The Homer of Aristotle

Author(s): A. Shewan
Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jul., 1927), p. 311
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/262761 .
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 NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS

THE HOMER OF ARISTOTLE

Professor Margoliouth's book is full of interest, and those who have kept
their faith in one Homer will wish it well. Insudent critici; let us here pursue
the professor's method. We shall find comfort for the Unitarian.
First, let us try the personalia. I had the audacity to write down my own
in Greek letters, viz., a pseudonym (Outis) which I have sometimes used, the
name of this town (Andreapolis), and my nationality (Scotus), and found to
my amazement that they provide a version-avep, Tts TOKOS 7TOAXLou&as-of
the inquiry that the learned have been addressing to Homer through the
ages about his origin, birthplace, and native soil. It looks as if an unseen
influence were calling up an old and lost paroemiac, garbling it only to the
extent of substituting nTLfor rT.
Next, if I venture to make free with the name of the learned author of
the treatise named above, and write the sentence, ?. E. MapyoXtoi3Oos "Trov
'ApucrToTeXovs;'O,upov" '7roL'a, I find it conceals the dictum, 'OpqpovTo rTEos
apcTrTOV 47Oi'qoev- &&tos yap uvOos, the correct translation of which appears
to be, "He has produced the best solution of the Homeric Question, for the
[old] notion [of multiple authorship] is humbug."
This is encouraging, but if we turn to the Homeric text there is something
even better. I select 7r 468, for, if there is one word in the poems which might
suggest a cryptogram more than another, it is the first word of that line, which
'
runs Uqpvjoffe S/ot 7rap eiLtpwv ayEXos WKUS. And sure enough the letters
are 4Dvaavra when grouped thus, with a double o for one o, Ss
OavveroLoYtv,
vOj,7LposEyOr pA,u,spa, KXaicE ou TL 7rapEyvoJ. The Earth, it will be seen, is
entreated not to weep (over the depravity of the Dissecting community), and
it is assured that it had not erred in its judgment (that the author of the
poems was Homer, of "indivisible supremacy"). So then, sursum corda!
A. SHEWAN
ST. ANDREWS

NOTES ON APULEIUS
1. Met. i. 8
In speakingof the exploitsof the sorceressMeroe,Socratessays, "alium
de foro quod adversuseam locutus esset, in arietemdeformavitet nunc aries
ille causasagit." Thereis a singularappropriatenessand logicabout the way
in which Meroe exercises her powers-witness the innkeeper whom she
311

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