PROLEGOMENA

but the great and deep ocean of Homer,
which encircles the whole inhabited world in a ring,
you command me to make passable and traversable for all, 30

as Moses once did for the Israelites across the Red Sea;
I am already moving toward the heirmos sequence/theme, and with the staff of the tongue
striking it, I shall make it passable for all,
and its unseen depths shall be revealed to everyone.
But let the mōmoskopoi censorious/carping tongues be checked, 35

goaded by envy to bark at us.
For just as the myths of old write that Zeus
transformed the Titans into the form of apes,
so too do I now wish, through the methods of my arrangement,
to transform the heroes into the writings of apes. 40

And now, having spread wide your divine ears,
first of all learn the lineage of the poet,

(28) B, great.

(31) B, as Moses, A, like Moses. Burg., Red Sea.

(32) Scholia in C, and in Anecdota Oxoniensia vol. 3, p. 376: "Apostrophe, which some falsely call 'claim'. A claim." B, Hermes and tongue. A, sequence with the tongue. C and Scor., mooring and tongue. I have preferred 'sequence', as I seemed to understand it a little better, the 'sequence of the Homeric work'.

(33) B, passable for all.

(34) B, these.

(35) Tzetzes has used the word 'censorious' more than once, in Chiliad 10, History 298, dealing with the name 'whale', which, having been used by him somewhere, had not pleased a certain criticaster; "This," he says, "is a buffalo-papa; who did not allow him to draw," (the codex distinguishes the hemistichs better than the published edition, which reads "a certain buffalo-papa"). "To whom the letter was written, a censorious one." I will transcribe that letter from codex 2644, which is laconic and enigmatic: "To a certain censorious man. You have complained about my whales, but you have deemed your own wise Telephi to be so." And for the sake of the person and the subject, I will add this other laconic one: "To a certain detractor. Momus, seeing all things, does not see himself." What lies hidden in 'Telephi' will be clear to one reading Chiliad 10, History 299.

(37) Scholia in B, thesis. B, myth-making.

(38) Bg., to transform. A B, Scor., Titans. C, Titans.

(39) B, thus I now.

(40) A B C, to transform.

(41) Scholia in C: "The exposition of the chapters according to the rhetoricians, called the 'pre-establishment' and 'promise'; but according to the poets, 'pre-theory' and 'pre-instruction', that is to say 'pre-narration', even if the rhetoricians say otherwise about pre-narration." It also exists in Cramer's Anecdota Oxoniensia vol. 3, p. 376, and without the 'the' before 'pre-establishment'. Indeed, in C, the 'the' is now missing, but it is manifest to one inspecting the place that a little letter was once present, which the bookbinder's knife cut away. In the Greek Thesaurus, under 'pre-instruction', the Cramerian scholium was cited, but corrupted by a too-hasty penman.