Omero ‘sofista’ negli Archilochoi di Cratino?

Cratinus in his Archilochoi stages a literary contest between Archilochus and Homer which ends with the victory of the iambist. In light of recent studies that present Cratinus involved in creating the opposition between the ‘inspired poets’ and the ‘technicians’, this paper combines evidences from the surviving fragments of the play (1-16 K.-A.) to ancient traditions about sophistical appropriative approach to Homer, in order to suggest that in the Archilochoi the failure of the rhapsode means the inferiority of a factitious, intellectualist and sophist(icated) poetry.