[456] Wood, Essai sur le Génie orig. d’Homère, p. 220.
[457] Bryant, cité par Desalles, Hist. d’Homère, p. 18.
[458] Wolf et Klotz, cités par le même. Ibid., p. 36 et 117.
[459] Paw, Recherches sur les Grecs, t. ii., p. 355.
[460] C’est un certain Grégoire, cité par Leo Allazi, dans son Livre de Patriâ Homeri.
Voltaire, Dict. philos., art. Epopée.
[461] The name of Pagan is an injurious and ignoble term derived from the Latin Paganus, which signifies a rustic, a peasant. When Christianity had entirely triumphed over Greek and Roman polytheism, and when by the order of the Emperor Theodosius, the last temple dedicated to the gods of the nations had been destroyed in the cities, it was found that the people in the country still persisted a considerable time in the ancient cult, which caused them and all their imitators to be called derisively Pagans. This appellation, which could suit the Greeks and Romans in the fifth century who refused to submit to the dominating religion in the Empire, is false and ridiculous when one extends it to other times, and to other peoples. It cannot be said without at once offending chronology and common sense, that the Romans or Greeks of the time of Cæsar, of Alexander, or of Pericles; the Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, Indians, the Chinese, ancient or modern, were Pagans; that is to say, peasants disobedient to the laws of Theodosius. These are polytheists, monotheists, mythologists, whatever one wishes, idolaters perhaps, but not Pagans.
[462] Novum Organ., aph. 48.
[463] De Dign. et Increm. Science, l. iii., c. 4.
[464] Ut supra.