CRITIQUE OF CELEBRATED AUTHORS

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...those who were themselves most highly praised. Therefore, let Ignorance or Envy depart: you cannot grasp, nor can you pluck at, this immortal and heavenly nature. Lipsius, Observations on the previously mentioned passage of Velleius Paterculus.

Plutarch, in book 2 on Homer, asserts that the seeds of all arts, Physica natural philosophy, Medicina medicine, Politica politics, Ethica ethics, Eloquentia eloquence, and military matters are present in Homer.

The Iliad and Odyssey are celebrated above all others, in which the lights of all philosophy, the oratorical art, and poetics may be seen. Lilio Gyraldi, On the Poets.

Aelian writes that a certain painter named Agathon painted Homer vomiting, while the rest of the poets were draining what he had vomited up. This metaphor suggests that all later poets merely consumed and repurposed the original genius of Homer.

The same author records that Homer was translated by the Indi Indians into their own language. A temple was even built for him by certain people. Aelian, in Various History.

Yet in this respect Homer is most to be blamed, as are Hesiod, Ovid, and almost the entire crowd of Gentile poets, because he proceeded to such a point of madness and impiety that he not only increased the number of the gods in a wondrous way, but also devised all sorts of shameful things about them. He attributed to them outrages, adulteries, incests, disputes, fights, slaughters, homicides, and thefts. That is, he fashioned such gods and goddesses as the citizens of an honest republic would by no means tolerate. Johannes Quenstedt.

Alexander of Macedon, that monarch of the world, held Homer in such high esteem that he called his Iliad a divine poem and a traveler's guide for military matters. Indeed, he kept it in a scriniolo small casket, most precious with gold and gems from the spoils of Darius. He placed it under his pillow at night together with a dagger; with it he kept watch, and with it he slept.

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

Two things more sagacious men are accustomed to disapprove of in Homer. One is that he did not abstain from idle epithets descriptive titles, and sometimes inept ones, and often from digressions and cold conversations. The other is that he sometimes handed down impure and unworthy things concerning the gods. The first, the very infancy of the nascent art, or certainly its not yet confirmed youth, will excuse. The second displeased even the more sensible of the ancient pagans. Indeed, Hieronymus the philosopher, according to Diogenes Laertius, relates that Pythagoras saw the soul of Hesiod in the underworld bound to a bronze column and shrieking loudly; but he saw that of Homer suspended 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 subject of the Iliad books from the books of Corinnus the epic poet, who first wrote an Iliad at the time of the Trojan War. See Suidas under the entry Corinnus.

Homer so stuffed all his poetry with maxims that his individual apophthegmata pithy sayings serve the role of proverbs in the mouths of citizens. Macrobius, book 5 of the Saturnalia, 116.

There are many editions of Homer, among which the Roman, the Stephanian Henri Estienne, and the Strasbourg editions are considered more excellent. Nor is the recent edition by Schrevelius to be condemned, despite what Meric Casaubon might find lacking in it in a specific writing.