doubt but that he followed the Hymn in the form in which he had it. As we have it, it is an extraordinarily incoherent document, most curiously pieced together. Moreover the exordium and termination are preserved (forming Hymn XVIII.) in an alternative form (XVIII. ll. 1–9 = III. ll. 1–9: XVIII. ll. 10–11 = III. ll. 579–580), which exhibits a strange mixture of likeness and unlikeness to the vulgate. Also l. 51, which runs in our texts as
ἑππὰ δὲ συμφώνους ὀίων ἐτανύσσατο χορδάς,
is quoted by Antigonus of Carystus (Histor. Mirab. 7), who lived in the third century B.C., as
ἑπτὰ δὲ θηλυτέρων ὀίων ἐτανύσσατο χορδάς.
All this suggests that the text of the Hymn was singularly fluid in antiquity, so that Apollodorus may well have had before him an arrangement of the parts in a sequence different from that which we now possess. Also the reticence of Sophocles may conceivably indicate that in his days the right order was in dispute.
Of Sophocles' predecessors, Alcaeus, in a Hymn to Hermes, of which an irrelevant morsel (Alcaeus, Fr. 5) survives, mentioned the story (as we are informed by Pausanias, VII. 20); but his treatment of it must have been most summary. Among Sophocles' successors, Horace did the same (Carm. I. 10) in a hymn perhaps based on that of Alcaeus. In the Ichneutae however, as will be seen to follow as a side-conclusion from the arguments set forth in the next chapter, it is highly improbable that, had we the full text, we should find that
viduus pharetra
Risit Apollo.
