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[595] τὸν Θρήϊκα, that Thracian. Thamyris, like Orpheus, was one of the legendary Thracians who dwelt in Pieria at the foot of Olympos, and from whom the cultus of the Muses was said to come. In Rhesos 921-25 the Muses speak of the time

ὅτ᾽ ἤλθομεν γῆς χρυσόβωλον εἰς λέπας
Πάγγαιον ὀργάνοισιν ἐξησκημέναι
Μοῦσαι, μεγίστην εἰς ἔριν μελωιδίας
δεινῶι σοφιστῆι Θρηικί, κἀτυφλώσαμεν
Θάμυριν, ὃς ἡμῶν πόλλ᾽ ἐδέννασεν τέχνην
”.

It will be noticed that the Rhesos places the scene of the meeting in Thrace, and beyond question the legend was originally a northern one, transplanted southwards, perhaps, in the course of the same tribal migrations which carried the name of Olympos from Thessaly to Elis. In l. 730 below Eurytos and Oichalia are placed in Thessaly; and there also, according to Byz.Steph., Hesiod made Thamyris at home, in “Δώτιον”, the Dotian plain, a name which bears a curious resemblance to “Δώριον”. Commentators have generally tried to save the consistency of the Catalogue by supposing that Thamyris was a wandering bard, who found himself at Dorion, far away from the Thessalian Oichalia, in the course of his travels southward. But, apart from the fact that Homer knows nothing of wandering minstrels, and tells us only of bards attached to a particular chieftain's court, there is clear evidence that the Oichalia legend, which played an important part in the later Epos, was localized in Peloponnesos as well as in Thessaly; see Od. 21.13 ff. (cf. Od. 8.224) and Pherekydes in the scholia on Soph. Trach. 354. Pausanias iv. 2. 2 says that the Messenians claimed, in proof that theirs was the real Oichalia, possession of the bones of Eurytos. There was, however, yet a third claimant, near Eretria in Euboia, which was generally recognized by later poets, the “Οἰχαλίας Ἅλωσις” attributed to Kreophylos, Soph. Trach. 237 and Ap. Rhod.i. 87. We may therefore easily admit that the Catalogue recognizes two different localizations of the same legend, in preference to supposing, with Niese, that the compiler has fallen into a mere blunder through mistaking the name Dotion for the Messenian or Arkadian Dorion. The localization of this place is purely conjectural (Strabo viii. 350). The southern Oichalia was placed at or near Andania.

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hide References (5 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (5):
    • Homer, Odyssey, 21.13
    • Homer, Odyssey, 8.224
    • Sophocles, Trachiniae, 237
    • Sophocles, Trachiniae, 354
    • Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, 1.87
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