Book 14
12
Moreover, there were rhapsodists also present at our entertainments: for Laurentius delighted in the reciters of Homer to an extraordinary degree; so that one might call Cassander the king of Macedonia a trifler in comparison of him; concerning whom Carystius, in his Historic Recollections, tells us that he was so devoted to Homer, that he could say the greater part of his poems by heart; and he had a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey written out with his own hand. And that these reciters of Homer were called Homeristæ also, Aristocles has told us in his treatise on Choruses. But those who are now called Homeristæ were first introduced on the stage by Demetrius Phalereus.
