Note 49 — Chapter XII · THE LAY AUTHORS

IG. xiv = IG. Sic. et It., 641, 1–2–3. [Harrison-Murray, Prolegom. 661 ff.; Vors. 66 B, 18, 19.]—The inscription of the oldest of these poems belongs to the fourth century B.C. The verses can, however, be cited here because the original or rather the two originals upon which the poems are modelled were older than the oldest of the three surviving inscr. (which itself shows serious corruption of the primitive text); and nothing prevents us from supposing that the original forms of these verses go to the fifth century.—The common ancestor of versions 2 and 3 is not derived from version 1, even in the parts in which it agrees with that version, but from a still older original.—Acc. to Dieterich, Nekyia 128 f., 135 f., the lines are taken from a poem of Orpheus’ descent to Hades; but of this they themselves offer not the slightest suggestion.