One cannot say nor do, if poor he be;
His tongue is bound to th' peace, as well as he.
("Theognis," vss. 177, 178.)
How comes it to pass then, said he, Theognis that thou thyself being so poor pratest and gratest our ears in this manner?
Nor are we to omit, in our reading those hints which, from some other words or phrases bordering on those that offend us, may help to rectify our apprehensions. But as physicians use cantharides, believing that, though their bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings are medicinal and are antidotes to the poison itself, so must we deal with poems. If any noun or verb near at hand may assist to the correction of any such saying, and preserve us from putting a bad construction upon it, we should take hold of it and employ it to assist a more favorable interpretation. As some do in reference to those verses of Homer,—
Sorrows and tears most commonly are seen
To be the gods' rewards to wretched men:—
The gods, who have no cause themselves to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.
("Odyssey," iv. 197; "Iliad," xxiv. 526.)
For, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the gods weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life, but he affirms it only of foolish and imprudent men, whom, because their vices make them such, he therefore calls wretched and miserable.
Another way whereby those passages which are suspicious in poets maybe transferred to a better sense may be taken from the ordinary use of words, which a young man ought indeed to be more exercised in than in the use of strange and obscure terms. For it will be a point of philology which it will not be unprofitable to him to understand, that when he meets with [Greek omitted] in a poet, that word means an EVIL DEATH; for the Macedonians use the word [Greek omitted] to signify DEATH. So the Aeolians call victory gotten by patient endurance of hardships [Greek omitted] and the Dryopians call daemons [Greek omitted].
But of all things it is most necessary, and no less profitable if we design to receive profit and not hurt from the poets, that we understand how they make use of the names of gods, as also of the terms of Evil and Good; and what they mean by Soul and Fate; and whether these words be always taken by them in one and the same sense or rather in various senses, as also many other words are. For so the word [Greek omitted] sometimes signifies a MATERIAL HOUSE, as, Into the high-roofed house; and sometimes ESTATE, as, My house is devoured. So the word [Greek omitted] sometimes signifies life, and sometimes wealth. And [Greek omitted] is sometimes taken for being uneasy and disquieted in mind, as in
[Greek omitted] ("Iliad," v. 352.)
and elsewhere for boasting and rejoicing, as in
[Greek omitted] ("Odyssey," xviii. 333.)