Eugamon Huxley, G L Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1960; 3, 1; ProQuest pg. 17

Homerica 
G. L. Huxley 

I 
Homeric Syrie 

N '" ~ I \ ' " " YJU"Ofl TLfl .,;.,vptYJ KtK/\ YJU"K€TUL, €t 7TOV UKOV€Lfl 

'0 'f)' f) <If) , , \' prvYLYJfl KU V7T€P €V, 0 L rp07TUt YJ€/\WW. 

(Homer, Odyssey 15.403-4) 

((THERE IS AN ISLAND called Syrie" says Eumaeus to Odysseus, 
"- you perhaps have heard of it - above Ortygie, where 

are the turnings of the sun." On the words "turnings of the sun" 
the scholiasts remark: "They say there is a cave of the sun there, 
through which they mark the turnings of the sun (QV). As it were 
towards the turnings of the sun, which is westwards, above Delos 
(BHQ). - So Aristarchus and Herodian (H)." Both explanations 
assume that Syrie is the island of Syros, and Ortygie Delos. Evident­
ly there was supposed to be a sun cave at Syros in Hellenistic times; 
it was probably to the same marker that Diogenes Laertius [1.1191 
referred. 

Syros cannot be Syrie, for the difference in length of the up­
silons is an insuperable difficulty. Nor can Ortygie be Delos, the 
two places being distinct in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: Leta is 
there said to have given birth to Apollo on Delos and to Artemis at 
Ortygie [161- There were Ortygias at Syracuse and Ephesus, and 
there may well have been others at places where quails landed dur­
ing their migrations. l Miss H. L. Lorimer suggested that Syrie was 
Syria,2 but Homer was surprisingly ignorant if he took Syria to be 
an island, and the Phoenicians of the swineherd's story would hardly 
have been thought to stay a whole year in a country so close to 

lG. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambrio"e 1957) 54 n. 2. 
2H. L. Lorimer, Horner and the Monuments (London 1950) 80-84. 

17 



18 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

Phoenicia.3 Guided by the words of Eumaeus, we must look else­
where for Syrie. 

In the Odyssey [5.123] Orion is said to have been slain by Arte­
mis at Ortygie, after he had been carried thither by Eos. The men­
tion of Eos, the dawn, led Miss Lorimer to the view that Ortygie lay 
in the east.4 Eos was commonly thought to dwell in Aia, and since 
Aia was a part of the land of Colchis,5 Ortygie lay east of Greece, 
and probably in the Black Sea region. 

By the words DO" rp01Ta'i TJ€A.iOLO Homer cannot have meant 
anything so complicated as a place in which solstices were marked; 
it is impossible in Greek of any period for the expression to mean 
a cave for marking the turnings of the sun, as the scholia would 
have it. The natural meaning of the words DO" rpoTra'i TJ€A.LOtO is "in 
the direction of the solstice." 

Solstices, as Kirk and Raven maintain, would normally be ob­
observed at sunrise,6 so that "where the summer solstice is" indi­
cates the position in which the sun is observed to rise at midsummer; 
similarly "where the winter solstice is" points to the position at 
which it rises at midwinter. Records of the summer solstice are those 
most needed for calendary reckoning; therefore the simple expres­
sion DOt rpOTraL TJ€A.LoLO would naturally call to mind the direction 
of the point on the horizon where the sun "turns" on the ecliptic 
at midsummer. Ortygie and Syrie thus lie north-east by east of 
Greece, since Odysseus and Eumaeus are talking in Ithaca. Here 
again the cryptic words of Homer point in the general direction 
of the Euxine. 

The precise meaning of the first words of Eumaeus is not at 
once clear: they can mean either "there is an island called Syrie" or 
possibly "there is a kind of island that is called Syrian," if stress is 
laid on ns-. The inhabitants of Levantine Syria and the Assyrians 
were not the only Syrians known to the Greeks, for the Pontic Syroi 
or Leukosyroi are well attested in early writers.7 They lived in the 

3Kirk and Raven, op.cit. 54 n. 2. 
4Lorimer, op.cit. 80ff. 
IISchol. to A.R. 2.413 (p. 164 Wendel). 
6 op.cit. 54 n. 3. 
7Hecat. FGrHist 1 F 200. 1 F 201; Hdt. 1.76. See Th. Noldeke. Hermu 5 (1871) 

443-468. 



