Living Poets

How to quote this translation

Show notes

M = reading of the whole MS tradition
m = reading of part of the MS tradition
P = reading on a papyrus
 

ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν Τρωϊκῶν ἐπὶ τὴν Ὁμήρου γένεσιν κατὰ μὲν Φιλόχορον ἑκατὸν ὀγδοήκοντα ἔτη γίνεται ὕστερον τῆς Ἰονικῆς ἀποικίας· Ἀρίσταρχος δὲ ἐν τοῖς Ἀρχιλοχείοις ὑπομνήμασι κατὰ τὴν Ἰωνικὴν ἀποικίαν φησὶ φέρεσθαι αὐτόν, ἣ ἐγένετο μετὰ ἑκατὸν τεσσαράκοντα ἔτη τῶν Τρωϊκῶν. Ἀπολλόδωρος δὲ μετὰ ἔτη ἑκατὸν τῆς Ἰονικῆς ἀποικίας Ἀγησιλάου τοῦ Δορυσσαίου Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλεύοντος, ὥστε ἐπιβαλεῖν αὐτῶι Λυκοῦργον τὸν νομοθέτην ἔτι νέον ὄντα. Εὐθυμένης δὲ ἐν τοῖς Χρονικοῖς συνακμάσαντα Ἡσιόδωι ἐπὶ Ἀκάστου ἐν Χίωι γενέσθαι περὶ τὸ διακοσιοστὸν ἔτος ὕστερον τῆς Ἰλίου ἁλώσεως. ταύτης δέ ἐστι τῆς δόξης καὶ Ἀρχέμαχος ἐν Εὐβοϊκῶν τρίτωι· ὡς εἶναι αὐτόν τε καὶ τὸν Ἡσίοδον καὶ Ἐλισσαίου τοῦ προφήτου νεωτέρους. κἂν ἕπεσθαί τις βουληθῆι τῶι γραμματικῶι Κράτητι καὶ λέγηι περὶ τὴν Ἡρακλειδῶν κάθοδον Ὅμηρον γεγονέναι μετὰ ἔτη ὀγδοήκοντα τῆς Ἰλίου ἁλώσεως, εὑρεθήσεται πάλιν Σολομῶνος μεταγενέστερος, ἐφ’ οὗ ἡ Μενελάου εἰς Φοινίκην ἄφιξις, ὡς προείρηται.

Ἐρατοσθένης δὲ μετὰ τὸ ἑκατοστὸν ἔτος τῆς Ἰλίου ἁλώσεως τὴν Ὁμήρου ἡλικίαν φέρει. ναὶ μὴν Θεόπομπος μὲν ἐν τῆι τεσσαρακοστῆι τρίτηι ἐν τῆι τεσσαρακοστῆι τρίτηι Hervet: ἔτη τεσσαρακοντατρία M τῶν Φιλιππικῶν μετὰ ἔτη πεντακόσια τῶν ἐπὶ Ἰλίωι στρατευσάντων γεγονέναι τὸν Ὅμηρον ἱστορεῖ. Εὐφορίων δὲ ἐν τῶι περὶ Ἀλευαδῶν Ἀλευαδῶν Meineke: ἁλιαδων M κατὰ Γύγην αὐτὸν τίθησι γεγονέναι, ὃς βασιλεύειν ἤρξατο ἀπὸ τῆς ὀκτωκαιδεκάτης ὀλυμπιάδος, ὃν καί φησι πρῶτον ὠνομάσθαι τύραννον. Σωσίβιος δὲ ὁ Λάκων ἐν χρόνων ἀναγραφῆι κατὰ τὸ ὄγδοον ἔτος τῆς Χαρίλλου τοῦ Πολυδέκτου βασιλείας Ὅμηρον φέρει. βασιλεύει μὲν οὖν Χάριλλος ἔτη ἑξήκοντα τέσσαρα, μεθ’ ὃν υἱὸς Νίκανδρος ἔτη τριάκοντα ἐννέα· τούτου κατὰ τὸ τριακοστὸν τέταρτον ἔτος τεθῆναί φησι τὴν πρώτην ὀλυμπιάδα. ὡς εἶναι ἐνενήκοντά που ἐτῶν πρὸ τῆς τῶν Ὀλυμπίων θέσεως Ὅμηρον.

According to Philochorus, there were one hundred and eighty years from the time of the Trojan War to the birth of Homer, which takes us beyond the Ionian migration. Aristarchus, however, in his commentary on Archilochus, says that Homer dates to the time of the Ionian migration, which took place one hundred and forty years after the Trojan War. But Apollodorus dates him a hundred years after the Ionian migration, at the time when Agesilaeus the son of Doryssaeus was king of the Spartans, so that Lycurgus the lawgiver overlapped with him while still a young man. Euthymenes in his Chronicles says that he flourished at the same time as Hesiod during the reign of Acastus and that he was born in Chios in about the two hundredth year after the capture of Troy. Also of this opinion is Archemachus in the third book of his Euboean History, so that Homer and Hesiod would be younger than even the prophet Elisha. And if anyone wishes to follow the grammarian Crates and say that Homer lived at about the time of the return of the Heraclids, eighty years after the capture of Troy, he will be discovered again to be later than Solomon, in whose time Menelaus arrived in Phoenicia, as has been said before.

But Eratosthenes places Homer’s floruit a hundred years after the capture of Troy. To be sure, Theopompus in the forty-third book of the Philippics recounts that Homer was born five hundred years after the expedition to Troy. And Euphorion in his work On the Aleuads, places his birth at the time of Gyges, who began to rule in the eighteenth Olympiad, and who he also says was the first to be called a tyrant. Sosibius the Spartan in his treatise on chronology places Homer in the eighth year of the rule of Charillus, the son of Polydektes. Charillus ruled for sixty-four years, and after him his son Nicander ruled for thirty-nine years. He dates the first Olympiad to thirty-four years after him, so that Homer would be about ninety years before the establishment of the Olympic games.

Relevant guides	Hesiod