ation about music.

Since we are speaking here about Pythagoras, to whom taciturnity and
not expressing those things which it is wrong to speak were especially
pleasing, let us see whether Homer had also this opinion. For about
those drunken with wine he says (O. xiv. 466):--

And makes him speak out a word which were better unsaid.

And Odysseus upbraids Thersites (I. ii. 246):--

Thou babbling fool Therites, prompt of speech,
Restrain thy tongue.

And Ajax speaks, blaming Idomeneus (I. xxiii. 478):--

But thou art ever hasty in thy speech.
And ill becomes thee this precipitance

And while the armies are entering the fight (I. iii. 2-8):--

With noise and clarmor, as a flight of birds,
The men of Troy advanced,
On th'other side the Greeks in silence mov'd.

Clamor is barbaric, silence is Greek. Therefore he has represented the
most prudent man as restrained, in speech. And Odysseus exhorts his son
(O. xvi. 300):--

If in very truth thou art my son and of our blood, then let
no man hear that Odysseus is come home; neither let Laertes
know it nor the swineherd nor any of the household nor
Penelope herself.

And again he exhorts him (O. xix. 42):--

Hold thy peace and keep all this in thine heart and ask
not thereof.

So the opinions of famous philosophers have their origin in Homer.

If it is necessary to mention those who elected for themselves certain
individual views, we could find them taking their source in Homer.
Democritus in constructing his "idola," or representative forms, takes
the thought from the following passage (I. v. 449):--

Meanwhile Apollo of the silver bow
A phantom form prepar'd, the counterpart
Of great Aeneas and alike in arms.

Others deviated into error in ways he would not approve of, but he
represented them as fitting to the special time. For when Odysseus was
detained with Alcinous, who lived in pleasure and luxury, he speaks to
him in a complimentary way (O. ix. 5):--

Nay, as for me I say that there is no more gracious or perfect
delight than when a whole people make merry, and the men sit
orderly at feasts in the halls and listen to the singer, and
the tables by them laden with food and flesh, and a winebearer
drawing the wine serves it into the cups. The fashion seems
to me the fairest thing in the world.

Led by these words, Epicurus took up the