As far as this goes, Eratosthenes, you are right enough; not so, however, when you not only deny that Homer was possessed of these vast acquirements, but represent poetry in general as a tissue of old wives’ fables, where, to use your own expression, every thing thought likely to amuse is cooked up. I ask, is it of no value to the auditors[83] of the poets to be made acquainted with [the history of] different countries, with strategy, agriculture, and rhetoric, and suchlike things, which the lecture generally contains.
4. One thing is certain, that the poet has bestowed all these gifts upon Ulysses, whom beyond any of his other [heroes] he loves to adorn with every virtue. He says of him, that he
“Discover’d various cities, and the mind
And manners learn’d of men in lands remote.”[84]
That he was
“Of a piercing wit and deeply wise.”[85]
He is continually described as “the destroyer of cities,” and as having vanquished Troy, by his counsels, his advice, and his deceptive art. Diomede says of him,
“Let him attend me, and through fire itself
We shall return; for none is wise as he.”[86]
He himself on his skill in husbandry, for at the harvest [he says],