Politics, Patronage, and Poetics in Hobbes’s Homer

ABSTRACT

Taking issue with the new orthodoxy that Hobbes set about his late-career translations of Homer in order to ventriloquize political opinions he was prevented by the processes of Restoration censorship from publishing, this article reexamines the foundations and questions the textual evidence for this interpretation. Drawing on previously unexamined evidence, the article shows that Hobbes’s patrons, the Cavendish family, had sponsored the recent translations of Homer by John Ogilby, and that Hobbes’s work represented an attempt to correct errors and infelicities in Ogilby’s work while defending Homer himself against ill-conceived attacks by modern critics such as Scaliger and Rapin.

Acknowledgements

A version of this argument was delivered as the Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. lecture at Carleton College on 28 September 2023. I am most grateful to my audience on that occasion for comments and questions, and to those scholars who subsequently read and commented on the full paper: Martin Dzelzainis, John Hale, Paul Hammond, Noel Malcolm, and (above all) Clara Hardy. All errors and misjudgments are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ On the sequence of publication, see Nelson’s account in HW 24: xxii-xxiv. For full bibliographical details, see Macdonald and Hargreaves, comps., Bibliography of Hobbes, 58-62 (nos. 75-81).

2 Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1: 349.

3 HW 24: xiv.

4 Hobbes, English Works, 10: [ii] (‘Advertisement’); also see Robertson, Hobbes, 202 (‘the pastime of an old man’).

5 HW 24: xcix.

6 See, for instance, Riddehough, ‘Hobbes’ Translations of Homer’, 61.

7 For the authoritative statement of this view, see Nelson’s introduction to HW 24: xii-lxxvi (esp. xix-xx); also, for the initial movement in this direction, Davis, ‘Hobbes’s Translations’. On the 1670 seizure and damasking, see HW 3: 233-7.

8 As several reviewers noted, the edition was marred by a number of textual errors; it was reissued with corrections in 2009. I cite the corrected edition.

9 HW 24: xxi-xxii, xli-xlvii.

10 HW 24: xxii. The memorable phrase is Quentin Skinner’s: see HW 24: xxii n. 42.

11 For reviews, see, for instance, Power, ‘Twang of feathered fates’, 10; Hammer, Review of Hobbes, Translations; Hopkins, Review of Hobbes, Translations (raising some doubts). For work building on Nelsonian foundations see Condren, ‘The Philosopher Hobbes as the Poet Homer’ (esp. 74-6); Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife, chap. 6 (esp. 376-7); Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero: una traduzione ‘politica’?, published in English as Politics through the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey’. See, for an overview, Catanzaro, Politics, 9; Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero, 25-6.

12 Power, ‘Twang of feathered fates’, 10; HW 24: lxxvi.

13 Ogilby, trans., Iliads, [^πB2^r]. For comment, see Lynch, ‘Political Ideology’, 26.

14 HW 24: xix.

15 Thus Skinner, ‘Hobbes’s Life in Philosophy’, Visions of Politics, 3: 33.

16 Crooke, A Catalogue of the Works of Mr. Hobbes [1675], [ii]; HW 10: 14; Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, 70-1; HW 11: xvi-xviii; Bulman, ‘Hobbes’s Publisher’, 342-4.

¹⁷ Hobbes, Travels of Ulysses (1673), [A1^r].

18 Hobbes, Travels of Ulysses (1673), 1-2.

19 HW 24: xxii (the passage appears in Bodleian Library, MS Wood F. 39, fo. 231^v).

20 Campbell, ‘Life of Thomas Hobbes’, in Hobbes, Moral and Political Works, xix (quoted HW 24: xvi); also Martinich, Hobbes, 339.

21 Hobbes’s friend, Sir Charles Scarborough expressed admiration for Hobbes’s Odyssey in the summer of 1675, telling Aubrey that he ‘very much admires’ Hobbes’s translation ‘of the Odysses’ (HW 7: 754); this has been taken as a reference to The Travels of Ulysses (HW 7: 756 n. 15); but since Hobbes’s translation of the complete Odyssey was by then in print it may rather refer to that.

22 Macdonald and Hargreaves, comps., Bibliography of Hobbes, 59 (nos. 76-7); Nelson mistakenly characterizes the reissue as a reprint (HW 24: lxxvii n. 2).

²³ Hobbes, Travels of Ulysses (1674), [A1^r].

24 See, for a vivid illustration, Wilson’s account of her first brush with the Cyclops in Homer, Odyssey, trans. Wilson, 81 (also 581).

²⁵ I am aware of no obvious candidate within the immediate family, and were it tailored for the child of a patron, he would surely have mentioned it—perhaps in a dedicatory epistle.

26 Wolfe points to a Latin translation by Abraham Rockenbach (Wittenburg, 1566), and an edition published explicitly for schools (Magdeburg, 1586) (‘Homer in Renaissance Europe’, 492).

27 Streufert, ‘Here There Be Monsters (and Heroes)’, 21, citing the graphic novelization for young readers of books IX-XII by Jolley and Yeates, Odysseus: Escaping Poseidon’s Curse.

28 HW 25: 111 n. 217 (though, as I argue below in n. 208, this is based on a textual error); 140 n. 255; 151 nn. 279, 280; 155 nn. 285, 286 (Odyssey); HW 24: 4 nn. 5, 7; 6-10 nn. 12-16; 12 nn. 20, 22-25; 14 nn. 27-30; 16 n. 31 (Iliad).

29 As is demonstrated by Nelson, HW 24: xlii-lv.

30 In his Preface to ‘Gondibert’, Hobbes’s friend Davenant treats Spenser’s allegorical approach in The Faerie Queene as something of an embarrassment: ‘His allegoricall Story (by many held defective in the connexion) resembling (me thinks) a continuance of extraordinary Dreames; such as excellent Poets, and Painters, by being overstudious may have in the beginning of Feavers’ (‘The Author’s Preface’, 7); see also Richard Whitlock’s disparagement, in his preface to Zootomia (1654) of ‘the Nauseating of a continued Allegory’ (a2^r). For the wider critical context, see Murrin, The Allegorical Epic, esp. 170, 196; Treip, Allegorical Poetics, 106-25.

31 HW 24: lxi; Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric.

32 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, IX. 426-30.

33 HW 24: lviii.

34 Katherine King, for instance, suggests that ‘if his [i.e., Achilles’] speeches were remembered, it was for the passion that lay behind their eloquence rather than for rhetoric’ (Achilles, 69). Homer is traditionally regarded as a source for subsequent rhetorical theorizing rather than as the practitioner of a formal art of rhetoric (Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, 35-9); Rachel Ahern Knudsen has, however, recently argued for the presence of something more systematic than mere ‘natural eloquence’ in the speeches of The Iliad, attempting to align these with Aristotle’s subsequent articulation of the principles of rhetoric (Homeric Speech).

35 Homer, Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 426-7 (IX. 438-43).

36 Liddell and Scott, comps., Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. ‘ἀγορά’, III.

37 See, for instance, Iliad, II. 275, which the Loeb Classical Library translation renders simply as ‘words’ (Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 80-1).

38 Raylor, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Hobbes, 90-1.

39 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, IX. 302-4. See also, Homer, Iliad, XVIII. 105-6 (not in Hobbes’s translation).

40 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 236-7.

41 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, III. 205-16; cf. Homer, Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 145.

42 See, in particular, Hobbes, trans., Iliads, IX. 45, 69-70, 86-7, 92, 108, 175-6.

43 HW 25: 16 n. 32 (Odysses, I. 420), 63 n. 121 (Odysses, IV. 770), 221 n. 393 (Odysses, XVI. 386).

44 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, VIII. 481-4.

