In discussing the story of "Thebes," Pausanias says that these things have been put in verse by Antimachus ̓Αντίμαχος ἐπιστρατείαν 'Apyeiwv Toihoas és nßas, viii. 254. This Thebais of Antimachus was very popular and often quoted, so that Kinkel is able to print fifty-six fragments therefrom, while he is able to find but seven from what is regarded as the earlier Thebais, and most of these are doubtful, since the fragment quoted by Athenaeus is assigned to that earlier postulated poem on the basis of the phrase ὡς ὁ τὴν κυκλικὴν Θηβαίδα πεποιηκώς φησιν (Athen. xi. 465 Ε.) There is no reason for not assigning this quotation to Antimachus, since he too was regarded as a cyclic poet. Horace refers to him as scriptor cyclicus in Ars Poet. 142, and had him in mind as the one who went back to Meleager when telling of the return of Diomede, as we know from Porphyrion's note to this passage in Horace, Antimachus fuit cyclicus poeta. There can be no doubt that cyclic poets were authors of cyclic poetry, so that the Thebais of Antimachus was regarded as cylic poetry long before either Pausanias or Athenaeus.

The scholiast to Stat. Theb. iii. 466 says of this Thebais: Dicunt poetam ista omnia ex Graeco poeta, Antimacho, deduxisse, qui et ipse longam Thebaidem scripsit et veteribus in magno pretio habitam. Judging from the frequency with which the Thebais of Antimachus is quoted and the high regard in which it was held, it seems safe to say that this would be the Thebais to which Pausanias referred, if there is no contrary evidence; but instead we do have positive evidence that it was the version of Antimachus he was following, for he begins the discussion with the words above quoted, "It was Antimachus who put in verse the story of the expedition against Thebes."

I do not care to discuss all uses of the word Thebais in Pausanias, but they all occur in parts of his writings which are subsequent to the statement that he is relying on the poetical version of Antimachus.

Nothing is more remarkable than the different ways in which Wilamowitz looks at the same thing, when this thing can be made to serve his different theories, since in discrediting Homer the slightest inference drawn from Pausanias becomes a foundation of granite capable of supporting the most far-reaching theories, but when he wishes to prove that all of the oldest poetry, except the Iliad and the Odyssey, were lost at an early period, then the most explicit

statements of Pausanias become utterly worthless. H.U., 338: "Paus. iv. 2 und sonst werden epische citate mit einem unzweideutigen éyw éñeλežáμunv eingeführt. Es wird ohne zweifel vielen ganz lästerlich klingen, wenn ich auch nur die frage aufwerfe ob Pausanias die gedichte gelesen hat. Dennoch scheue ich mich nicht, mit zuversicht und mit ruhe diese frage zu verneinen. Die belesensten männer, Plutarch und Porphyrius, haben die gedichte nie gesehen." Here he is discussing the early epic poems of the Homeric cycle. It seems to me further discussion of this passage is hardly necessary, for if the most explicit statements are to be thrown aside as worthless, it is hard to put much weight on a doubtful reference, and that a reference which depends on a most improbable conjecture. It is unlikely that Callinus ever wrote any literary discussion, so that even if all the manuscripts had the name Callinus, it would then be necessary to prove that the Callinus intended was the poet of Ephesus.

The sole argument against the form Calaenus is that no man of that name is known, but at least one-half of all the proper names given by Pape are names occurring but a single time.

The theory that Pausanias was here quoting the elegiac poet, Callinus, needs some support for itself and cannot alone and unaided furnish the proof that in the seventh century B.C. Homer was generally regarded as the poet of the Thebais. Pausanias may in the very passage quoted be expressing his surprise that a Calaenus should assign a poem by Antimachus to Homer, just as I might be surprised that a prominent writer in a recent magazine assigned She Stoops to Conquer to Sheridan, or that Secretary Lane confused Achilles and Antaeus, or that many educated people think the Bible is the source of the phrase, "The Lord tempers the weather to the shorn lamb."

The meaning of Pausanias is not clear; the word Callinus is a conjecture, and Wilamowitz accuses Pausanias, H.U., 340: "er hat sich eine gelehrsamkeit angeschwindelt die er nicht besass," so that if a clear statement is set aside, we feel that an obscure passage founded on an emendation is poor support for arguments which discredit the literary judgment of the entire ancient world, for that ancient world chose to neglect the Thebais.

The second writer quoted to prove that Homer was regarded as the author of the Thebais is Herodotus from whom the following passage is confidently quoted (ν. 67): Κλεισθένης γὰρ Αργείοισι πολεμήσας τοῦτο μὲν ῥαψῳδοὺς ἔπαυσε ἐν Σικυῶνι ἀγωνίζεσθαι τῶν Ομηρείων ἐπέων εἵνεκα, ὅτι Αργεῖοί τε καὶ "Αργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαTal. Finsler in his Homer, I, 64, never doubts that here is a clear reference to the Thebais, for he says: "Die Thebais ist gemeint, wenn der Tyrann Kleisthenes von Sikyon die Rhapsodenvorträge verbietet, weil die homerischen Gedichte Argos zu sehr verherrlichten." Wilamowitz, H.U., 352: "Es ist nur sinn wenn der dichter der Thebais verstanden wird." It is waste of time to quote this same sentiment from the many writers who argue that there is no praise of Argos and the Argives found in the Iliad and Odyssey which would arouse the envy of a hostile neighbor, and since Argos is so neglected in these poems some other poem must be assumed that contains the needed praise, hence the hypothetical praise in an assumed Thebais. However, the Iliad and Odyssey do seem to furnish ample justification for the phrase ̓Αργείοι τε καὶ ̓́Αργος τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ὑμνέαται, since some form of the word Argos is found in every book of the Iliad but one, and even in the Odyssey, where Ithaca and the Ithacans turn our attention away from Argos and the Argives, some form of this word is found in fifteen of the twenty-four books, hence thirtyeight Homeric books mention Argos or the Argives. Rawlinson, with no thought of this discussion, in his note to the first chapter of Herodotus says: "The ancient superiority of Argos is indicated by the position of Agamemnon at the time of the Trojan War and by the use of Argive in Homer for Greek generally. No other name of a single people is used in the same generic way." Here this competent historian bases the claim for Argive superiority entirely on the campaign before Troy, that is, on the Iliad and the Odyssey.

