If we turn to others, we shall draw some of the most flourishing coverts in vain, but find something elsewhere. Erycius of Cyzicus[98] has a spirited retort to an insulter of Homer, and a generous eulogium of Sophocles—it is noteworthy that these two most unite the Anthological, as the general, suffrage. Palladas handles Homer’s dealings with women,[99] elsewhere[100] jests ruefully about having to sell his books, even Callimachus and Pindar, and moralises[101] the story of Circe, rather stupidly, but in a fashion for which he might find only too many compurgators in antiquity. Pollianus[102] rallies (not disagreeably) the stealers of Homeric tags and phrases; and a certain Cyrus accomplishes[103] a mild couplet to complete his own witty conceit of erecting a statue of Pindar at a bath. The long and curious poem[104] of Christodorus Coptites on the statues in the Gymnasium of Zeuxippus naturally has a great many literary allusions. Agathias—a somewhat major star than most of these, and one whose pursuits earned him the special surname of Scholasticus—has, so far as I remember, only two literary epigrams[105] on statues of Æsop and Plutarch. Another “Scholasticus,” scarcely distinguished more by the name of Thomas, announces that he has three “stars in rhetoric”—Demosthenes, Aristides, and Thucydides[106]—praising especially the pains of the first, but seeming actually to prefer the two latter. Leon, the philosopher, has a little handful[107] of epigrams on books, chiefly of science and philosophy, and a Homeric cento not more respectable than such things usually are. Footnote 98: Ibid., iii. 12. Footnote 99: Ibid., iii. 117. Footnote 100: Ibid., iii. 124. Footnote 101: Ibid., iii. 137. Footnote 102: Ibid., iii. 146. Footnote 103: Ibid., iii. 160. Footnote 104: Ibid., iii. 161-177. Footnote 105: Ibid., iv. 16. Footnote 106: Ibid., iv. 95. Footnote 107: Ibid., iv. 97-100.