This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Who are the ‘Coliadae’ among the inhabitants of Ithaca and what is the phagilos?
After the slaughter of the suitors the relatives
of the dead men rose up against Odysseus; but
Neoptolemus was sent for by both parties to act as
arbiter.1 He adjudged that Odysseus should depart
from the country and be exiled for homicide from
Cephallenia, Zacynthus, and Ithaca ; and that the
[p. 193]
companions and the relatives of the suitors should
recompense Odysseus each year for the injuries
which they had done to his estate. Odysseus accordingly departed to Italy ; but the recompense he
formally transferred to his son, and ordered the inhabitants of Ithaca to pay it to him. The recompense consisted of barley, wine, honeycombs,
olive-oil, salt, and beasts for sacrifice that were older
than phagiloi; according to Aristotle's2 statement,
a lamb is a phagilos. Now Telemachus bestowed
freedom upon Eumaeus and his associates, and incorporated them among the citizens ; and the clan
of the Coliadae is descended from Eumaeus, and that
of the Bucolidae from Philoetius.3
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com