Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/300

226 that I perceive even he knows nothing of, that Homer's case and Stesichorus's have no relation to one another. For, I pray, at what time were the temples built to Homer? 'Twas a long time before he was honoured with so much as an epitaph. He was buried, says Herodotus, in the island Ios,, and a after, when his poems became famous, they made an epitaph upon him. As for his temple at Smyrna, which Strabo, Cicero, and others mention, it must needs be as recent as the city itself, and that was built by Antigonus and Lysimachus six or seven hundred years after the poet's time, the old city having been ruined and desolate for four hundred years together. And then the temple at Alexandria, that Ptolemee Philopater erected to his memory, was later than that at Smyrna: and the marble of Homer's apotheosis which is published with an ample commentary by the very learned Cuperus, may be reasonably supposed to be later than them both. What has the Examiner got therefore by his instances of Homer's temples? They are all near three hundred years younger than Phalaris and Stesichorus; and if a custom obtained in this latter age, will he infer, that it was