HOMER: `At no time in the sea: and he opened his mouth said:'

HESIOD: `Eat, my guests, and drink, and may no one of you return home to his dear country --'

HOMER: `Distressed; but may you all reach home again unscathed.'

When Homer had met him fairly on every point Hesiod said:

`Only tell me this thing that I ask: How many Achaeans went to Ilium with the sons of Atreus?'

Homer answered in a mathematical problem, thus:

`There were fifty hearths, and at each hearth were fifty spits, and on each spit were fifty carcases, and there were thrice three hundred Achaeans to each joint.'

This is found to be an incredible number; for as there were fifty hearths, the number of spits is two thousand five hundred; and of carcasses, one hundred and twenty thousand...