Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/40

 26 STRABO. BOOK I. lands, and skilled in strategy, agriculture, rhetoric, and simi- lar information, which some persons seem desirous to make him possessed of. To seek to invest him with all this know- ledge is most likely the effect of too great a zeal for his honour. Hipparchus observes, that to assert he was acquainted with every art and science, is like saying that an Attic eiresion& l bears pears and apples. As far as this goes, Eratosthenes, you are right enough ; not so, however, when you not only deny that Homer was possessed of these vast acquirements, but represent poetry in general as a tissue of old wives' fables, where, to use your own expression, every thing thought likely to amuse is cooked up. I ask, is it of no value to the auditors 2 of the poets to be made acquainted with [the history of] different countries, with strategy, agriculture, and rhetoric, and such- like things, which the lecture generally contains. 4. One thing is certain, that the poet has bestowed all these gifts upon Ulysses, whom beyond any of his other [heroes] he loves to adorn with every virtue. He says of him, that he " Discover'd various cities, and the mind And manners learn'd of men in lands remote." 3 That he was " Of a piercing^wit and deeply wise."* He is continually described as " the destroyer of cities," and as having vanquished Troy, by his counsels, his advice, and his deceptive art. Diomede says of him, " Let him attend me, and through fire itself We shall return ; for none is wise as he." 5 He prides himself on his skill in husbandry, for at the har- vest [he says], 1 A harvest-wreath of laurel or olive wound round with wool, and adorned with fruits, borne about by singing-boys at the Hvavt-fyia and 6apy?7ia, while offerings were made to Helios and the Hours : it was afterwards hung up at the house-door. The song was likewise called eiresione, which became the general name for all begging-songs. 2 Auditors,] a.Kpow/igj/oig. In Greece there was a class of lectures where the only duty of the professors was to explain the works of the poets, and point out the beauties which they contained. The students who attended these lectures were styled a*cpoarae, or auditors, and the method of instruction a*:p6a<7ic. 3 Odyssey i 3. * Iliad iii. 202. s Ib. x. 246.