45 HW 24: lxi.

46 Homer, Odyssey, VIII. 505-6 (Odyssey, trans. Murray, 1: 309).

47 HW 24: xlii-lv, lxix-lxxiv.

48 For comment, see HW 25: 42 n. 73, 96 n. 185, 97 n. 188, 292 n. 498, 300 n. 519.

49 See, for instance, Homer, Odyssey, I. 325 and Hobbes, trans., Odysses, I. 357 (‘Phemius’); Homer, Odyssey, XIII. 27-8 and Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XIII. 25 (‘Demodocus’); Homer, Odyssey, I. 346 and Hobbes, trans., Odysses, I. 376 (‘the Singer’); Homer, Odyssey, XVI. 252 and Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XVI. 235 (‘a Fidler’).

50 Liddell and Scott, comps., Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. ‘ἀοιδός’; Homer, Iliad, trans. Murray; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray.

51 See Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I. v. 3; Welch, Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past, 72. It has been suggested that Spenser distinguishes the two by assigning composition to minstrels and performance to bards (Faerie Queene, ed. Hamilton, 72 n. (St. 3)); but this does not quite square with Spenser’s phrasing: ‘many Minstrales maken melody’ (I. v. 3, line 4) denotes performance, rather than composition as opposed to performance.

52 Homer, Odyssey, III. 267-8; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, III. 245-7; HW 24: lxxiii-lxxiv.

53 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray, 1: 98-9 (III. 265-8).

54 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fagles, 116 (III. 304).

55 As noted by Nelson, HW 24: lxxiii.

56 Chapman, trans., Odysses, III. 366-9 (Chapman’s Homer, 2: 52); my emphasis.

57 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 32. And also, as Nelson points out, by identifying him, in a marginal note, as the famous bard Demodocus (32 n. o).

58 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, III. 245-7.

59 See, for example, Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XXIII. 128 (‘the Minstrel’); Homer, Odyssey, XXIII. 133 (‘θεῖος ἀοιδòς’); and HW 25: 300 n. 519.

60 Homer, Odyssey, VIII. 43-5; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, VIII. 54-5.

61 See comparative line counts and discussion in Ball, ‘The Despised Version’, 4-8.

62 Briseis is, however, introduced as ‘fair’ on her first appearance: Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 180 (Homer, Iliad, I. 184). For Menelaus and Diomedes (or ‘Tydides’) as ‘good at the war cry’, see, e.g., Homer Iliad, III. 96; Hobbes, trans., Iliads, III. 91 (Menelaus); Homer, Iliad, VII. 399; Hobbes, trans., Iliads, VII. 358 (Diomedes or ‘Tydides’); for ‘swift-footed’ Achilles, see, e.g., Homer, Iliad, I. 58; Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 60 (the first of many instances).

63 HW 24: lxi-lxii; this thesis is the burden of Catanzaro, Politics; Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero.

64 Catanzaro, Politics, 67-115; Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero, 97-165.

65 Proponents of this thesis recognize that Hobbes’s compression of his source texts may account for many such omissions: see HW 24: xxx-xxxi; Catanzaro, Politics, 36 n. 141, 71-2, 79; Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero, 55 n. 140, 102-3, 113-14.

66 HW 24: lxii-lxvii.

67 Homer, Iliad, trans. Murray: 1: 18-19.

68 HW 24: lxii-lxiv.

69 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 81-4.

70 HW 24: lxiv.

71 Homer, Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 18-19. Nelson notes the dropping of ‘ἄριστος’, but reads ‘μέγα πάντων’ as ‘most powerful’ (HW 24: 6 n. 12).

72 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 19-20; as noted in HW 24: 4 n. 5.

73 See the discussion of the term by Catanzaro, Politics, 48-9, 126-7; Catanzaro, Hobbes e Omero, 76-8, 179-82.

74 Oxford English Dictionary, ‘best, adj., sense 2.a’, accessed December 2023; Oxford English Dictionary, ‘best, adj., sense 2.b’, accessed December 2023.

