Note 4 — Chapter I

“If Solon ... had not considered the writing of poetry a recreation, but had made it, as others do, an actual employment, and had completed the history which he had brought from Egypt; and had not been forced to relinquish it by seditions and many other troubles in which he found his country involved, I do not think that either Hesiod, Homer, or any other poet would have acquired more extensive fame.”—Plato: Timæus, or Concerning Nature.