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LIBRARY 

OF   THE 

University  of  California. 

GIFT  OF 

GEORGE  MOREY  RICHARDSON. 


Received,  ^August,  1898. 
Accession  No.  78  6 OJL         Class  No. 


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Ancient  Classics  for  English  Readers 

EDITED    BY    THE 

REV.  W.  LUCAS  COLLI  In  S,  M.A. 


HESIOD   AND    THEOGNIS 


CONTENTS    OF    THE    SERIES. 


HOMER :  THE  ILIAD,  . '  .  .  .  By  the  Editor. 
HOMER :  THE  ODYSSEY,  .        .  By  the  Same. 

HERODOTUS,  ...  By  George  C.  Swayne,  M.A. 
CAESAR,  ......  By  Anthony  Trollope. 

VIRGIL By  the  Editor. 

HORACE,        .        .        .        .  .By  Theodore  Martin. 

.AESCHYLUS,  By  the  Right  Rev.  the  Bishop  of  Colombo. 
XENOPHON,         .        .     By  Sir  Alex.  Grant,  Bart.,  LL.D. 

CICERO By  the  Editor. 

SOPHOCLES,         ...      By  Clifton  W.  Collins,  M.A. 
PLINY  By  A.  Church,  M.A.,  and  W.  J.  Brodribb,  M.A. 

EURIPIDES  ...        By  William  Bodham  Donne. 

JUVENAL,      .        .      •  .        .         By  Edward  Walford,  M.A. 
ARISTOPHANES, .        .        .        .        .        .By  the  Editor. 

HESIOD  AND  THEOGNIS,  By  the  Rev.  James  Davies,  M.A. 
PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE,      ...        By  the  Editor. 
TACITUS,      ....        By  William  Bodham  Donne. 

LUCIAN,         .......       By  the  Editor. 

PLATO By  Clifton  W.  Collins. 

THE  GREEK  ANTHOLOGY,     .        .        .By  Lord  Neaves. 

LIVY By  the  Editor. 

OVID, By  the  Rev.  A.  Church,  M.A. 

CATULLUS,  TIBULLUS,  &  PROPERTIUS,  ByJ.  Davies,  M.A. 
DEMOSTHENES,  .  .  By  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Brodribb,  M.A. 
ARISTOTLE,  ...    By  Sir  Alex.  Grant,  Bart.,  LL.D. 

THUCYDIDES, By  the  Editor. 

LUCRETIUS,  .  .  .  .  By  W.  H.  Mallock,  M.A. 
PINDAR,        ...        By  the  Rev.  F.  D.  Morice,  M.A. 


HESIOD  AND   THEOGNIS 


BY   THE 

REV.    JAMES    DAVIES,     M.A. 

LATE  SCHOLAR  OF   LINCOLN   COLLEGE,   OXFORD 
TRANSLATOR  OF   'BABRIUS' 


PHILADELPHIA  : 

J.   B.   LITPINCOTT    COMPANY. 


H/^¥ 


7  3  60  2. 


P/A3go( 

At 

H^ 

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H-A-^j 

PEEFACE. 


The  life  of  Hesiod,  remote  from  towns,  and  far  away 
up  the  gulf  of  time,  and  Ms  ^pioetry  devoid  of  sensation 
and  excitement  in  its  almost  impersonal  didacticism, 
place  the  writer  who  deals  with  them  at  a  disadvan- 
tage, as  compared  with  one  whose  theme  is  an  ancient 
epic,  or  a  Greek  or  Roman  historian.  He  lacks,  in  a 
^reat  measure,  the  choice  of  parallels  by  aid  of  which 
he  may  abridge  the  distance  between  the  shadowy 
past  and  the  living  present.  He  cannot  easily  per- 
suade himself  or  his  readers  to  realise,  in  the  inspired 
rustic  of  Ascra,  "  a  heart  once  pregnant  with  celestial 
fire,"  when  he  reflects  how  foreign  to  the  wildest 
dreams  of  an  English  ploughman  would  be  the  reduc- 
tion to  verse  of  his  rural  experiences,  or,  still  more, 
of  his  notions  about  the  divine  governance  of  the 
universe.  Yet  this  is  scarcely  an  excuse  for  over- 
looking the  possible  contemporary  of  Homer,  the  poet 