75 Iliad, trans. Murray 1: 75, 19.

76 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 261-6.

77 HW 24: lxvi-lxvii.

78 HW 24: lxvi-lxvii; Ogilby, trans., Iliads, 15.

79 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 179-82. Hobbes’s version aligns both with the Greek: ‘I will myself come to your hut and take the fair-cheeked Briseïs, that prize of yours, so that you may well know how much mightier I am than you’ (Iliad, trans., Murray, 1: 26-7 (I. 182-7)), and with the emphasis of earlier English versions like Chapman’s, in which Agamemnon threatens to ‘take, in person, from thy tent | Bright-cheekt Briseis, and so tell thy strength how eminent | My powre is, being compar’d to thine’ (Chapman, trans., Iliads, I. 187-9; Chapman’s Homer, 1: 29).

80 HW 24: 12 n. 23.

81 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘command (n.), sense 8.a’, accessed December 2023. See, for another use of a ‘command’ in this sense, Hobbes, trans., Iliads, II. 528.

82 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, III. 174-6.

83 ‘Now Nestor turns to Akhilleus: he should avoid quarrelling with Agamemnon, who is φέρτεος, ‘superior’, in so far as he rules over more people’ (Kirk, comp., The Iliad: A Commentary, 1: 81 (I. 276-81)).

⁸⁴ Hobbes, trans., Iliads, IX. 103. The addition is noted by Nelson, HW 24: 135 n. 184. See also Hammer, Review of Hobbes, Translations, 168.

85 As noted in HW 24: 135 n. 185.

86 See HW 24: lxvi.

87 See HW 24: 135 n. 186.

88 HW 24: lxvi-lxvii, citing Leviathan, 90, 109 (HW 4: 270, 330).

89 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 220, 335; II. 216 (Thersites); IX. 572 (Phoenix), as noted by Nelson, HW 24: 148 n. 194.

90 HW 24: xcix.

91 Davis, ‘Hobbes’s Translations’, 238-9; also, Ball, ‘The Despised Version’, 2-3.

92 Van Eerde, Ogilby, 41.

93 HW 24: xix, and Martinich, ‘Hobbes’s Translations of Homer’, 149-50.

94 HW 24: xviii, citing Bodleian Library, MS Wood F. 39, 231^v.

95 The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro, Translated, 312; Hosford, ‘Cavendish, William, first duke of Devonshire (1641-1707)’; Stater, ‘Cavendish, William, third earl of Devonshire (1617-1684)’.

96 The plate shows three companies of six boys, each following a leader (‘dux’). This seems to misconstrue Virgil’s somewhat unclear account of the numbers involved: three companies of twelve, each following a leader and divided into two troops of six (Aeneid, V. 560-2). The plate shows only one half of each divided troop (six boys, rather than twelve).

97 Virgil, trans. Fairclough, 1: 512-13.

98 The equine interests of his great grandfather, William Cavendish, first earl of Devonshire, are explored in Edwards, Horses and the Aristocratic Lifestyle in Early Modern England; the equestrian pursuits of his cousin William Cavendish, first earl of Newcastle—one of the most famous horsemen in Europe—are investigated in Walker, To Amaze the People with Pleasure and Delight; Worsley, Härting, and Keblusek, ‘Horsemanship’.

99 Hardwick MS 14 (Privy Purse Accounts of William Cavendish, third earl of Devonshire, 1653-57), 5 (c. June 1654).

100 Publii Virgilii Maronis opera, facing p. 238. A copy of this edition is listed in Lacaita, Catalogue, 4: 93. For the payment, see n. 106, below.

101 Schuchard, Descriptive Bibliography of the Works of Ogilby and Morgan, 19-20.

102 Van Eerde, Ogilby, 36-40; Clapp, ‘The Subscription Enterprises of Ogilby and Blome’, 366-7.

103 The line number is stipulated in the arms and dedication to William Lane, visible in the Bodleian Library (Douce) copy, but not in the version prepared for Cavendish.

