1. Argos and its inhabitants were the grand subject of the poem, and the proclaimed assailants in the expedition against Thêbes. Though the poem itself is lost, the first line of it has been preserved (Leutsch, Theb. Cycl. Reliq. p. 5; compare Sophoclês, Œd. Col. 380 with Scholia),— Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες, etc. 2. Adrastus was king of Argos, and the chief of the expedition. It is therefore literally true, that Argos and the Argeians were “the burden of the song” in these two poems. To this we may add— 1. The rhapsodes would have the strongest motive to recite the Thebaïs and Epigoni at Sikyôn, where Adrastus was worshipped and enjoyed so vast a popularity, and where he even attracted to himself the choric solemnities which in other towns were given to Dionysus. 2. The means which Kleisthenês took to get rid of Adrastus indicates a special reference to the Thebaïs: he invited from Thêbes the hero Melanippus, the _Hector_ of Thêbes, in that very poem. For these reasons, I think we may conclude that the Ὁμήρεια ἔπη, alluded to in this very illustrative story of Herodotus, are the Thebaïs and the Epigoni, not the Iliad. [234] Herodot. ii. 117; iv. 32. The words in which Herodotus intimates his own dissent from the reigning opinion, are treated as spurious by F. A. Wolf, and vindicated by Schweighäuser: whether they be admitted or not, the general currency of the opinion adverted to is equally evident. The many different cities which laid claim to the birth of Homer (seven is rather below the truth, and Smyrna and Chios are the most prominent among them,) is well known, and most of them had legends to tell respecting his romantic parentage, his alleged blindness, and his life of an itinerant bard, acquainted with poverty and sorrow.[235] The discrepancies of statement respecting the date of his reputed existence are no less worthy of remark; for out of the eight different epochs assigned to him, the oldest differs from the most recent by a period of four hundred and sixty years. [235] The Life of Homer, which passes falsely under the name of Herodotus, contains a collection of these different stories: it is supposed to have been written about the second century after the Christian era, but the statements which it furnishes are probably several of them as old as Ephorus (compare also Proclus ap. Photium, c. 239).