Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Homer   Listen
noun
Homer  n.  (Baseball) Same as Home run. The poet to whom is assigned by very ancient tradition the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and of certain hymns to the gods ("Homeric Hymns"). Other poems also, as the "Batrachomyomachia" ("Battle of the Frogs and Mice"), were with less certainty attributed to him. Of his personality nothing is known. Seven cities Smyrna, Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis (in Cyprus), Chios, Argos, and Athens contended for the honor of being his birthplace: of these, the best evidence connects him with Smyrna. He was said to have died on the island of Ios. The tradition that he lived on the island of Chios, and in his old age was blind, is supported by the Hymn to the Delian Apollo. Modern destructive criticism has led to the doubt whether such a person as Homer existed at all, the great epics which bear that name being supposed to be, in their existing form, of a composite character, the product of various persons and ages. It is altogether probable, however, that the nucleus of the Iliad, at least, was the work of a single poet of commanding genius. (See Iliad, Odyssey, and the quotation below.) Various dates have been assigned to Homer. According to Herodotus he lived about 850 b. c.; others give a later date, and some a date as early as 1200 b. c. His poems were sung by professional reciters (rhapsodists, who went from city to city. (See Homeridae.) They were given substantially their present form by Pisistratus or his sons Hipparchus and Hippias, who ordered the rhapsodists to recite them at the Panathenaic festival in their order and completeness. The present text of the poems, with their division into books, is based upon the work of the Alexandrine critics. Note: We may assume it as certain that there existed in Ionia schools or fraternities of epic rhapsodists who composed and recited heroic lays at feasts, and often had friendly contests in these recitations. The origin of these recitations may be sought in northern Greece, from which the fashion migrated in early days to Asia Minor. We may assume that these singers became popular in many parts of Greece, aud that they wandered from court to court, glorifying the heroic ancestors of the various chiefs. One among them, called Homer, was endowed with a genius superior to the rest, and struck out a plot capable of nobler and larger treatment. It is likely that this superiority was not recognized at the time, and that he remained all his life a singer like the rest, a wandering minstrel, possibly poor and blind. The listening public gradually stamped his poem with their approval, they demanded its frequent recitation, and so this Homer began to attain a great posthumous fame. But when this fame led people to inquire into his life and history, it had already passed out of recollection, and men supplied by fables what they had forgotten or neglected. The rhapaodists, however, then turned their attention to expanding and perfecting his poem, which was greatly enlarged and called the Iliad. In doing this they had recourse to the art of writing, which seems to have been in use when Homer framed his poem, but which was certainly employed when the plan was enlarged with episodes. The home of the original Homer seems to have been about Smyrna, and in contact with both Aeolic and Ionic legends. Hia date is quite uncertain: it need not be placed before 800 B. C., and is perhaps later, but not after 700 a. c.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Homer" Quotes from Famous Books



... published at Naples, by F. Antonio Bresciani, of the Society of Jesus[1], on the manners and habits of the Sardes compared with those of the oldest Oriental nations. The comparisons are chiefly gathered from scenes and usages depicted in the narratives of Homer and the Bible, still singularly reflected in the habits and traditions of the primitive and insular people ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... itself the narrative of his exploits is of thrilling interest, but the real value of the book consists in the graphic and accurate picture which it gives of the world as it was a thousand years before the Christian Era. King David, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, and even Homer are among the characters Captain Mago meets in his ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... find fault with their living in the market-place; but I commend it. For if it had been bad, Homer would never have been for representing Nestor as an orator; nor all the other wise men. I will return, then, from thence to the tongue, which this fellow says our youths ought not to exercise, while I maintain they should. And again, he says they ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... perfect instrument of literary expression; and, in his own literature, models of every kind of literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get literary culture out of his Bible, his Shakespeare, his Milton, neither, in my belief, will the profoundest study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... manner of that ancient Parthians, I included all my family, from the full beauty of my excellent wife to the sun-lighted hair of my prattling little Charles, (the which reminds me of those beautiful lines which are contained in a translation of the Iliad of Homer by Mr Hobbes, descriptive of the young Astyanax in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... Eleusis," says the profound German mythologist, Creuzer, "did not only teach resignation, but, as we see by the verses of Homer to Ceres sung on those occasions, they afforded consoling promises of a better futurity. 