104 The Lane subscription appears in the Bodleian Library (Douce) copy; the Cavendish subscription in the Folger Shakespeare Library copy; and no subscription at all in the Harvard Library copy.

105 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 155; Hosford, ‘Cavendish, William, first duke of Devonshire (1641-1707)’; Magalotti, Relazione d’Inghilterra 1668 e 1688, 129; Magalotti, Lorenzo Magalotti at the Court of Charles II, 117.

106 Hardwick MS 14 (Privy Purse Accounts of William Cavendish, third earl of Devonshire, 1653-57), 13. The first-person pronoun refers to Devonshire’s purser, Jo[hn] Colles, whose name appears elsewhere in the accounts but about whom little is known. He appears to be the same John Colles, gentleman, whose will (30 Jan. 1701/2) requested that he be buried as near as possible to the monument to his ‘late Master’, William Cavendish, [third] earl of Devonshire, in All Saints, Derby (The National Archives, PROB 11/464/394). I am grateful to Philip Riden for this reference.

107 HW 24: xvii; Ogilby, trans., Fables of Aesop, A4^r; Davenant, Shorter Poems and Songs from the Plays and Masques, 153-5, 419; Van Eerde, Ogilby, 31, 63, 74.

108 Crooke entered Ogilby’s Aesop on 6 Oct. 1651; he had entered Leviathan on 20[/30] Jan. 1650[/1651] (Eyre and Rivington, Register of the Company of Stationers, 1: 358); Van Eerde, Ogilby, 31.

109 HW 24: xicx.

110 HW 24: xicx.

111 HW 24: xcii-xciii.

112 Davenant, ‘The Author’s Preface’, 22; Hobbes, ‘Answer to Davenant’, 53.

113 HW 24: xciii.

114 HW 24: xciii.

115 HW 24: xciii.

116 See Stater, ‘Cavendish [née Bruce], Christian [Christiana], countess of Devonshire’. For her salon and Waller’s involvement in it, see Parker, ‘Waller and the Wits’, 254-5. For her patronage of John Donne the Younger, see Donne, ‘To the Right Honorable Cristiana’, A2^r.

117 On female readership of translations, see Gillespie and Wilson, ‘Publishing and Readership of Translation’, 47.

118 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 4.

119 Spondanus, trans., Odyssea, 6.

120 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘talaria (n.)’, accessed July 2023.

121 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, I. 114.

122 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 122; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IX. 430. Hobbes’s version found favour with Pope, who adopted the same term in his Odyssey (IX. 432, 438, 485): see Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 9: 323-6.

123 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 115; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IX. 67-8.

124 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 141; Spondanus, trans., Odyssea, 145; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, X. 489.

125 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 164; Spondanus, trans., Odyssea, 170; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XII. 13.

126 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 117; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘borachio (n.), sense 1’, accessed July 2023; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IX. 167; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘budget (n.), sense 1.a’, accessed December 2023.

127 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 131, 135, 141; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘falchion (n.), sense 1.a’, accessed July 2023; Hobbes, trans., Odysses, X. 122, 273, 504.

128 Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 124, 126 (‘Offine’); Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IX. 503-4, 575; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘offing (n.), sense 1.a’, accessed September 2023; Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 148, 154 (‘Leagure’); Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XI. 159-60, 356; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘leaguer (n.1), sense 1.a’, accessed December 2023; Ogilby, trans., Odysses, 158 (‘Ambuscade’); Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XI. 509-10; Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘ambuscade (n.), sense 1.a’, accessed July 2023.

129 Dryden, ‘Preface’ to Fables Ancient and Modern (Poems, 5: 58); Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 10: 36 n. (also 10: 440), and Pope, Iliad, ed. Mack, et al., 7: cxxxvi. For examples of Pope’s borrowings, see Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 10: 496-500 (Iliad), 10: 506-8 (Odyssey). For discussion, see Ball, ‘The Despised Version’, 1-2; Knight, Pope and the Heroic Tradition, 25-6.

