Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/216

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APPENDIX

part with 'em. And if Euripides and Hesiod were honoured with such contentions as these, after their deaths, why might not Stesichorus?

"Ay, but," says the Doctor, "a temple and deification were a little too extravagant an honour to be paid to a poet's memory." I thought such things as these could not have surprised a man of the Doctor's polymathy; but I find he knows nothing of the several temples erected to Homer at Smyrna and in other places, as Strabo and Aelian expressly affirm, nor so much as remembers that known passage in Tully's Oration pro Archia poeta which is no secret even to the first beginners in learning. "Homer," says he, "the Smyrnaeans claim as a native of theirs, and therefore they have erected a temple to him." From whence, also, Dr Bentley may please to learn the reason why Phalaris would have the Himereans content themselves with erecting a temple to Stesichorus, because that would declare to posterity that he was born there.

Nay it happens, a little unluckily, that an ancient marble is preserved to this day, which perhaps belonged to some temple erected to the honour of Homer,