'Happy is the mortal,' it is said there, 'who hath been able to contemplate these grand scenes! But he who hath not taken part in these holy ceremonies is fore ever deprived ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... Signor Segretario, if thou hast found no least trace of the great philosopher Zeno in the ancient city of Cition that was his birthplace; nor of Homer, that maker of literature, who hath, perchance, won space enough in the estimate of mankind to be worthy the brief thought of a child—even of thine—a scholar seeking for truth—he being ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... there are various readings?[10] And for this reason, it is manifest that no man can know the opinions of Aristotle or Plato, or believe the facts related by Thucydides or Livy, or be pleased with the poetry of Homer and Virgil, all which books are utterly useless, upon account of their various readings. Some books of Scripture are said to be lost, and this utterly destroys the credit of those that are left: some we reject, which the Africans and Copticks receive; and why ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... Sobey nor the mare—nor, for that matter, the jackass—had ever read the eighteenth book of Homer's Iliad; and this must be their excuse for letting pass the encounter with less eloquence than I, its narrator, might have made a fortune by reporting. For once Gunner Sobey's readiness failed him, under emotion too deep for words. He laid a hand on the mare's withers and heaved ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the reading of rabido in the last line and discusses the subject in six folio pages, with passages from Catullus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Claudian, Homer, Tasso, &c.; and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... women's apartment with Fibi and Vinos. Ursus chained up Homo under the Green Box; Gwynplaine looked after the horses, the lover becoming a groom, like a hero of Homer's or a paladin of Charlemagne's. At midnight, all were asleep, except the wolf, who, alive to his responsibility, now and then opened an eye. The next morning they met again. They breakfasted together, generally on ham and tea. Tea was introduced into England ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... and dogs the infection first began, And, last, the vengeful arrows fix'd on man. POPE'S Homer's Iliad, I. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... supposed to involve his {16} [23] teaching. He wrote not for the vulgar, but for the gifted few. 'Much learning makes not wise' was the motto of his work; the man of gift, of insight, that man is better than ten thousand. He was savage in his criticism of other writers, even the greatest. Homer, he said, and Archilochus too, deserved to be hooted from the platform and thrashed. Even the main purport of his writings was differently interpreted. Some named his work 'The Muses,' as though it were chiefly a poetic vision; others named it 'The sure ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... stars, old man, When you cannot preserve your own position." This adventure in itself, without going further, Might serve as a lesson, to most of mankind, For of us mortals, a certain part inclines, To the belief, that, with the help of mind, The book of Destiny may easily be read, But this book, by Homer and his disciples sung, What is it called but Chance, by ancients, And by us Christians named Providence instead. Now in Chance there can no science be, Or why should it be called by them Chance— And things uncertain, who knows in advance? ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... little fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small, and set in lead. The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the residence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, the admirable letters to which I have referred above. The room once contained a record by himself, scratched with a diamond on one of the window-panes, (since removed for safe-keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it was shown me,) purporting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... cities which adorn the banks of the majestic Hudson. I will not be so particular as to name the place, lest other towns should be moved to jealousy. Each of the seven cities that contended for the honor of giving birth to Homer, was as well off as though each was actually entitled to it—whereas, had the point been settled, six of them would not have been worth living in; rent-free. There is another reason for not being too particular. Although, unlike Byron, I have no fear of ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... attempt to elevate The Dunciad comes in section two of his poem. Unlike Dryden, in whose Discourse the account of the "progress" of satire is confined almost exclusively to a few Roman writers, Harte begins his account of its progress with Homer and brings it down to Pope. Deriving the ancestry of The Dunciad from Homer, the greatest epic poet, obviously enhances Pope's satire. Perhaps less obviously, by extending Dryden's account to the present, Harte makes The Dunciad not only a chronological terminus ad ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... objects, the catch of raw silk, the chill smoothness of burnished brass, the thick softness of mists, the "amorous wet" of green depths of sea. The senses of taste and smell may be excited imaginatively and contribute to our pleasure. Winslow Homer's breakers bring back to us the salt fragrance of the ocean, and in the presence of these white mad surges we feel the stinging spray in our faces and we taste the cosmic exhilaration of the sea-wind. But the final meaning of a picture resides in the total harmony of color ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... and his friends cared little for scholastic puzzles and they gave themselves to the study of the beauties of Latin poetry and to the newly opened mine of the literature of Greece. They delighted in Virgil and Lucian, and still more in Homer ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Mrs. Homer shook her head. "I am afraid not, but you can ask him. Julia will be greatly disappointed, but you know Justus is nothing if not conscientious and if he has made up his mind he ought not to go, nothing ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... It was only during the progress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that I succeeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom's had been won, fanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer, recruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowing colours. Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they went back to him. Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he departed, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... question with a laugh. "But I wasn't always a tobacco- grower, and there were poets before Homer, who is about the only one I've ever read. It's true I've tried to lose the little education I ever had—that I've done my best to come down to the level of my own cattle; but I'm not an ox, after all, except in strength, and one has plenty of time ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for garbage, a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... sympathies are awakened by general sentiments of philanthropy among the emirs of the east, or the barons of the west, there is reason to suspect that the origin of the tale must be sought in Greece. Europe has been guided by the mind of Hellas in every age, from the days of Homer to those of Tzetzes; and its power has been maintained by addressing the feelings common to the whole human race—feelings long cherished in Greece after they had been banished from western society by Goths, Franks, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... Maeterlinck so far as the facts will bear us out in doing, it remains to be said that he is the philosopher of the insect world. If Fabre is the Homer, as he himself has said, Maeterlinck is the Plato of that realm. How wisely he speaks of the insect world in his latest volume, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... waved his hand towards the encircling moors. "We have feasted more Homerico, and in Homer, you remember the host allowed his guest fourteen days before asking that question. Permit me to delay the answer only till I have poured libation on the turf here. Ah! I perceive the whisky is exhausted: ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and human interest to both history and geography. By means of literature we are able to get a better notion of the ideals and motives of a people than the mere recital of the facts of their history can give. In this connection we naturally think of Homer's Iliad and its influence on the Greeks. It was their storehouse of history, morals, religion, aesthetics, and rules for the practical guidance of life, as well ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... solitary man, to wit, Sheridan, whose look, whose voice, whose traditional character, formed a prologue to what was coming. Here let the reader understand that, throughout the "Iliad," all speeches or commands, questions or answers, are introduced by Homer under some peculiar formula. For instance, replies ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... to say, which they observe, the Romans being called Quirites after Quirinus. Whenever we speak, however, of civil law, without any qualification, we mean our own; exactly as, when 'the poet' is spoken of, without addition or qualification, the Greeks understand the great Homer, and we understand Vergil. But the law of nations is common to the whole human race; for nations have settled certain things for themselves as occasion and the necessities of human life required. For instance, wars arose, ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... the acquaintance of such a man. His name was J. Homer Lane. He was quite alone in the world, having neither family nor near relative, so far as any one knew. He had formerly been an examiner or something similar in the Patent Office, but under the system which prevailed in those days, a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... of Ajax and Hector, HOMER says, were near the sea, as well as other heroes of antiquity; for as they considered man to be composed of earth and water, his bones ought to be laid in ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... He was original enough to have invented, or adopted from popular tradition, a form for himself; his originality declares itself everywhere in his one surviving masterpiece. True, he uses certain traditional formulae, that have survived in his time, as they survived in Homer's, from the manner of purely popular poetry, of Volkslieder. Thus he repeats snatches of conversation always in the same, or very nearly the same words. He has a stereotyped form, like Homer, for saying that one person addressed another, "ains traist au visconte de la vile si l'apela" ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang

... to display or to philosophy. Margaret was struck with the singular fineness of his perceptions, and the pious tendency of his thoughts, and enjoyed with him his proud reception, not as from above, but almost on equal ground, of Homer and AEschylus, of Dante and Petrarch, of Montaigne, of Calderon, of Goethe. Margaret wished, also, to defend his privacy from the dangerous solicitations ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... my secrets, you cannot expect me to keep yours.