[56] The existence of a competition appears in Lucian, Eunuchus, 3, 5: the fullest account is that of Eunapius, Prohæres. pp. 79 sqq.
[57] Eunapius, ibid. p. 84.
[58] Olympiodorus, ap. Phot. Biblioth. 80; S. Greg. Naz. Orat. 43 (20). 15, vol. i. p. 782; Liban. de fort. sua, vol. i. p. 14. The admission was probably the occasion of some academical sport: the novice was marched in mock procession to the baths, whence he came out with his gown on. It was something like initiation into a religious guild or order. There was a law against any one who assumed the philosopher’s dress without authority, “indebite et insolenter,” Cod. Theodos. 13. 3. 7.
[59] The last traces are in the Christian poets: for example, in Sidonius Apollinaris († 482), Carm. xxiii. 211, ed. Luetjohann, “quicquid rhetoricæ institutionis, quicquid grammaticalis aut palæstræ est;” in Ennodius († 521), Carm. ccxxxiv. p. 182, ed. Vogel, and in Ep. 94, which is a letter of thanks to a grammarian for having successfully instructed the writer’s nephew; in Venantius Fortunatus († 603), who speaks of himself as “Parvula grammaticæ lambens refluamina guttæ, Rhetorici exiguum prælibans gurgitis haustum,” V. Martini, i. 29, 30, ed. Leo; but there are traces in the same poets of the antagonism between classical and Christian learning which ultimately led to the disappearance of the former, e.g. Fortunatus speaks of Martin as “doctor apostolicus vacuans ratione sophistas,” V. Martini, i. 139.
[60] “La période bénédictine,” Leon Maitre, Les écoles épiscopales et monastiques de l’Occident, p. 173.
[61] “Dictæ per carmina sortes,” Hor. A. P. 403. But it may be inferred from the title of Plutarch’s treatise, Περὶ τοῦ μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα νῦν τὴν Πυθίαν, that the practice had ceased in the second century.
[62] Cf. e.g.. Pindar, Frag. 127 (118), μαντεύεο μοῖσα προφατεύσω δ’ ἐγώ; and, in later times, Ælius Aristides, vol. iii. p. 22, ed. Cant.
[63] Dio Chrysostom, Orat. i. vol. i. p. 12, ed. Dind.
[64] Id. Orat. xxxvi. vol. ii. p. 59: καί πού τις ἐπίπνοια θείας φύσεώς τε καὶ ἀληθείας καθάπερ αὐγὴ πυρὸς ἐξ ἀφανοῦς λάμψαντος.
[65] It was a natural result of the estimation in which he was held that he should sometimes have been regarded as being not only inspired, but divine: the passages which refer to this are collected in G. Cuper, Apotheosis vel consecratio Homeri (in vol. ii. of Polenus’s Supplement to Gronovius’s Thesaurus), which is primarily a commentary on the bas-relief by Archelaus of Priene, now in the British Museum (figured, e.g. in Overbeck, Geschichte der griechischen Plastik, ii. 333). The idea has existed in much more recent times, not indeed that he was divine, but that so much truth and wisdom could not have existed outside Judæa. There is, for example, a treatise by G. Croesus, entitled, ομηρος εβραιος sive historia Hebræorum ab Homero Hebraicis nominibus ac sententiis conscripta in Odyssea et Iliade, Dordraci, 1704, which endeavours to prove both that the name Homer is a Hebrew word, that the Iliad is an account of the conquest of Canaan, and that the Odyssey is a narrative of the wanderings of the children of Israel up to the death of Moses.