Note 85 — Lecture III. GREEK AND CHRISTIAN EXEGESIS.

Diogenes Laertius, 2. 11, quotes Favorinus as saying that Anaxagoras was the first who showed that the poems of Homer had virtue and righteousness for their subject. If the later traditions (Georg. Syncellus, Chronogr. p. 149 c) could be trusted, the disciples of Anaxagoras were the authors of the explanations which Plato attributes to οἱ νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον δεινοί, and which tried by a fanciful etymology to prove that Athené was voῦv τε καὶ διάνοιαν (Plat. Cratyl. 407 b).