19601 HOMERICA I: HOMERIC SYRIE 19 

hinterland of Sinope in the country about Pteria, and once they had 
held the land in which the Milesian founders of Sinope settled. 

There had also been a Phrygian settlement in the land of the 
Leukosyroi, for west of Sinope lay the little port of Armene.8 The 
name points to an Armenian settlement, and the Armenians were 
colonists of the Phrygians.9 The Halys flowed from a Mount Arme­
nion to the sea east of Sinope.1o The natural harbors of Sinope gave 
to Phrygia an outlet to the Euxine in her most prosperous age before 
the Cimmerian invasions, at the time when Kyme was her outlet 
to the Aegean. Through Sinope Phrygia could trade with Urartu, 
and, through K yme, with the west in the period of her thalassocracy 
in the late eighth century B.C. 

The presence of Armeno-Phrygian settlers in the land of the 
Leukosyroi before the coming of the Greeks gave rise to the legend 
of a Thessalian foundation earlier than the Milesian;l1 the Thes­
salians were supposed to have come from Ormenion or Armenian, 
but the fiction is transparent.12 The founders Autolycus, Deileon, 
and Phlogius, who came to war against the Amazons about Sinope 
from Ormenion in Thessaly, are taken over from the earlier Phrygi­
an settlers. Both Phlogius and Autolycus later had oracles at Sinope; 
they are heroes of an indigenous cult, hellenized by the Milesians.13 

The change from A to 0, as in Armenos and Ormenos, Atreus, 
and Otreus, is typically Phrygian. The father of Eumaeus was Ktesios 
Ormenides. His name is rare, but the patronymic, son of Ormenus 
or Armenus, is found twice on the Trojan side in Homer/4 and 
points to a Phrygian or an Armenian. Eumaeus, then, came from a 
Phrygian princely line; that is why Homer calls the swineherd "a 
marshaller of men."15 

All Homer's hints in the story of Eumaeus point to the Pontic 

8Anon. Per.Pont.Euxin. 20 (C. Muller, Geographi Graeei Minores2 1 rParis 1882] 
407); Arrian, Periplus 14 (p. 84 ed. G. Marenghi); St.Byz. S.v . • ApIJ.€p1'}; Str. 12.545. 

9Hdt. 7.73. 
10Hdt. 1.72. 
llPs.Scymnus 946. 
12p. Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Griechischen Spraehe (Gottingen 

1896) 210. 
13ATA 9 (1905) 306 No. 31. F. Bilabel, Die lonische Kolonisation, Phiioiogul Sup. 

plementband 14.1 (Leipzig 1920) 33-34. 
HII. 8.274; 12.187. 
150d. 15.389. 



20 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

coast of the Leukosyroi: the name Syrie itself, the name Ormenus, 
the natural meaning of the expression "where are the turnings of 
the sun," and the position of Ortygie all show that the poet had 
one place in mind; that place lay on the coast of the Leukosyrian 
land. There are no prominent islands on the coast, but the chief 
landmark to sailors voyaging eastwards along the southern shore 
of the Pontus is the Chersonese of Sinope. That is the island vij0"6~ 
TIS which Homer names Syrie, the Syrian. In the twentieth cen­
tury the Greeks of Sin ope still called the promontory of Sinope 
VTJO"L,.1G Syrie lay above Ortygie, because the great cape must be 
rounded before a ship can sail on eastwards to Colchis, Aia, and the 
land of Eos. 

Homer thinks of Syrie as an eighth century Greek would think 
of the place before the Milesians settled there. His knowledge comes 
from early Greek exploration of the Pontus, when the land of the 
Leukosyroi seemed so remote that the Phoenicians are made to 
spend a whole year there. The date of the passage depends upon 
the date of the Greek penetration of the Black Sea - a still un­
certain matter.17 

It is sometimes said that the foundation of Sinope by Miletus 
must have taken place as early as the middle of the eighth century 
B.C., because Trapezus was a colony of Sinope/8 and Eusebius dates 
the foundation of Trapezus in 756 B.C.19 The reasoning is not close; 
if the eighth century foundation of Trapezus is historical, the 
mother city may have been the Arcadian Trapezus,2o the seat of 

16D. M. Robinson, Ancient Sin ope (Diss. Chicago, 1906) 131 n. 4. 
17Th ere is a sober discussion of the problem by A. J. Graham, "The Date of the Greek 

Penetration of the Black Sea," Bulletill of the London Institute of Classical Studies 
5 (1958) 25-42. 

