The portrait of Homer that forms the frontispiece of this volume hangs in the Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice. It is generally thought to be an early work of Mattia Preti (1613-1699), from a period when the influence of Caravaggio on him was strong. As a rendering of the bard, considered retrospectively from the twenty-first century, it offers much to ponder. The general appearance - closed, useless eyes upon a gaunt and bearded face - follows the ancient type. The upward turn of the head, however, evokes ancient portraits of Alexander of Macedon, that great dreamer, and the painting’s dark and brooding atmosphere, like many other portraits of the seicento, seems already to evoke the spirit of Romanticism. Proto-Romantic too is the stress on the inspiration of the lonely genius. The principal light in the picture streams from heaven, abode of the Muses, the source of this inspiration. It falls full on the unseeing eyes, underscoring the paradox that the blind poet sees more than the sighted. Yet the poet is no mere passive receptacle. Above his eyes, Homer’s deep brows are obscured by Apollo’s laurels; this is a learned poet, like the docti poetae of Hellenistic Alexandria or Catullan Rome. The doctor’s robes reinforce the point: medieval, of course. The wreath too more probably springs from medieval conceptions of the poet’s garb or from the famous close of the third book of Horace’s Odes - sume superbiam | quaesitam meritis, et mihi Delphica | lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam - than from close knowledge of Greek cultic practice.