Mimnermus and Pylos Huxley, G L Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Apr 1, 1959; 2, 2; ProQuest pg. 101

MIMNERMUS AND PYLOS 

G. L. HUXLEY 



I N HIS Nanno Mimnermus of Colophon alluded to the com­
ing of his people from Pylos, the home of the N eleids in 

Messenia, to Asia in ships. Having taken Colophon by force 
they settled there, and at a later date they captured Aeolian 
Smyrna.1 In the same poem he also wrote that Andraemon a 
Pylian was a founder of Colophon.2 Both fragments are pre­
served by Strabo, who used them in his account of early Ionian 
history. 

The text of the poetical fragment is given as follows in the 
latest edition of the Anthologia Lyrica Graeca: 3 

, , II '\ N \ ' " \' - V E7TEL 'TE VJ\ov 7]J\ 7]LOV a<T'TV M7TOV'TEc; 

lP,EP'Ti]V • AU'L7]V V7JV<TLV o.CPLK6p,EOa, 
e~ ~' epa'T7}v KoAocpwva {jL7]V lJ7rEpo7TAov EXOV'TE~ 

E,6p,EfJ' o.pyaAE7]C; V{jPLO~ 7rrEp,OVE~ . 
KEiOEV t8La<Tn]EV'TOC; a7TopvVp,EVOL 7ToTap,oio 

OEf;w {jOVA-ryL !,p,vPV7]V ErAop,EV AloAL8a. 

No satisfactory emendation of the first line has yet been pro­
posed. Bergk printed <Hp,EZc; ~' al.m, IIVAov N7]A-r]LoV lJ,U'TV ).t7TOvTEc; 
but 'Hp,Eic; is a conjecture of Xylander and seems to be without 
any manuscript authority.4 E7TELTE is good Ionic, besides being 
found in F, a good manuscript of Strabo (Vat. Gr. 1329), of 
which Kramer wrote that it was "omnium primus nominan­
dus" and "non unam ob causam maxime memorabilis." 5 It 
is written by thirteen different hands and begins at Book XII, 
p. 574. Amongst the manuscripts of Strabo the authority of F 
stands highest, but here at least it cannot be wholly trusted. 
As Benedict Niese made clear in his Emendationes Strabo­
nianae,6 the emendation of Mimnermus must begin with the 
correction of the corrupt words of Strabo himself that intro­
duce the fragment. The text of F runs prose and poetry 

1 Strabo xiv.634; Fragment 9 Bergk.; 12 Diehl. 
2 Strabo xiv.633; Fragment 10 Bergk. KoAo<pw"a a' 'A"apalp,w" IIvALOS (KTltEL), 

~s <P'I1(fL Kill Mlp,"EPp'OS E" TijL Na""oi. 
3 Editio Stereotypa Editionis Tertiae (MCMIL) ed. E. Diehl t, Fasc. 1 (Leipzig, 

1954),53. 
• F. Jacoby, Hermes, 53 (1918), 264-265 note 5. 
6 G. Kramer, Strabonis Geographica, 1 (Berlin, 1844), xx. 
e Ind. Lect. (Marburg, 1878), xii-xiii. Cf. Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides 

(Berlin, 1913), 282. 



104 G. L. HUXLEY [GRBS 2 

together so that it is not clear where the quotation begins: 

Ka(}a1T€p Kat MLfJ-V€pfJ-Or; EV rT1' Navvo£ ~pa'€, fJ-VTJU(}€IS T-ijr; 
~,,, , • ,. , II '\ N \ ' \ 
~fJ-vPVTJr; on 1T€p'fJ-aXrrror; a€t €1THT€ VI\OV TJI\TJtOV KTI\. 

Even if E1T€LT€ is what Strabo wrote, there is no proof that it 
originally stood in the text of the poem. On the other hand, 
since the word is good Ionic it may be an ancient conjecture 
that found its way into the poem. It could even have come 
from Artemidorus of Ephesus, from whom Strabo probably 
took much of his Ionic history. But whatever the origin of 
E1T€LT€ it is not necessary to assume that Mimnermus wrote it. 