18F. Miltner, "Die erste Milesische Kolonisation im Stidpontus," Anatolian Studies 
Buckler (Manche<ter 1939) 191-195. 

19Eus. 11.80 (Schoene). 
20Pausanias (8.3.2) lists Arcadian Trapezus amongst the Arcadian places that founded 

cities. In 8.27.6 he states that the people of Pontic Trapezus welcomed settlers from 
Arcadian Trapezus as namesakes and brethren from the mother city at the time of the 
founding of Megale Polis. The name OirT/vis in St. Byz. s.v. (Pontic) T pa1l"erOVS is 
possibly, as Meineke suggested, a corruption of the Arcadian name 'ArT/vis. J. A. Cramer 
(Asia Minor 1 [Oxford 1832] 287) was, so far as I can find, the first to deny that 
Pontic Trapezus was founded by Arcadians; the words of Pausanias should not be rejected 
on account of the sameness of names, Arcadian Trapezus may well have been the mother 
city of a short-lived eighth century settlement, Sinope of a new foundation in the 
seventh century or later. 



1960] HOMERICA I: HOMERIC SYRIE 21 

the Arcadian kings. The Peloponnesian interest in the Euxine would 
help to explain the mention of Colchis by Eumelus the Corinthian, 
who also made Sinope a daughter of Asopus,21 and who may have 
made her the mother of Syros by Apollo.22 The Peloponnesian set­
tlement would not have lasted later than the Cimmerian attacks 
on Urartu and north eastern Asia Minor in the last quarter of the 
eighth century. The place may well have been refounded by Sinope 
in the seventh century B.C. 

The Chersonese of Sinope was occupied by the Cimmerians, 
when they were fleeing from the Scythians ;23 the words of Hero­
dotus here do not entail that there had been no previous Greek 
settlement at the place. Pseudo-Scymnus [947] noted a settlement 
led by Habrondas a Milesian, and he was thought to have been 
killed by the Cimmerians. The settlement evidently was short-lived 
and there is unlikely to be much archaeological material to prove 
its existence. The date is about 700 B.C., before the great Cimmerian 
and Trerian attack on western Asia Minor, which overthrew the 
might of Phrygia. After the Cimmerians, continues Pseudo-Scymnus, 
Cous and Cretines, exiles from Miletus, made a synoecism there 
[951]; that was when the Cimmerian host was overrunning Asia. 
The last words seem to refer to the raids on Ionia about 675 B.C., 

dfter the Cimmerians had moved westwards from their base at 
Sinope. The earliest finds of Greek material yet made at Sinope 
belong to the second half of the seventh century,24 but when the 
place is better explored traces of the Milesian settlement about 
675 B.C. should be found. 

According to Nicolas of Damascus/5 who followed Xanthus 
the historian of Lydia, the father of Gyges fled to the land of the 
Syroi who dwelt above Sinope, and married a Syrian woman. His 
words certainly imply a settlement at Sinope about 700 B.C., in the 
generation before Gyges, who reigned about 660 B.C. Whether the 
Sinope is the Phrygian settlement or the first Milesian is not stated, 
but at least the passage shows that there was a city about 700 B.C. 

21Frg. 8 Kinkel ap. Schol. to A.R. 2.946 (p. 197 Wendel); ct. C. M. Bowra, Hermes 

73 (1938) 213-221. 
22D.S. 4.72.2; Plu. Luc. 23. 
23Hdt. 4.12. 
24Graham, op.cit. (supra n. 17) discusses the excavations of Akurgal and Budde at Sinope. 
25FGrHist 90 F 46. 



., , 

22 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

in the land of the Syrians called Sinope. The same fact is implied 
by the fragment of Eumelus that names Sinope. 

