Υμνω νικησαντα φερειν τριποδ’ ωτωεντα, I bore a tripod ear’d, my prize, away: Υμνω νικησαντ’ εν χαλκιδι θειον Ομηρον, Victor in Chalcis crown’d o’er Homer, bard divine: the identical verse in the pretended inscription. It is incredible that any person should take the trouble of foisting lines into Hesiod’s poem, for the barren object of inducing a belief that he had won a poetical prize from some unknown and nameless bard: unless we were to presume that the forger omitted the name through a refinement of artifice, that no suspicion may be excited by its too minute coincidence with the traditionary story: but it is a perfectly natural circumstance that the passage in Hesiod, describing a contest with some unknown bard, should have furnished the basis of a meeting between Hesiod and Homer: and the tradition is at once explained by the coincidence of this passage in “The Works,” and an invocation in the “Hymn to Venus;” where Homer exclaims on the eve of one of these bardic festivals, Oh in this contest let me bear away The palm of song: do thou prepare my lay! The piece entitled “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” is entitled to no authority. It is not credible that a composition of this nature, consisting of enigmas with their solutions, and of lines of imperfect sense which are completed by the alternate verses of the answerer, should have been preserved by the oral tradition of ages like complete poems: and the foolish genealogies, whereby Homer and Hesiod are traced to Gods, Muses, and Rivers, and are made cousins, according to the favourite zeal of the Greeks for finding out a consanguinity in poets, diminish all the credit of the writer as a sober historian. It appears probable that the whole piece was suggested by the hint of the contest in Plutarch: who quotes it in his “Banquet of Sages,” as an example of the ancient contests in poetry. He says Homer proposed this enigma: Rehearse, O Muse! the things that ne’er have been, Nor e’er shall in the future time be seen: which Hesiod answered in a manner no less enigmatical: When round Jove’s tomb the clashing cars shall roll The trampling coursers straining for the goal