Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/36

xxxii tioned here, the Æolians being the only people of Greece who do not burn them. Homer also shows his Æolian descent in the following verses, there again describing the customs of that country:

"The elder burns the sacrifice on the wood of the altar, pouring over it libations of wine. The youths stand around holding five-barred gridirons."

The Æolians are the only people of Greece who roast the entrails on five-barred gridirons, those of the other Greeks having but three. The Æolians also say for  [five].

I have now concluded that which concerns the birth, life, and death of Homer. It remains for me to determine the time at which he lived. This is most easily done in the following manner. The island of Lesbos was not colonized till the hundred and thirtieth year after the Trojan war, and eighteen years subsequently Smyrna was built by the Cumæans. At this time Homer was born. From the birth of the poet to the passage of Xerxes into Greece, six hundred and twenty-two years elapsed. The course of time may easily be calculated by a reference to the Archonships. It is thus proved that Homer was born one hundred and sixty-eight years after the taking of Troy.