Eumaeus says that his homeland was not too full of people, 
but abounding in Bocks and wine and wheat. Such a description well 
fits the rich land about Sinope, whose natural advantages are care­
fully described by Strabo.26 Homer does not name the two cities 
over which Ktesios held sway, but we can guess. One was the 
Phrygian settlement of Sinope; the other was Pteria, the Greek 
name of Hattusas, which once had been the capital of the Hittite 
Empire. Possibly Syroi and Leukosyroi were the Greeks' names 
for the survivors of the Hittites who still lived in the country be­
tween Pteria and Sinope in the eighth century B.C. 

Eumaeus makes his story sound like a prospectus for a colony;27 
such stories as his of lands awaiting settlement in the west and 
on the shores of the Pontus encouraged the Greeks of the eighth 
century to sail further afield, first to explore and later to colonize. 
There is no suggestion in the Odyssey that Odysseus went to the 
Pontus, and even the allusions to the Argonautica are not expressly 
to the Pontic Argonautica. After the work of Eumelus, however, 
the Argonautica was firmly connected with the Pontus, and Colchis, 
which Homer does not mention, entered the Corinthian and Mile­
sian epics. If there is any truth in the Eusebian date for Trapezus, 
then the Odyssey's only mention of a place on the coast of the 
Euxine, Syrie with Ortygie, should be dated nearer 750 B.C. than 
700 B.C. The remote Homeric view of the Pontus is in any case 
earlier than the work of Eumelus, who lived before the first Mes­
senian war, that is before the thirties of the eighth century B.C. By 
the time of the brief founding of Sin ope by Habrondas, the Euxine 
was well known to explorers from Ionia and from mainland 
Greece, who had no difficulty in sailing there and needed only the 
motive to do so. The motive was given by the hope of trade with 
Urartu in the great awakening before the Cimmerian and Trerian 
invasions. By 700 B.C. the Euxine (I suggest) was well known to 
the Greeks, but in 750 B.C. the northeastern sea was still strange and 
remote. It is strange and remote in the Odyssey; Odysseus is sup-

26Str. 12.545. 
27Lorimer. op.cit. (supra n. 2) 80ff. 



1960] HOMERICA II: EUGAMON 23 

posed to have heard of Syrie, but not to have been there. The Syrie 
of Eumaeus is the land of the Leukosyroi as it was known to an 
Ionian poet about the third quarter of the eighth century B.C. 

June 1959 

II 

Eugamon 

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EUGAMON'S EPIC POEM the Telegony comes 
from a summary in the Chrestomathy of Proclus. Not one 

hexameter is quoted from his work by an ancient author: Eugamon 
is a poet without poetry, but I shall show that he is a rewarding 
subject for literary investigation. 

Then there is the Odyssey of Homer, wrote Proclus;l next two books of 
the Telegony of Eugammon,2 a Cyrenean, comprising the following: 

The suitors are buried by their kinsfolk. 
And Odysseus, after sacrificing to the nymphs, sails away to inspect the 

herds,3 and is entertained by Polyxenus, and receives a crater as a gift. After 
that came the story of Trophonius and Agamedes and Augeas. [Since 
Polyxenus was king of Elis, this part of the poem was certainly set in 
Pelopponnese. ] 

Then he sails back to Ithaca and offers the sacrifices prescribed by 
Tiresias. And afterwards he goes to the Thesprotians, and marries Callidice, 
queen of the Thesprotians .. Then the Thesprotians make war on the Brygians 
under the leadership of Odysseus. Thereupon Ares puts to flight the com­
panions of Odysseus, and Athena engages Ares in battle; but Apollo reconciles 
them. And after the death of Callidice, Polypoetes son of Odysseus succeeds 
to the kingdom, and Odysseus goes to Ithaca. 

Meanwhile Telegonus, sailing to look for his father, lands in Ithaca and 
lays the island waste. After marching out to repel him, Odysseus is killed by 
his son in ignorance. After seeing his mistake Telegonus took the body of his 
father, with Telemachus and Penelope, to his mother; she made them Im­
mortal. And Telegonus married Penelope and Telemachus Circe. 

lE. Bethe, Homer II (Berlin 1922) 186. 
2The spelling Ev')'a.,uwp was defended by O. Crusius, Philologus 54 (1895) 733 with 

n. 51. Proclus has E{ryaf.Lf.LwII, Eusebius Ev,),af.LwII. Crusius thought the name meant 'Hoch­
zeitfreund,' and his spelling is followed by Schmid-Stahlin, Geschichte der Griechischen 
Literatur I.i (Munich 1929) 217 n. 4. ct. A. Hartmann, Untersuchungen ilber die Sagen 
tlom Tod des Odysseus (Munich 1917) 47. 

