Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/27

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THE LIFE OF HOMER.

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ried,^[1] and had two daughters, one of whom died single, the other married a Chian.^[2]

XXVI. He shows great gratitude to his benefactors in his poems, particularly to Mentor of Ithaca, in the Odyssea, on account of his having taken care of him during his blindness, while in that island. He mentions his name in that poem, placing him amongst the companions of Odysseus, and relates that that prince, on his departure for Troy, appointed him steward of his house and lands, knowing him to be the most just and worthy man in Ithaca. Homer often mentions him in other parts of his poem, and when Athenê is represented speaking to some one, it is under the form of Mentor.^[3] He also testifies his gratitude to Phemius, who, not content with instructing him in literature, had also maintained him at his

↑ His wife's father seems to have been Creophilus, (according to other accounts he was Homer's son-in-law, and received the Οἰχαλία as a dowry,) an epic poet of Chios, Samos, or Ios. Plato, Rep. x. 3; Callim. Epig. 6; Strab. xiv, p. 638; Sext. Empir. ad Math. i. 2; Eustath. ad Hom. Il. ii. 730; Suidas, s. v. Plutarch reports that it was in the possession of his family that the Iliad and the Odyssea were discovered. Mure, ii. 276, sqq.
↑ For Chian read Cyprian, as Stasinus, the son-in-law, was a poet of Cyprus. He contests the honour of the authorship of the Cypriacs, with Homer, (Welcker, Ep. Cycl. p. 300,) and Hegesias, (or Hegesinus, according to Photius, Cod. 239, p. 319, ed. Bekker,) a Salaminian. Two lines of the Cypriacs are preserved in Plato's Euthyphron, (p. 12, a, where the Scholiast attributes them to Homer,) where that philosopher censures them as untrue, by the mouth of Socrates:
"Almighty Zeus unwillingly you name,
For ever linked with fear is bashful shame."

The extant hymn to Aphroditè, is conjectured by Schoel (Histoire de la Litérature Grecque Profane, vol. i. p. 167) to be a fragment of this poem. By some, this poem is stated to have been a dowry with Homer's daughter. The number of books it contained is doubtful; Athenæus, however, quotes the eleventh. It related the events which led to the Trojan war, on which see Smith, iii. p. 899; Mure, ii. 279—282. Herod. ii. 117. Compare with the plot of the Cypriacs, Eurip. Orest. 1635, and Helen, 38.
↑ Odyssea, ii. 399.

[1] His wife's father seems to have been Creophilus, (according to other accounts he was Homer's son-in-law, and received the Οἰχαλία as a dowry,) an epic poet of Chios, Samos, or Ios. Plato, Rep. x. 3; Callim. Epig. 6; Strab. xiv, p. 638; Sext. Empir. ad Math. i. 2; Eustath. ad Hom. Il. ii. 730; Suidas, s. v. Plutarch reports that it was in the possession of his family that the Iliad and the Odyssea were discovered. Mure, ii. 276, sqq.

[2] For Chian read Cyprian, as Stasinus, the son-in-law, was a poet of Cyprus. He contests the honour of the authorship of the Cypriacs, with Homer, (Welcker, Ep. Cycl. p. 300,) and Hegesias, (or Hegesinus, according to Photius, Cod. 239, p. 319, ed. Bekker,) a Salaminian. Two lines of the Cypriacs are preserved in Plato's Euthyphron, (p. 12, a, where the Scholiast attributes them to Homer,) where that philosopher censures them as untrue, by the mouth of Socrates:
"Almighty Zeus unwillingly you name,
For ever linked with fear is bashful shame."

The extant hymn to Aphroditè, is conjectured by Schoel (Histoire de la Litérature Grecque Profane, vol. i. p. 167) to be a fragment of this poem. By some, this poem is stated to have been a dowry with Homer's daughter. The number of books it contained is doubtful; Athenæus, however, quotes the eleventh. It related the events which led to the Trojan war, on which see Smith, iii. p. 899; Mure, ii. 279—282. Herod. ii. 117. Compare with the plot of the Cypriacs, Eurip. Orest. 1635, and Helen, 38.

[3] Odyssea, ii. 399.

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