Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica

Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #8

(Loeb Classics #57)

CONTENTS: [ Preparer's Note ] [ Preface ] [ Introduction ]

• Hesiod
• • Works and Days
  • The Theogony
  • The Catalogues of Women and the Eoiae (fragments)
  • The Shield of Heracles (attributed to Hesiod)
  • Fragmentary works: Divination by Birds to Idaean Dactyls and Marriage of Ceyx to Doubtful fragments
• Homer
  • Homeric Hymns
  • The Epigrams of Homer
  • Homeric fragments (Expedition of Amphiarus to the Cercopes)
• Various
  • Epic Cycle fragments
  • Battle of Frogs and Mice
  • The Contest of Homer and Hesiod
  • The Cypria (framents)
  • Aethiopis (fragments)
  • The Little Iliad (fragments)
  • The Sack of Ilium (fragments)
  • The Returns & the Telegony (fragments)

PREPARER'S NOTE:

Translations, introduction and explanatory material by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. This file contains only that portion of the book in English; Greek texts are excluded. Where Greek characters appear in the original English text, a transcription in CAPITALS is substituted.

In order to make this file more accessable to the average computer user, the preparer has found it necessary to re-arrange some of Mr. Evelyn-White's material. The preparer takes full responsibility for his choice of arrangement.

A few endnotes have been added by the preparer, and some additions have been supplied to the original endnotes of Mr. Evelyn-White's. Where this occurs I have noted the addition with my initials "DBK". Some endnotes, particularly those concerning textual variations in the ancient Greek text, are here ommitted.

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This edition is based on that published as "Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica" (ed. & translation: Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classics, Cambridge Mass., 1914). This work is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.

This electronic edition was edited, proofed, and prepared by Douglas B. Killings (DeTroyes@AOL.COM), June 1995.

PREFACE

This volume contains practically all that remains of the post- Homeric and pre-academic epic poetry.

I have for the most part formed my own text. In the case of Hesiod I have been able to use independent collations of several MSS. by Dr. W.H.D. Rouse; otherwise I have depended on the apparatus criticus of the several editions, especially that of Rzach (1902). The arrangement adopted in this edition, by which the complete and fragmentary poems are restored to the order in which they would probably have appeared had the Hesiodic corpus survived intact, is unusual, but should not need apology; the true place for the "Catalogues" (for example), fragmentary as they are, is certainly after the "Theogony".

In preparing the text of the "Homeric Hymns" my chief debt -- and it is a heavy one -- is to the edition of Allen and Sikes (1904) and to the series of articles in the "Journal of Hellenic Studies" (vols. xv.sqq.) by T.W. Allen. To the same scholar and to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press I am greatly indebted for permission to use the restorations of the "Hymn to Demeter", lines 387-401 and 462-470, printed in the Oxford Text of 1912.

Of the fragments of the Epic Cycle I have given only such as seemed to possess distinct importance or interest, and in doing so have relied mostly upon Kinkel's collection and on the fifth volume of the Oxford Homer (1912).

The texts of the "Batrachomyomachia" and of the "Contest of Homer and Hesiod" are those of Baumeister and Flach respectively: where I have diverged from these, the fact has been noted.

Hugh G. Evelyn-White,
Rampton, NR. Cambridge.
Sept. 9th, 1914.