father such sayings and sentences upon Homer, who, bringing in Hector furiously flying upon others, yet at another time represents him as flying from Ajax son of Telamon,[9]—an argument that Hector knew himself. And Homer made Ulysses approve the saying “Do not overdo,” when he besought his friend Diomedes not to commend him too much nor yet to censure him too much. And for suretyship he exposes it as a matter unsafe, nay highly dangerous, saying that to be bound for idle and wicked men is full of hazard.[10] To confirm this, Chersias reported how Jupiter had thrown Ate headlong out of heaven, because she was by when he made the promise about the birth of Hercules whereby he was circumvented. Here Solon interrupted: I am of this mind, that we now give ear to the most wise Homer,— But now the night extends her awful shade: The Goddess parts you: be the night obeyed.[11] If it please the company then, let us sacrifice to the Muses, to Neptune, and to Amphitrite, and so bid each adieu for this night. This was the conclusion of that meeting, my dear Nicarchus. HOW A YOUNG MAN OUGHT TO HEAR POEMS. 1. It may be allowed to be a question fit for the determination of those concerning whom Cato said, Their palates are more sensitive than their hearts, whether that saying of Philoxenus the poet be true or no. The most savory flesh is that which is no flesh, and fish that is no fish. Yet this to me, Marcus Sedatus, is out of question, that those precepts of philosophy which seem not to be delivered with a designed gravity, such as becomes philosophers, take most with persons that are very young, and meet with a more ready acceptance and compliance from them. Whence it is that they do not only read through Esop’s fables and the fictions of poets and the Abaris of Heraclides and Ariston’s Lyco; but they also read such doctrines as relate to the souls of men, if something fabulous be mixed with them, with an excess of pleasure that borders on enthusiasm. Wherefore we are not only to govern their appetites in the delights of eating and drinking, but also (and much more) to inure them to a like temperance in reading and hearing, that, while they make use of pleasure as a sauce, they may pursue that which is wholesome and profitable in those things which they read. For neither can a city be secure if but one gate be left open to receive the enemy, though all the rest be shut; nor a young man safe, though he be sufficiently fortified against the assaults of all other pleasures, whilst he is without any guard against those of the ear. Yea, the nearer the commerce is betwixt the delights of that sense and those of the mind and reason, by so much the more, when he lies open on that side, is he apt to be debauched and corrupted thereby. Seeing therefore we cannot (and perhaps would not if we could) debar young men of the size of my Soclarus and thy Cleander altogether from the reading of