ns and the well-greaved Greeks
For beauty such as this should long endure
The toils of war.

And other things of the same kind. Other poets have represented
men taken by this passion uncontrollably and immoderately. This is
sufficient for this subject.

Epigrams are a pleasing variety of speech; they are found on statues and
on monuments indicating succinctly to whom they are dedicated. And this,
too, is a mark of Homer where he says (I. vii. 89):--

Lo! there a warrior's tomb of days gone by,
A mighty chief whom glorious Hector slew.

And again (I. vi. 460):--

Lo! this was Hector's wife, who, when they fought
On plains of Troy, was Ilion's bravest chief.

But if any one should say that Homer was a master of painting, he would
make no mistake. For some of the wise men said that poetry was speaking
painting, and painting silent poetry. Who before or who more than Homer,
by the imagination of his thoughts or by the harmony of his verse,
showed and exalted gods, men, places, and different kinds of deeds? For
he showed by abundance of language all sorts of creatures and the most
notable things--lions, swine, leopards. Describing their forms and
characters and comparing them to human deeds, he showed the properties
of each. He dared to liken the forms of gods to those of men. Hephaestus
prepared Achilles' shield; he sculptured in gold, land, sky, sea, the
greatness of the Sun and the beauty of the Moon and the host of the
stars crowning all. He placed on it cities in different states and
fortunes, and animals moving and speaking. Who has more skill than the
artificer of such an art?

Let us see in another example out of many how poems resemble more those
things that are seen than those that are heard. As for example, in the
passage where he tells of the wound of Odysseus, he introduces what
Eurychleias did (O. xix. 468):--

Now the old woman took the scarred limb and passed her hand
down it, and knew it by the touch and let the foot drop
suddenly, so that the knees fell into the bath, and the vessel
broke, being turned over on the other side, and that water was
spilled on the ground. Then grief and joy came on her in one
moment, and her eyes filled with tears, and the voice of her
utterance was stayed, and touching the chin of Odysseus, she
spake to him saying, "Yea, verily, thou art Odysseus, my dear
child, and I knew thee not before til