VI  PREFACE. 

nearest  to  him  in  claims  of  antiquity,  even  if  we  grant 
that  his  style  is  less  interesting,  and  his  matter  not  so 
attractive.  Indeed  one  argument  for  including  Hesiod 
in  the  serie^  of  '  Ancient  Classics  for  English  Headers' 
may  be  found  in  the  fact  that  nine  Out  of  twelve  stu- 
dents finish  their  classical  course  with  but  the  vaguest 
acquaintance  with  his  remains.  Such,  therefore,  ought 
to  be  as  thankful  as  the  unlearned  for  an  idea  of 
what  he  actually  or  probably  wrote.  And  it  is  this 
which  the  larger  portion  of  this  volume  endeavours 
to  supply.  The  poet's  life  has  been  compiled  from 
ancient  and  modern  biographies  with  a  constant  eye 
to  the  internal  evidence  of  his  extant  poetry,  for  which 
the  editions  of  Paley,  Goettling,  and  Dubner,  have 
been  chiefly  studied.  For  illustrative  quotation,  use 
has  been  chiefly  made  of  the  English  versions  of 
Elton,  good  for  the  most  part,  and,  as  regards  the 
Theogony,  almost  Miltonic.  For  the  '  Works  and 
Days,'  the  little-known  version  of  the  Elizabethan 
George  Chapman — a  biographical  rarity  made  accessible 
by  Mr  Hooper's  edition  in  J.  E.  Smith's  Library  of 
Old  Authors — has  been  here  and  there  pressed  into 
our  service.  A  parallel  or  two  to  Hesiod's  '  Shield  of 
Hercules,'  from  Homer's  Shield  of  Achilles,  belong  to 
an  unpublished  version  by  Mr  Eichard  Garnett.  But 
to  no  student  of  Hesiod  are  so  many  thanks  due  as  to 
Mr  F.  A.  Paley,  whose  notes  have  been  of  the  utmost 
use,  as  the  most  successful  attempt  to  unravel  Hesiodic 


PREFACE.  vii 

difficulties  and  incongruities.  Whatever  difference  of 
opinion  may  exist  upon  his  views  as  to  the  date  and 
authorship  of  the  Homeric  epics,  there  can  be  none  as 
to  the  high  value  of  his  edition  of  Hesiod,  which  may 
rank  with  his  iEschylus,  Euripides,  and  Propertius. 

For  the  three  chapters  about  Theognis,  which  com- 
plete this  volume,  the  translation  and  arrangement  of 
Mr  John  Hookham  Frere  have  been  used  and  followed. 
In  some  instances,  where  Gaisford's  text  seemed  to 
discourage  freedom  of  paraphrase,  the  editor  has  fallen 
back  upon  his  own  more  literal  versions.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  debt  of  Theognis  to  Mr  Hookham 
Frere,  for  acting  as  his  exponent  to  English  readers, 
cannot  be  over-estimated ;  and  we  tender  our  thanks 
to  his  literary  executors  for  permission  to  avail  our- 
selves of  his  acute  and  lively  versions.  These  are 
marked  F.  Those  of  Elton  and  Chapman  in  Hesiod 
are  designated  by  the  letters  E  and  C  respectively, 
and  the  editor's  alternative  versions  by  the  letter 
D  affixed  to  them. 


. 


CONTENTS. 


HESIOD. 

CHAP.       I.   THE   LIFE   OF   HESIOD,    . 
II.    THE   WORKS   AND   DAYS, 

III.  hesiod's  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY, 

IV.  THE   THEOGONY,     .... 
V.    THE   SHIELD   OF   HERCULES, 

VI.    IMITATORS   OF   HESIOD, 


PAOl 

1 

21 
56 
70 
95 
111 


THEOGNIS. 

