THE INCONCLUSIVENESS OF FEELINGS 439
minds this belief did not fade out before the seventeenth century; in
'fundamentalist' Western Christian minds it was still alive in the present
writer's lifetime.

The pessimist's error of mistaking dawn for nightfall may be rarer
than the optimist's error of mistaking sunset for noon; yet the eleventh-
century Western Christian Millenarians* misapprehension of the char-
acter of the age through which they were living has at least one striking
counterpart in the Boeotian poet Hesiod's misapprehension of the
prospects of his own Hellenic Civilization in the eighth century B.C.
Hesiod believed that the Iron Age into which it had been his fate to be
born was a worse age than all previous ages1 of human history. In his
eyes it was an age that was to see Honour and Justice, the slowest of the
Gods to despair of Human Nature, at last break off their losing battle
against triumphantly aggressive forces of evil and sorrowfully withdraw
from the terrestrial arena, leaving human sinners and sufferers to their
self-inflicted fate. The iron had entered into this eighth-century Hellenic
prophet's soul.2

*O would that I had not tarried to live thereafter with the fifth race, but
had either died before or had been born after; for now in these latter days
is the Race of Iron. Never by day shall they rest from travail and sorrow,
and never by night from the hand of the spoiler; and cruel are the cares
which the Gods shall give them. The father shall not be of one mind with
the children nor the children with the father, nor the guest with the host
that receives him, nor friend with friend, nor shall brother cleave to
brother as aforetime. Parents shall swiftly age and swiftly be dishonoured,
and they shall reproach their children and chide them with cruel words.
Wretches that know not the visitation of the Gods! Such as these would
not repay their aging parents for their nurture. The righteous man or the
good man or he that keeps his oath shall not find favour, but they shall
honour rather the doer of wrong and the proud man insolent. Right shall
rest in might of hand and Ruth shall be no more. The wicked shall do
hurt to his better by use of crooked words with oath to crown them. AH
the sons of sorrowful Man shall have Strife for their helpmate—harsh-
voiced Strife of hateful countenance, rejoicing in evil.

'And then, at long last, shall those spirits go their way to Olympus from
the wide-wayed Earth, with their beautiful faces veiled in white raiment,
seeking the company of the immortals, and leaving behind them the com-
pany of men—even the spirits of Ruth and Retribution. Fain and grief are
the portion that shall be left for mortal men, and there shall be no defence
against the evil day.'3

The sincerity of Hesiod's cry of anguish is transparent; yet it is mani-
fest in retrospect that Hesiod in the eighth century B.C. was misreading
the signs of the times as egregiously as the Millenarians were to misread
them in the eleventh century of the Christian Era. Hesiod's announce-
ment of the withdrawal of Astraea was just as wide of the mark as the
Millenarians* announcement of the approach of the I>ast Judgement;

1 The difiraction of a post-Minoan heroic age in Hesiod's retrospective viskm of it
through two different lenses has been noticed in VIII. viiL 74-78.

2 'Ferrum pertransiit animgm eius1, Psalm cv. 18, as mistranslated in the Vulgate
version (where it is numbered civ. 18).

3 Hesiod: Works and Days, 11. 174-201,