INTRODUCTION
round them as to supply appropriate occasions for their composition. Epigram iii. on Midas of Larissa was otherwise attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus, one of the Seven Sages; the address to Glaucus (xi) is purely Hesiodic; xiii, according to MM. Croiset, is a fragment from a gnomic poem. Epigram xiv is a curious poem attributed on no very obvious grounds to Hesiod by Julius Pollux. In it the poet invokes Athena to protect certain potters and their craft, if they will, according to promise, give him a reward for his song; if they prove false, malignant gnomes are invoked to wreck the kiln and hurt the potters.
The Burlesque Poems
To Homer were popularly ascribed certain burlesque poems in which Aristotle (Poetics iv) saw the germ of comedy. Most interesting of these, were it extant, would be the Margites. The hero of the epic is at once sciolist and simpleton, "knowing many things, but knowing them all badly." It is unfortunately impossible to trace the plan of the poem, which presumably detailed the adventures of this unheroic character: the metre used was a curious mixture of hexametric and iambic lines. The date of such a work cannot be high: Croiset thinks it may belong to the period of Archilochus (c. 650 B.C.), but it may well be somewhat later.
Another poem, of which we know even less, is the Cercopes. These Cercopes ("Monkey-Men") were a pair of malignant dwarfs who went about the world mischief-making. Their punishment by Heracles is represented on one of the earlier metopes from Selinus. It would be idle to speculate as to the date of this work.
xl
