So Horace joins these two classes as inventors of all kinds of improbable fictions—
Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas.—A. P. 9.
Which Roscommon translates—
Painters and poets have been still allow'd
Their pencil and their fancies unconfined.
Archytas was a native of Tarentum, and is said to have saved the life of Plato by his influence with the tyrant Dionysius. He was especially great as a mathematician and geometrician, so that Horace calls him
Maris et terræ numeroque carentis arenæ
Mensorem—Od. i. 28. 1.
Plato is supposed to have learnt some of his views from him, and Aristotle to nave borrowed from him every idea of the Categories.
The epigram is—
Εἴπας Ἥλιε χαῖρε, Κλεόμβροτος Ὅμβρακιώτης
ἥλατ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ύψηλοῦ τείχεος εἰς Ἀίδην,
ἄξιον οὐδὲν ἰδὼν θανάτου κακὸν, ἀλλὰ Πλάτωνος
ἔν τὸ περὶ ψύχης γράμμ᾽ ἀναλεξάμενος.
Which may be translated, perhaps—