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The ''Margites'' () is a comic mock-epic of Ancient Greece that is largely lost. From references to the work that survived, we know that its central character is an exceedingly dumb man named "Margites" (from ancient Greek , ''margos'', "raving, mad; lustful") who was so dense he did not know which parent had given birth to him.〔Stuart Kelly, ''The Book of Lost Books'', New York: Random House, 2005.〕 His name gave rise to the recherché adjective ''margitomanēs'' (), "mad as Margites", used by Philodemus.〔Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'' revised edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.〕 It was commonly attributed to Homer, as by Aristotle (''Poetics'' 13.92): "His ''Margites'' indeed provides an analogy: as are the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' to our tragedies, so is the ''Margites'' to our comedies"; but the work, among a mixed genre of works loosely labelled "Homerica" in Antiquity, was more reasonably attributed to Pigres, a Greek poet of Halicarnassus, in the massive medieval Greek encyclopedia called ''Suda''. It is written in mixed hexameter and iambic lines, an odd whim of Pigres, who also inserted a pentameter line after each hexameter of the ''Iliad'' as a curious literary game.〔Harry Thurston Peck, ''Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquity,'' New York, 1898.〕 ''Margites'' was famous in the ancient world, but only these following lines passed from Medieval tradition: :Him, then, the Gods made neither a delver nor a ploughman, :Nor in any other way wise; he failed every art. ::as quoted by Aristotle :He knew many things, but he knew them badly… ::as quoted by Plato :There came to Colophon an old man and divine singer, :a servant of the Muses and of far-shooting Apollo. :In his dear hands he held a sweet-toned lyre… ::as quoted by Atilius Fortunatianus :The fox knows many a wile; :but the hedgehog's one trick can beat them all. ::as quoted by Zenobius (attributed simply to "Homer") Fortunately, in Oxyrhynchus, a few papyrus fragments were found and published (P.Oxy 2309, 3693 and 3694). The collected fragments were included in volume II of ''Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati'' by M.L. West. ==References== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Margites」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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