CHAP.       I.    THEOGNIS   IN  YOUTH  AND   PROSPERITY,            ,  129 

n           II.    THEOGNIS    IN   OPPOSITION,     ....  141 

m        III.   THEOGNIS   IN  EXILE,                .           ,          ,          ,  154 


H  E  S  I  O  D. 


CHAPTER    L 


THE   LIFE    OF   HESIOD. 


Of  materials  for  a  biography  of  the  father  of  didactic 
poetry  there  is,  as  might  be  expected,  far  less  scarcity 
than  is  felt  in  the  case  of  the  founder  of  epic.  Classed 
as  contemporaries  by  Herodotus,  Homer  and  Hesiod 
represent  two  schools  of  authorship — the  former  the 
objective  and  impersonal,  wherein  the  mover  of  the 
puppets  that  fill  his  stage  is  himself  invisible ;  the 
latter  the  subjective  and  personal,  which  communicates 
to  reader  and  listener,  through  the  medium  of  its  verse, 
the  private  thoughts  and  circumstances  of  the  indi- 
vidual author.  Homer,  behind  the  scenes,  sets  the 
battles  of  the  Iliad  in  array,  or  carries  the  reader 
with  his  hero  through  the  voyages  and  adventures  of 
the  Odyssey.  Hesiod,  with  all  the  naivete  of  reality, 
sets  himself  in  the  foreground,  and  lets  us  into  confi- 
dences about  his  family  matters — his  hopes  and  fears, 
his  aims  and  discouragements,  the  earnests  of  his  suc- 
a.  c.  vol.  XV.  A 


2  HE  SI  OB. 

cess  and  the  obstacles  to  it.  But  notwithstanding  the 
expiicitness  natural  to  his  school  of  composition,  he 
has  failed  to  leave  any  record  of  the  date  of  his  life 
and  poems.  Eor  an  approximation  to  this  the  chief 
authority  is  Herodotus,  who,  in  discussing  the  Hellenic 
theogonies,  gives  it  as  his  opinion  that  "  Hesiod  and 
Homer  lived  not  more  than  four  hundred  years  before  " 
his  era,  and  places,  it  will  be  observed,  the  didactic 
poet  first  in  order  of  the  two.  This  would  correspond 
with  the  testimony  of  the  Parian  marble  which  makes 
Hesiod  Homer's  senior  by  about  thirty  years ;  and 
Ephorus,  the  historian  of  the  poet's  fatherland,  main- 
tained, amongst  others,  the  higher  antiquity  of  Hesiod. 
There  was  undoubtedly  a  counter  theory,  referred  to 
Xenophanes,  the  Eleatic  philosopher,  which  placed 
Hesiod  later  than  Homer ;  but  the  problem  is  in- 
capable of  decisive  solution,  and  the  key  to  it  has 
to  be  sought,  if  anywhere,  in  the  internal  evidence 
of  the  poems  themselves,  as  to  "the  state  of  man- 
ners, customs,  arts,  and  political  government  fami- 
liar to  the  respective  authors."  Tradition  certainly 
conspires  to  affix  a  common  date  to  these  pre-eminent 
stars  of  Hellenic  poetry,  by  clinging  to  a  fabled 
contest  for  the  prize  of  their  mutual  art ;  and,  so  far 
as  it  is  of  any  worth,  corroborates  the  consistent  be- 
lief of  the  ancients,  that  Hesiod  flourished  at  least 
nine  centuries  before  Christ.  As  to  his  parentage, 
although  the  names  of  his  father  and  mother  have  not 
been  preserved,  there  is  internal  evidence  of  the  most 
trustworthy  kind.  In  his  ( Works  and  Days '  the 
poet  tells  us  that  his  father  migrated  across  the  iEgean 


