Homer sometimes nods
Preserved but no longer current.
Even the best of us is liable to make mistakes. The line is from Horace's De Arte Poetica (359): — Quandoque bonus donnitat Homerus! Verum open longo fas est obrepere somnum, (Sometimes good Homer himself even nods; but in so long a work it is allowable if there should be a drowsy interval or so.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Examples
Tatoeba sentence #25866 (CC BY 2.0 FR, tatoeba.org, retrieved 2026-07-31)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “Homer sometimes nods” mean?
Even the best of us is liable to make mistakes. The line is from Horace's De Arte Poetica (359): — Quandoque bonus donnitat Homerus! Verum open longo fas est obrepere somnum, (Sometimes good Homer himself even nods; but in so long a work it is allowable if there should be a drowsy interval or so.
Is “Homer sometimes nods” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.