From emonc@erols.com Sun Jan 21 15:04:07 2001 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id PAA40652 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 15:04:06 -0800 Received: from smtp03.mrf.mail.rcn.net (smtp03.mrf.mail.rcn.net [207.172.4.62]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id PAA12646 for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 15:04:06 -0800 Received: from 66-44-17-118.s1896.apx2.lnh.md.dialup.rcn.com ([66.44.17.118] helo=erols.com) by smtp03.mrf.mail.rcn.net with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #5) id 14KTWl-0003WI-00 for classics@u.washington.edu; Sun, 21 Jan 2001 18:04:04 -0500 Message-ID: <3A6B69E6.F63D4EE1@erols.com> Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 17:59:50 -0500 From: Ernest Moncada X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Homer's death by a riddle References: <3A6ACB53.58F6250@panix.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------72A298129C092EB237E3C909" --------------72A298129C092EB237E3C909 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit James Pfundstein wrote: > At 12:43 PM +0100 1/21/01, E. Philip Hewitt Schwartz wrote: > >> Oliver Taplin in the opening chapter of Literature in the Greek & >> Roman Worlds: A New Perspective alludes (p.53) to a myth about >> Homer's dying on the island of Ios, a death connected to his not >> being able to answer a riddle set him by some boys.  Could some >> member of the list supply a reference for this story? > >  This is the conclusion to the _Peri Ome:rou kai E:siodou kai tou > Genous kai Agwnos Autwn_ (_On Homer and Hesiod, their Origin and > Contest_). It's a very late work with a bunch of earlier models. (It's > dated to the reign of Hadrian, by H.G. Evelyn-White, editor of the > Loeb _Hesiod and Homeric Hymns_, where it can most easily be found, > along with a heap of other interesting stuff like the _Battle of Frogs > and Mice_, etc.) JMP In addition to JMP's offering, there is an account of Homer's  failure to solve a riddle in *The Life of Homer*, attributed to Herodotus (T.W. Allen, Homeri Opera, vol.5 [?35]) except that here, in contrast to the *Peri Ome:rou kai E:siodou...* the answer to the riddle is mosquitoes rather than vermin (lice) and Homer's death is not blamed on his failure to solve the riddle. Archias writes (A.P. 7. 213, ll.7-8), in his "Epitaph for a cicada:" epei kai koiranos (umnOn/ Maioidas griphois ichthubolOn ethanen (for even the lord of song, Maionides was killed by fishermen's riddles). V. also Alcaeus, 7.1.1. (Gow and Page). In a discussion of mining, Strabo compares the profitability of the Turdetanians efforts with those of Attic miners and says of the latter, "for them, mining is like a riddle," and then cites the riddle supposedly put to Homer. A note at this point (Loeb, 3.2.9.) says, interestingly, "Demetrius, Poseidonius, Diodorus Siculus (5.37), Athenaeus (6.23), and Strabo apply the riddle to Attica's loss of invested capital when the revenues from her mines failed."   EJM   --------------72A298129C092EB237E3C909 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit James Pfundstein wrote:
At 12:43 PM +0100 1/21/01, E. Philip Hewitt Schwartz wrote:
Oliver Taplin in the opening chapter of Literature in the Greek & Roman Worlds: A New Perspective alludes (p.53) to a myth about Homer's dying on the island of Ios, a death connected to his not being able to answer a riddle set him by some boys.  Could some member of the list supply a reference for this story?
 This is the conclusion to the _Peri Ome:rou kai E:siodou kai tou Genous kai Agwnos Autwn_ (_On Homer and Hesiod, their Origin and Contest_). It's a very late work with a bunch of earlier models. (It's dated to the reign of Hadrian, by H.G. Evelyn-White, editor of the Loeb _Hesiod and Homeric Hymns_, where it can most easily be found, along with a heap of other interesting stuff like the _Battle of Frogs and Mice_, etc.) JMP


In addition to JMP's offering, there is an account of Homer's  failure to solve a riddle in *The Life of Homer*, attributed to Herodotus (T.W. Allen, Homeri Opera, vol.5 [§35]) except that here, in contrast to the *Peri Ome:rou kai E:siodou...* the answer to the riddle is mosquitoes rather than vermin (lice) and Homer's death is not blamed on his failure to solve the riddle.
Archias writes (A.P. 7. 213, ll.7-8), in his "Epitaph for a cicada:" epei kai koiranos (umnOn/ Maioidas griphois ichthubolOn ethanen (for even the lord of song, Maionides was killed by fishermen's riddles). V. also Alcaeus, 7.1.1. (Gow and Page).
In a discussion of mining, Strabo compares the profitability of the Turdetanians efforts with those of Attic miners and says of the latter, "for them, mining is like a riddle," and then cites the riddle supposedly put to Homer. A note at this point (Loeb, 3.2.9.) says, interestingly, "Demetrius, Poseidonius, Diodorus Siculus (5.37), Athenaeus (6.23), and Strabo apply the riddle to Attica's loss of invested capital when the revenues from her mines failed."   EJM
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