130 Mason, To Homer Through Pope, 29.

131 Scaliger, Poetices, 217, col. i, D.

132 On Translating Homer, in Arnold, Complete Prose Works, 1: 127.

133 Mason, To Homer Through Pope, 10-13; Simonsuuri, Homer’s Original Genius, 12.

134 Mason, To Homer Through Pope, 10-13, 51-5.

135 Iliad, trans. Wilson, 3 (I. 65-6). This is not included among the several effects ‘Expressing in the Sound the Thing describ’d’ noted by Pope in the ‘Poetical Index’ to his Iliad: Pope, Iliad, ed. Mack, et al., 8: 608.

136 Pope, Iliad, ed. Mack, et al., I. 64.

137 For the dismissal, see Riddehough, ‘Hobbes’ Translations of Homer’, 60.

138 Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 56-9.

139 Dryden, Poems, 5: 332. For comment, see Mason, To Homer Through Pope, 57-60; Sowerby, ‘The Freedom of Dryden’s Homer’, 46.

140 Pope, Iliad, ed. Mack, et al., 7: 124 n. 771.

141 Chapman, trans., Iliads, I. 578; Chapman’s Homer, 1: 41.

142 Mason, To Homer Through Pope, 59.

143 Hobbes, trans., Iliads, I. 558-62.

144 Smith, trans., Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Preface, [b2^v, b3^r]; quoted in Schlatter, ed., Hobbes’s Thucydides, xiv.

145 Smith, trans., Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Preface, [b3^r].

146 Grene, ed., Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War: The Complete Hobbes Translation, vii-viii; Schlatter, ed., Hobbes’s Thucydides, xiv.

147 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray, 2: 208-9 (XVIII. 118-19); Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XVIII. 100-1; Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 10: 173 (XVIII. 144).

148 Iliad, trans. Murray, IX. 186; Hobbes, trans., Iliads, IX. 181; Pope, Iliad, ed. Mack, et al., 7: 444 (IX. 246).

149 Iliad, trans. Murray, 1: 118-19 (II. 788-9).

150 Newman, trans., Iliad, v (metre), vi (diction).

151 Chapman, trans., Iliads, ed. Hooper, 1: lii-liii.

152 Arnold’s lectures were delivered at Oxford in 1860 and published in the following year as On Translating Homer; an additional lecture, responding to a printed reply by Newman, was delivered in 1861 and published the following year: see Arnold, On Translating Homer, in Arnold, Complete Prose Works, 1: 97-216, 254-5.

153 Current taste tends more toward the oral and colloquial than the high literary: see, for instance, Homer, Iliad, trans. Fagles, ix-x; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Wilson, 82-3.

154 Ball, ‘The Despised Version’, 16 n. 7; Brinkley, ed., Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, 66-7.

155 Hobbes, English Works, 10: [iv].

156 Davenant, ‘The Author’s Preface’, 17.

157 Hobbes, ‘Answer to Davenant’, 47.

158 Davenant, ‘The Author’s Preface’, 17; Welch, Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past, 125, and, for the sources of this account, in Cicero’s De oratore (III. 137) and for variant versions of it, 15-16.

159 Hobbes, ‘Answer to Davenant’, 47.

160 Hobbes, trans., Thucydides, Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre, A3^v.

161 HW 24: xciii.

162 HW 24: xciii-xciv.

163 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray, 2: 453.

164 Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife, 381.

165 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XXIV. 488-90.

166 HW 25: 319 n. 550; Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife, 381.

167 Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 10: 377-8 (XXIV. 628-31).

168 Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray, 1: 398-9.

169 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, X. 518-26.

