Book XI, 130

I hate these cyclic poets who say “natheless eftsoon,” filchers of the verses of others, and so I pay more attention to elegies, for there is nothing I want to steal from Callimachus or Parthenius. Let me become like an “eared beast” if ever I write “from the rivers sallow celandine.” But these epic poets strip Homer so shamelessly that they already write “ Sing, O Goddess, the wrath.”