areless
diet. Perhaps here he shows his art. For he who takes care of himself at
ordinary times is able to heal himself.

This is noted, too, in Homer, that he knows the distinction of drugs.
Some are to be used as plasters, others as powders, as when he says (I.
iv. 218):--

And applied with skilful hand the herbs of healing power.

But some are to be drunk, as where Helen mixes a medicine in a bowl (O.
iv. 221):--

A drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of
every sorrow.

He knows, too, that some poisonous drugs are to be applied as ointments
(O. i. 261):--

To seek a deadly drug, that he might have wherewithal to
smear his bronze-shod arrows.

Others are to be drunk, as in these words (O. ii. 330):--

To fetch a poisonous drug that he may cast it into the bowl
and make an end of all of us.

So much for medicines in the Homeric poems.

Divination is useful to man like medicine. A part of this the Stoics
call artificial, as the inspection of entrails and birds' oracles, lots,
and signs. All of these they call in general artificial. But what is not
artificial, and is not acquired by learning, are trances and ecstasy,
Homer knew, too, of these phenomena. But he also knew of seers, priests,
interpreters of dreams, and augurs. A certain wise man in Ithaca he
tells of (O. ii 159):--

He excelled his peers in knowledge of birds and in uttering
words of fate.

And Odysseus, praying, says (O. xx. 100):--

Let some one I pray of the folk that are waking show me a
word of good omen within and without; let soon other sign be
revealed to me from Zeus.

Snoring with him is a good sign. A divinely inspired seer is with the
suitors, telling the future by divine inspiration. Once, too, Helenus
says (I. vii. 53):--

He was the recipient of a divine voice.
By revelation from th' eternal gods.

He gives cause of believing that Socrates had actually communications
from the voice of the daemon.

What natural or scientific art is left untouched? Tragedy took its start
from Homer, and afterward was raised to supremacy in words and things.
He shows that there is every form of tragedy; great and extraordinary
deeds, appearances of the gods, speech full of wisdom, revealing all
sorts of natures. In a word, his poems are all dramas, serious and
sublime in expression, also in feeling and in subject. But they contain
no exhibition of u