THE  LIFE  OF  IIESIOD.  3 

from  Cyme  in  iEolia,  urged  by  narrowness  of  means 
and  a  desire  to  better  his  fortunes  by  a  recurrence  to 
the  source  and  fountain-head  of  his  race  ;  for  he  sailed 
to  Boeotia,  the  mother-country  of  the  iEolian  colonies. 
There  he  probably  gave  up  his  seafaring  life,  taking  to 
agriculture  instead ;  and  there — unless,  as  some  have 
surmised  without  much  warranty,  his  elder  son, 
Hesiod,  was  born  before  his  migration — he  begat  two 
sons,  Hesiod,  and  a  younger  brother,  Perses,  whose 
personality  is  too  abundantly  avouched  by  Hesiod  to 
be  any  subject  of  question.  Though  not  himself  a 
bard,  the  father  must  have  carried  to  Boeotia  lively 
and  personal  reminiscences  and  souvenirs  of  the  heroic 
poetty  for  which  the  iEolic  coast  of  Asia  Minor  was 
then  establishing  a  fame ;  and  his  own  traditions,  to- 
gether with  the  intercourse  between  the  mother  and 
daughter  countries,  cannot  but  have  nursed  a  taste  for 
the  muse  in  Hesiod,  which  developed  itself  in  a  dis- 
tinct and  independent  vein,  and  was  neither  an  offset 
of  the  Homeric  stock,  nor  indebted  to  the  Homeric 
poems  for  aught  beyond  the  countenance  afforded  by 
parity  of  pursuits.  The  account  given  by  Hesiod 
of  his  father's  migration  deserves  citation,  and  may 
be  conveniently  given  in  the  words  of  Elton's  transla- 
tion of  the  '  Works  and  Days  : ' — 

"  0  witless  Perses,  thus  for  honest  gain, 
Thus  did  our  mutual  father  plough  the  main. 
Erst  from  iEolian  Cyme's  distant  shore 
Hither  in  sable  ship  his  course  he  bore  ; 
Through  the  wide  seas  his  venturous  way  he  took, 
No  revenues,  nor  prosperous  ease  forsook. 


4  HESIOD. 

His  wandering  course  from  poverty  began, 
The  visitation  sent  from  Heaven  to  man. 
In  Ascra's  wretched  hamlet,  at  the  feet 
Of  Helicon,  he  fixed  his  humble  seat  : 
Ungenial  clime — in  wintry  cold  severe 
And  summer  heat,  and  joyless  through  the  year." 

— E.  883-894. 

An  unpromising  field,  at  first  sight,  for  the  growth  of 
poesy;  but,  if  the  locality  is  studied,  no  unmeet 
"nurse/'  in  its  associations  and  surroundings,  "for  a 
poetic  child."  Near  the  base  of  Helicon,  the  gentler 
of  the  twin  mountain  -  brethren  towering  above  the 
chain  that  circles  Boeotia,  A  sera  was  within  easy  reach 
of  the  grotto  of  the  Libethrian  nymphs,  and  aftnost 
close  to  the  spring  of  Aganippe,  and  the  source  of  the 
memory-haunted  Permessus.  The  fountain  of  Hippo- 
crene  was  further  to  the  south ;  but  it  was  near  this 
fountain  that  the  inhabitants  of  Helicon  showed  to 
Pausanias  a  very  ancient  copy  of  the  '  Works  and 
Days'  of  the  bard,  whose  name  is  inseparably  associated 
with  the  neighbourhood.  Modern  travellers  describe 
the  locality  in  glowing  colours.  "The  dales  and 
slopes  of  Helicon,"  says  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  in 
his  '  Greece,  Pictorial,  Descriptive,  and  Historical,'  * 
'•'  are  clothed  with  groves  of  olive,  walnut,  and  almond 
trees;  clusters  of  ilex  and  arbutus  deck  its  higher 
plains,  and  the  oleander  and  myrtle  fringe  the  banks  of 
the  numerous  rills  that  gush  from  the  soil,  and  stream 
in  shining  cascades  down  its  declivities  into  the  plain 
between  it  and  the  Copaic  Lake.  On  Helicon,"  he 
adds,  "according  to  the  ancient  belief,  no  noxious 
*  P.  253,  254. 


