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I asked whether Alexander was bald, and having sealed it publicly with great care, got a night oracle in reply: Sabardalachu malach Attis was not he. Another time I did up the same question What was Homer's birthplace? in two packets given in under different names.
"No matter for what purpose they were invented; if we can make so good a use of them we shall be satisfied, especially if you are pleased. I will, however, leave the burden of the proof upon my friend here, who has detected me already in quoting from Pope's Iliad instead of Homer's.
The ancients, who knew the laws of memory, grouped the seven cities that contended for the honor of being Homer's birthplace in a line thus given by Aulus Gellius: Smurna, Rodos, Colophon, Salamin, Ios, Argos, Athenai.
This was quite easy to do, because Homer had put them into the most beautiful and harmonious language the world has ever known. As soon as these young men had learned a few of the tales, they too began to travel from place to place, telling them to all they met; and thus Homer's verses became well known throughout all Greece.
Let us hope that it may be a speedy one; for if the senses be the only avenues to knowledge; if man be the measure of all things; and if law have not, as Hooker says, her fount and home in the very bosom of God himself, then was Homer's Zeus right in declaring man to be "the most wretched of all the beasts of the field."
"In the wake of northern tribes this god Aesculapius a more majestic figure than the blameless leech of Homer's song came by land to Epidaurus and was carried by sea to the east-ward island of Cos.... Aesculapius grew in importance with the growth of Greece, but may not have attained his greatest power until Greece and Rome were one."
Moreover, they had a salutary dread of what sailors term "blue water" that is, the deep, distant sea and never ventured out of sight of land. They had no compass to direct them, and in their coasting voyages of discovery they were guided, if blown out to sea, by the stars. The sails were made of linen in Homer's time; subsequently sail-cloth was made of hemp, rushes, and leather.
I knew all about it, "e'l chi, e'l quale"; I was privy to its intricacy; I caught without instruction the alternating beat in the second line, and savoured all the good words, gilded car, glowing axle, Star that bids the shepherd fold. Allay ravished me, young as I was. I knew why he had called the Atlantic stream steep, and remembered Homer's "Στυγὸς ὔδατος αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα."
I also remember, continued he, that Aristotle affirms Homer's words to be flying, moving, and consequently animated. Besides, Antiphanes said that Plato's philosophy was like words which, being spoken in some country during a hard winter, are immediately congealed, frozen up, and not heard; for what Plato taught young lads could hardly be understood by them when they were grown old.
Recall Brutus, who put his own sons to death because they committed treason. Remember what Scipio Æmilianus said when he learned that Tiberius Gracchus, his dear brother-in-law, had been put to death for sedition. He quoted Homer's line: "'So perish all who do the like again!"
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