From at least the early Renaissance, Homer was regarded as the father of poets, the master of all knowledge, and classical antiquity's preeminent poet. His occasional detractors were thought tasteless cranks or, in the case of Plato, either a great man's nod or admirable respect for the gods. Julius Caesar Scaliger's still unusual negative judgments in the Poetices (1561) were easily dismissed as the product of Zoilus redivivus. Homer, moreover, was ideologically pure since, many believed, the moral of his Iliad was the need for a unified state under Jove's vicegerent. In 1660 John Ogilby thus dedicates his translation of Homer to Charles II and prudently says “that which may render [Homer] yet more proper for Royal Entertainment is, That he appears a most constant assertor of the Divine Right of Princes and Monarchical Government.” In 1714, when a Hanoverian was on the throne and divine right was in exile, that argument was less compelling but Homer apparently was not. Richard Fiddes speaks of Homer's “universal Esteem … in all Ages,” the “universal Genius” he embodies, and the “Danger … either to revive, or raise Objections against” him. One year later Thomas Parnell concludes his “Essay on Homer” prefatory to Pope's Iliad (1715) by reminding us that Homer was the comprehensive “Father of learning,” and left behind him “A Work which shall always stand at the top of the sublime Character, to be gaz'd at by Readers with an Admiration of its Perfection, and by Writers with a Despair that it should be emulated with Success.”