OF THE ALLEGORIES.

And Dionysius the cyclographer writer of epic cycles says this as well.
Learn this also elsewhere, clearly and more accurately.
The poet Stesichorus was the son of Hesiod, 110

living in the times of Phalaris and Pythagoras;
but these men were four hundred years later than Homer.
Since, therefore, you have learned well the time of Homer,
learn also in what manner his death occurred.
Being poor, and having become blind from old age, 115

he traveled everywhere through the lands of Greece,
reciting his own poems, and receiving honorably.
As he came passing through the region of Arcadia,
he was hosted there by a certain Creophylus,
and while staying there in a friendly manner for many days, 120

he went to walk along the seashore.
And there were fishermen there who had caught no catch,
but were only picking lice and killing them;

The following section contains critical apparatus and scholarly commentary in Latin and Greek.

• (108) A, says. Regarding Dionysius the Cyclographer, see the Greek Thesaurus under Kyklographos. Compare Tzetzes himself, Chiliades 12.184. Now a very easy restoration of Tzetzes for the Exegesis, p. 150, in this very way: "Dionysius the Cyclographer says that Homer was present at both campaigns, the Theban and the Trojan."

(109) C, elsewhere, and thus Burgess. See note on book A, 8. Proclus also mentions this synchronism of Stesichorus, Phalaris, and Pythagoras in his Commentary on Hesiod, p. 7. But such things should now be avoided.

(111) A, Pithagoras.

(112) B, he is later than Homer.

(114) B, the death.

(115) Cf. the narrative of Homer’s death in Tzetzes, Chiliades 13.654, from which most verses are taken.

(119) A, B, C, "hosted by someone and staying there, he went to walk along the seashore." And regarding Chiliades 13.659 in the manuscript, while it is epi in the edition. In C, to Creophylus is written above someone as a scholium. I have followed Burgess, who is one verse longer. Regarding en ho, I would conjecture en hou, namely, "in whose house," unless it were read in book O, 62 as en hais or para hais, "in whose houses." Alciphron's Glycera 2.43, to Menander: "As you sent me the King's letters, I read them immediately; by Calligenia, in whose [house] I am now, I rejoiced." The manuscripts I have seen are two: "the letters which you sent me... in whom I am now..." En hes is Bergler’s conjecture, perhaps received more rashly by Wagner. — I return to Tzetzes. Burgess: "along the seashore," which I have taken. We shall see that peri and para are often interchanged. And just now I would almost prefer "along Arcadia," and para should be restored in the passage of Chiliades 13.

(123) A, "the lice," which I have preferred because of verses 127–128. B, C, Burgess, "the lice." Psellus in the Encomium of the Louse, p. 85: "But perhaps the louse might envy the flea its praise." But it varies there, too, "the louse." I found it written in the masculine gender, hoi phtheires, in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Problems 2.30; in Apollonius Dyscolus, History, ch. 27; and in the Life of Homer, Herodotean 35, where the story of those lousy fishermen is told: "as many of the lice as they caught." See note 128 shortly. I will add in passing, which is of little or no importance, regarding the notes on the Psellian work, that J. H. Ursinus wrote a Paignion (playful piece) on the praise of the louse.