τῶν αὖθ’ ἡγεμόνευ’ υἷος Πετεῶο Μενεσθεύς. (552.) τῷ δ’ ἅμα πεντήκοντα μέλαιναι νῆες ἕποντο. (556.) To the supposition that this jejune _minimum_ represents the passage in its original form, it is certainly an objection, that in no other place of the whole Catalogue has Homer dispatched quite so drily and summarily any important division of the force. The remainder of the passage falls into three portions, of which the first is separable from the two others, and the first with the second is also separable from the third. They are as follows: (1)--vv. 546-9. οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνας εἶχον, ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον, δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν ποτ’ Ἀθήνη θρέψε Διὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος Ἄρουρα, κὰδ δ’ ἐν Ἀθήνῃσ’ εἷσεν, ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι νηῷ. There is a reading of Ἀθήνης for Ἀθηνῃσ’: it is disputed whether τέκε applies to δῆμον or to Erechtheus; whether ἑῷ is to be understood of Erechtheus or of Minerva; and again, what is the meaning of πίονι as applied to νηῷ? The variety of lection is not material: the application of τέκε is clearly to Erechtheus, as seems also that of ἑῷ to Minerva[178]. Again, the application of the epithet πίονι to the temple is perhaps sufficiently supported by Od. xii. 346, πίονα νηὸν, and Il. v. 512, μάλα πίονος ἐξ ἀδύτοιο. It does not appear that these lines, or the two which follow, were rejected by the Alexandrian critics, but the Pseudo-Herodotus, in the Life of Homer, c. 28, states that they were interpolated. The objections from internal evidence are stated by Payne Knight[179]. 1. That the Greeks had no temples at the time of the _Troica_. 2. That as Ἄρουρα is _superficies non orbis Terræ_, so it was not a known personification at the time of Homer. As to the first of these, we hear of Trojan temples in the Iliad; probably also of the Greek temple of Apollo in Il. ix. 404; and of Greek temples in the Odyssey, beyond all reasonable doubt. We hear of Ætolian priests in Il. ix. 575; while it is not likely that there should have been priests without temples. Again, the circumstances of the Greeks in the Iliad were not such as to lead to the mention of temples usually or frequently. Therefore this is not a ground of suspicion against the passage. As to the second objection, it should be borne in mind that the Earth, Γαῖα, as well as Ἄρουρα, was apparently to Homer, not less than to the other ancients, a surface, not a solid (κυκλοτερὴς ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου, Herod. iv. 36.) The objection really is, that Ἄρουρα means a particular class of ground, namely, arable or cultivable land; and that to personify this class of land by itself is artificial, far-fetched, and not in the manner of Homer.