3ct. Noemon's herds in Elis: Od. 4.630. 



24 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

Eustathius, commenting on Odyssey 16.118, noted: "The Cyre­
nean who wrote the Telegony calls the son of Odysseus by Calypso 
Telegonus or Teledamus, and his sons by Penelope Telemachus 
and Arcesilaus." T'Y]AiDafLo)) will not scan in an hexameter, and 
Wilamowitz4 suggested T'Y]AiDa1TO)). In other authorities Tele­
gonus is a son of Circe; Eustathius or his source probably made a 
slip here. Arcesilaus is plainly due to Eugamon, who wished to 
connect the royal house of Cyrene with his hero Odysseus. 

Other Cyrenean elements can be detected in the plot of the 
Telegony. In a digression Eugamon told the story of the treasury 
of Augeas and how Trophonius built it. In the Telegony the tale 
may have been depicted upon the crater given by Polyxenus to 
Odysseus.5 It is told in enough detail in a fragment of Charax of 
Pergamum6 to show that the point of the plot was the same as 
in the Herodotean tale of the robbing of the treasury of Rhampsini­
tus: the Egyptian who left the loose stone in the treasury becomes 
Trophonius in the Telegony. The change is typical of the mixed 
culture of Cyrene, part Hellenic, part Libyan, and influenced by 
Egypt. Since the floruit of Eugamon is given by Eusebius as Olympi­
ad 53.3 (566 B.C.), the poet probably was active under king Arcesi­
laus II, and the Arcesilaus of the Telegony was perhaps named after 
him; possibly Eugamon was his court poet. 

Clement of Alexandria remarked that early Greek epic poets 
were notorious for their thefts. He cited as an example of plagiar­
ism Eugamon's passing off the whole book of Musaeus on the 
Thesprotians as his own.7 It is true that part of the Telegony is set 
in Thesprotia, but that does not prove Eugamon to have stolen from 
Musaeus or anyone else. Rhapsodes had no sense of copyright and 
were at liberty to borrow each others' stories. Clement or his source 
probably saw that the T hesprotis and part of the Telegony had a 
great deal in common; but it cannot be proved that Eugamon took 
over the entire Thesprotis into his Telegony. 

The Telegony has recently been studied with great penetration 

4Homensche Untersuchungen (Berlin 1884) 183. 
fiRE 21.2 (1952) 1854. 
6FGrHist 103 F 5. Cf.Hdt. 2.121; Wilamowitz, op.cit. 186; D. B. Munro, lHS 5 

(1884) 41; E. Schwartz, Die Odyssee (Munich 1924) 149 n. 1. 
7Ciem. AI. Strom. 6.2.25.1. Homer 5 (ed. T. W. Allen) 143. 



1960] HOMERICA II: EUGAMON 25 

by Merkelbach.8 He has compared the prophecy of Tiresias made 
in the Nekyomanteia9 with events in the Telegony. As may be 
expected in a poem designed to continue the Odyssey, the plot of 
the Telegony accords well with the prophecy of the Theban seer. 
"After you kill the suitors in your halls," says he, "either by stealth 
or with the sharp bronze, then next set out taking a well-smoothed 
oaf, until you come to the people who know not the sea and eat 
no food mixed with salt . . . I shall tell you a very obvious sign 
which shall not escape you: when another traveller meets you and 
says that you have a winnowing fan on your sturdy shoulder, then 
fix the oar in the ground and make good sacrifice to lord Poseidon, 
a ram, a bull, and a breeding boar. Then go back home and sacri­
fice holy hecatombs to the immortal gods, who dwell in the broad 
heaven: to each of them in turn. And a painless death shall come to 
you from the sea" [or possibly "far from the sea" - the word was 
taken both ways in antiquity] "that shall take you off in gentle 
old age. The people around you shall be prosperous; it is the uner­
ring truth that I tell." In the Telegony Odysseus sets out on his 
wanderings again and he is killed by Telegonus, who comes from 
the sea. In the Apollodorean Epitome10 details missing in ProcIus 
are given: Telegonus coming to Ithaca drove away some of the 
cattle; and when Odysseus defended them, Telegonus wounded 
him with a spear barbed with the spine of a sting ray. Odysseus 
then died of the wound. Here the sting ray is the death that came 
from the sea - an ingenious device to explain the words of Tiresias. 
We cannot know whether it was an invention of Eugamon himself; 
Sophocles, who may have drawn on Eugamon, told the story in 
his Odysseus Acanthoplex.ll 

