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[15] Whenever he himself argued out a question, he advanced by steps that gained general assent, holding this to be the only sure method. Accordingly, whenever he argued, he gained a greater measure of assent from his hearers than any man I have known. He said that Homer gave Odysseus the credit of being “a safe speaker”1 because he had a way of leading the discussion from one acknowledged truth to another.

1 Odyssey, viii. 171.

Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 4. E. C. Marchant. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1923.

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  • Commentary references to this page (1):
    • W. Walter Merry, James Riddell, D. B. Monro, Commentary on the Odyssey (1886), 8.171
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