Chap. 30.] 
MEN OF EEMARKABLE GENIUS. 
173 
each man has fallen. What civic crowns did Trebia, what 
did the Ticinns, what did Lake Thrasymenus afford ? What 
crown was there to be gained at Cannae, where it was deemed 
the greatest effort of valour to have escaped from the enemy } 
Other persons have been conquerors of men, no doubt, but 
Sergius^^ conquered even Fortune herself. 
CHAP. 30. (29.) MEN OE REMAKKABLE GENIUS. 
Among so many different pursuits, and so great a variety of 
works and objects, who can select the palm of glory for tran- 
scendent genius ? Unless perchance we should agree in opinion 
that no more brilliant genius ever existed than the Greek poet 
Homer, whether it is that we regard the happy subject of his 
work, or the excellence of its execution. For this reason it 
was that Alexander the Great — and it is only by judges of 
such high estate that a sentence, just and unbiassed by envy, 
can be pronounced in the case of such lofty claims — when he 
found among the spoils of Darius, the king of Persia, a casket 
for perfumes,^^ enriched with gold, precious stones, and pearls, 
covered as he was with the dust of battle, deemed it beneath a 
warrior to make use of unguents, and, when his friends were 
pointing out to him its various uses, exclaimed, ^^Nay, but by 
Hercules ! let the casket be used for preserving the poems of 
Homer ;" that so the most precious work of the human mind 
might be placed in the keeping of the richest work of art. It 
was the same conqueror, too, who gave directions that the 
In allusion to the compliment paid by the senate to the consul, M. 
Terentius Varro, by whose rashness the battle of Cannse was lost. On his 
escape and safe return to Eome. instead of visiting him with censure, 
he received the thanks of the senate, "that he had not despaired of the 
republic." 
It appears somewhat remarkable, considering the extraordinary acts 
of valour here enumerated, as performed by Sergius, that we hear so little 
of him from other sources. — B. 
Hardouin takes the meaning to be, that though ill fortune overtook 
the Romans in their wars with Hannibal, nevertheless Sergius defeated 
Fortune herself, in dying before his country was overwhelmed by those 
calamities. 
99 Pliny informs us, B. xiii. c. 1, that the art of making perfumes origi- 
nated with the Persians. — B. 
