Eurynome because to distribute benefits requires a wide
inheritance; as if the mother usually received her name after her
daughters, or as if the names given by poets were true. In truth,
just as with a 'nomenclator' audacity supplies the place of memory,
and he invents a name for every one whose name he cannot recollect,
so the poets think that it is of no importance to speak the truth,
but are either forced by the exigencies of metre, or attracted by
sweetness of sound, into calling every one by whatever name runs
neatly into verse. Nor do they suffer for it if they introduce
another name into the list, for the next poet makes them bear what
name he pleases. That you may know that this is so, for instance
Thalia, our present subject of discourse, is one of the Graces in
Hesiod's poems, while in those of Homer she is one of the Muses.

IV. But lest I should do the very thing which I am blaming, I will
pass over all these matters, which are so far from the subject that
they are not even connected with it. Only do you protect me, if any
one attacks me for putting down Chrysippus, who, by Hercules, was a
great man, but yet a Greek, whose intellect, too sharply pointed,
is often bent and turned back upon itself; even when it seems to be
in earnest it only pricks, but does not pierce. Here, however, what
occasion is there for subtlety? We are to speak of benefits, and to
define a matter which is the chief bond of human society; we are to
lay down a rule of life, such that neither careless openhandedness
may commend itself to us under the guise of goodness of heart, and
yet that our circumspection, while it moderates, may not quench our
generosity, a quality in which we ought neither to exceed nor to
fall short. Men must be taught to be willing to give, willing to
receive, willing to return; and to place before themselves the high
aim, not merely of equalling, but even of surpassing those to whom