Merkelbach considered that the order to Odysseus to go inland 
was fulfilled in the Telegony in Epirus. Tradition, it is true, placed 
at Bouneima the inland people visited by Odysseus with the oar, 
or sent him to Trampya amongst the Eurytanes of the Pindus 
range.12 Odysseus was thus made to go as far inland as possible 

SR. Merkelbach, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee, Zetemata 2 (Munich 1951) 142-155. 
90d. 11.119-137. 
10736 (p. 302 ed. J. G. Frazer). 
llA. C. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles 2 (Cambridge 1917) 105-114. 
12Steph. Byz. s.v. Bovl'fI,ua. Sehol. Lye. Alex. 800. Wilamowitz, op.cit. 189 n. 30. 



26 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

in northern Greece to obey the orders of Tiresias. However, in the 
summary of Produs, Odysseus carries out in Ithaca the sacrifices 
bidden by Tiresias. Merkelbach13 therefore emended the text of 
P I . d f" , '10' \" ., T roc us: Instea 0 E1TELTa EIS aKTJv KaTa1TI\.Evcrar; Tar; V1TO ELPE~ 

ULOV PTJOELcrar; TEAE£ OVULar;, he proposed to read E1TELTa elr; "H1TELpOV. 

The change is ingenious, but the rough handling of the evidence 
unnecessary. In his prophecy Tiresias orders Odysseus to go to the 
people who eat no salt with their food, and to sacrifice to Poseidon 
there; then he is to return home and to sacrifice to all the immortal 
gods in turn. The words of Produs Tas lnrO TELPEcrLOV PTJOEtUar; 

TEAE£ OvuLar; therefore apply to the group of sacrifices to be per­
formed in Ithaca on the return of Odysseus from the land of the 
saltless people. 

It follows that in the Telegony the sacrifices to Poseidon were 
made before Odysseus returned from Polyxenus in Elis to Ithaca. 
Produs does not mention them, but it can be shown that in the 
Telegony Odysseus did indeed sacrifice far from the sea before he 
left Elis for Ithaca. The Arcadians were well known for their ig­
norance of maritime matters: accordingly Eugamon was able to 
send Odysseus to sacrifice to Poseidon in Arcadia. To confirm that 
he did so, the coins of Mantineia include types depicting Odysseus 
bearing an oar on his shoulder ;14 there, then, in central Peloponnese, 
according to one interpretation of the prophecy of Tiresias, Odys~ 
seus sacrificed to Poseidon far from the sea. To conclude the rea­
soning thus far: Odysseus sacrificed to Poseidon far inland before 
he returned to make other sacrifices in Ithaca. Before he came back 
to Ithaca in the Telegony, he was in Peloponnese, and the repre~ 
sentation of Odysseus with an oar on the coins of Mantineia shows 
that in the Telegony the hero went to Arcadia to sacrifice to Poseidon 
far inland. Then he went back to Ithaca, after seeing Polyxenus in 
Elis, and sacrificed to all the immortals. Proclus mentioned only 
the sacrifices in Ithaca. 

The story of Trophonius and the treasury in the Telegony is only 
a digression, but it deserves passing notice. When Eugamon described 
the gift of Polyxenus to Odysseus, he may have had in mind a 

130p.cit. (supra n. 8) 147. 
14J. Svoronos, "Ulysse chez Ies Arcadiens et Ia Teh~gonie d'Eugammon," Gazette 

archeoIogique 13 (l888) 269. B. V. Head, Hiltoria Numorum2 (Oxford 1911) 450. 



