To which they made answer,
‘What caught we, we left; what caught we not, we carry.’[188]
Homer, however, caught not on, until he was told that the key of ‘what’ was not fish, but lice.[189]
“Remembering him of the oracle that the end of life was upon him, he makes the epitaph for his own tomb. Arising thence, he slipped in the mud, falling on his rib, and on the third day, so men say, died. And he was buried in Ios.”
This is the epitaph—
Ἐνθάδε τὴν ἱερὴν κεφαλὴν κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτει, Ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων κοσμήτορα, θεῖον Ὄμηρον.
or
“Here Earth has hid that holy head of thine, Marshal of heroes, Homer the divine.”[190]
The story of Hesiod after his victory over Homer as set forth in The Contest repays telling.
He journeyed at once to Delphi to give the first fruits of his victory as a votive offering to the Oracle—and here let us note how in early times, certainly down to the time of Xenophon, the Greeks at important events in their lives resorted to some such fane for guidance.[191]