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[558] Here again criticism attacked the text at an early date (see Prolegomena), and seems, from the number of MSS. which omit the line, to have affected the tradition in prae-Aristarchean times. But the text was certainly current in the time of Aristotle, who alludes ( Rhet. i. 15) to the story about the arbitration with Megara, to which the line is essential. According to this, Solon and not Peisistratos must have produced the interpolation as existing in the already established text. But no doubt the whole story of the arbitration is a fiction, and the Athenians won Salamis by force of arms. Strabo evidently doubts the tale (ix. 394), “οἱ μὲν οὖν Ἀθηναῖοι τοιαύτην τινα σκήψασθαι μαρτυρίαν παρ᾽ Ὁμήρου δοκοῦσιν: οἱ δὲ Μεγαρεῖς ἀντιπαρωιδῆσαι αὐτοῖς οὕτως:
Αἴας δ᾽ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος ἄγεν νέας ἔκ τε Πολίχνης
ἔκ τ᾽ Αἰγειρούσσης Νισαίης τε Τριπόδων τε.

”

It is evident from this that the Attic version had supplanted all others at an early date, and that the Megarians had no authentic version of their own, but could only suggest what might have stood here. The fact that the line cannot be original is patent from the fact that Aias in the rest of the Iliad is not encamped next the Athenians, see 4.327 ff., 13.681. Indeed, the way in which the great hero is dismissed in a couple of lines, without even his father's name, sounds like a mocking cry of triumph from Athens over the conquest of the island of the Aiakidai. No line in the Iliad can be more confidently dated than this to the sixth century.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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