Fables

With three chapters exceeding the scope of the rest, he describes the return of Ulysses, son of Sisyphus, to his home, so that of the descendants of Aeolus dispersed throughout all of Greece, none should now lack the notice of posterity. Furthermore, the mythographer—which seems not unworthy of mention—did not use the entire poem of Homer, but passed through only the wanderings and the recognition, and not even then always using Homer as his sole guide; from this, I do not know if some weight might be added to the doctrine of Kirchhoff concerning the composition of the Odyssey.

However, it was permitted to the writer to treat the nostos return of Ulysses separately from the return of the other leaders to their fatherland, even if the honor of the fable itself, increased by poetic virtue, had not persuaded him to do so; he had decided to add to the Odyssey the argument of the Telegony of Eugammon, so that the same argument might define the limit for both these excerpts from the epic cycle and for the epic cycle itself. I do not hesitate regarding the addition of Chapter CXXVII (on augurs). It evidently fulfills the role of a terminal stone, by which, as if by some conspicuous sign, he marked the boundaries of two larger chapters in this place as well. Just as he had woven in the lists of kings in XLVIII, LXXVI, and CXXIV, he now inserted the names of the augurs quite ingeniously, as their mention had been made quite often in the preceding chapters and such knowledge would seem most useful to students.

Having now discussed all the fables that provided arguments for the writers of epic poems or tragedies, one Bacchic fable remained, into which the most recent age, stirred by a certain poetic frenzy, began to intrude. For my part, I would not say that the mythographer, in bringing forth more common materials in chapters CXXVIIII–CXXXIV, drew these from the Dionysiaca or Bassarica, though I would wish to note that the concept of the Bacchic fable was familiar to him. Furthermore, I have nothing to add concerning these six chapters, except that Chapter CXXXIV is suspect of interpolation, as the names of the Tyrrhenian sailors seem to have been taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses original: "μεταμορφώσεων".

We have reached that part of the book from which we began our commentary; now we must deal with two complete chapters close to the Telegony, and that third bipartite one, whose continuity we have demonstrated to have been disturbed by an incursion of forty-seven chapters. Since this cannot happen without a result—unless one considers those fables that follow the end of the interpolated chapters—the matter reduces to an inquiry into this series of fables: CXXXV Laocoon, CXXXVI Polyidus, CXXXVII + CLXXXIV^B Me-