88 HOMER AND HESIOD—HOMER’S DEATH 
To which they made answer, 
“*What caught we, we left; what caught we not, we carry.’ 1 
Homer, however, caught not on, until he was told that the key 
of ‘ what’ was not fish, but lice.? 
“Remembering him of the oracle that the end of life was 
upon him, he makes the epitaph for his own tomb. Arising 
thence, he slipped in the mud, falling on his rib, and on the third 
day, so men say, died. And he was buried in Ios.” 
This is the epitaph— 
*EvOdde Thy lephy Kepadryy kata yaia Kadvmrel, 
“AvdpGy jpowy koophropa, Betov “Ounpov. 
or 
“ Here Earth has hid that holy head of thine, 
Marshal of heroes, Homer the divine.” 3 
The story of Hesiod after his victory over Homer as set 
forth in The Contest repays telling. 
He journeyed at once to Delphi to give the first fruits of 
his victory as a votive offering to the Oracle—and here let us 
note how in early times, certainly down to the time of Xenophon, 
the Greeks at important events in their lives resorted to some 
such fane for guidance. 
1 From Anth. Pal., 1X. 448. 
"Epdérnots ‘Ophpov. 
“AvSpes dm ‘Apxadlys adchropes, H pexoper Tes 
-Avramékpiots “Apkddav. 
“Ogo’ édoper, Aimduece’, Baa" ovx Aoper, pepduerba, 
which may perhaps be rendered in rhyme, 
“ Fishers from Arcady, have we aught ? 
Our catch, we left ; we bear, what we ne’er caught ! ” 
2 It suggests itself to me that in the answer to the riddle there is just 
possibly a play within’a play, or a double latent meaning, for the word $Oelp 
denotes not only a louse, but also a fish of the Remora kind. Perhaps this 
humour is too subtle even for a class so noted for “ calliditas,’’ or shrewd wit, 
as Greek fishermen are reputed to have been. 
3 Anth. Pal., VII. 3. Koopuhropa 1 prefer to translate ‘‘ marshal,” its 
first meaning, rather than ‘“‘ adorner”’ adopted by Coleridge, as being far 
stronger, and more fitting for a poet who had “ marshalled ”’ on his stage of 
the Iliadso many heroes. Herodotus states that the people of Ios (not Homer) 
wrote the epitaph at a subsequent date. 
« It was on the advice of Socrates that Xenophon consulted the oracle 
at Delphi, before he set forth for the campaign in Asia, which forms the story 
of his Anabasis. Tablets discovered in Epirus in 1877 by C. Carapanos (see 
Dodone et ses Ruines, Paris, 1878) give examples of questions addressed to the 