—I assure you, Captain Waverley, that Fergus is too proud to exchange his broadsword for a marechal's baton; that he esteems Mac-Murrough a far greater poet than Homer, and would not give up his goat skin purse for all the louis d'or which it ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... frankness with you so far as I may. Our reason for advertising for information regarding Miss Mona Forester was this: I received recently a communication from a lawyer in London, desiring me to look up a person so named, and stating that a certain Homer Forester—a wool merchant of Australia—had just died in London while on his way home to America, and had left in his lawyer's hands a will bequeathing all that he possessed to a niece, Miss Mona Forester, or her heirs, if she was not living. The date ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... he is one of the Heathen Gods; Iupiter's Grandfather. You may read a particular Account of him my dear, in Homer, or Milton, or any of the Greek Poets (pulls out a Bill of the Farce) well I vow its a Whimsicall Bill this; a charming Puff. Lud where's Sir Conjecture? I suppose he can give us a particular Account of it. for he ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... straightway bewitched and held willing captives. I have looked up the lotus, about which so much is said or sung and so little definitely known, and find it is a prickly shrub of Africa, bearing a fruit of a sweet taste, and the early Greeks knew all about its power. Homer in the Odyssey says that whoever ate of the fruit wished never to depart nor again to see his native land. Many of Ulysses' sailors ate this fruit, and lost ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... its barbaric vigour, its brutality, and its high sentiments of piety and honour. The beauty of the poem lies in the grand simplicity of its style. Without a trace of the delicacy and variety of a Homer, farther still from the consummate literary power of a Virgil or a Dante, the unknown minstrel who composed the Chanson de Roland possessed nevertheless a very real gift of art. He worked on a large scale with a bold confidence. Discarding absolutely the aids of ornament ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... another bite at the pear. 'Don't you think I know on which side my bread is buttered yet, aunt?' he asked; 'though I am near fifteen years of age, and half through Homer? but you must allow that Bernard Low is an abominably disagreeable fellow, and one that one should like to duck in a horse-pond—a whining, puling, mother-spoiled brat; however, I will see that he shan't ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... chapter without reference to that noble company of archers, the members of the National Archery Association—men and women who can shoot as pretty a shaft as any who ever drew a bowstring. The names of Will Thompson, Louis Maxson, George P. Bryant, Harry Richardson, Dr. Robert P. Elmer, Homer Taylor, Mrs. Howell, and Cynthia Wesson are emblazoned on the annals of archery history for all time. To them and the many other worthy bowmen who have fostered the art in America, we are eternally grateful. The self-imposed discipline of target shooting is much harder ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... course such extravagant claims simply bring discredit upon those who are so foolish as to make them but unfortunately some of that discredit is liable to be reflected, however unjustly, upon the Society to which they belong, so that a man who feels seething within him the conviction that he was Homer or Shakespeare would do well to pause and apply common-sense tests on the physical plane before publishing ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... tribe were to be eventually the founders of Athens; the other, of Sparta. Besides these two main tribes, the Aeolians occupied Thessaly, Boeotia, Aetolia, and other districts. To them the Achaeans, who were supreme in Peloponnesus in the days of Homer, were allied. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Anglicanae," is said from that time to have conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry. Addison says that Boileau "hated an ill poet." Unfortunately, however, for his judgment, it is notorious that he slighted Shakspeare, Milton, and Corneille, and that, next to Homer and Virgil, his great ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... tell you," with the semblance of perfect frankness. "I've been wondering which one of the Grecian goddesses you would have been if you had lived, say, in Homer's time." ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... Church lie Chapman, the earliest and best translator of Homer; and Andrew Marvell, the wit and patriot, whose poverty Charles II. could not bribe.—Who would suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the metropolis? And yet it is undoubtedly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... The Ballad of the White Horse is an epic of the struggle between Christian and Pagan. One of the essentials of an epic is that its men should be decent men, if they cannot be heroes. The Iliad would have been impossible if it had occurred to Homer to introduce the Government contractors to the belligerent powers. All the point would have gone out of Orlando Furioso if it had been the case that the madness of Orlando was the delirium tremens of an habitual drunkard. Chesterton recognizing this truth makes the pagans of the White Horse ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... Poestion, Lapplaendische Maerchen, p. 122. Another Lapp version, almost identical with Homer's, is given by Latham, Nationalities of Europe, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... glance in the great Venetian mirror before her. Her freshly donned robe of blue silk, edged with a foam of snowy laces and furbelows, set off her tall figure. Her arms, bare to the elbows, would have excited Juno's jealousy or Homer's verse to gather efforts in praise of them. Her dainty feet, shapely, aspiring, and full of character as her face, were carelessly thrust forward, and upon one of them lay a flossy spaniel, a privileged pet ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Greek, even in prose, and but little in Latin. Not that my father could be indifferent to the value of this practice, in giving a thorough knowledge of these languages, but because there really was not time for it. The verses I was required to write were English. When I first read Pope's Homer, I ambitiously attempted to compose something of the same kind, and achieved as much as one book of a continuation of the Iliad. There, probably, the spontaneous promptings of my poetical ambition would have stopped; but the