Lastly, there is the famous story of the contest in song at
Chalcis. In later times the modest version in the "Works and
Days" was elaborated, first by making Homer the opponent whom
Hesiod conquered, while a later period exercised its ingenuity in
working up the story of the contest into the elaborate form in
which it still survives. Finally the contest, in which the two
poets contended with hymns to Apollo (4), was transferred to
Delos. These developments certainly need no consideration: are
we to say the same of the passage in the "Works and Days"?
Critics from Plutarch downwards have almost unanimously rejected
the lines 654-662, on the ground that Hesiod's Amphidamas is the
hero of the Lelantine Wars between Chalcis and Eretria, whose
death may be placed circa 705 B.C. -- a date which is obviously
too low for the genuine Hesiod. Nevertheless, there is much to
be said in defence of the passage. Hesiod's claim in the "Works
and Days" is modest, since he neither pretends to have met Homer,
nor to have sung in any but an impromptu, local festival, so that
the supposed interpolation lacks a sufficient motive. And there
is nothing in the context to show that Hesiod's Amphidamas is to
be identified with that Amphidamas whom Plutarch alone connects
with the Lelantine War: the name may have been borne by an
earlier Chalcidian, an ancestor, perhaps, of the person to whom
Plutarch refers.

The story of the end of Hesiod may be told in outline. After the
contest at Chalcis, Hesiod went to Delphi and there was warned
that the `issue of death should overtake him in the fair grove of
Nemean Zeus.' Avoiding therefore Nemea on the Isthmus of
Corinth, to which he supposed the oracle to refer, Hesiod retired