TEE  LIFE  OF  I1EX10D.  5 

herb  was  found.  Here  also  the  first  narcissus  bloomed. 
The  ground  is  luxuriantly  decked  with  flowers,  which 
diffuse  a  delightful  fragrance.  It  resounds  with  the 
industrious  murmur  of  bees,  and  with  the  music  of 
pastoral  flutes,  and  the  noise  of  waterfalls."  The  solu- 
tion of  the  apparent  discrepancy  between  the  ancient 
settler's  account  of  Ascra  and  its  climate,  and  that  of 
the  modern  traveller,  is  probably  to  be  found  in  the 
leaning  of  the  poet  Hesiod's  mind  towards  the  land 
which  his  father  had  quitted,  and  which  was  then 
more  congenial  to  the  growth  of  poetry — a  leaning 
which  may  have  been  enhanced  and  intensified  by 
disgust  at  the  injustice  done  to  him,  as  we  shall  pre- 
sently see,  by  the  Boeotian  law-tribunals.  It  is,  in- 
deed, conceivable  that,  at  certain  seasons,  Ascra  may 
have  been  swept  by  fierce  blasts,  and  have  deserved 
the  character  given  it  in  the  above  verses ;  but  the 
key  to  its  general  depreciation  at  all  seasons  is  more 
likely  to  be  hid  under  strong  personal  prejudice  than 
found  in  an  actual  disparity  between  the  ancient  and 
the  modern  climate.  At  any  rate,  it  is  manifest,  from 
Hesiod's  own  showing,  that  the  home  of  his  father's 
settlement  had  sufficient  inducements  for  him  to  make 
it  his  own  likewise ;  though  from  the  fact  that  the 
people  of  Orchomenus  possessed  his  relics,  that  Boeotian 
town  may  dispute  the  honour  of  his  birth  and  residence 
with  Ascra.  The  latter  place,  without  controversy,  is 
entitled  to  be  the  witness  of  the  most  momentous  in- 
cident of  his  poetic  history — to  wit,  the  apparition  of 
the  Muses,  as  he  fed  his  father's  flock  beside  the  divine 
Helicon,  when,  after  one  of  those  night-dances  in  which 


6  HESIOD. 

"  They  wont 
To  lead  the  mazy  measure,  breathing  grace 
Enkindling  love,  and  glance  their  quivering  feet,"— 

they  accosted  the  favoured  rustic  with  their  heavenly 
speech,  gave  him  commission  to  be  the  bard  of  didactic, 
as  Homer  was  of  epic,  poetry,  and  in  token  of  such  a 
function  invested  him  with  a  staff  of  bay,  symbolic  of 
poetry  and  song.  Hesiod's  own  account  of  this  vision 
in  the  opening  of  his  '  Theogony '  is  as  follows  : — 

"  They  to  Hesiod  erst 
Have  taught  their  stately  song,  the  whilst  his  flocks 
He  fed  beneath  all-sacred  Helicon. 
Thus  first  those  goddesses  their  heavenly  speech 
Addressed,  the  Olympian  Muses  born  from  Jove  : 
'  Night- watching  shepherds  !  beings  of  reproach  ! 
Ye  grosser  natures,  hear  !     We  know  to  speak 
Full  many  a  fiction  false,  yet  seeming  true, 
Or  utter  at  our  will  the  things  of  truth/ 
So  said  they,  daughters  of  the  mighty  Jove, 
All  eloquent,  and  gave  into  mine  hand, 
Wondrous  !  a  verdant  rod,  a  laurel  branch, 
Of  bloom  unwithering,  and  a  voice  imbreathed 
Divine,  that  I  might  utter  forth  in  song 
The  future  and  the  past,  and  bade  me  sing 
The  blessed  race  existing  evermore, 
And  first  and  last  resound  the  Muses'  praise." 

