Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/20

XVI. During his residence in Phocæa, at the house of Thestorides, he composed the Little Iliad,^[1] of which the two first verses are as follows:

"I sing of Ilium and Dardania, abounding in excellent horses,^[2] and the ills the Greeks, servants of Mars, endured in their plains."

He next composed the Phocæid,^[3] as the Phocæans say.

1. The Little Ilias (Ἰλιὰς μικρά) is generally considered to be the composition of Lesches or Lescheos, who flourished about the eighteenth Olympiad. This poem, and the Æthiopis of Arctinus, a more ancient writer, who lived in the beginning of the Olympiads, treated of the same subject, and so gave rise to an absurd anachronism, concerning a contest between the two poets. It has been (like all the cyclic poems) variously ascribed to Homer himself, to Thestorides of Phocæa (§ xvi.), Cinæthon of Lacedæmon, and Diodorus of Erythræ. The poem was divided into four books, according to Proclus, who preserves an extract. It narrated the fate of Ajax, the exploits of Odysseus, Neoptolemus, and Philoctetes, and the final capture and sacking of Troy, (Arist. Poet. xxiii.,) which part of the poem received the name of the Destruction of Troy (Ἰλίου περσίς). The poem possessing no unity excepting historical and chronological succession, Aristotle (loc. cit.) justly observes that eight tragedies might be made from it, while only one can be composed from the Iliad or Odyssey. Conf. Müller's History of Greek Literature, vi. §3; Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, pp. 132, 251, 272, 358, 368; Suidas, s. v. Ὅμηρος; Clemens Alex. i. p. 381; Saumaise, In exercitationibus Plinianis, p. 847, et seq.; Mure.´, Greek Literature, vol. ii. 284, 285.
2. Homer, in the Iliad, frequently calls the plains of Troy "rich in horses." There is some resemblance in Sophocles, (Œdip. Col. v. 669,) where the Chorus tells Œdipus that he had come to the land "renowned for the steed," speaking of Colonus.
3. Of this poem nothing is known. It was probably a history of the founding and progress of the town of Phocæa, now called Phokia. Fabricius conjectures that we should read Phaecid, instead of Phocæid. See Ovid, Epist. iv. ep. 12, l. 27.
   "Dignam Mœoniis Phæacida condere chartis
   Cum te Pierides perdocuere tuæ."
   
   

   But see Cardinal Quirini (De primordiis Corcyræ, p. 19 et 20); Mure, vol. ii. 369, sqq; Welck. Ep. Cycl. p. 248.