Nor must you make such an exordium, as the Cyclic writer of old:" I will sing the fate of Priam, and the noble war. "What will this boaster produce worthy of all this gaping? The mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth. How much more to the purpose he, who attempts nothing improperly?" Sing for me, my muse, the man who, after the time of the destruction of Troy, surveyed the manners and cities of many men." He meditates not[ to produce] smoke from a flash, but out of smoke to elicit fire, that he may thence bring forth his instances of the marvelous with beauty,[ such as] Antiphates, Scylla, the Cyclops, and Charybdis. Nor does he date Diomede 's return from Meleager 's death, nor trace the rise of the Trojan war from[ Leda 's] eggs: he always hastens on to the event; and hurries away his reader in the midst of interesting circumstances, no otherwise than as if they were[ already] known; and what he despairs of, as to receiving a polish from his touch, he omits; and in such a manner forms his fictions, so intermingles the false with the true, that the middle is not inconsistent with the beginning, nor the end with the middle. 