Much has been written about the origin of the Homeric Poems, and the processes, more or less long, by which they were given eventual literary form. The archaeological discoveries of Schliemann and his successors, from 1870 to about 1910, lengthened the perspective and changed the point of view, diverting attention from the latest to the earlier phases, from an ‘Ionian’ to an ‘Aeolic’, ‘Achaean’, and even Mycenaean epic or saga or folk-tale. But not only was there no recovery of early literary texts related to the Minoan scripts, but the decline and fall of the Minoan régime revealed even more clearly the wide interval between the traditional date for the ‘Fall of Troy’ and the emergence of the ‘Ionian’ epic. Political circumstances unfortunately terminated the American excavation of Hissarlik before the questions asked by M. Charles de Vellay about the north side of the fortress could be completely answered; but it seems certain that there was a north wall, and that this was deliberately destroyed at a rather late date, as in the story of the foundation of Achilleum. In Aeolis and Ionia, too, no large excavation is possible yet; so attempts to find archaeological equivalents for the latest indications of material culture in the poems are still conjectural.

It is just 2,000 years since two boys complained that their schoolmaster furenter irasci. He, however, as such people will, had anticipated their complaint with a report of ambiguously qualified praise, and managed to retain parental confidence in his moral and intellectual qualifications. But the boys probably felt that lessons were out of place. They were abroad for the first time. There had been two grand feasts, a round of sightseeing, a voyage in open boats, a stay on an island, sleeping in tents, and six months at the court of a native prince. A story might have been written about this, but it was Cicero's proconsular year and he had other fish to fry. His was a province already subjugated more Romano with pilum and syngrapha, yet his anxieties were manifold: to meet the outgoing proconsul and tidy up the mess which that gentleman had made; to face a Parthian invasion; to catch a brigand; to square the legal and the economic rates of interest; to restrain his staff from making requisitions, and to dun the bankrupt king of Cappadocia. Then, at Rome, seven weeks' journey away, the republic was tottering, his daughter Tullia was on the marriage-market for the third time, water was being laid on at his suburban villa, and no—he really couldn't supply leopards for the arena, but please, please, would everyone see that his term of office in that dreadful province wasn't extended to a second year.

So Cicero only really noticed his son Marcus and his nephew Quintus when they were a nuisance.

PART 1

Collecting of weather-signs must have been a practice of considerable antiquity, for man has always drawn his sustenance from the land or from beasts that convert vegetable into animal protein. A hunter must know the best times for hunting; and for the agriculturist it is essential not only to know when the average seasonal changes of weather occur but to have some means of forecasting variations from the normal. We know two Greek collections of weather-signs, and there may have been a third which was older than either of these. Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of Plato and a distinguished mathematician who lived about 390–337 b.c., had written a prose work on astronomy, entitled Phaenomena. This, at the request of Antigonus of Macedon, was put into verse, under the same title, by Aratus of Soli somewhere between 276 and 274 b.c. The Phaenomena of Aratus is a dull, pretentious piece of versification, of interest to us only because it contains a number of seasonal signs which Virgil has scattered about the Georgics. But the astronomical piece is followed by a passage of 422 lines, which has been given the independent title of Diosemiai or Diosemeiai, on the signs of less normal weather. This is undoubtedly the principal source of Virgil's main collection; and from it, therefore, I shall chiefly be quoting. But there does exist another work, Concerning the Signs of Rain, Wind, Storm, and Fair Weather, a prose work in the form of some twenty pages of notes.

Thus was Dante welcomed by Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, and invited to become a member of the select circle in Limbo, the upper section of Hell containing the souls of unbaptized infants and distinguished pagans. The commentators tell us that this account of himself has been adduced as a proof of Dante's modesty; I have never been able to discover who proposed this idea. The poets entered the Palace of Wisdom and later on took their stand on an eminence from which Dante had a good view of the noble souls on the green sward in front of him, and he was told who many of them were.

Owing to lack of space I must confine myself to the literary figures seen by Dante, although there were many other notable inmates of Limbo, e.g. Aeneas, Caesar, and Saladin in spite of his adherence to the religion of the renegade Christian Mahomet who was sent down to the circle allotted to the Schismatics.

This list, with its supplement in Purg. xxii, deserves study; both should, however, be used with caution: the omission of well-known names should not be taken to imply ignorance on the poet's part. As Dante had but little Greek, it is obvious that he had not read the works of all the authors named.

The writers and philosophers in the first list are: the five poets already mentioned, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Democritus, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Zeno, Dioscorides, Orpheus, Cicero, Linus (v.l. Livy), Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen (Inf. iv. 131 ff.).