O monster, mix'd of insolence and fear, Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer! When wert thou known in ambush'd fights to dare, Or nobly face the horrid front of war? 'Tis ours the chance of fighting fields to try, Thine to look on and bid the valiant die.[292:2] For it does not follow because something is said in Homer, that Homer himself says it. For how could Menelaus have been effeminate who, single-handed, kept Hector away from Patroclus, and who slew Euphorbus, and stripped him of his arms though in the very middle of the Trojan host? And it was foolish of him not completely to consider the entire line which he was finding fault with, in which Menelaus is called "Raising the battle cry," βοὴν ἀγαθὸς, for that is an epithet which Homer is in the habit of giving only to the most valiant; for the ancients called war itself βοή. 6. But Homer, who is most accurate in everything, did not overlook even this trifling point; that a man ought to show some care of his person, and to bathe himself before going to an entertainment. And so, in the case of Ulysses, before the banquet among the Phæacians, he tells us-- A train attends Around the baths, the bath the king ascends, (Untasted joy since that disastrous hour He sail'd defeated from Calypso's bower,) He bathes, the damsels with officious toil Shed sweets, shed unguents in a shower of oil. Then o'er his limbs a gorgeous robe he spreads, And to the feast magnificently treads.[293:1] And again he says of Telemachus and his companion-- From room to room their eager view they bend, Thence to the bath, a beauteous pile, descend.[293:2] For it was unseemly, says Aristotle, for a man to come to a banquet all over sweat and dust. For a well-bred man ought not to be dirty nor squalid, nor to be all over mud, as Heraclitus says. And a man when he first enters another person's house for a feast, ought not to hasten at once to the banqueting-room, as if he had no care but to fill his stomach, but he ought first to indulge his fancy in looking about him, and to examine the house. And the poet has not omitted to take notice of this also. Part in a portico, profusely graced With rich magnificence, the chariot placed; Then to the dome the friendly pair invite, Who eye the dazzling roof with vast delight, Resplendent as the blaze of summer noon, Or the pale radiance of the midnight moon.[293:3] And Aristophanes, in his Wasps, represents the rustic and litigious old man as invited to a more civilized form of life by his son-- Cease; sit down here and learn at length to be A boon companion, and a cheerful guest.[293:4] And then showing him how he ought to sit down he says-- Then praise some of these beauteous works in brass, Look at the roof, admire the carvèd hall.