M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
Sleep, however, did not allow Ulysses a long recognition of his native land, from which he yearned to see even the smoke leap upwards.[1]
3. Now I leave the son of Laertes for the son of Atreus. For that with all haste, which beguiled the latter, and led to the defeat and rout of so many legions, surely sprang from sleep and a dream.
Again, when the poet would praise Agamemnon, what says he?—
Then none might see the godlike Agamemnon sleeping—[2]
what, when he is finding fault?—
No councillor should sleep the whole night long,[3]
verses indeed, which an illustrious orator[4] once wrested in a strange fashion.
4. I now pass on to our friend Q. Ennius, who, you say, drew from sleep and a dream[5] his first inspiration to write. But, marry, had he never waked from sleep, he had never told his dream.
5. From him let us to Hesiod the shepherd, who became a poet, you say, in slumber. But, indeed, I remember reading once upon a time at school:
When on the swift steed's track he was leading his sheep to the pasture,
Hesiod once was met in the way by a bevy of Muses.[6]
That was met, you see what it implies? Why, that he was walking when the Muses met him.
- ↑ Odyss. i. 58.
- ↑ Iliad, iv. 22, 23.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 24.
- ↑ Fronto. Jerome calls certain translations of the Scriptures non versiones sed eversiones.
- ↑ Cicero (Acad. ii. 16) quotes the beginning of Ennius's own account of the dream: Visus Homerus adesse poeta.
- ↑ cp. Hesiod, Theog. 22 f.
