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Testimony of the learned Tzetzes concerning the Masters of Epic Poetry, runs thus: ‘There have been five celebrated Poets of the Epic kind; old Homer the first, then Antimachus the Colophonian, then Panyasis [of Halicarnassus,] Pisander of Camirus, and this Hesiod of Cumae.’ Tzetzes’ Life of. By which it appears, that the famous, who distinguished themselves in Epic Poetry, were all Natives of the Asiatic Coast.

 

was divided by the Learned among the Ancients into three Periods; the first was the dark Age, of which they knew nothing: The second the fabulous, of which they heard much, but with little Certainty: The third the historical, in which Times, Places and Persons were ascertain’d. It is with respect to the first of these Periods that Lucretius asks,

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