170 See Pope, Odyssey, ed. Mack, et al., 9: 375 (X. 663); Homer, Odyssey, trans. Butcher and Lang, 161; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Bates, 116; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fitzgerald, 193-4; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Lattimore, 166; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fagles, 247 (X. 612); Homer, Odyssey, trans. Hammond, 106; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Green, 169; Homer, Odyssey, trans. Wilson. 277 (X. 554). The exception is Homer, Odyssey, trans. Murray, 1: 369.

171 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IV. 529-32.

172 HW 25: 57 n. 109.

173 HW 24: xcii-xcvi. While the comparison of Homer and Virgil was conventional, the introduction of Lucan was a little more unusual, but not unprecedented: see Davenant, ‘The Author’s Preface’, 4-5.

174 HW 24: xcvii-xcix. The discussion to which Hobbes responds comes from Ogilby, trans., Iliads, 107 n. a.

175 HW 24: xcix.

176 HW 24: xcix.

177 Poetices libri septem, 216-45 (V. 3).

178 On Scaliger’s criticisms see Shepard, ‘Scaliger on Homer and Virgil’; Bizer, ‘Genealogy of Poetry’, 309-12; Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance, 124-49.

179 Poetices, 218, col. ii, C. It has been suggested that Scaliger ranks Homer below the minor poet Musaeus on the grounds of his indiscretion (HW 24: xl); but that ranking is based on Musaeus’ superior elegance and ornament: ‘Arbitror enim ego Musæaei stilu[m] longè esse Homerico politiorem atque comptiorem’ (Poetices, 215, col. i, C).

180 Ogilby, trans., Iliads, 107 n. a.

181 HW 24: xcix. Scaliger’s comment is found in his Poetices, 231, col. i, D.

182 HW 24: xcii.

183 Observations on the Poems of Homer and Virgil, trans. Davies of Kidwelly, 127, also 67; Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile, 189, also 101.

184 Observations on the Poems of Homer and Virgil, trans. Davies of Kidwelly, 67; Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile, 101.

185 Observations on the Poems of Homer and Virgil, trans. Davies of Kidwelly, 84-5, 70; Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile, 125-6, 105. The objection to Homer’s garrulousness was something of a commonplace: see Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife, 167-8.

186 HW 24: xcix.

187 HW 24: xcix.

188 HW 24: xxxix-xli.

189 Wolfe, Homer and the Question of Strife, 53. See also, for the wider context, Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance, 124-41; Clarke, Homer’s Readers, 121.

190 Shepard, ‘Scaliger on Homer and Virgil’, 316-17.

191 The work was first delivered as an academic oration on 19 Aug. 1667, as the privilege leaf (omitted from the widely-cited facsimile published by Olms in 1973) to the ‘1664’ edition indicates; this was then published as Discours academique sur la Comparaison entre Virgile, & Homère (Paris, 1668). Another edition, reformatted with chapter divisions and other more substantive changes, soon followed under the title Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile (Paris, 1669): see Hepp, Homère en France au XVII^e Siècle, 401. A ‘third edition’ appeared under the title Comparaison des Poëmes d’Homere et de Virgile (Paris, ‘1664’). The notes to the Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue entry for the title suggest that the correct date of this edition may be 1669 (presumably by erroneous substitution on the title-page of ‘V’ for ‘X’ (‘M DC LXIV’ for ‘M DC LXIX’): see https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31177720c. But since the second edition (revised and reformatted) also appeared in that year, it seems more likely that the third edition is later, perhaps 1674, the title-page omitting an ‘X’ from the date (i.e., ‘M DC LX[X]IV’). The correct date of the first edition was noted in Lessay, ed. and trans., Hobbes, Textes sur l’Hérésie et sur l’Histoire, 204.

