[176] In The Confessions of a Beachcomber, pp. 266-8 (London, 1913), the illustrations of pearl-shell fish-hooks in various stages of completion tend to confirm this statement, while the author, Mr. Banfield, inclines to Mr. Minchin’s theory as regards the horn of an ox.
[177] Maspero, Egyptian Archæology, p. 270.
[178] “On Homeric Fishing Tackle,” Jour. of Philology, XIX., 1891.
[179] Described by Mr. Moseley, Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger, p. 467.
[180] In Victor Bérard’s Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée (Paris, 1903), vol. ii. p. 64 ff. (a work, compact of knowledge and of both classical and modern research, which tracks characters and episodes in Homer to and compares them with Egyptian and Phœnician accounts), is found a very interesting dissertation on Proteus, the guardian of the seals of Poseidon and foreteller of the future (Od., IV.). Bérard holds that the name was simply a Greek form of the Egyptian word Prouiti, or Prouti, which was one of the ascriptions or titles of the kings of Egypt, as to whose knowledge of or association with magicians (who, like Proteus, were capable of transforming themselves or other objects) he cites alike Maspero and the Old Testament. See, however, for other possibilities, P. Weizsäcker in Roscher, Lex. Myth., iii. 3172-3178, who concludes that for us, as for Menelaos or Aristaios, Proteus the shape-shifter is still a very slippery customer.
[181] Otto Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1913), ii. 357.
[182] See infra, p. 201.
[183] The Ἀγὼν is found in only a few of the editions of Hesiod. I have followed the text of C. Goettling, 1843. The author Herodotus, who wrote probably about 60 to 100 a.d., lived of course centuries after Hesiod, who is generally dated some 100 to 200 years subsequent to Homer. The account given by Suidas varies in several small details, for instance the riddle is rendered in prose as well as in metre. He definitely states that illness, not the riddle, was accountable for the poet’s death.
Since writing this Note, I have come across in the Oxford Homer, vol. v. (1912), edited by T. W. Allen, the Ἀγὼν, the Life of Homer by Plutarch, and by Suidas, all conveniently placed together. Mr. Allen, in the Jour. Hell. Studies, XXXV. (1915), 85-99, has an elaborate article on ‘the Date of Hesiod,’ which for astronomical and other reasons he now fixes as 846-777 b.c.
[184] “It is difficult to understand how the author could derive from Works and Days a reputation like that enjoyed by Hesiod, especially if we remember that at Thespiæ, to which the village of Ascra, the birthplace and early home of Hesiod, was subject, agriculture was held degrading to a freeman” (Smith, Dict. Gk.-Rom. Biog. and Myth., s. v. “Hesiod”).