Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), Broome, W. and Fenton, E.

The Odyssey of Homer. Translated from the Greek

London

1725-6

"Homer therefore evidently understood that the soul ought to govern and direct the passions, and that it is of a nature more divine than harmony."

3. These two Verses are quoted by Plato in his Phædo, where he treats of the soul's immortality; He makes use of them to prove that Homer understood the soul to be uncompounded and distinct from the body. "If the soul, argues that Author, were a compounded substance, if it were harmony (as some philosophically assert) she would never act discordantly from the parts which compose it; but we see the contrary, we see the soul guide and govern the parts of which she her self is pretended to be composed; she resists, threatens and restrains our passions, our fears, avarice and anger: in short, the soul speaks to the body as to a substance of a nature entirely different from its own. Homer therefore evidently understood that the soul ought to govern and direct the passions, and that it is of a nature more divine than harmony.

This is undoubtedly very just reasoning: and there is an expression, observes Dacier, that bears the same import in the holy Scriptures: The heart of David smote him when he number'd the people. There is this difference; in Homer by heart is understood the corporeal substance, in the Scriptures the spiritual; but both make a manifest distinction between the soul and the body.

Government::Rule and Subjection::Rule of Soul

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Over 30 entries in ESTC (1725, 1726, 1745, 1752, 1753, 1758, 1760, 1761, 1763, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1773, 1778, 1790, 1792, 1795, 1796).

The Odyssey of Homer. Translated from the Greek, 5 vols. (London: Printed for Bernard Lintot, 1725-26).

02/06/2005