1960] HOMERICA II: EUGAMON 27 

Laconian crater, for the pottery of Sparta was very popular at 
Cyrene and the Arcesilaus vase, made in the lifetime of Eugamon, 
shows that the Laconian potters and painters were interested in 
Cyrenean subjects. Amongst the Laconian material found in Samos 
is a fragment showing a man holding what appears to be the cap­
stone of a building. Boehlau15 reasonably identified the man as 
Trophonius erecting a tholos and his interpretation was accepted 
by Lane.16 Certainly the circle held by the man is too large for a 
discus - even Heracles would have difficulty in throwing that. 
Eugamon, we may suggest, described a vase with the story of 
Trophonius drawn upon it and so prompted some Laconian painter 
to make a real vase showing the architect and his tholos. 

We come now to the link between the Odyssey and the Tele­
gony. Eugamon based the plot of his poem on the prophecy of 
Tiresias; but when he fitted the Telegony to the already existing 
Odyssey, had the twenty fourth book, which many competent crit­
ics, ancient and modern, consider later than the rest of the poem, 
already been added? Or did the version of the Odyssey to which 
Eugamon adapted his epic, end at about 23.296? That is where 
Aristophanes and Aristarchus set the true end of the Odyssey.17 
The arguments tending to prove that Book 24, the Continuation, 
is later than the rest of the Odyssey, and that its author flagrantly 
abused the language of traditional epic, have been stated with 
clarity and vigour by D. L. PagelS and do not need to be rehearsed 
here. It would be valuable to know whether the rhapsodic Contin­
uation was already part of the Odyssey known to Eugamon in the 
sixth century B.C.: I propose that the Cyrenean used an Odyssey 
lacking the Continuation. 

It has been suggested that the Continuation from 23.396 onwards 
was designed to link the Odyssey to the beginning of Eugamon's 
poem.19 There is, however, a difficulty in that solution: for the 
first statement made by Proclus about the Telegony is that the 

15J. Boehlau, Atu ionischen und italischen Nekropolen (Leipzig 1899) 128 and Pl. 10.4. 
16E. A. Lane, "Laconian Vase Painting," ABSA 34 [1933-34] (1936) 165-166: 

"Trophonius erecting a Tholos." 
17D. L. Page, The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford 1955) 101. 

1Slbid. 101-111. 
19Schwartz, op.cit. 148fT. Page, op.cit. 129 with n. 33. 



28 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

suitors are buried by their kinsfolk. If the Continuation were a 
link between the two poems, then the suitors would have been 
buried twice - once in the Continuation and once at the beginning 
of the Telegony. For in fact the suitors are buried in the Continu­
ation (24.417): . ~" " ,/..' , ()' ., 

EK oE V€KVC; OLKWV %p€OV KaL a7TTOV EKaCTTOL. 

Therefore the Continuation overlaps the beginning of the Telegony, 
and the conclusion follows that the Continuation is not a link 
between the Odyssey and the Telegony. It is most probable there­
fore that Eugamon took up the story at about 23.296. Indeed the 
Telegony does begin where the Odyssey proper ends: the suitors, 
who by 23.296 are still unburied, are interred by their kinsfolk at 
the very beginning of Eugamon's poem. It seems then that there 
were texts of the Odyssey current in the mid-sixth century which 
lacked the Continuation and that Eugamon used one of them; the 
great Alexandrian critics may well have had diplomatic support 
for their rejection from the canon of Homer all that followed 23.296, 
and the reader who senses that the inept rhapsodising of Book 24 
is unworthy of Homer's Odyssey can only applaud their judgement. 

Eugamon, in short, is interesting for a number of reasons: 
he linked Mantineia with the journey of Odysseus to appease Posei­
don; to please the Cyrenean royalty he made Arcesilaus a son of 
Odysseus; and he almost certainly began his Telegony at the place 
where Aristophanes and Aristarchus thought the true end of the 
Odyssey to be. An obscure figure he will always be; but because 
the plot of the Telegony bears upon the state of the Odyssey in 
the sixth century B.C., there is reason enough to study that Cyrenean 
poet. 

December 1959 



1960] HOMERICA III: POEM OF THE HOMERIDAE 29 

III 
A Poem of the Homeridae 

I N THE PHAEDRUS (252 B) Plato stated that the Homeridae re­
cited from their private poems two lines to Eros. The second he 

thought outrageous and not quite metrical. 