However, this is not a question of probabilities, for we know from the Argives themselves the poetry which stirred their pride, since we have a copy of the very inscription they set up in honor of Homer. This inscription is added to the Contest between Homer and Hesiod as published in the works of Hesiod. The present form of this Agon is admittedly late, as it contains the name of the Emperor

Hadrian, but E. Rhode, Rh. Mus., XXXVII, 566; E. Meyer, Hermes, XXVII, 378; and Wilamowitz, Die Ilias und Homer, pp. 400 f., agree in assigning the material of the Agon to a date earlier than the Age of Pericles. The date of the Argive inscription is uncertain, but even Wilamowitz who discusses this Agon in his Ilias under the heading Ein Altes Volksbuch declines to give it a later date than the fourth century B.C. The account of the inscription and the inscription itself are as follows: "The leaders of Argos rejoicing greatly in the fact that their own people have been so highly honored by the most illustrious of poets have in turn loaded him with conspicuous honors. They erected a bronze image and voted him a sacrifice for each day, each month, each year, and in addition every fifth year sent an offering for his glory to Chios. On his image they engraved the following verses:

θεῖος Ομηρος δ' ἐστίν, ὃς Ελλάδα τὴν μεγάλαυχον

πᾶσαν εκόσμησεν καλλιεπεῖ σοφίῃ

ἔξοχα δ' Αργείους, οἳ τὴν θεοτειχέα Τροίην

ἤρειψαν ποινὴν ἠυκόμου Ἑλένης

οὗ χάριν ἔστησεν δῆμος μεγαλόπολις αὐτὸν

ἐνθάδε καὶ τιμαῖς ἁμφέπει ἀθανάτων.

This is divine Homer, who adorned all proud Hellas with his wonderful poetic skill, but most of all he honored the Argives, who humbled the godbuilt city Troy, as a requital for the wrongs done to the fair-haired Helen, and hence the proud-citied state worships him now with divine honors.

Here we have from the Argives themselves the thing in Homer which they viewed with such boundless pride, and this thing was no exploit connected with Thebes, but it was the expedition against Troy, that is, they felt exalted because Homer had honored them in the Iliad and Odyssey, and they never mentioned in this inscription anything in regard to Thebes.

There can be no doubt that hostile neighbors would envy them just the thing in which they themselves took this unbounded pride, and that thing is found in no assumed Thebais, but in Homer, our Homer, the Homer who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In no place in Herodotus do the Argives lay any claim to honor or favor because of their connection with Thebes, but oddly enough the Athenians at the battle of Plataea claimed as one of the reasons

for commanding the wing opposite the Spartans their own services at that time; Her. ix. 27: "When the Argives led their troops with Polynices against Thebes and were slain and refused burial, it is our boast that we went out against the Cadmaeans, recovered the bodies and buried them at Eleusis in our own territory." Yet in the face of this, these lynx-eyed critics assume that there was nothing in the Iliad and Odyssey to stir the pride of the Argives or to arouse the envy of jealous neighbors, hence they must flee to a poem which told how these same Argives could not bury their own slain but depended on the mercies of a foreign race to bury them in a foreign soil.

The love the people of Argos had for Homer is shown by the fact that Aristarchus quoted readings from the Argive state manuscript for both the Iliad and the Odyssey, but there is not the slightest evidence that they made any attempt to preserve any copy of the Thebais.

In the Panegyricus, 158, Isocrates tells of the sadness the Greeks always feel when told in poetry of the wars between the Greeks, and then he adds: "I think that the poetry of Homer has received the greater glory because he pictures them as fighting the barbarians, and it was just because of this that our ancestors honored him in musical festivals and in the education of the young." If Isocrates could pick out as the especial merit of Homer that he represented the Greeks as fighting the barbarians and not one another, then there is no doubt that Homer was not regarded as the poet of the Thebais in Athens in the fourth century B.C., and if Isocrates had ever heard of such a tradition he could not have used this argument. This speech was no sudden and careless production, but a work of art in the preparation of which the orator had spent many years, so that it must be regarded as evidence of the greatest weight.

These two passages, one from Herodotus, the other from Pausanias, are the only assumed allusions in any classical Greek writer to a Thebais by Homer, yet on this slender foundation Wilamowitz has erected all his stupendous theory of Homer's name and fame in connection with the Thebais. Many sentences like the following could be quoted from his recent Die Ilias und Homer (p. 375): "The testimony of Callinus proves that in his age the rhapsodists in