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.


Arrived at Cumae, he frequented the conversaziones 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.” 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 Cumae might never produce a poet capable of giving it renown and

glory.


At Phocaea 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.”