The blind old man who dwelt on Scio’s rocky isle.
So paramount, indeed, were the reputation and influence of the immortal poet “whose genius had breathed inspiration into the national life of Greece” that it was said, when tradition respecting his sublime achievements was still fresh,
Seven cities now contend for Homer dead
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
The genius of Homer [declares a recent writer] was worshiped as god-like and temples were erected to his honor at Chios, Alexandria, Smyrna, and elsewhere; games were also instituted in his memory; Apollo and Homer were actually worshiped together at Argos, the one as the god of song, the other of minstrelsy.[73]
Filled with these thoughts and with a life-long love of the poet’s masterpieces, I visited every nook and corner of the Trojan plain and with unrestrained rapture contemplated the places which had so haunted my youthful imagination when I first became acquainted with the sublime pages of the Iliad. For the time being I forgot all about Wolf, Lachman, Hermann, and other advocates of the atomistic theory respecting Homer’s matchless epic and, like a child reading a fairy tale, I loved to picture before my eyes the wonderful events which Homer so vividly describes and which seemed to me almost as real as they were to the actual spectators three thousand years ago.
Still in our ears Andromache complains,
And still in sight the fate of Troy remains;
Still Ajax fights, still Hector’s dragged along,—
Such strange enchantment dwells in Homer’s song.