Three lines of it must in any case be allowed to remain, in order to describe the Athenian contingent and its commander.
οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον ... (v. 546.)
τῶν αὖθ’ ἡγεμόνευ’ υἷος Πετεῶο Μενεσθεύς. (552.)
τῷ δ’ ἅμα πεντήκοντα μέλαιναι νῆες ἕποντο. (556.)
To the supposition that this jejune minimum represents the passage in its original form, it is certainly an objection, that in no other place of the whole Catalogue has Homer dispatched quite so drily and summarily any important division of the force.
The remainder of the passage falls into three portions, of which the first is separable from the two others, and the first with the second is also separable from the third. They are as follows:
(1)—vv. 546-9.
οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον,
δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνη
θρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα,
κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ.
There is a reading of Ἀθήνης for Ἀθηνῃσ’: it is disputed whether τέκε applies to δῆμον or to Erechtheus; whether ἑῷ is to be understood of Erechtheus or of Minerva; and again, what is the meaning of πίονι as applied to νηῷ? The variety of lection is not material: the application of τέκε is clearly to Erechtheus, as seems also that of ἑῷ to Minerva[178]. Again, the application of the epithet πίονι to the temple is perhaps sufficiently supported by Od. xii. 346, πίονα νηὸν, and Il. v. 512, μάλα πίονος ἐξ ἀδύτοιο.
It does not appear that these lines, or the two which follow, were rejected by the Alexandrian critics, but the Pseudo-Herodotus, in the Life of Homer, c. 28, states that they were interpolated.