ARETE AND ALKINOOS 217

guage ; and they would associate with it, without any
feeling of incongruity, the proverb that had already grown
round the dominant use of their own day.

Our second example will be linguistic, and not archaeo-
logical, and our reason for introducing it is that in dealing
with the Homeric question it is vital that both lines of
argument should be considered side by side, and allowed
their cumulative weight. While explaining to Odysseus
the genealogy of the royal house of Phaaacia, Athene
states that the king and queen, Alkinoos and Arete, are
" descended from the same ancestors ; " 1 they are, in
fact, uncle and niece.2 Nausithoos had two sons, Rhexe-
nor and Alkinoos. Rhexenor died " without leaving a
male child," 3 and his daughter Arete became the wife
of her uncle Alkinoos. Such is the meaning of the
genealogy as it stands, but it is only extracted from it
at the expense of two flagrant violations of the ordinary
usages of the Greek language. " Descended from the
same ancestors " is not the legitimate meaning of the
Greek words, but " born of the same parents," and
Rhexenor, on any ordinary principle of interpretation,
died " without a child," and not " without a male child." 1
In the version for which these two lines were originally
written, Arete and Alkinoos were clearly brother and
sister, and Rhexenor was the brother of both. Expres-
sions that were really applicable only to a grosser version
have been taken over into one that is more refined, and
are strained to bear a new interpretation. It is significant
that we have a tradition preserved to us in Hesiod,'
that the king and queen were, in fact, brother and sister.

1 Od. vii. 54 '■ in TOKrjav twv aiiTwv.

3 Murray, A.G.L. p. 40, says by mistake first cousins.

3 vii. 64 : rov ptv aKovpov tovra.

4 uKovpov would naturally be without a Kovpt) as well as
without a Koiipos.

0 A p. Schol. ad loc. It was probably from the Catalogue of
Women, the so-called Eoiai (i) olm).