Clazomenæ, Babylon, Cumæ, Egypt, Italy, Crete, Ithaca, Mycenæ, Phrygia, Mæonia, Lucania, Lydia, Syria, Thessaly, and finally Troy, and even Rome. However, the tradition which I have followed, in considering Homer as born not far from Smyrna, upon the borders of the river Meles, is not only the most probable but the most generally followed; it has in its favour Pindar; the first anonymous Life of Homer; the Life of this poet by Proclus; Cicero, in his oration for Archias; Eustathius in his _Prolégoménes sur l’Iliade_; Aristotle, _Poétique_, l. iii.; Aulus Gellius, Martial, and Suidas. It is known that Smyrna, jealous of consecrating the glory that it attributed to itself, of having given birth to Homer, erected to this great genius a temple with quadrangular portico, and showed for a long time, near the source of the Meles, a grotto, where a contemporaneous tradition supposes that he had composed his first works. Voyez _La Vie d’Homère_, par Delille-de-Sales, p. 49, et les ouvrages qu’il cite: _Voyage de Chandeler_, t. i., p. 162, et _Voyages pittoresques de Choiseul-Gouffier_, p. 200. [90] Hérod., l. v., 42; Thucyd., l. i., 12. [91] _Marbres de Paros_, _Epoq._ 28; Hérod., l. i., 142, 145, 149; Plat., _De Leg._, l. v.; Strab., l. xiv.; Pausan., l. vii., 2; Ælian., _Var. Histor._, l. viii., c. 5; Sainte-Croix, _De l’état des Colon, des anc. Peuples_, p. 65; Bourgainville, _Dissert. sur les Métrop. et les Colon._, p. 18; Spanheim, _Præst._, num. p. 580. [92] _Bible_, Chron. ii., ch. 12 _et suiv._ [93] _Ibid._, Chron. ii., ch. 32 et 36. [94] Pausanias, _passim_. [95] Strab., l. xiv.; Polyb., l. v.; Aulu-Gell., l. vii., c. 3; Meurs., _In Rhod._, l. i., c. 18 et 21; _Hist. univ. des Anglais_, in-8ᵒ, t. ii., p. 493. [96] Diod. Sicul., l. i., 2. [97] In Phœnician מלך־אתע (_Melich-ærtz_), in Greek Μελικέρτης: a name given to the Divinity whom the Thracians called _Hercules_, the Lord of the Universe: from הרר or שרר (_harr_ or _shar_), excellence, dominance, sovereignty; and כל (_col._), All. Notice that the Teutonic roots are not very different from the Phœnician: _Herr_ signifies lord, and _alles_, all; so that _Herr-alles_ is, with the exception of the guttural inflection which is effaced, the same word as that of _Hercules_, used by the Thracians and the Etruscans. The Greeks have made a transposition of letters in Ἡρακλῆς (_Heracles_) so as to evade the guttural harshness without entirely losing it. [98] Goguet, _Origine des Lois et des Arts_, t. i., p. 359. [99] _Voyez_ Epiphane, _Hæres_, xxvi., _et conférez avec_ Beausobre, _Hist. du Manich._, t. ii., p. 328.