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Now just as in pasturage the bee seeks the flower, the goat the tender shoot, the swine the root, and other animals the seed and the fruit, so in the reading of poetry one person culls the flowers of the story, another rivets his attention upon the beauty of the diction and the arrangement of the words, as Aristophanes Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 513. says of Euripides, I use the rounded neatness of his speech; but as for those who are concerned with what is said as being useful for character (and it is to these that our present discourse is directed), let us remind them how strange it is if the lover of fables does not fail to observe the novel and unusual points in the story, and the student of language does not allow faultless and elegant forms of expression to escape him, whereas he that affects what is honourable and good, who takes up poetry not for amusement but for education, should give but a slack and careless hearing to utterances that look toward manliness or sobriety or uprightness, such, for example, as the following: Son of Tydeus, what has made us forget our swift prowess? Hither, stand, my friend, by me. Disgrace will befall us If yon Hector, gleaming-helmed, shall capture our vessels.Homer, Il. xi. 313; the first line is quoted infra, 71 F. For to observe that the most wise and prudent man, when he is in danger of being destroyed and lost, together with the whole host, fears shame and disapprobation, but not death, will make the young man keenly alive to the moral virtues. And by the line, Glad was Athena because of the man that was prudent and honest,Homer, Od. iii. 52. the poet permits us to draw a similar conclusion in that he represents the goddess as taking delight, not in some rich man or in one who is physically handsome or strong, but in one who is wise and honest. And again when she says that she does not overlook Odysseus, much less desert him, Since he is courteous and clever of mind and prudent, Ibid. xiii. 332. her words indicate that the only one of our attributes that is dear to the gods and divine is a virtuous mind, if it be true that it is the nature of like to delight in like.
