d'un vieux poète grec ; Homer, of whom nothing is

known with certainty even now, sonie going so far as to doubt whether he ever existed. It is generally thought that lie was born somewhere in Asia Minor between 1000 and 900 B.C. The quarrel hère referred to is the famous querelle des anciens et des modernes, which occupied nearly the whole of the seventeenth century and part of the

I02 Lettres Persanes

Page LiNE

eighteenth, and in which Boisrobert, Desmarest, and Claude Perrault attacked the Ancients, whilst Boileau, Racine, La Bruyère and Rollin were amongst their chief defenders.

22. 23. on ignore : account for the tense, already explained in the

notes.

23. 7. de part et d'autre : same meaning as des deux côtés, 9. admirais : in the Latin sensé of ' to wonder at.'