Hesiod, Works and Days 648–62
The story of the poetic contest between Homer and Hesiod originated from Works and Days 648–62, the famous passage where Hesiod proclaims his victory in a poetic contest:
δείξω δή τοι μέτρα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,
οὔτέ τι ναυτιλίης σεσοφισμένος οὔτέ τι νηῶν·
[650] οὐ γάρ πώ ποτε νηί γ’ ἐπέπλων εὐρέα πόντον,
εἰ μὴ ἐς Εὔβοιαν ἐξ Αὐλίδος, ᾗ ποτ’ Ἀχαιοὶ
μείναντες χειμῶνα πολὺν σὺν λαὸν ἄγειραν
Ἑλλάδος ἐξ ἱερῆς Τροίην ἐς καλλιγύναικα.
ἔνθα δ’ ἐγὼν ἐπ’ ἄεθλα δαΐφρονος Ἀμφιδάμαντος
[655] Χαλκίδα τ’ εἲς ἐπέρησα· τὰ δὲ προπεφραδμένα πολλὰ
ἆθλ’ ἔθεσαν παῖδες μεγαλήτορος· ἔνθά μέ φημι
ὕμνῳ νικήσαντα φέρειν τρίποδ’ ὠτώεντα.
τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ Μούσῃς Ἑλικωνιάδεσσ’ ἀνέθηκα,
ἔνθά με τὸ πρῶτον λιγυρῆς ἐπέβησαν ἀοιδῆς.
[660] τόσσόν τοι νηῶν γε πεπείρημαι πολυγόμφων·
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς ἐρέω Ζηνὸς νόον αἰγιόχοιο·
Μοῦσαι γάρ μ᾽ ἐδίδαξαν ἀθέσφατον ὕμνον ἀείδειν. (ed. Most)
Now, I shall show you the measures of loud-roaring sea, although I am no expert on seamanship, nor on ships. For I have never sailed the broad sea in a ship, except to Euboea from Aulis, where once the Achaeans stayed during the winter, and assembled a great army to go from holy Greece to Troy of the lovely women. There, I crossed over to Chalcis for the funeral games of warlike Amphidamas; the sons of that great-hearted man had announced and set up many prizes. There, I say, having won with a hymn, I carried away a tripod with handles. I dedicated it to the Heliconian Muses, where for the first time they initiated me to sweet song. Such is my experience of well-riveted ships – but even so, I shall tell the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, for the Muses have taught me to sing an unutterable hymn.
In this passage, Hesiod is not simply giving instructions on sailing, but also making programmatic statements. First of all, he aims to prove that he is a divinely inspired poet – an important claim present also in the Theogony.14 He does not have much experience of sailing, as he himself admits,15 but thanks to the Muses he is able to cover the topic with his song. Importantly, this passage also shows how Hesiod, a didactic poet, engages with the ‘other’ major Greek hexameter tradition represented by the heroic epic. Hesiod’s sea-voyage starts from Aulis, just like the Homeric heroes’ longer journey to Troy; furthermore, Hesiod employs Homeric diction in this passage by using the epic epithets καλλιγύναιξ (‘of the lovely women’) and ἱερή (‘holy’), but reverses them in comparison with the Homeric poems.16 As a result of these echoes of the heroic tradition, the name of Homer was naturally added as Hesiod’s rival in the contest. Indeed, his name was even transmitted as a variant reading in some manuscripts of Works and Days, as a scholium to Op. 657 shows:
ὕμνῳ νικήσαντι· ἄλλοι γράφουσιν· ὕμνῳ νικήσαντ’ ἐν Χαλκίδι θεῖον Ὅμηρον. (ed. Pertusi)
‘having won with a hymn’: others write ‘when he defeated divine Homer in song at Chalcis’.
The verse as given in the scholium also forms part of the epigram allegedly inscribed on the tripod won by Hesiod.17 We do not know whether the text of the epigram penetrated the text of Works and Days, or a variant reading present in Works and Days was later used as part of the epigram; nor do we know how widely attested this variant was.18 But, importantly, it shows the extent and the power of the relationship between the Hesiodic text and the biographical story that originated from it.19
Hesiod’s victory was proclaimed by the poet himself in his work, and therefore became a non-negotiable aspect of the story. But a fundamental role in sealing the verdict was played also by the material reception of the Hesiodic passage. A tripod bearing the epigram of Hesiod’s victory was displayed in antiquity on Mt Helicon, in the place where Hesiod himself claims to have dedicated it (Op. 657–8), and was visible in Pausanias’ time.20 The tripod of Hesiod’s victory against Homer was the visible and tangible evidence of Hesiod’s success. As Manieri points out, this and other archaeological witnesses also seen by Pausanias guaranteed the immortal presence of Hesiod in the Valley of the Muses.21 Its presence played an important part in the celebration of Hesiod’s poetry on Helicon – a celebration that was made mainly in relation to Homer, as is confirmed by the absence of the statue of Homer from the statuary recorded in the sanctuary of the Muses on Helicon.22 Because of the importance of the tripod, most writers were aware that treatment of the story involved almost by necessity a discussion of it.23
[Hesiod], fr. 357 MW
A fixed feature of the tradition of the contest between Homer and Hesiod is its location at Chalcis, in Euboea. It is Hesiod who authoritatively states that the contest happened there, a place full of metapoetic significance (see Part 1, ‘Hesiod’). However, the pseudo-Hesiodic fragment 357 MW reports that Homer and Hesiod sang together on another occasion as well: the two poets were once on Delos, engaged in the performance of a hymn to Apollo.24 This is the text of our fragment:
ἐν Δήλῳ τότε πρῶτον ἐγὼ καὶ ῞Ομηρος ἀοιδοί
μέλπομεν, ἐν νεαροῖς ὕμνοις ῥάψαντες ἀοιδήν,
Φοῖβον Ἀπόλλωνα χρυσάορον ὃν τέκε Λητώ.
