BOOK XVII.
ARGUMENT.
This book contained, according to Schoenbeck's view, a discussion on the dogma of the Stoics, "that no one could be said to possess any thing peculiarly his own." The poet therefore ridicules the creations of the older poets, who have dignified their heroines with every conceivable embellishment, and invested them with the attractions of every virtue that adorns humanity. He then goes through the list of all the greatest mythological personages that occur in the various Epic poets, in order to show the fallacy of their ideas, and establish his own theory on the subject of moral virtue. Gerlach, on the other hand, considers that the subject was merely a disparagement of the boasted virtues of the female character; by showing that even these creations of ideal perfection, elaborated by poets of the greatest genius, and endowed with every excellence both of mind and body, are not even by them represented as exempt from those passions and vices which disgrace their unromantic fellow-mortals. In this general detraction of female purity, not even the chaste Penelope herself escapes. The 6th Fragment seems to be directed against those whose verses are composed under the inspiration of sordid gain.
1 Now that far-famed lady with the "beautiful ringlets," "and beautiful ankles?" Do you think it was forbidden to touch her...? Or that Alcmena, the bedfellow of Amphytrion, and others, was knock-kneed or bandy-legged. In fine, Leda herself; I don't like to mention her: look out yourself, and choose some dissyllable. Do you think Tyro, the nobly-born, had any thing particularly disfiguring; a wart ... a mole, or a projecting tooth?[1800]
2 All other things he despises; and lays out all at no high interest ... but that no one has aught of his own....[1801]
3 His bailiff Aristocrates, a drudge and neat-herd, he corrupted and reduced to the last extremity.[1802]
4 Do you, when married, say you will never be married, because you hope Ulysses still survives?
5 If he will not go, seize him, he says; and if he shuffles, lay hands on him....[1803]
6 ... if you sell your Muses to Laverna.[1804]
7 ... the big bones and shoulders of the man appear.[1805]