OF CELEBRATED AUTHORS

...those who were themselves most highly praised. Go away, therefore, Ignorance or Envy: you cannot grasp, you cannot criticize this immortal and heavenly nature. Lipsius, Animadversions on the aforementioned passage of Velleius Paterculus.

Plutarch, in his second book on Homer, affirms that the seeds of all arts, Physics, Medicine, Politics, Ethics, Eloquence, and military affairs, are present in Homer.

Among all his works, the Iliad and Odyssey are especially celebrated, in which the lights of all philosophy, the art of oratory, and poetics may be seen. Lilius Giraldus, On the Poets.

Aelian writes that a certain painter named Agathon painted Homer vomiting, and the rest of the poets draining those things which he himself had vomited.

The same author mentions that Homer was translated by the Indians into their own language. A temple was even built for him by some. Aelian in Various History.

But in this matter Homer is especially to be blamed (as are also Hesiod, Ovid, and almost all the rest of the crowd of Pagan poets), because he proceeded to such madness and impiety that he not only increased the number of gods in a wonderful way, but also devised all sorts of shameful things about the gods. He attributed to them outrages, adulteries, incests, quarrels, fights, slaughters, homicides, and thefts; that is, he fashioned such gods and goddesses as an honest Republic would by no means tolerate in its citizens. Johann Quenstedt.

Alexander of Macedon, that Monarch of the world, valued Homer so much that he called his Iliad a divine poem and a traveler's provision for military affairs; indeed, he kept it in a small casket, most precious with gold and gems from the spoils of Darius. At night he placed it under his pillow along with a dagger; he woke with it, and he slept with it.

Basil the Great said that the entire poetry of Homer is a praise of virtue.

Two more sharp-witted men are accustomed to disapprove of things in Homer: one, that he did not abstain from idle and sometimes inept epithets, and often also from digressions and cold conversations; the other, that he sometimes handed down impure and unworthy things about the gods. The first will be excused by the very infancy of the birthing art, or certainly its youth not yet confirmed; the second also displeased the more sensible of the ancient Pagans. For Hieronymus the philosopher, in Diogenes Laertius, relates that Pythagoras saw the soul of Hesiod bound to a bronze column in the Underworld, screeching loudly; but that of Homer he saw hanging from a tree and surrounded by dreadful serpents, because both had produced such foul things concerning the divine nature. Borrichius, On the Poets, page 9.

Homer took many things from Orpheus. Clement of Alexandria, book 6 of the Stromata.

Homer took the argument of the books of the Iliad from the books of Corinnus the epic poet, who first wrote an Iliad at the time of the Trojan War. See Suidas under the word Corinnus.

Homer so stuffed all his poetry with maxims that his individual sayings serve as proverbs in the mouths of citizens. Macrobius, book 5 of the Saturnalia, 16.

There are many editions of Homer, among which the Roman, the Stephanic, and the Strasbourg are considered more excellent. Nor is the recent one by Schrevelius to be condemned, whatever Meric Casaubon may miss in it in his particular writing.