“Then, besides, there is nothing in poetry more
serviceable to language than that the ideas communicated, by being botind up and interwoven with verse,
are better remembered and kept firmly in mind.
Men in those days had to have a memory for many
things. For many things were communicated to
them, such as signs for recognizing places, the times
for activities,
1 the shrines of gods across the sea,
secret burial-places of heroes, hard to find for men
setting forth on a distant voyage from Greece. You
all, of course, know about Teucer and Cretines and
Gnesiochus and Phalanthus and many other leaders
of expeditions
2 who had to discover by means of
evidential proofs the suitable place of settlement
granted to each. Some of these made a mistake, as
did Battus.
3 For he thought that he had been forced
to land without gaining possession of the place to
which he had been sent. Then he came a second time
[p. 337]
in sore distress. And the god made answer to
him
4:
If without going you know far better than I, who have gone
there,
Africa, mother of flocks, then I greatly admire your wisdom,
and with these words sent him forth again.
“Lysander also failed to recognize the hill Orchalides
(the other name of which is Alopecus) and the river
Hoplites
5 and
Also the serpent, the Earth-born, behind him stealthily
creeping,
and was vanquished in battle, and fell in that very
place by the hand of Neoehorus, a man of Haliartus,
who carried a shield which had as its emblem a snake.
Numerous other instances of this sort among the
people of olden time, difficult to retain and remember,
it is not necessary to rehearse to you who know them.
