. The accountgiven by Suidas varies in several small details, for instance the riddle is renderedin prose as well as in metre. He definitely states that illness, not the riddle,was accountable for the poet's death.Since writing this Note, I have come across in the Oxford Homer, vol. v.(1912), edited by T. W. Allen, the 'Ayriv, the Life of Homer by Plutarch, andby Suidas, all conveniently placed together. Mr. Allen, in the Jour. Hell.Studies, XXXV. (1915), 85-99, has an elaborate article on 'the Date of Hesiod,*which for astronomical and other reasons he now fixes as 846-777 B.C.* "It is difficult to understand how the author could derive from Works86