BOOK VII. xxix. 107-109 



XXIX. Who could make an lionours class-Iist of Ca-wo/ 

 geniuses, ranging througli all thc kinds of systems and ",'»*«!■""' 

 all the varieties of subject and of treatment? unless inpveiry, 

 perhaps it is agreed that no genius has ever 

 existed who was more successful than Homer the 

 bard of Greece, whether he be judged by the form 

 or by the matter of his work. Consequently Alex- 

 ander the Great — for so lordly an assessment will 

 be effected best and least invidiously by the most 

 supreme tribunals — when among the booty won from 

 the Persian King Darius there was a case of unguents 

 made of gold and enriched with pearls and precious 

 stones, and when his friends pointed out the various 

 uses to which it could be put, since a warrior soiled 

 with warfare had no use for perfume, said, " No, by 

 Hercules, rather let it be assigned to keeping the 

 works of Homer " — so that the most precious achieve- 

 ment of the mind of man might be preserved in 

 the richest possible product of the craftsman's art. 

 Alexander also gave orders at the sack of Thebes 

 for the household and home of the poet Pindar to 

 be spared ; and he felt the native place of the philo- 

 sopher Aristotle to be his own, and blended that 

 evidence of kindhness with all the glory of his 

 exploits." Apollo at Delphi exposed the murderers 

 of the poet Archilochus. When Sophocles the 

 prince of the tragic buskin died,'' Father Liber gave 

 orders for his burial though the Spartans were 

 besieging the city walls, the Spartan king Lysander 

 receiving frequent adnionitions in dreams ' to permit 

 the interment of the darHng of the god.' The king 

 enquired what persoiLs had expircd at Athens and had 

 no difKculty in understanding which among them the 

 god meant , and he granted an ar mistice forthe funeral. 



577 