exercise, begun from ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... gods, and who were transported thither without tasting death, there to pass an immortality which was described, with great inconsistency, sometimes as purely happy, sometimes as joyless and wearisome. To all except a few chosen ones this region was utterly inaccessible. Homer says, "But for you, O Menelaus, it is not decreed by the gods to die; but the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain, because you are the son in law of Zeus."4 Had the inheritance of this clime been proclaimed as the reward of heroic merit, had it been ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... assure us that it is equally a closing of those inward and skyward gates through which come the reinforcements of faculty, the strength that masters and uses impression? I persuade myself, on the contrary, that it is what Homer called it, divine,—able, indeed, to bring the blessing of a god; and that hours lawfully passed under the pressure of its heavenly palms are fruitful, not merely negatively, but positively, not only as recruiting exhausted powers, and enabling us to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... Homer came in for its share of consideration at the hands of Antoine and Charles Coypel, who made of it a set of five scenes. It was Romanelli, the Italian, who painted a similar set, a hundred years before, for Cardinal Barberini, which set came to America in the Ffoulke collection. After the death, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... the ways of the night and of the day are near." I have seen what Mr. Andrew Lang says ("Homer and the Epic," p.236, and "Longman's Magazine" for January, 1898, p.277) about the "amber route" and the "Sacred Way" in this connection; but until he gives his grounds for holding that the Mediterranean peoples in the Odyssean ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... the poets and sculptors, they were very soon shut up. The idea of any educated person wanting to read modern poetry when he could obtain Homer, or caring to look at any other statue while there was still some of the Venus de Medicis left, was too absurd. Poets and sculptors ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... prior to 1500, the most important exception being the Annals of Tacitus, of which the editio princeps was in 1515. Between the years 1478 and 1500, the following Greek works had been published, and in this order: Aesop, Homer, Isocrates, Theocritus, the Anthology, four plays of Euripides, Aristotle, Theognis, and nine plays of Aristophanes. Follow the dates of the editiones principes of the other principal ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... my lord spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay stealing.' [Footnote: My note of this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. Yet as I have resolved that THE VERY ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... up to the same athletic sports, the same martial exercises, as their men, were not ashamed to care for them, to win their friendship, even on emergency to consult their judgment; and used their rank, not to differ from their men, but to outvie them; not merely to command and be obeyed, but, like Homer's heroes, or the old Norse Vikings, to lead and be followed. Drake touched the true mainspring of English success when he once (in his voyage round the world) indignantly rebuked some coxcomb gentlemen-adventurers with—"I should like ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... my sack for a pattern, and wanting to know if 'polonays' were still worn." She remembered more bitterly the romance that had tickled her earlier fancy, told of two college friends of her brother-in-law's who were living the "perfect life" in the mines, laboring in the ditches with a copy of Homer in their pockets, and writing letters of the purest philosophy under the free air of the pines. How, coming unexpectedly on them in their Arcadia, the party found them unpresentable through dirt, and thenceforth unknowable through ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... opinion, and that nearest the truth, is, that their present way of using those letters was unknown at that time. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to be genuine among them ancienter than Homer's Poems, who must plainly he confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward, and that this is the reason ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... poetical gentleman, with a preparatory flourish of his ruler, "have possessed localities famous in the history of literature:—as Athens, in Greece; the Island of Scio, where Homer first saw the light; and Stratford, where Shakspeare appeared. Now, sir, reasoning from analogy, which is the finest possible way of reasoning, we must conclude that Virginia has such a locality, and I leave you to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... heard the first preacher who told them of their innermost selves, they called him the Prophetes or prophet, the man that speaketh forth as from an illimitable deep; and when they listened to the soul of music coming from the lips of a Homer or a Sappho, they called it by the most expressive name of all, "making" or "creation". The poet was a creator. And so he is if we come to think of it. Out of the materials supplied to him by the thinking of other intelligences, he weaves his song of joy and beauty which ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... troubles of divers kinds, and numerous interlopers to face and put down. Once an officious peeler arrested him as a vagabond, but was triumphantly routed amid the laughter of the court, when Moran reminded his worship of the precedent set by Homer, who was also, he declared, a poet, and a blind man, and a beggarman. He had to face a more serious difficulty as his fame grew. Various imitators started up upon all sides. A certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... of Dick Wythe, who never needed any tonic but a fight," returned the Governor, thoughtfully. "You remember Dick, don't you, Major?