10
Periander now entered into the conversation, and said, Nevertheless it is a fact, Cleodorus, that the ancient Greeks also had a habit of propounding such perplexing questions to one another. For we have the story that the most famous poets among the wise men of that time gathered at Chalcis to attend the funeral of Amphidamas. Now Amphidamas was a warrior who had given much trouble to the Eretrians, and had fallen in one of the battles for the possession of the Lelantine plain. But since the verses composed by the poets made the decision a difficult and troublesome matter because they were so evenly matched, and since the repute of the contestants, Homer and Hesiod, caused the judges much perplexity as well as embarrassment, the poets resorted to questionings of this sort, and Homer, as Lesches asserts,Some MSS. make Lesches propound the question, and other traditions make Hesiod the questioner, to whom Homer replies. Cf. note c below. propounded this: Tell me, O Muse, of events which never have happened aforetime, Nor in the future shall ever betide, and Hesiod answered quite off-hand: When round Zeus in his tomb rush the steeds with galloping hoof-beats, Crashing car against car, as they eagerly run for a trophy. And for this it is said that he gained the greatest admiration and won the tripod. It is of interest to compare the long and variant account given in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a work of the second century A.D. which is usually included at the end of editions of Hesiod, also in the 5th vol. of the edition of Homer in the Oxford Classical Texts.
10
But what difference is there, said Cleodorus, between things like this and Eumetis’s riddles? Perhaps it is not unbecoming for her to amuse herself and to weave these as other girls weave girdles and hair-nets, and to propound them to women, but the idea that men of sense should take them at all seriously is ridiculous.