192 Davies’s work appeared as Observations on the Poems of Homer and Virgil. Its source was the Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile of 1669. Davies’s translation was listed in the Term Catalogue for 21 Nov. 1672 (Arber, ed., Term Catalogues, 1: 118); Hobbes’s Travels of Ulysses was listed two and a half months later on 7 Feb. 1673 (Arber, ed., Term Catalogues, 1: 127). On Davies in general, see Tucker, ‘Davies of Kidwelly’. On Hobbes’s friendship with Davies, see Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 153-4, Collins, Allegiance of Hobbes, 181-2, McDowell, Poetry and Allegiance, 22.

193 On the debate, see Hepp, Homère en France au XVII^e Siècle, 394-5, 401-2; Hepp, Deux Amis d’Homère en France au XVII^e Siècle, 132; le Brun, ‘Pierre Lalemant et l’Académie Lamoignon’, 159, 170.

194 Le Brun, ‘Pierre Lalemant et l’Académie Lamoignon’, 170.

195 Rapin, Observations on the Poems of Homer and Virgil, 5; Rapin, Observations sur les Poemes de d’Homere et de Virgile, 6-7.

196 HW 24: xxxvii.

197 Leviathan, 33 (HW 4: 104).

198 ‘Answer to Davenant’, 49.

¹⁹⁹ ‘Answer to Davenant’, 49-50.

200 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IV. 212; VI. 178; VII. 63, 215, 279; VIII. 163, 166, 236; X. 520; XVI. 274; XVII. 533; XVIII. 190; XIX. 324; Hobbes, trans., Iliads, XX. 243.

²⁰¹ ‘Answer to Davenant’, 48-9.

202 HW 24: xcvi.

203 See the discussion of this tendency in Simonsuuri, Homer’s Original Genius.

204 ‘Answer to Davenant’, 48.

205 As noted by Nelson, HW 24: xxi. For these lists see, for example, HW 10: 164, 322; also 110, 137.

206 HW 24: xcix.

207 Hobbes, trans., Odysses, XI. 206 (HW 25: 147 n. 270).

208 Hobbes’s translation is not always quite as careless as it might at first seem. Some misperceptions derive from insufficient attention to the historical meanings of key terms. For instance, Hobbes’s handling of Telemachus’ recognition of Menelaus in Odyssey, IV—‘And Menelaus when he that espi’d’ (Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IV. 116)—has been criticized on the grounds that it ‘elides the crucial detail that Menelaus “recognized” (νόησε) Telemachus (IV. 116)’ (HW 25: 45 n. 83); but ‘espy’ contains this sense of discovery or recognition (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘espy (v.), sense 2.a’, accessed September 2023. Elsewhere, the characterization of Polyphemus replying ‘sadly’ in response to Odysseus in Hobbes, trans., Odysses, IX. 389, has been dismissed as ‘a poor translation, suggesting … that the Cyclops feels some sort of regret. The Greek states that he answered “from his pitiless heart” … (IX. 368)’ (HW 25: 122 n. 229); but this ignores the now obsolete sense of ‘sadly’ as ‘Resolutely; with sustained vigour; hardily’ (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘sadly (adv.), sense I.2’, accessed December 2023). Another criticism derives from inattention to textual error. In the 1675 and subsequent editions of Odysses, lines 547-8 of book VIII read ‘What kind of People, civil, or without Law, | Civil or kinde to Strangers, godly or no’. Nelson notes that ‘Hobbes uses the term “civil” to render the Greek δίκαιοι (“just”) in line 575. There is no warrant in the Greek for repeating it in this line’ (HW 25: 111, n. 217); but as he also notes, in the 1673 edition of the text line 548 reads, correctly, ‘Cruel or kinde to Strangers, godly or no’ (HW 25: 111, n. ^c; Hobbes, Travels of Ulysses, 1). The 1675 replacement of ‘Cruel’ by ‘Civil’ makes no sense, and probably derives from a compositor’s misreading of the 1673 text, which is set in a narrow italic and (in copies I have examined) with ‘e’ not fully printing, making it possible for a hurried reading, biased by the appearance of ‘civil’ in the previous line, to misread it as ‘Ciuil’.