—a hard drinker, poor fellow, but handsome enough to have stepped out of Homer. I've been sitting by him at the post-office on a spring day, and seen him get up and slap a passer-by on the face as coolly as he'd take his toddy. Of course the man would slap back again, and when it was over Dick would make his politest bow, and say pleasantly, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... been an open winter, 'nd there wuz fever all around us. The Baxters lost their little girl, and Homer Thompson's children had all been taken down. Ev'ry night 'nd mornin' we prayed God to save our darlin'; but one evenin' when I come up from the wood-lot, the Old Man wuz restless 'nd his face wuz hot 'nd he ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... admits, "done all which the King imputes to him. If he has not been a Homer, a Pheidias, or a Terpander, his creative sympathies have united all three; and in thus passing from the simple to the complex, he has obeyed the law of progress, though at the risk perhaps of appearing a ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... the Holy City from the Saracen. But in both of them there was a splendor of diction and a wealth of coloring quite unknown to the rude mediaeval romances. Ariosto and Tasso wrote with the great epics of Homer and Vergil constantly in mind, and all about them was the brilliant light of Italian art, in its early freshness {71} and power. The Faery Queene, too, was a tale of knight-errantry. Its hero was King Arthur, and its pages swarm with the familiar adventures and figures ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... man this must be—thought I—to whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter, alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, "Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie"—whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Barry. There may be some among us that are not for a day. Who foresaw in the strolling player, in the wild, thoughtless Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged, until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and the ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Voltaire was certainly a greater Frenchman than Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Minister of France in his time. His actions were more important; and it is certainly not too much to maintain that the exploits of Homer, Aristotle, Dante, or my Lord Bacon, were as considerable events as anything that occurred at Actium, Lepanto, or Blenheim. A Book may be as great a thing as a battle, and there are systems of philosophy that have produced as great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... neither to reply against the saying of the matters touched in this book, though it accord not unto the translation of others which have written it. For divers men have made divers books which in all points accord not, as Dictes, Dares, and Homer. For Dictes and Homer, as Greeks, say and write favourably for the Greeks, and give to them more worship than to the Trojans; and Dares writeth otherwise than they do. And also as for the proper names, it is no wonder that they accord not, for some one name ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... extraordinary circumstances considered, the task of determining to what government he naturally owed allegiance, would be at least as difficult as that of ascertaining the so much contested birthplace of Homer. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... the sterner does the operation of that law appear, and the less promising the future of mankind. If people tell me the world is not getting better, I suggest that it might be worth their while to read a chapter of mediaeval or primitive history. In the "Odyssey," for instance, Homer sketches for us the career of a strong and remarkable man. His hero, supposed to be a paragon of virtue, is capable of things you would call scoundrelism to-day. He and his band of storm-tossed companions land upon an island of the Grecian Archipelago and find a city there. They promptly ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... believe, such things, and can preach such doctrines without pity and sorrow, know not of what they rob a mankind already but too miserable by its own folly and its own sin—a mankind which if it have not hope in God and in Christ, is truly, as Homer said of old, more miserable than ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley

... du denn hin in dein Elyserfeld, Du Pindar, du Homer, du Maro unsrer Zeiten, Und untermenge dich mit diesen grossen Leuten, Die ganz in deinen Geist sich hatten hier verstellt. Zeuch jenen Helden zu, du jenen gleicher Held, Der itzt nichts Gleiches hat, du Herzog deutscher ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... race, And Nile substructs her granite base,— Tented Tartary, columned Nile,— And, under vines, on rocky isle, Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak, Forward stepped the perfect Greek: That wit and joy might find a tongue, And earth grow civil, HOMER sung. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... however, under no circumstances to bear arms against his native country. Whilst moodily and slowly walking towards the British outposts to carry into execution this scheme, having in one pocket a shirt, and in another a Greek Testament and a Homer, he was met half-way by a British officer, who fixed his eyes steadily on him in passing. Jackson in his agitation thought he read in the glance a knowledge of his purpose and a disapprobation of it. Struck by the incident, he turned back, and, after a moment's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... 