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their friends in combat, and perhaps allegorically intimating 

 that the party was condudled by Strength and by Prudence, 

 he boldly perfonifies the patron and patronefs of war according 

 to his own fublime conception of the fuperior beauty and 

 llature of Gods ; an idea which, among many others, may be 

 fuppofed to have given rife to thofe divine reprefentations which 

 were afterward framed. 



An inftance alfo, where mention is made by Homer * of ftatues, 

 though not of Gods, occurs in the Odyfley, Lib. vii. verfe 90, &c. 

 where in the defcription of the palace of Alcinous we find not 

 only dogs of gold and filver, but golden boys holding torches. 

 The dogs, however, which were endowed not only with life, 

 but with immortality and perpetual youth, were the workman- 

 fliip of Vulcan, and confequently may be defcribed as ap- 

 proaching nearer to the life, for that is the meaning of the 

 miraculous endowment above-mentioned, than could have been 

 expedted from any mortal fculptor of the age. The boys alfo, 

 though nothing is faid of their origin, may poflibly be fuppofed 

 to have come from the fame fhop ; and, if they were equal in 

 elegance to the torches they bore, which at that time were 



probably 



* It is fomewhat Angular that in all the writings of Homer there fliould not be, that I can 

 recolleift, any word expreffive of Jlatue. Aya^ftot indeed frequently occurs, but this word had 

 not as yet obtained that fignification, being only ufed to mean ornamentum, tbliHamrnlum, vide 

 Steph. Thef. And that even in ages very far pofterior it did not neceflarily convey the idea 

 of a ftatue, but, like our word idol, might mean any reprefention of a God, however dirtant 

 from the human form, is evident from the pa/Tage of Paufanias already quoted, where, (peaking 

 of the Thefpiati Cupid, he lays, xsi a<piau ayxf^fi.x irahKiilalat «$yos Ai9o,'. 



