stead of being the author of
encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.

Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honour and
profit.

Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer; not about medicine, or
any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer: we are not
going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients
like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the
Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts
at second-hand; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics,
politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his
poems, and we may fairly ask him about them. 'Friend Homer,' then we say
to him, 'if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say
of virtue, and not in the third--not an image maker or imitator--and
if you are able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in
private or public life, tell us what State was ever better governed by
your help? The good order of Lacedaemon is due to Lycurgus, and many
other cities great and small have been similarly benefited by others;
but who says that you have been a good legislator to them and have done
them any good? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon
who is renowned among us; but what city has anything to say about you?'
Is there any city which he might name?

I think not, said Glaucon; not even the Homerids themselves pretend that
he was a legislator.

Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on successfully
by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was alive?

There is not.

Or is there any invention of his, applicable to the arts or to human
life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian, and other
ingenious men have conceived, which is attributed to him?

There is absolutely nothing of the kind.

But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately a guide or
teacher of any? Had he in his lifetime friends who loved to associate
with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such
as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his
wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the
order which was named after him?

Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates,
Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name
always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed fo