Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/301

Rh used too in the former? or will he compare the fame of Stesichorus with the glory of Homer? or will he suppose that Stesichorus could immediately obtain those honours, which Homer did not, 'till his books had lasted six centuries, when he was numbered among the ancient heroes? This is so poor an excuse for the sophist, that it's a further detection of him. For since he lived after Ptolemee's time, and had heard of Homer's temples at Alexandria and Smyrna, it might easily come into his head to build the like for Stesichorus: but the true Phalaris, in whose days even Homer himself had no temple erected to him, would never have thought on't.

But what a morose piece of critic is that, where he will not give me leave to say, as others have done, that Himera was afterwards called Thermae because, forsooth, Diodorus and Cicero say they were not built upon the same spot of ground? And yet Diodorus himself expressly calls the inhabitants of Thermae, Himeraeans: and Scipio, when he gave them the statues that formerly belonged to Himera; and Cicero, when he tells that story of Scipio, do both as good as declare, that they looked upon them as