Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/78

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56
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
56

56 HISTORY OF THE which the Iliad itself gives of the forces of the Trojans: this altogether omits the important allies, the Caucones and the Leleges, both of whom often occur in the Iliad, and the latter inhabited the celebrated city of Pedasus, on the Satnioeis *. Among the princes unmentioned in this Catalogue, Asteropaeus, the leader and hero of the Pseonians, is particularly ob- servable, who arrived eleven days before the battle with Achilles, and, therefore, before the review in the second book f, and at least deserved to be named as well as Pyraechmes }. On the other hand, this Catalogue has some names, which are wanting in the parts of the Iliad, where they would naturally recur §. But we have another more decided proof that the Catalogue of the Trojans is of comparatively recent date, and was composed after that of the Achaeans. The Cyprian poem, which was intended solely to serve as an introduction to the Iliad ||, gave at its con- clusion (that is, immediately before the beginning of the action of the Iliad) a list of the Trojan allies-^"; which certainly would not have been the case if, in the second book of the Iliad, as it then existed, not the Achaeans alone but also the Trojans had been enumerated. Perhaps our present Catalogue in the Iliad is only an abridgment of that in the Cyprian poem ; at least, then, the omission of Asteropaeus could be ex- plained, for if he came eleven days before the battle just mentioned, he would not (according to Homer's chronology) have arrived till after the beginning of the action of the Iliad, that is, the sending of the plague. But from the observations on these two Catalogues may be drawn other inferences, besides that they are not of genuine Homeric origin : first, that the rhapsodists, who composed these parts, had not the Iliad before them in writing, so as to be able to refer to it at pleasure ; other- wise, how should they not have discovered that Medon lived at Phy- lace, and such like particulars ; 2dly, that these later poets did not retain the entire Iliad in their memory, but that in this attempt to °;ive an ethnographical survey of the forces on each side, they allowed them- selves to be guided by the parts which they themselves knew by heart and could recite, and by less distinct reminiscences of the rest of the poem. § 10. A far less valid suspicion than that which has been raised

  • For the Caucones, see II. x. 429 j xx. 329. For the Leleges, II. x. 429 j xx. 96 ;

xxi. 86. Comp. vi. 35. f See II. xxi. 155 ; also xii. 102 ; xviii. 351. ^ J II. ii. 848. The author of this Catalogue must have thought only of II. xvi. 287 The scholiast, on II. ii. 844, is also quite correct in mis-ing Iphidamas; who, indeed, was a Trojan, the son of Autenor and Theano, hut was furnished by his maternal grandfather, a Thracian prince, with a fleet of twelve ships. 11. xi. 221. § For example, the soothsayer Eunomus, who, according to the Catalogue (11. ii. 861), was slain by Achilles in the river, of which there is no mention in the Iliad. So likewise Amphimachus. 11. ii. 871. || See below, chap. vi. § 4. <|f kx) xxTu.oyt$ twv rc~n Tean fvy.y.ix^ufavrcdv, Proclus in Gaisford's Hephaestion. p. 476.