Note 183 — Chapter III · THE CONTEST BETWEEN HOMER AND HESIOD—HOMER’S DEATH

The Ἀγὼν is found in only a few of the editions of Hesiod. I have followed the text of C. Goettling, 1843. The author Herodotus, who wrote probably about 60 to 100 a.d., lived of course centuries after Hesiod, who is generally dated some 100 to 200 years subsequent to Homer. The account given by Suidas varies in several small details, for instance the riddle is rendered in prose as well as in metre. He definitely states that illness, not the riddle, was accountable for the poet’s death.

Since writing this Note, I have come across in the Oxford Homer, vol. v. (1912), edited by T. W. Allen, the Ἀγὼν, the Life of Homer by Plutarch, and by Suidas, all conveniently placed together. Mr. Allen, in the Jour. Hell. Studies, XXXV. (1915), 85-99, has an elaborate article on ‘the Date of Hesiod,’ which for astronomical and other reasons he now fixes as 846-777 b.c.