Blind Thamyris and Blind Maeonides

VWHEN THAMYRIS boasted that he would surpass them in competition (II. 2.594ff), the Muses maimed him (rnpobvO&rav), took away his wondrous song (aov OEabi eraflyv &4p Xovro), and caused him to forget his lyrecraft (EKXCXaOov KLOapLarbv). The moral is commonplace and the punishment condign, as in the legend of Niobe recounted by Achilles (1. 24.605ff), but certain details are nevertheless indistinct. The forgetfulness may mean that Thamyris could not remember his epic lays, or merely that lyrecraft became for him a matter of the past, the verb EKXEXaOov being used as XEXaaTbvos is in Od. 24.40, and the nature of the maiming cannot be decided with confidence, owing to the lack of clarification by a noun of reference. An epigram from the anthology, cited by LSJ s.v. irqpbs, tells how necessity was met by a man maimed in his limbs and another

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