chlidia,[1] and all those other amusing books and poems that have gained him such celebrity. When Thestorides heard that Homer was in Chios, he left the island.
XXV. Some time after, Homer begged the Chian citizen to take him to the town of Chios: he there established a school,[2] in which he taught the maxims of poetry to young people. He acquitted himself of this task so efficiently, in the opinion of the Chians, that the greater part held him in high estimation. He thus acquired a considerable fortune, mar-
- ↑ Homer is said to have called one of his poems, Ἐπικιχλίδες, because when he sang to the boys they rewarded him with fieldfares. See Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. p. viii.; Athenæus, ii. 24, xiv. 9; Mure, ii, p. 362; and Welcker, Ep. Cycl. 412.
- ↑ Speaking of the antiquities of the island of Chios, Chandler says (Travels, vol. i. p. 61): "The most curious remain which has been named, without reason, The School of Homer. It is on the coast, at some distance from the city northward, and appears to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is bounded by a low rim or seat, and about five yards over. The whole is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the most remote antiquity." Pope also, in his Introductory Essay, mentions a ruinous building in the neighbourhood of Bolissus, as being traditionally named the house of Homer.
counts. The Margites was a comic poem, the subject of which was the adventures and actions of one whose character is, in the fragments, summed up thus, "For much he knew, but little knew he well," and that little he displays with the greatest self-glorification in the world. The poem was believed by Plato (Alcib. ii. p. 147, c.) and Aristotle (Ethic. Nicom. vi. 7, Magn. Moral. ad Eudem. v. 7) to be a Homeric production, was highly esteemed by Callimachus, and in the time of Demosthenes, the name of Margites was proverbial for stupidity (Harpocr. s. v. Μαργίτης; Phot. Sex. p. 247, ed. Porson; Plut. in Demosth. 23; Æschin. adv. Ctesiph. p. 297). The Margites was considered by Aristotle as the essence of comedy, as the Iliad and Odyssea were of heroic and narrative poetry. Poetic. § 7. Lindemann, in his work De Lyra, (i. p. 79, &c,) has collected all the fragments of this poem. See Mure, ii. 358, sqq. and ii. 363—367.