AEYOVCrt oE oIfLai TLVE~ <OfLYJPLOWV EK TWV (i7rof)ET(J)v E1TWV 
~ , 31 ;) '>IE -?', ~ ( Q ' , 
ovo E1TYJ EL~ TOV pWTa, WV TO ETEpOV VfJpLCTTLKOV 1Tavv 

Kat OV CTcjJoopa TL EfLfLETpOV· VfLVOVU"L OE c10E -
TOV 0' 7]TOL f)VYJTOt fLEV "EpwTa KaAOVCTL 1TOTYJVOV 
'f)' r;:-'II I r;:-' ,/..'" I a avaTOL OE TEpWTa, OLa 1TTEpO'f'VTOp avaYKYJV. 

[Phdr. 252 B 4-9, ed. Burnet] 
-;- 'T < I B <Q " B ' <Q ' oLfLaL : Ot fLEV . VfJpLU"TLKOV 1Tavv : 1Tavv VfJpLCTTLKOV 

T Stobaeus. 0' 7]TOt T: 01j TOt B Stobaeus. 1TTEpOcjJVTOp' 

Stobaeus, 1TTEpOcjJVTOV B: 1TTEpOcjJOtTOV T. 

Wilamowitz held that Plato was joking, l Wade-Gery that he 
was parodying.2 The second line is surprising, for the correption is 
without parallel: Plato at once noticed the metrical irregularity. 
Allen3 simply wrote "the correption of OE 1TT- is intended," but that 
was to dismiss the anomaly without explaining it. To any Athenian 
ear the line would have sounded wrong, and not just odd. 

For 8€ to be short, 1TT- must be pronounced as a single consonant. 
The dialect of Greek in which that is possible is Aeolic. In Thessaly 
1TT could become TT, as in TTOAtapxoL/ and apXLTToALapxevTo~.5 
It is not clear whether TT was pronounced as a diphthong or not, 
but Thessalian also shows a development from 1TT to TT and thence 
to T. The single T can be seen in TOAEfLa'i0~,6 which derives from 
IIToAEfLaLo~. Here the initial would not be pronounced as a diph­
thong. Similarly the word IITEpwTa could be written in Aeolic 
TepwTa, and pronounced so as not to make position. 8€ thus could 
remain short for an Aeolic speaker, but to Plato's ear there naturally 

seemed to be an irregularity. 

IDie Ilias und Homer (Berlin 1916) 366 n. 4. 
2The Poet of the Iliad (Cambridge 1952) 71 n. 50. 
3Homer: The Origins and the Transmission (Oxford 1924) 44. 
4C. D. Buck, The Greek Dialects3 (Chicago 1955) 61 para. 67. 
liBuck, op.cit. 73 para. 86.2 
60. Hoffmann, Die Griechischen Dialekte (Gottingen 1893) 2.507; 518. 



30 GEORGE L. HUXLEY [GRBS 3 

The unique 1TTEpOCPVTOp' can be retained, for the word is a 
compound of cpvw; the v of cpvw can be scanned long or short, being 
generall y short before a vowel and long before a consonant. The 
unmetrical1TTEpoc/>vTov is probably a corruption of 1TTEPOCPVTOP', and 
the origin of 1TTEpOcpOLTOV. If the 1TT- of 1TTEpOCPVTOp' was subject to 
the same treatment as in 1TTEpwTa, then SLa must be scanned SLa 
with long alpha. The scansion SuI., with alpha long, is common in 
Homer. 

The private verses quoted by Plato were therefore originally re­
cited by the Homeridae in Aeolic. In Chios where the Homeridae 
lived there was a strong Aeolic element in the population. Bolissos 
in the north of the island is even called an Aeolian city by Stephen 
of Byzantium; 7 the notice comes from Ephorus, who connected 
Homer with Bolissos.8 The Homeridae may have lived there, for 
the Aeolism of their private verses quoted by Plato suggests that 
they were influenced by the Aeolic speech of the island. Plato, 
then, was not joking, nor was he parodying; in the Phaedrus he 
gave a version of an Aeolic couplet from the apotheta of the Hom­
eridae of Chios. 

ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD 

November 1959 

7s.v. BOAICTCTOS. 

8PGrHist 70 F 103. [Ps.Hdt.1 Vil.Hom. 21-24.