The reading in C (Parisin. 1393), a manuscript of the four­
teenth century,7 is more promising: aim) T€. It led Hiller to 
the supplement at1T€£(av) T€; against that Niese remarked that 
Pylos was not high but sandy, not a very cogent objection. 
There is no MS authority for reading IIvA-ov in the genitive 
and taking aL7rV with auTV, either as an epithet or as the name 
of the Messenian Aipy found in the Iliad. (awap) E1TE(,T€ and 
(ai1Tvv) E1TE(,T€ mend the line, but neither is compelling. 

I shall show that a solution may be found by considering 
the early histories of Colophon and Messenia. At first Rhacius 
the Cretan ruled over the country about Colophon and the 
neighboring Carians.8 When Manto arrived with refugees 
from Thebes, he married her. The son of Rhacius and Manto 
was Mopsus, who drove the Carians away. Later the Greeks 
of Colophon blended peacefully with the Ionian migrants, 
who "plighted faith with them and lived amongst the citizens 
on equal terms." The kings of the Ionians were Damasich­
thon and Promethus, sons of Codrus. Since Pausanias says 
that they were Codrids, he implies that the Ionians of Colo­
phon came from Athens. Pausanias gives a consistent account 
of the early settlement of the place; he has nothing to say about 
an Ionian attack on Colophon. Mimnermus, however, says 
that his people took Colophon by force. The "we" of Mim­
nermus therefore cannot be the Codrid-Ied Ionians that came 

7 Kramer, op.cit (supra note 5) xiv-xvi. E. Honigmann, RE, r;s (1931), ColI. 
153-154, v. Strahon (Handschriften). 

8 Pausanias VII.3. 



1959] MIMNERMUS AND PYLOS 105 

from Athens. Mimnermus does not say that his people came 
from Athens, but straight from Pylos. There is no reason to 
think that he meant that his people came from N eleian Pylos 
to Athens and thence to Colophon; it is true that some fugi­
tives from Pylos fled to Athens and from there colonized Ionia, 
but the founder of Colophon according to Mimnermus him­
self in the N anna was Andraemon, who is simply called a 
Pylian. Andraemon, therefore, was the Pylian, and not a Cod­
rid, founder of Colophon; he it was who led the people that 
Mimnermus claimed as his own. 

The Pylians who took Colophon by force came directly from 
Messenia to Asia Minor. Andraemon and his followers have 
no part in the early Colophonian history of Pausanias, because 
they arrived later than the Ionians. The Codrids lived at least 
three generations after their ancestor Melanthus fled from Pylos 
to Athens in the generation of the return of the Heraclidae; 9 

and Codrid Pylians with Andraemon came from Messenia to 
Colophon well over a century after the collapse of the power 
of the Neleids. The Mycenaean population of Messenia was 
not immediately Dorized after the burning of the palace of 
the N eleids at Pylos about 1200 B.C. In the fifth century B.C. 

the Messenians of Naupactus spoke Doric,lO but they may have 
acquired that dialect in the period of Spartan domination 
after the first Messenian War in the second half of the eighth 
century B.C. It is not even certain that Dorians were respon­
sible for the burning of the palace at Pylos. Therefore Mes­
senia need not have been strongly Dorized until after the first 
Messenian War. The hymn that Eumelus of Corinth wrote 
for the independent Messenians in the eighth century B.C., 

when they were still ruled by their kings and independent 
of Sparta, is in Aeolic rather than Doric dialect.ll Cumula­
tively the evidence for Messenian history between the collapse 

9T. B. L. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer (London, 1958), 141-142. 
10 Cf. A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956), 64. 
u Pausanias IV.33.2. TtiJ 'Yap 'IOwl-'clT{t KaTa.OVI-'IOf l7rXETO l-'oilTa 

ci KaOapa <KIOclpap> Kal iXEVDepa ITcll-'f3aX' lxollTa. 

