And prepositions are like to the crests of a helmet, or footstools and pedestals, which (one may rather say) do belong to words than are words themselves. See whether they rather be not pieces and scraps of words, as they that are in haste write but dashes and points for letters. For it is plain that [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are abbreviations of the whole words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted]. As undoubtedly for haste and brevity's sake, instead of [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] men first said [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted].
Therefore every one of these is of some use in speech; but nothing is a part or element of speech (as has been said) except a noun and a verb, which make the first juncture allowing of truth or falsehood, which some call a proposition or protasis, others an axiom, and which Plato called speech.
END OF ELEVEN—————- [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
LITERARY ESSAYS.
THE LIFE AND POETRY OF HOMER
(Homeric quotations are almost all taken from Lord Derby's "Iliad" and Butcher and Long's "Odyssey." The first is indicated by the letter I, the second by O.)
Homer, who was in time first among most poets and by his power first of all poets, we justly read first, thereby gaining the greatest advantages for our language, for our intellect, and for practical knowledge. Let us speak of his poetry, first having shortly recalled his origin.
Homer, Pindar says, was a Chian and of Smyrnae; Simonides says a Chian; Antimachus and Nicander, a Colophonion; but the philosopher Aristotle says he was of Iete; the historian Ephorus says he was from Kyme. Some do not hesitate to say he was from Salamis in Cyprus; some, an Argive. Aristarchus and Dionysius the Thracian say that he was an Athenian. By some he is spoken of as the son of Maeon and Kritheus; by others, (a son) of the river-god Meles.
Just as there is a difficulty about his origin, so there is about the time in which he flourished. Aristarchus says he lived about the period of the Ionian emigration; this happened sixty years after the return of the Heraclidae. But the affair of the Heraclidae took place eighty years after the destruction of Troy. Crates reports that he lived before the return of the Heraclidae, so he was not altogether eighty years distant from the Trojan War. But by very many it is believed that he was born one hundred years after the Trojan War, not much before the foundation of the Olympic games, from which the time according to the Olympics is reckoned.
There are two poems of his, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," both, of which are arranged according to the number of letters in the alphabet, not by the poet himself, but by Aristarchus, the grammarian. Of these, the "Iliad" records the deeds of the Greeks and Barbarians in Ilium on account of the rape of Helen, and particularly the valor displayed in the war by Achilles. In the "Odyssey" are described the return of Ulysses home after the Trojan War, and his experiences in his wanderings, and how he took vengeance on those who plotted against his house. From this it is evident that Homer sets before us, through the "Iliad," bodily courage; in the "Odyssey," nobility of soul.