Note 276 — Chapter II · SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Reading edition
Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97) says αὐτὸς ἐρραψῴδει τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, which is a very different thing. Nothing is said anywhere of his reciting Homer, and the word ῥαψῳδεῖν is used quite loosely for “to recite.” Gomperz’s imaginative picture (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 155) has no further support than this single word. Nor is there any trace of Homeric influence in the fragments. They are in the usual elegiac style.