On Delos, once, for the first time, I and Homer, the bards, stitching a song in new hymns, sang Phoebus Apollo with golden sword, whom Leto bore.
Some modern scholars have posited a connection between the meeting of the two poets on Delos and the meeting at Chalcis. West suggests that this fragment comes from a poem that told the story of the ‘first’ (πρῶτον) encounter between the two poets in which Homer won, followed by the Chalcidean episode which would be Hesiod’s revenge. According to West, who argues that Alcidamas invented the story of the contest of Homer and Hesiod, such a work could not have existed before Alcidamas, or he would have set his story on Delos rather than at Chalcis, since Homer is not mentioned in Works and Days 648–62, whereas he is in this fragment.25 However, the mere existence of the fragment and the presence of Homer’s name do not prove its ability to become more influential than the Works and Days in determining the location of the contest between Homer and Hesiod for Alcidamas. Kivilo (who, unlike West, places the origins of the Delian fragment before Alcidamas) and Nagy believe that Delos was an alternative location for the episode of the contest between Homer and Hesiod that is usually situated at Chalcis.26 But locating the contest on the island of Delos would contradict Hesiod’s statement that he never sailed the sea except from Aulis to Chalcis (Op. 650–1). The tone of Hesiod’s words in the fragment, the apparent collaboration between the two bards in order to create a single new song, the mention of Apollo – aspects that are completely absent from the verses about Chalcis – are further reasons to look for the origins and the meaning of fr. 357 MW in other circumstances, independent from the Chalcidean episode.
Other, more convincing, circumstances have been proposed regarding the origins of this episode. Janko connects the fragment to a festival organised by Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, in 523–2 BC: this festival was held on Delos and was a joint celebration of Apollo of Delos and Apollo of Delphi, and it may have been a suitable occasion for the first joint performance of the two parts of the Hymn to Apollo, the Delian and the Pythian.27 Fr. 357 MW worked therefore as an attempt to give ancient and authoritative roots to this festival, by attributing the proto-performance of the joint parts of the Hymn to Homer and Hesiod respectively.28 If this suggestion is correct, it also accounts for the emphasis on the cooperation between the two bards that seems to emerge from the verses, and that makes the episode look quite different from the story told in the Certamen.29
Another famous story about Homer (this time Homer alone) performing this Hymn is told by Thucydides (3.104). The historian gives an account of the purification of Delos carried out by the Athenians in 426 BC, the first purification of the island after Peisistratus’ time. He remarks that the action taken by his fellow citizens in 426 BC included the revival of the festival of the Delia, which, he recalls, in ancient times saw Homer himself reciting the Hymn to Apollo. Each of these two versions of the story emphasises different aspects of the performance, and this can be explained, at least in part, as a response to the different political contexts in which the story was told. Furthermore, some elements of the Thucydidean version seem to suggest that the two traditions were, to some extent, engaging and competing with each other. Since the story told in [Hes.] fr. 357 MW is likely to have its origins in a festival in honour of both Delian and Pythian Apollo, which hosted the joint performance of the Delian and Pythian parts of the Hymn, the presence of Hesiod in the story may have been determined by the Delphic element. The Thucydidean version, by contrast, focuses only on the Delian elements: the Athenians revived the festival called Delia, all the quoted verses come from the Delian part of the Hymn and are strictly connected to the figure of Homer (esp. 165–72), who is the only poet to be mentioned. All this underlines the Athenian connection with Delos, with all the political and symbolic meaning that the island had for the Athenian empire; furthermore, Athens’ relationships with Delphi were difficult at the time of the Peloponnesian War because of the pro-Spartan sympathies of the oracle.30 Therefore, it is not surprising that Thucydides does not refer to the Delphic, that is Hesiodic, part of the Hymn. Interestingly, then, an element in the Thucydidean account seems to show that there was a certain degree of engagement among these different traditions: on the occasion of the festival to which fr. 357 MW is connected, Polycrates spectacularly dedicated the island of Rheneia to Apollo by binding it with a chain to Delos. Thucydides, before mentioning the Athenians’ own revival of the Delian festival in 426 BC, relates that the Athenians during the purification of Delos brought the corpses to Rheneia, and then remarks that the two islands were so close to each other that Polycrates could bind Rheneia to Delos with a chain (3.104.2). The effect of this claim is to minimise the impact of an event that must have been important to Polycratean propaganda.
The version given in the Certamen (315–21) is similar to Thucydides’. Although not all details are the same, in both accounts Homer emerges as a Panionian poet. The Certamen seems to take inspiration from the tradition attested by Thucydides, according to which the process of Panhellenisation of Homer is connected to the image of the blind bard from Chios presented in the Hymn to Apollo: this was the image of the poet accepted and promoted by the Athenians, and thus became predominant.31
In conclusion, fr. 357 MW has no relation with the Chalcidean contest: the joint performance of Homer and Hesiod on Delos may have been inspired, or supported, by the Chalcidean tradition, but it does not represent an alternative version of it. Rather, it is connected to the story of the first performance of the Hymn to Apollo which, like the story of the contest at Chalcis, was adapted to suit different circumstances.