29th day of the month, the Colonel was cared for as a friend, and exhibited as a phenomenon. Seven photographers disputed the possession of so precious a sitter. The cities of Greece did no more for our poor old Homer. His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, wished to see him in propria persona, and begged Herr Hirtz to bring him to the palace. Fougas scratched his ear a little, and intimated that a soldier ought not to associate with the enemy, seeming to think ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... explainable than that of Shakespeare. That Brann knew the literary classics of the world is obvious from his every line. But, unless we invent some theory of universal telepathy to have wafted inspiration to Waco from all the canonized dead from Homer to Carlyle, we can only conceive that Brann derived his knowledge and his power, without encouragement and without guidance, by poring over the printed page in lonely hours bitterly wrested from the wolf of poverty that for forty years ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... may sometimes be aroused by Lucian's trick of constant and trivial quotation; he would rather put the simplest statement, or even make his transition from one subject to another, in words of Homer than in his own; we have modern writers too who show the same tendency, and perhaps we like or dislike them for it in proportion as their allusions recall memories or merely puzzle us; we cannot all be expected to have agreeable memories stirred by insignificant ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... Grecian cities claim great Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread." So sang, as if the thought had been his own, An unknown bard, improving on a known. "Neglected genius!"—that is sad indeed, But malice better would ignore than heed, And Shepherd's soul, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... pass'd through. Abraham Lincoln, familiar, our own, an Illinoisian, modern, yet tallying ancient Moses, Joshua, Ulysses, or later Cromwell, and grander in some respects than any of them; Abraham Lincoln, that makes the like of Homer, Plutarch, Shakspere, eligible our day or any day. My subject this evening for forty or fifty minutes' talk is the death of this man, and how that death will really filter into America. I am not going to tell you anything new; and it is doubtless nearly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of Gaea and Poseidon, a monster mentioned in Homer and later identified with the whirlpool Charybdis, in the Strait of Messina off the NE coast of Sicily. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... her what quality in herself she valued the most; and owned that he was hugely indebted to his coolness. When his colours were not drying fast enough, he read her a page or two of grand heroic reading from Pope's 'Homer' about Agamemnon and Achilles, Helen and Andromache; when she tired of that he was back again to the sparkling gossip of the town, for he was a brilliant fellow, with a clear intellect and a fine taste; and he had stored ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... of "Chock," who generally accompanies him. Of course, true daughter of Eve that you are, you will wish to know "right off" what Chock's other name is. Young woman, I am ashamed of you! Who ever asks for the other name of Alexander, of Hannibal, of Homer? Suffice it that he is Chock by himself,—Chock, and assistant ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, I am not quarreling with textual criticism. It would ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... I hear they go very high, being fair books, in good condition, and most of them finely bound. This afternoon I was told of a gentleman of All Souls' College, I suppose Dr. Clarke, that gave a commission of 8s. for an Homer in 2 vols., a small 8 deg. if not 12 deg.. But it went for six guineas. People are in love with good binding more than good reading.' Humphrey Wanley, who was a buyer at the sale for Lord Oxford's library, was much dissatisfied with the large sums which the books fetched, and ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... is no cure for death. Boerhaave was born a doctor, as Homer was born a poet; otherwise he would have succumbed at the age of fourteen to a malignant ulcer which had resisted all the best treatment of the day. He cured it himself by rubbing it constantly with salt dissolved in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... me; nor have they any dictionaries but Hesichius and Dioscerides. They esteem Plutarch highly, and were much taken with Lucian's wit and with his pleasant way of writing. As for the poets, they have Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles of Aldus's edition; and for historians, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Herodian. One of my companions, Thricius Apinatus, happened to carry with him some of Hippocrates's works and Galen's Microtechne, which they hold in great estimation; for though there is no nation in ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... home and his faithful Penelope. In those days, so the Greek bard tells us, there dwelt upon these islets strange sea-witches with the faces and forms of most beautiful maidens, although their lower limbs had the resemblance of eagles' feet and talons. Two sirens only, says Homer, dwelt upon these coasts, although later poets have increased the number of the fatal sisters to three or even four. Singing the most enchanting songs to the sound of tortoise-shell lyres, there used to bask in the sunlight beside the gentle ripple the Sirens, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... as old as Homer. Its laureate is Montesquieu. The more northerly you go, he said, the sterner the man grows. You must scorch a Muscovite to make him feel. Gray was a convert. One of the prose hints for his noble ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... and the man who goes out into the world expecting to find men just such as Moses and Paul have represented them will never be disappointed. If you are contented to read nothing but your Bibles, well, you have it all there. But if you will read any other books, read Homer and Shakespeare. They come