The Homeric Catalogue

Abstract

In antiquity Apollodorus wrote a work upon the Greek Catalogue, Demetrius of Scepsis one, in thirty books, on the Trojan; both were used by Strabo, who surpassed, fortunately, either in judgment. Titles of similar works are ascribed to the logographer Damastes and the rhetor Polus. Its literary merits are extolled by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Comp. Verb. 102, and though a considerable number of MSS. omit it, Tribonianus of Side in the Byzantine period was found to execute a special metaphrase of it.In modern times the latest work dealing with the Catalogue apart appears to be the short treatise of Benedikt Niese, Der homerische Schiffskatalog als historische Quelle betrachtet, Kiel, 1873. Written at the blackest moment of Homeric and historical science, before the first light from archaeology had begun to illumine the gloom of Higher Criticism, before even Wilamowitz had lit his corpse-candle, the book naturally cannot influence our opinion now, and would not have needed mention but for the singular uis inertiae owing to which it is still currently cited. Niese's principal conclusions were: the Catalogue involves late political circumstances, contains geographical inaccuracies, especially in regard to Thessaly, and is the result of the contamination of an old geographical document or periegesis dating from 770–740 with names of heroes and peoples taken from the Cypria: the Trojan Catalogue is made out of the Trojan Catalogue again in the Cypria with additions from the body of the Iliad; and the editor of both may be found in a Milesian of 630–600.