g
the most convenient road. Here, the Cumans say, he composed an epitaph on
Gordius, king of Phrygia, which has however, and with greater probability,
been attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus.(5)

Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the _converzationes_(6) of the old men,
and delighted all by the charms of his poetry. Encouraged by this
favourable reception, he declared that, if they would allow him a public
maintenance, he would render their city most gloriously renowned. They
avowed their willingness to support him in the measure he proposed, and
procured him an audience in the council. Having made the speech, with the
purport of which our author has forgotten to acquaint us, he retired, and
left them to debate respecting the answer to be given to his proposal.

The greater part of the assembly seemed favourable to the poet's demand,
but one man observed that "if they were to feed _Homers,_ they would be
encumbered with a multitude of useless people." "From this circumstance,"
says the writer, "Melesigenes acquired the name of Homer, for the Cumans
call blind men _Homers._"(7) With a love of economy, which shows how
similar the world has always been in its treatment of literary men, the
pension was denied, and the poet vented his disappointment in a wish that
Cumoea might never produce a poet capable of giving it renown and glory.

At Phocoea, Homer was destined to experience another literary distress.
One Thestorides, who aimed at the reputation of poetical genius, kept
Homer in his own house, and allowed him a pittance, on condition of the
verses of the poet passing in his name. Having collected sufficient poetry
to be profitable, Thestorides, like some would-be-literary publishers,
neglected the man whose brains he had sucked, and left him. At his
departure, Homer is said to have observed: "O Thestorides, of the many
things hidden from the knowledge of man, nothing is more unintelligible
than the human heart."(8)

Homer continued his career of difficulty and distress, until some Chian
merchants, struck by the similarity of the verses they heard him recite,
acquainted him with the fact that Thestorides was pursuing a profitable
livelihood by the recital of the very same poems. This at once determined
him to set out for Chios. No vessel happened then to be setting sail
thither, but he found one ready to Start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia,
which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to
accomp