4to. pp. vii, [i], 20, 5 folding engraved plates. Signatures: A-C4 D2. Hard marbled boards. Gold-tooled title label laid to spine. Ex libris Henry Blackmer inside upper cover.

Rare 1795 first English edition of C. G. Heyne’s follow-up investigation concerning the purported discovery of Homer’s tomb in 1771 by the Dutch ‘Count’ Pasch van Krienen. The story of van Krienen’s excavation on the Greek island of Ios excited the world of classical archeology for some years before unraveling into one of the most notorious antiquarian hoaxes of the 18th century. Van Krienen reported in his 1773 Breve Descrizione dell’ Arcipelago that he had found Homer’s skeleton sitting on a bench in a stone sarcophagus, together with a marble inkstand, a pen with a marble stylus, a stone pen-sharpener, two bronze coins, a gem bearing the poet’s image, and his marble bust. Workmen, it was said, promptly dropped the lid of the tomb, utterly pulverizing the poet’s fragile remains (see J. P. Crielaard, “A ‘Dutch’ Discoverer of Homer’s Tomb,” in Homeric Questions. Amsterdam, 1995, pp. 313-316: 313). Van Krienen’s claims rested on the romance of this gripping story and on supposed inscriptional evidence transcribed from the exterior of the sarcophagus. No physical artifacts of the tomb would, in fact, ever be produced to face scholarly scrutiny. Heyne’s The Pretended Tomb of Homer (Das Vermeinte Grabmal Homers. Leipzig, 1794, held only at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) treats sculptural evidence from a claimant tomb presented to him in the form of drawings (here reproduced in 5 folding engravings).

Some two decades after van Krienen’s ‘discovery’ the archeological world still held out some hope that his finds might be verified, and so when a sarcophagus in St. Petersburg lately installed on the grounds of the Stoganoff summer palace began to be referred to in the city as ‘The Tomb of Homer,’ Heyne was enlisted to investigate. Using Winckelmann as an authority, Heyne interpreted the reliefs as being a depiction of Achilles among the women of Scyros, and cited circumstantial evidence suggesting that the relic was from Andros, not Ios. More troubling was that the dimensions of the sarcophagus did not square with those reported by van Krienen, nor were any inscriptions to be found on the relic. Heyne naturally suggested that the drawings he had been presented not only did not depict Homer’s tomb, but also had nothing to do with van Krienen’s story. Holding his tongue, the courteous Heyne slyly concludes that, “Every one is therefore at liberty to indulge himself in conjecture, in a circumstance so full of uncertainty” (vii).

See also ESTC, T108382; D. Constantine, In the Footsteps of the Gods: Travelers to Greece and the Quest for the Hellenic Ideal. London, 2011, pp. 215-18; L. Ross, Graf Pasch van Krienen. Halle, 1860.

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.

The pretended tomb of Homer

The pretended tomb of Homer

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