accused of
theft, and after condemnation sent them off in disgrace; but he honoured
Aristophanes with the most generous gifts, and put him in charge of the
library.

8. Some years later, Zoilus, who took the surname of Homeromastix, came
from Macedonia to Alexandria and read to the king his writings directed
against the Iliad and Odyssey. Ptolemy, seeing the father of poets and
captain of all literature abused in his absence, and his works, to which
all the world looked up in admiration, disparaged by this person, made
no rejoinder, although he thought it an outrage. Zoilus, however, after
remaining in the kingdom some time, sank into poverty, and sent a
message to the king, requesting that something might be bestowed upon
him.

9. But it is said that the king replied, that Homer, though dead a
thousand years ago, had all that time been the means of livelihood for
many thousands of men; similarly, a person who laid claim to higher
genius ought to be able to support not one man only, but many others.
And in short, various stories are told about his death, which was like
that of one found guilty of parricide. Some writers have said that he
was crucified by Philadelphus; others that he was stoned at Chios;
others again that he was thrown alive upon a funeral pyre at Smyrna.
Whichever of these forms of death befell him, it was a fitting
punishment and his just due; for one who accuses men that cannot answer
and show, face to face, what was the meaning of their writings,
obviously deserves no other treatment.

10. But for my part, Caesar, I am not bringing forward the present
treatise after changing the titles of other men's books and inserting my
own name, nor has it been my plan to win approbation by finding fault
with the ideas of another. On the contrary, I express unlimited thanks
to all the authors that have in the past, by compiling from antiquity
remarkable instances of the skill shown by genius, provided us with
abundant materials of different kinds. Drawing from them as it were
water from springs, and converting them to our own purposes, we find our
powers of writing rendered more fluent and easy, and, relying upon such
authorities, we venture to produce new systems of instruction.

11. Hence, as I saw that such beginnings on their part formed an
introduction suited to the nature of my own purpose, I set out to draw
from them, and to go somewhat further.

In the first place Agatharcus, in Athens, when Aeschy