Page:Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer's Life and Writings.pdf/19

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6
Proofs of the Enquiry into

where the Tradition concerning her is found, to wit, in the Life of the Poet, commonly, and not without Probability, ascribed to Herodotus. P. 5. (b) 
5. (g)
“While the young Woman lived here, (in Cumae) it happened that she was privately got with Child,”

She concealed it till she was near the time of her being delivered, and then at a public Festival, when all the Virgins were gathered together to dance, was taken with Pains, and brought forth a Boy upon the Bank of the River Meles; whence they say Homer had his Name, Melesigenes.[lower-alpha 1]


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Ibid. (c)
Ibid. (b)
The Testimony of Herodotus concerning the happy Seat of the Ionian Colony is this: ‘The Ionians, says he, to whom the Panionium (the common Rendezvous of the Ionian Cities) belongs, have built their Towns in the finest Situation of any People that ever I knew, in respect of the Climate and the Mildness of the Seasons.

Clio.
We find that all Mankind have allowed the Inhabitants of different Countries to have different Manners and even different Capacities. A Beotian Swine was a settled Reproach upon the Inhabitants of Thebes before the Days of Pindar, and is confirmed by Horace:
BOEO-
  1. The Meles is now a small obscure Brook dear Smyrna.