Book 1
2.3
As far as this goes, Eratosthenes, you are right enough; not so, however, when you not only deny that Homer was possessed of these vast acquirements, but represent poetry in general as a tissue of old wives’ fables, where, to use your own expression, every thing thought likely to amuse is cooked up. I ask, is it of no value to the auditorsAuditors,] ἀκοͅοωμένοις. In Greece there was a class of lectures where the only duty of the professors was to explain the works of the poets, and point out the beauties which they contained. The students who attended these lectures were styled ἀκοͅοάται, or auditors, and the method of instruction ἀκοͅόασις. of the poets to be made acquainted with [the history of] different countries, with strategy, agriculture, and rhetoric, and suchlike things, which the lecture generally contains.
