Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/55

 his benevolent preceptor, simple but pure ideas, which the activity of his soul developed, which his genius increased, universalized, and brought to their perfection. His education, begun with an assiduous and sedentary study, was perfected through observation. He undertook long journeys for the sole purpose of instructing himself. The political conditions, contrary to every other project, favoured him.

Greece, after having shaken off the yoke of the Phœnicians and having become the friend of Egypt rather than her subject, commenced to reap the fruits of the beautiful institutions that she had received from Orpheus. Powerful metropolises arose in the heart of this country, long regarded as a simple colony of Asia, and her native strength being progressively augmented by the habit of liberty, she had need of extending herself abroad. Rich with the increase of population, she had reacted upon her ancient metropolis, had taken possession of a great number of cities on the opposite shores of Asia, and had colonized them. Phœnicia humiliated, tom by internal dissensions, tossed between the power of the Assyrians and that of the Egyptians, saw

the first anonymous Life of Homer; the Life of this poet by Proclus; Cicero, in his oration for Archias; Eustathius in his Prolégoménes sur l'Iliade; Aristotle, Poétique, l. iii.; Aulus Gellius, Martial, and Suidas. It is known that Smyrna, jealous of consecrating the glory that it attributed to itself, of having given birth to Homer, erected to this great genius a temple with quadrangular portico, and showed for a long time, near the source of the Meles, a grotto, where a contemporaneous tradition supposes that he had composed his first works. Voyez La Vie d'Homère, par Delille-de-Sales, p. 49, et les ouvrages qu'il cite: Voyage de Chandeler, t. i., p. 162, et Voyages pittoresques de Choiseul-Gouffier, p. 200.]
 * [Footnote: the most probable but the most generally followed; it has in its favour Pindar;