described in the Iliad, that any popularity would attend such a ridicule of war

and the gods as is contained in this poem; and the fact of there having existed

three other poems of the same kind attributed, for aught we can see, with as

much reason to Homer, is a strong inducement to believe that none of them were

of the Homeric age. Knight infers from the usage of the word

δὲλτος, ‘writing tablet,’ instead of

διφθέρα, ‘skin,’ which,

according to Herod 5, 58, was the material employed by the Asiatic Greeks for

that purpose, that this poem was another offspring of Attic ingenuity; and

generally that the familiar mention of the cock (v. 191) is a strong argument

against so ancient a date for its composition.”


Having thus given a brief account of the poems comprised in Pope’s

design, I will now proceed to make a few remarks on his translation, and on my

own purpose in the present edition.


Pope was not a Grecian. His whole education had been irregular, and his

earliest acquaintance with the poet was through the version of Ogilby. It is

not too much to say that his whole work bears the impress of a disposition to

be satisfied with the general sense, rather than to dive deeply into the minute

and delicate features of language. Hence his whole work is to be looked upon

rather as an elegant paraphrase than a translation. There are, to be sure,

certain conventional anecdotes, which prove that Pope consulted various

friends, whose classical attainments were sounder than his own, during the

undertaking; but it is probable that these examinations were the result rather

of the contradictory versions already existing, than of a desire to make a

perfect transcript of the original. And in those days, what is called literal

translation was less cultivated than at present. If something like the general

sense could be decorated with the easy gracefulness of a practised poet; if the