that looked behind them. They
had also eight legs and two feelers--persistent creatures who are called
crabs. These nipped off the tails and paws and feet of the Mice with
their jaws, while spears only beat on them. Of these the Mice were all
afraid and no longer stood up to them, but turned and fled. Already the
sun was set, and so came the end of the one-day war.

OF THE ORIGIN OF HOMER AND HESIOD, AND OF THEIR CONTEST

(aka "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod")

Everyone boasts that the most divine of poets, Homer and Hesiod, are
said to be his particular countrymen. Hesiod, indeed, has put a name
to his native place and so prevented any rivalry, for he said that
his father 'settled near Helicon in a wretched hamlet, Ascra, which is
miserable in winter, sultry in summer, and good at no season.' But, as
for Homer, you might almost say that every city with its inhabitants
claims him as her son. Foremost are the men of Smyrna who say that he
was the Son of Meles, the river of their town, by a nymph Cretheis, and
that he was at first called Melesigenes. He was named Homer later, when
he became blind, this being their usual epithet for such people. The
Chians, on the other hand, bring forward evidence to show that he
was their countryman, saying that there actually remain some of his
descendants among them who are called Homeridae. The Colophonians
even show the place where they declare that he began to compose when a
schoolmaster, and say that his first work was the "Margites".

As to his parents also, there is on all hands great disagreement.

Hellanicus and Cleanthes say his father was Maeon, but Eugaeon says
Meles; Callicles is for Mnesagoras, Democritus of Troezen for Daemon,
a merchant-trader. Some, again, say he was the son of Thamyras, but the
Egyptians say of Menemachus, a priest-scribe, and there are even those
who father him on Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. As for his mother,
she is variously called Metis, Cretheis, Themista, and Eugnetho. Others
say she was an Ithacan woman sold as a slave by the Phoenicians; other,
Calliope the Muse; others again Polycasta, the daughter of Nestor.

Homer himself was called Meles or, according to different accounts,
Melesigenes or Altes. Some authorities say he was called Homer, because
his father was given as a hostage to the Persians by the men of Cyprus;
others, because of his blindness; for amongst the Aeolians the blind are
so called. We will set down, however