As for the grammatical section, that does touch us nearer; indeed, when Sextus divides Grammar into two parts, adopting for the second the definition of Dionysius of Thrace, that “Grammar is the knowledge[68] of what is said by the poets and prose writers,”[69] we seem to be almost at home. But in this expectation we should be counting without our host, the sceptical physician, and, indeed, without antiquity generally. We have first quibbling _à perte de vue_ about _empeiria_, then other definitions, then considerations of the mere grammatical elements. Only after a long time does Sextus come to the grammarian’s business of _interpreting_ the poets and prose writers. And then he not only seems to be dealing with men of straw, but answers them with, as Luther would say, a most “stramineous” argument. Poetry, it seems, they say (and it is fair to Sextus to admit that Plutarch and other people do in effect say this) is useful as containing wise saws and philosophical instances: grammar is necessary to understand poetry: therefore, grammar is good. He does not care actually to attack poetry, but observes that, in so far as it provides matter useful or necessary for life, it is always clear, and wants no grammatical exposition, while (662-663) whatsoever deals in unfamiliar stories, or is enigmatically expressed, is useless, so that grammar can do nothing useful with it. A subsequent contention, that grammarians know neither the matter nor the words of literature, though a little sweeping, might have chapter and verse given for it in the case of at least some critics. But when Sextus establishes his first point by triumphing over the poor grammarians for not having perceived in a Homeric epithet an allusion to a pharmaceutical property, and in Euripides a point of clinical practice (671), he is either making a heavy joke or is utterly off the critical standpoint. Footnote 68: ἐμπειρία. Footnote 69: συγγραφεῖς. The opposition is as old as Plato, though συγγραφεὺς is sometimes limited to “historian.” A third school, in its various stages, has perhaps a better, if a vague, repute for attention to literature. Perverse as was in [Sidenote: _The Academics._] many respects the attitude of Plato to the subject in detail, it was impossible (or might have seemed impossible) that his doctrine of _psychagogia_,[70] and the magnificent eulogies bestowed in the _Ion_ and the _Phædrus_ on that poetry towards which he is elsewhere so severe, should not induce his followers—at whatever great a distance—to do likewise. It seems, however, to have been found easier by the earlier Academics to follow the crotchet than the enthusiasm, and many of the puerile and servile quibbles to which we have referred as appearing in Sextus Empiricus seem to be of Academic origin. Footnote 70: