ABSTRACT
‘The Episode of Sarpedon’ was first published on 2 May 1709. According to Spence, in the last year of his life Pope described himself as having been ‘nursed up in Homer and Virgil’ (OAC, I.83), with his first exposure to Homer coming from John Ogilby’s translation of the Iliad (1660): ‘Ogilby’s translation of Homer was one of the first large poems that ever Mr. Pope read, and he still spoke of the pleasure it then gave him, with a sort of rapture, only on reflecting on it’. ‘It was that great edition with pictures. I was then about eight years old’ (OAC, I.14). Ogilby does not have a plate illustrating the death of Sarpedon, though there is one, opposite p. 263, showing the fight at the gate. This late recollection is in contrast to the disparaging mention of Ogilby made in The Dunciad Variorum, I.121 and 258.
