Homer's Riddle

“What we caught, we threw away, what we didn't catch, we kept.” 

This is Homer's Riddle and I didn't figure it out, but neither did Homer. In the story, Homer is on the Greek island of Ios, and he is sitting on a rock on the shore when some young fishermen arrive in their boat with very few clothes on (see picture above). He asks them if they caught anything and the fishermen, who have caught nothing, reply with this riddle. Homer thinks they are referring to fish and he cannot guess the answer. One way or another (there are various explanations), it literally kills him not to know the answer. It's at the bottom of this page, so that it won't happen to you.

Homer's tomb is on Ios (below), possibly because his mother was from the island, but there is no historical evidence to support any of this. The riddle is a good one though. It appears first in The Life of Homer, one among several ancient biographies of Homer. Its unknown author is referred to as Pseudo-Herodotus because, although the writer claims to be Herodotus the historian, it isn't him. Herodotus was 5th century BCE; best guesses place Pseudo-Herodotus as 3rd-4th century AD.

The answer to the riddle: lice