to belittle a method of explanation which was in particular favour with a rival school.
Dieuchidas, then, knows of Pisistratus having done to the poems something which gave an opportunity for interpolation. But most Megarian writers, according to Plutarch (Solon, 10), say it was Solon who made the interpolations; and a widespread tradition credits Solon with a special law about the recitation of 'Homer' at the Festival of the Panathenæa. This law, again, is attributed to Hipparchus in the pseudo-Platonic dialogue which bears his name—a work not later than the third century. Lycurgus the orator ascribes it simply to 'our ancestors,' and that is where we must leave it. When a law was once passed at Athens, it tended to become at once the property of Solon, the great 'Nomothetês.' If Pisistratus and Hipparchus dispute this particular law, it is partly because there are rumours of dishonest dealings attached to the story, partly because the tyrants were always associated with the Panathenæa.
But what was the law? It seems clear that the recitation of Homer formed part of the festal observances, and probable that there was a competition. Again, we know that the poems were to be recited in a particular way. But was it ἐξ ὑποβολῆς (by suggestion')—at any verse given? That is almost incredible. Or was it ἐξ ὑποληψέως ('one beginning where the last left off')? Or, as Diogenes Laertius airily decides, did the law perhaps say ἐξ ὑποβολῆς, and mean ἐξ ὑποληψέως?[1]
Our evidence then amounts in the first place to this:
- ↑ One is tempted to add to this early evidence what Herodotus says (vii. 6) of the banishment of Onomacritus by Hipparchus; but he was banished for trafficking in false oracles, an offence of an entirely different sort from interpolating works of literature.
