asured than the
noblest works of great thinkers and great poets.

"To preserve them from injury, to purge them from the errors which, in
the course of time, may have spotted their immaculate purity, this is
our task; and if we do indeed raise blocks of stone it is not to weight
a sparrow's feather that it may not be blown away, but to seal the door
which guards a precious possession, and to preserve a gem from injury.

"The chatter of girls at a fountain is worth nothing but to be wafted
away on the winds, and to be remembered by none; but can a son ever
deem that one single word is unimportant which his dying father has
bequeathed to him as a clue to his path in life? If you yourself were
such a son, and your ear had not perfectly caught the parting counsels
of the dying-how many talents of silver would you not pay to be able to
supply the missing words? And what are immortal works of the great poets
and thinkers but such sacred words of warning addressed, not to a single
individual, but to all that are not barbarians, however many they maybe.
They will elevate, instruct, and delight our descendants a thousand
years hence as they do us at this day, and they, if they are not
degenerate and ungrateful will be thankful to those who have devoted
the best powers of their life to completing and restoring all that our
mighty forefathers have said, as it must have originally stood before it
was mutilated, and spoiled by carelessness and folly.

"He who, like King Euergetes, puts one syllable in Homer right, in
place of a wrong one, in my opinion has done a service to succeeding
generations--aye and a great service."

"What you say," replied Publius, "sounds convincing, but it is still
not perfectly clear to me; no doubt because I learned at an early age to
prefer deeds to words. I find it more easy to reconcile my mind to your
painful and minute labors when I reflect that to you is entrusted the
restoration of the literal tenor of laws, whose full meaning might be
lost by a verbal error; or that wrong information might be laid
before me as to one single transaction in the life of a friend or of a
blood-relation, and it might lie with me to clear him of mistakes and
misinterpretation."

"And what are the works of the great singers of the deeds of the
heroes-of the writers of past history, but the lives of our fathers
related either with veracious exactness or with poetic adornments?"
cried Aristarchus. "It is to these that