For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη, alluded to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebaïs and the Epigoni, not the Iliad.
[234] Herodot. ii. 117; iv. 32. The words in which Herodotus intimates his own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A. Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighäuser: whether they be admitted or not, the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident.
[235] The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, contains a collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have been written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239).
The belief in the blindness of Homer is doubtless of far more ancient date, since the circumstance appears mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo where the bard of Chios, in some very touching lines, recommends himself and his strains to the favor of the Delian maidens employed in the worship of Apollo. This hymn is cited by Thucydidês as unquestionably authentic, and he doubtless accepted the lines as a description of the personal condition and relations of the author of the Iliad and Odyssey (Thucyd. iii. 104): Simonidês of Keôs also calls Homer a Chian (Frag. 69, Schneidewin).
There were also tales which represented Homer as the contemporary, the cousin, and the rival in recited composition, of Hesiod, who (it was pretended) had vanquished him. See the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, annexed to the works of the latter (p. 314, ed. Göttling; and Plutarch, Conviv. Sept. Sapient. c. 10), in which also various stories respecting the Life of Homer are scattered. The emperor Hadrian consulted the Delphian oracle to know who Homer was: the answer of the priestess reported him to be a native of Ithaca, the son of Telemachus and Epikastê, daughter of Nestôr (Certamen Hom. et Hes. p. 314). The author of this Certamen tells us that the authority of the Delphian oracle deserves implicit confidence.
Hellanikus, Damastes, and Pherekydês traced both Homer and Hesiod up to Orpheus, through a pedigree of ten generations (see Sturz, Fragment. Hellanic. fr. 75-144; compare also Lobeck’s remarks—Aglaophamus, p. 322—on the subject of these genealogies). The computations of these authors earlier than Herodotus are of value, because they illustrate the habits of mind in which Grecian chronology began: the genealogy might be easily continued backward to any length in the past. To trace Homer up to Orpheus, however, would not have been consonant to the belief of the Homêrids.
The contentions of the different cities which disputed for the birth of Homer, and, indeed, all the legendary anecdotes circulated in antiquity respecting the poet, are copiously discussed in Welcker, Der Epische Kyklos (pp. 194-199).
[236] Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage: a damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna, at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. ap. Plutarch. Vit. Homer. p. 1059).
Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant rhapsode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600).
[237] Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, and Scholia; Akusilaus, Fragm. 31, Didot; Harpokration, v. Ὁμήριδαι; Hellanic. Fr. 55, Didot; Strabo, xiv. p. 645.