Tradition says that Homer was blind. First, the bard Demodocus, who appears in the Odyssey to sing episodes of the Trojan War, is blind: the Muse he "took his eyes, but given the mild chant". Then the author of the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo says about himself: "This is a blind, who lives in the rocailleuse Chios". The passage is taken by Thucydides, citing it as a passage where Homer says it same.. The image of "blind bard" is a commonplace of Greek literature. A character of a speech by Dio Chrysostom thus noted that "all these poets are blind, and believe that it would be impossible to become a poet otherwise"; Dion said that poets are transmitted this feature as a kind of disease yeux. In fact, the lyric poet Xénocrite of Locri is deemed to be blind naissance; Achaeus Eretria becomes blind to being stung by bees, symbol of Muses; Stesichorus loses sight because he has spoken ill of Helen of Sparte and Democritus takes his own view to better voir Translater: Alexander Pope was born into a wealthy family. Reached in his childhood Pott's disease, an infection of the intervertebral discs due to tuberculosis, he kept a small size. He was a member of Scriblerus Club. His formative years were studious and conducive to poetic creation. It is generally considered as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century, known for his satirical poems and his translation of Homer. It is the English writer most often cited after William Shakespeare and Tennyson in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. His best known work is The Dunciad (The Dunciad), a satirical poem. Membership in Freemasonry, established as certain by some archivists, remains controversial. Its only source the presence of the name "Alex Pope" on the list of members of the "Lodge Held at the Goat" in London. In his essay Alexander Pope and Freemasonry: A Discursive Essay (2003), the historian WJ Williams prefers to speak of association between Pope and the Masons while Cécile Révauger, teacher at the University of Bordeaux III, says that " doubt hovered over the Masonic membership of Swift and Pope but never no evidence could be provided. " There has against any doubt that he was born into a family recusants, was formed in Catholic schools (which were then semi-clandestine, given the religious persecution that persisted in England in his time ), and asked to be assisted by a Catholic priest in his last moments. Besides his fragile health, this religious affiliation has contributed to social isolation, outside a narrow circle of friends and admirers. .