The instance of Proteus in the Odyssey has already been referred to: but one more marked is afforded by the description that Eumæus gives of the herds and flocks of Ulysses. This, again, is one of the instances where the spirit and gist of the passage almost required that a total should be stated. For the object is to give a telling account. The wealth of this prince, says the Poet, was boundless; none of the heroes, whether of Ithaca or of the fertile continent, had so much; no, nor had any twenty of them. Then he mentions how many herds of cattle, goats, and swine, and flocks of sheep there were, but gives no numbers of any of the herds, nor any total: though, shortly before, the poem had mentioned the three hundred and sixty fat hogs under the care of Eumæus, and had also given us the sows in the usual manner, stating that there were twelve sties with fifty in each; but not specifying anywhere the total of six hundred which these figures yield when multiplied together[816]. [816] Od. xiv. 13-20. Again, then the result of all these passages, as well as of more which might be quoted, is, I think, to show that Homer’s conceptions of number, and his use of number, especially when beyond a very low limit, were so indeterminate, that they may not improperly be called figurative. ~_Hesiod’s age of the Nymphs._~ In support and in illustration of this belief with respect to Homer, I would once more refer to the curious fragment ascribed to Hesiod respecting the age of the Nymphs with beauteous locks, which begins, ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων. In the Etymol. Magn. 13. 36, the reading is γερώντων; and Ausonius, following this authority in his Eighteenth Idyll, makes the γενεὴ no less than 96 years. But the sense of γενεὴ is fixed by Homer’s account of Nestor, and otherwise, in such a way as greatly to favour the reading ἡβώντων. The word therefore means the term between birth and the prime of life, which may well be taken at thirty years. Then comes a table as follows. The age of the daw = 9 ages of men. The age of the stag = 4 of daws = 36 of men. The age of the crow = 3 of stags = twelve of daws = 108 of men. The age of the palm = 9 of crows = 27 of stags = 108 of daws = 972 of men. The age of the Nymph = 10 of palms = 90 of crows = 270 of stags = 1080 of daws = 9720 of men. And if the γενεὴ be 30 years, the age of the Nymphs = 30 × 9720 = 291,600 years. But the point most remarkable for us is, that while Hesiod, if Hesiod it be, supplies us with the whole of the first factors after the γενεὴ, for this long sum, he does not actually perform one single multiplication; nor does he even define the γενεὴ, which is the first and most vital element of all.