The method lasted as long as Greek literature. It is found in full operation in the first centuries of our era. It was explicitly recognized, and most of the prominent writers of the time supply instances of its application. “In the childhood of the world,” says Strabo,[69] “men, like children, had to be taught by tales;” and Homer told tales with a moral purpose. “It has been contended,” he says again,[70] “that poetry was meant only to please:” on the contrary, the ancients looked upon poetry as a form of philosophy, introducing us early to the facts of life, and teaching us in a pleasant way the characters and feelings and actions of men. It was from Homer that moralists drew their ideals: it was his verses that were quoted, like verses of the Bible with us, to enforce moral truths. There is in Dio Chrysostom[71] a charming “imaginary conversation” between Philip and Alexander. “How is it,” said the father, “that Homer is the only poet you care for: there are others who ought not to be neglected?” “Because,” said the son, “it is not every kind of poetry, just as it is not every kind of dress, that is fitting for a king; and the poetry of Homer is the only poetry that I see to be truly noble and splendid and regal, and fit for one who will some day rule over men.” And Dio himself reads into Homer many a moral meaning. When, for example,[72] the poet speaks of the son of Kronos having given the staff and rights of a chief that he might take counsel for the people, he meant to imply that not all kings, but only those who have a special gift of God, had that staff and those rights, and that they had them, moreover, not for their own gratification, but for the general good; he meant, in fact, that no bad man can be a true master either of himself or of others—no, not if all the Greeks and all the barbarians join in calling him king. It was not only the developing forms of ethics that were thus made to find a support in Homer, but all the varying theories of physics and metaphysics, one by one. The Heracliteans held, for example, that when Homer spoke of “Ocean, the birth of gods, and Tethys their mother,”