The supplement is Bergk's. On page 596 of my article BCH, 82 (1958), 588-
601 the reference to Messenian maidens singing at Delos must be deleted. Eumelos 
wrote the hymn for Messenian men. 



106 G. L. HUXLEY [GRBS 2 

of Mycenaean Pylos and the first Messenian War shows that 
the descendants of the bronze-age population of the area con­
tinued to live there. From those Mycenaean survivors came 
the people who followed Andraemon to Colophon. 

The kings of Messenia before the conquest by Sparta about 
725 B.C. were called Aepytidae. They claimed descent from 
Aepytus king of Arcadia,12 whose tomb was mentioned by 
Homer. When Andraemon left Pylos the place was Aepytian. 
Formerly it had been Neleian. Mimnermus, I suggest, re­
called the new dynasty of Messenia in the first line of the frag­
ment; the origin of E7TEI/TE and aimJ'TE was AimJn6v 'TE. Mimner­
mus originally wrote 

A' " II '\ N \ ' ., \' t7TVTtOV 'TE VI\OV, 'YI1\'YItOV au'TV, I\t7TOV'TE~ 

thereby reminding his hearers and readers that the final mas­
ters of Colophon had left Messenia later than the Neleids, 
who had fled to Athens. Through the emendation the histor­
ical interest of the fragment, which had always been great, is 
increased. Andraemon came to Colophon and took it some 
time after the failure of the Neleids in Messenia. The Mes­
senian traditions in Ionia should be a warning against putting 
too much stress on the part played by Athens in the Ionian 
migration. 

Mimnermus does not say how long after their arrival the 
migrants from Pylos attacked Smyrna. The foundation date 
of Smyrna is given by the curious Pseudo-Herodotean Life of 
H orner as 1102 B.C. That may be near the true date, since 
Protogeometric and even some Submycenaean pottery has been 
found in the recent excavations at Old Smyrna. By 688 B.C. 

Smyrna had become a member of the Ionian League; an 
Olympic victor in that year is called an Ionian. ls How long 
before 688 B.C. Smyrna had ceased to be Aeolian is unknown; 
the Colophonian attack may have been made at any time be­
tween the arrival of Andraemon and the Pylians after 1100 B.C. 

and about 700 B.C. Herodotus (1.150) gives a brief account 

11 Iliad B604. Hesychius v. A 17r1iTLO II. Hesiod, Fr. 113, ed. Rzach9 (Leipzig, 
1913). An Aepytus founded Priene: Strabo xiv.633. Paus. VII.2.l0. 

J8 Pausanias V B.7. 



1959] MIMNERMUS AND PYLOS 107 

of how the Aeolians lost Smyrna. Exiles from Colophon, hav­
ing been worsted in civic strife there, were received by the 
people of Smyrna. Later the Colophonians shut the gates of 
the city against their hosts, who were busy with a festival of 
Dionysus outside the walls. After all the Aeolians had come 
to the assistance of the people of Smyrna, it was agreed that 
the Aeolian population should leave the city with their prop­
erty. Thereupon they were distributed amongst the eleven 
mainland cities of Aeolis, and the Ionians of Colophon held 
Smyrna. Herodotus does not date the Colophon ian seizure of 
Smyrna; but the exiles whom he mentions are surely the same 
people as the "we" of Mimnermus. At some period therefore 
in the history of Colophon, the Pylians were expelled by the 
earlier Codrid, Theban, and Cretan people. Since Mimner­
mus says that the Pylians took Colophon by force, their rela­
tions with the earlier settlers cannot have been untroubled. 
The Pylians were thrown out and dwelt in Smyrna. Since 
Mimnermus was one of the Pylians, he is called a man of Colo­
phon and of Smyrna; his ancestors lived in Colophon, but 
most probably he lived in the city that they had taken 
8€wv fJoVAfjL - an allusion, perhaps, to the fortunate seizure of 
Smyrna during the festival of Dionysus. 

ALL SOULS COLLEGE • UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD