Fragment 42 is a quote by Heraclitus regarding his dislike for the ancient poets, especially Homer and Archilochos. This is a fragment, like all of the other material we have of Heraclitus, and is preserved today only because Diogenes Laertius quoted it in his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (Book 9, Section 1, Paragraph 2) English: [1] Greek: [2].
τόν τε Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκϐάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι καὶ Ἀρχίλοχον ὁμοίως. (Original Greek)
Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochos likewise. (Translation: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1912))
Homer deserves to be taken out of the games and beaten with a stick, and Archilochus too. (Translation: Randy Hoyt, [heraclitusfragments.com
— heraclitusfragments.com] (2002)
Homer deserves to be thrown out of the contests and flogged and Archilochus too. (Translation: William Harris, Heraclitus, The Complete Fragments: Translation and Commentary and The Greek text [3]
[Heraclitus] used to say, too, that Homer deserved to be expelled from the games and beaten, and Archilochus likewise. (Translation: C.D. Yonge, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853) [4]
This attack on Homer, who we consider the prime Greek author and in many ways the cultural mainstay of later Hellenic thought, is surprising and we are left largely in the dark as to Heraclitus' reasons. It must be that Homer and the first poet Archilochus simply antedate the new philosophical spirit of the 5th century, since there is no way to harmonize their writing with the new cosmic interests and Heraclitus' preoccupations with the Logos and the One. the world of the Persian Wars.
It may be that Homer was so much a part of everyone's thinking, that social conservatives could try to refute the oncoming new idea by saying: "That's not in Homer.... so it must be some newfangled notion.....". We have a parallel situation when fundamentalists deny the truth of anything that is not specifically mentioned in the Bible. And Homer was in many ways the cultural bible of ancient Greece.
Heraclitus, The Complete Fragments: Translation and Commentary and The Greek text by William Harris [5]