nearer, in my estimation, to Moses and Paul, in their delineations of human character, than any other authors I am acquainted with. I would have every young man read Shakespeare. I have always taught my children to read it.' Ministers, as a class, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... perceive by reason or deduce from rational premises is but a small part of the knowledge that we should possess. The heathen Aristotle in his best book concludes from a passage in the wisest pagan poet, Homer: There can be no good government in which there is more than one lord; it results as where more than one master or mistress attempts to direct the household servants. So must there be but one lord and regent ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... their hands alive, he knew that his last chance was over for liberating himself, by a Roman death, from the burthen of ignominious life, and from a lingering torture. He paused from his restless motions, listened attentively, then repeated a line from Homer...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... eye. It could still boast of magnificent pageants, trains of noble youths and ladies moving through its stately palaces and shady villa-gardens, academies of learned men discussing the merits of Homer and Ariosto and discoursing on the principles of poetry and drama. Bernardo Tasso read his Amadigi in the evenings to the Duchess. The days were spent in hunting and athletic exercises; the nights in masquerades or dances. Love and ambition wore an external ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... eloquence, its symbols that open up unending vistas through mysteries, its eeriness as of the bewildering light of late sunset over gray-green Irish bog and lake and mountain, its lonely figures as great in their simplicity as those of Homer, its plain statement of high passion that breaks free of all that is occult and surprises with its clarity where so much is dim with dream. First one and then another of these qualities has most interested him. He has written in explanation of patriotic verse, of folk-verse, of verse ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... approximate to this moral centre. The following are added as further illustrations of our meaning. Walter Scott's centre is chivalrous honour; Shakespeare exhibits the [Greek: ethos], the physiognomy of an unlearned and undisciplined piety; Homer the religion of nature and the heart, at times debased by polytheism. All these poets are religious:—the occasional irreligion of Virgil's poetry is painful to the admirers of his general taste and delicacy. Dryden's Alexander's ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... know not how it is that memories of antiquity haunt me; verses of Homer come into my mind; this is a city of the ancient East, a city of the odyssey; this is Troy, although Troy was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... slender lime-white shape, her face like flowers, her neck, her cheek, and her amber hair; Virgil, Cicero, and Homer could tell of nothing like her; she is like the dew ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... which is principally to be discovered from his having Emmerson, Simpson, and Bonnycastle's works in his library. In classical learning he confesses to having "forgotten" a good deal of Greek; but sports a Latin phrase upon occasion, and is something of a critic in languages. He prefers Virgil to Homer, and Horace to Pindar, and can, upon occasion, enter into a dissertation on the precise meaning of a "Simplex munditiis." He also delights in a pun, and most especially in a Latin one; and when applied to for payment of paving-rate, never fails to reply ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... interesting relics of antiquity at Delphi. The long line of Chian sculptors (see GREEK ART) in marble bears witness to the fame of Chian art. In literature the chief glory of Chios was the school of epic poets called Homeridae, who helped to create a received text of Homer and gave the island the reputation of being the poet's birthplace. The chief town, Chios (pop. 16,000), is on the E. coast. A theatre and a temple of Athena Poliuchus existed in the ancient city. About 6 m. N. of the city there is a curious monument ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... of some clan battle. But in his going on, the chief (who piques himself upon his school-learning) at some particular passage, bid him cease, and cryed out, "There's nothing like that in Virgil or Homer." I bowed, and told him I believed so. This you may believe was very edifying and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... having rolled away When his return the Gods no more delay. Lo! Ithaca the Fates award; and there New trials meet the Wanderer." HOMER: ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Lords, he exactly followed the advice which Longinus gives to a great writer:—"Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... every scribbler, every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got by heart by every wit. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the gulf which divides us from our ancestors of the eighteenth century, than a comparison between our thoughts ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... Since Homer, no poet has come near Shakespeare in originality, freshness, opulence, and boldness of imagery. It is this that forms, in a large part, the surpassing beauty of his poetry; it is in this that much of his finest idealizing centres. And he abounds in all the figures ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson



Words linked to "Homer" :   cubage unit, tally, solo blast, Homer Thompson, score, Homer Armstrong Thompson, base hit, home run, volume unit, bath, cubic measure, ephah, capacity unit, hit, domestic pigeon, capacity measure, Homeric, epha, cubic content unit, solo homer, homing pigeon, rack up, carrier pigeon, cubature unit



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com