OF THE ORIGIN OF HOMER AND
HESIOD, AND OF THEIR CONTEST
Everyone boasts that the most divine of poets, Homer and Hesiod, are said to be his particular countrymen. Hesiod, indeed, has put a name to his native place and so prevented any rivalry, for he said that his father "settled near Helicon in a wretched hamlet, Ascra, which is miserable in winter sultry in summer, and good at no season." But, as for Homer, you might almost say that every city with its inhabitants claims him as her son. Foremost are the men of Smyrna who say that he was the Son of Meles, the river of their town, by a nymph Cretheïs, and that he was at first called Melesigenes. He was named Homer later, when he became blind, this being their usual epithet for such people. The Chians, on the other hand, bring forward evidence to show that he was their countrymen, saying that there actually remain some of his descendants among them who are called Hcrmeridae. The Colophonians even show the place where they declare that he began to compose when a schoolmaster, and say that his first work was the Margites.
As to his parents also, there is on all hands great disagreement. Hellanicus and Cleanthes say his
