“The Epicureans especially made sport with the paltry Poetry that came from Delphos.”

— Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: [A]bout the time of Alexander the Great, a little before Pyrrhus's days, there appear'd in Greece certain great Sects of Philosophers, such as the Peripateticks and Epicureans, who made a mock of Oracles. The Epicureans especially made sport with the paltry Poetry that came from Delphos. For the Priests hammered out their Verses as well as they could, and they often times committed faults against the common Rules of Prosodia. Now those Fleering Philosophers were mightily concerned that Apollo, the very God of Poetry, should come so far behind Homer, who was but a meer mortal, and was beholding to the same Apollo for his inspirations.<!--p. 220

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Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle 13

French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment 1657–1757

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