Book 9
1.2
Therefore Ammonius commanded Erato to sing to his harp, and he sang some part of Hesiod’s Works beginning thus, Contention to one sort is not confined;Works and Days, 11. and I commended him for choosing so apposite a song. Then he began to discourse about the seasonable use of verse, that it was not only pleasant but profitable. And straight every one’s mouth was full of that poet who began Ptolemy’s epithalamium (when he married his sister, a wicked and abominable match) thus, Jove Juno called his sister and his wife;Il. XVIII 356. and another, who was unwilling to sing after supper to Demetrius the king, but when he sent him his young son Philip to be educated sang thus, Breed thou the boy as doth become Both Hercules’s race and us; and Anaxarchus who, being pelted with apples by Alexander at supper, rose up and said, Some God shall wounded be by mortal hand.Eurip. Orest. 271. But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus: Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell.Odyss. V. 306. For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept, and gave all the free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty. And some mentioned the wife of Theodorus the tragedian, who refused his embraces a little before he contended for the prize; but, when he was conqueror and came in unto her, clasped him and said, Now, Agamemnon’s son, you freely may.Soph. Electra, 2.
1.3
After this a great many sayings were mentioned as unseasonably spoken, it being fit that we should know such and avoid them;—as that to Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at this line, Returned from war; but hadst thou there been slain, My wish had been complete; Il. III. 428.
