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Another method, again, which transfers from the worse to the better sense suspicious passages in poetry, is that which works through the normal usage of words, in which it were better to have the young man trained than in what are called glosses. Strange of obsolete words. It is indeed learned, and not unpleasing, to know that rhigedanos Homer, Il. xix. 325. means dying miserably (for the Macedonians call death danos ), that the Aeolians call a victory won by patience and perseverance an outlasting, Ibid. xxii. 257 and xxiii. 661. that the Dryopians call the divinities popoi. There was a tradition, preserved in the scholia, that ὦ πόποι, often found in Homer, was the equivalent of ὦ θεοί gods. But it is necessary and useful, if we are to be helped and not harmed by poetry, to know how the poets employ the names of the gods, and again the names of bad and of good things, and what they mean when they speak of Fortune or of Fate, and whether these belong to the class of words which in their writings are used in one sense only or in several senses, as the case is with many other words. For, to illustrate, they apply the term house sometimes to a dwelling house, as Into the lofty house,Homer, Od. v. 42, vii. 77, and perhaps x. 474. and sometimes to property, as My house is being devoured; Ibid. iv. 318. and the term living they apply sometimes to life, as But dark-haired Poseidon Thwarted his spear, nor would let him end his foeman’s living,Homer, Il. xiii. 562. and sometimes to possessions, as And others are eating my living;Homer, Od. xiii. 419. and the expression be distraught is used sometimes instead of be chagrined and be at one’s wits’ end : Thus he spoke, and she departed distraught and sore troubledHomer, Il. v. 352. and at other times, instead of to be arrogant and be delighted, as Are you now distraught since you vanquished Irus, the vagrant? Homer, Od. xviii. 332, 392. and by huddle they mean either be in motion, as Euripides says:From the Andromeda of Euripides, Nauck, Trag.Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 145. A monster huddling from th’ Atlantic’s surge, or sit down and be seated, as Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus, 2. says: What means your huddling in these places here With suppliant garlands on the boughs ye bear? It is a graceful accomplishment also to adapt the usage of the words to fit the matter in hand, as the grammarians teach us to do, taking a word for one signification at one time, and at another time for another, as for example, Better commend a small ship, but put your goods on a big one.Hesiod, Works and Days, 643. For by commend is meant recommend, and the very expression of recommend to another is used nowadays instead of deprecating for one’s self, as in everyday speech we say, It’s very kind, and Very welcome, when we do not want a thing and do not accept it. In this way also some persons will have it that it must be commendable Persephone because she is deprecated.
