The Academic Questions, Treatise De Finibus, and Tusculan Disputations Part 37

He did not, however, follow all the opinions of his master: he held that knowledge was the chief good. Some of the treatises of Cleanthes were written expressly to confute him.

118 Anacharsis was (Herod, iv. 76) son of Gnurus and brother of Saulius, king of Thrace. He came to Athens while Solon was occupied in framing laws for his people; and by the simplicity of his way of living, and his acute observations on the manners of the Greeks, he excited such general admiration, that he was reckoned by some writers among the seven wise men of Greece.

119 This was Appius Claudius Caecus, who was censor B.C. 310, and who, according to Livy, was afflicted with blindness by the G.o.ds for persuading the Pot.i.tii to instruct the public servants in the way of sacrificing to Hercules. He it was who made the Via Appia.

120 The fact of Homer's blindness rests on a pa.s.sage in the Hymn to Apollo, quoted by Thucydides as a genuine work of Homer, and which is thus spoken of by one of the most accomplished scholars that this country or this age has ever produced:-"They are indeed beautiful verses, and if none worse had ever been attributed to Homer, the Prince of Poets would have had little reason to complain.

"He has been describing the Delian festival in honour of Apollo and Diana, and concludes this part of the poem with an address to the women of that island, to whom it is to be supposed that he had become familiarly known by his frequent recitations:

Virgins, farewell,-and oh! remember me Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea, A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore, And ask you, "Maids, of all the bards you boast, Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most?"

Oh! answer all,-"A blind old man, and poor, Sweetest he sings, and dwells on Chios' rocky sh.o.r.e."

-_Coleridge's Introduction to the Study of the Greek Cla.s.sic Poets._