Contest of Homer and Hesiod

The Contest of Homer and Hesiod (Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, or simply Certamen) is a Greek narrative that expands a remark made in Hesiod's Works and Days to recount an imagined poetical agon between Homer and Hesiod, in which Hesiod bears away the prize, a bronze tripod, which he dedicates to the Muses of Mount Helicon. A tripod, believed to be Hesiod's dedication-offering, was still being shown to tourists visiting Mount Helicon and its sacred grove of the Muses in Pausanias' day, but has since vanished.

The narrative as we have it is clearly of the 2nd century AD, for it mentions Hadrian (line 33). Friedrich Nietzsche deduced that it must have an earlier precedent in some form, and argued that it must derive from the sophist Alcidamas' Mouseion, written in the 4th century BC. Three fragmentary papyri discovered since have confirmed his view. One dates from the 3rd century BC, one from the 2nd century BC (both of these contain versions of the text largely agreeing with the Hadrianic version) and one, identified in a colophon text as the ending of Alcidamas, On Homer (University of Michigan Pap. 2754) from the 2nd or 3rd century AD.

That it derives in part from the Classical period has been shown most clearly by two lines from its riddle passage that appear in Aristophanes' Peace "It does seem easier to suppose that Aristophanes was quoting a pre-existing text of the Certamen than that Alcidamas appropriated the lines from Aristophanes for a Certamen-like story in his Mouseion," R.M. Rosen observes. The more profound influences of some version of the Contest on Aristophanes' The Frogs has been traced by Rosen, who notes the clearly traditional organising principle of the contest of wits (sophias), often involving riddling tests.

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