Book 1
2.3
As far as this goes, Eratosthenes, you are right enough; not so, however, when you not only deny that Homer was possessed of these vast acquirements, but represent poetry in general as a tissue of old wives’ fables, where, to use your own expression, every thing thought likely to amuse is cooked up. I ask, is it of no value to the auditorsAuditors,] ἀκοͅοωμένοις. In Greece there was a class of lectures where the only duty of the professors was to explain the works of the poets, and point out the beauties which they contained. The students who attended these lectures were styled ἀκοͅοάται, or auditors, and the method of instruction ἀκοͅόασις. of the poets to be made acquainted with [the history of] different countries, with strategy, agriculture, and rhetoric, and suchlike things, which the lecture generally contains.
2.4
One thing is certain, that the poet has bestowed all these gifts upon Ulysses, whom beyond any of his other [heroes] he loves to adorn with every virtue. He says of him, that he Discover’d various cities, and the mind And manners learn’d of men in lands remote.Odyssey i 3.Odyssey i 3. That he was Of a piercing wit and deeply wise.Iliad iii. 202.Iliad iii. 202. He is continually described as the destroyer of cities, and as having vanquished Troy, by his counsels, his advice, and his deceptive art. Diomede says of him, Let him attend me, and through fire itself We shall return; for none is wise as he.Ib. x. 246.Ib. x. 246. He prides himself on his skill in husbandry, for at the harvest [he says], I with my well-bent sickle in my hand, Thou arm’d with one as keen.Odyssey xviii. 367.Odyssey xviii. 367. And also in tillage, Then shouldst thou see How straight my furrow should be cut and true.Ib. xviii. 374.Ib. xviii. 374. And Homer was not singular in his opinion regarding these matters, for all educated people appeal to him in favour of the idea that such practical knowledge is one of the chief means of acquiring understanding.