— E.  33-48. 

The  details  of  this  interview,  as  above  recorded,  are 
replete  with  interest — centred,  indeed,  in  the  poet 
himself,  but  in  .  some  degree  also  attaching  to  his 
reputed  works.  If  the  verses  are  genuine — and  that 
the  ancients  so  accounted  them  is  plain  from  two  allu- 


THE  LIFE  OF  HESIOD.  7 

sions  of  Ovid* — they  show  that  with  a  faith  quite  in 
keeping  with  his  simple,  serious,  superstitious  character, 
he  took  this  night-vision  for  no  idle  dream-fabric,  hut 
a  definite  call  to  devote  himself  to  the  poetry  of  truth, 
and  the  errand  of  making  song  subserve  the  propaga- 
tion of  religion  and  moral  instruction.  The  "  fictions 
seeming  true  " — in  other  words,  the  heroic  poetry  so 
popular  in  the  land  of  his  father's  birth — Hesiod  con- 
siders himself  enjoined  to  forsake  for  a  graver  strain — 
"the  things  of  truth" — which  the  Muses  declare  have 
been  hitherto  regarded  by  mortals  as  not  included 
in  their  gift  of  inspiration.  He  takes  their  com- 
mission to  be  prophet  and  poet  of  this  phase  of  min- 
strelsy, embracing,  it  appears,  the  past  and  future,  and 
including  his  theogonic  and  ethical  poetry.  And 
while  the  language  of  the  Muses  thus  defines  the 
poet's  aim,  when  awakened  from  a  rude  shepherd-life 
to  the  devout  service  of  inspired  song,  it  implies, 
rather  than  asserts,  a  censure  of  the  kinds  of  poetry 
which  admit  of  an  easier  and  freer  range  of  fancy. 
For  himself,  this  supernatural  interview  formed  the 
starting-point  of  a  path  clear  to  be  tracked ;  and  that 
he  accepted  his  commission  as  Heaven-appointed  is 
seen  in  the  gratitude  which,  as  we  learn  from  his 
1  Works  and  Days,'  he  evinced  by  dedicating  to  the 
maids  of  Helicon, 

"  Where  first  their  tunef id  inspiration  flowed," 

an  eared  tripod,  won  in  a  contest  of  song  at  funeral 
games  in  Eubcea.     In  the  same  passage  (E.  915-922) 

*  Fasti,  vi.  13  ;  Art  of  Love,  i  27. 


8  HESIOD. 

Hesiod  testifies  to  the  gravity  of  his  poetic  trust  by 
averring  that  he  speaks  "the  mind  of  aegis  -  hearing 
Jove,  whose  daughters,  the  Muses,  have  taught  him 
the  divine  song."  Pausanias  (IX.  xxxi.  3)  records  the 
existence  of  this  tripod  at  Helicon  in  his  own  day. 

But  though  he  took  his  call  as  divine,  there  is  no 
reason  to  think  that  Hesiod  depended  solely  on  this 
gift  of  inspiration  for  a  name  and  place  among  poets. 
His  father's  antecedents  suggest  the  literary  culture 
which  he  may  well  have  imbibed  from  his  birthplace 
in  zEolia.  His  own  traditions  and  surroundings  in  the 
mother-country — so  near  the  very  Olympus  which  was 
the  seat  of  the  old  Pierian  minstrels,  whatever  it  may 
have  been  of  the  fabled  gods — so  fed  by  local  influences 
and  local  cultivation  of  music  and  poetry — may  have 
predisposed  him  to  the  life  and  functions  of  a  poet ; 
but  there  is  a  distinctly  practical  tone  about  all  his 
poetry,  which  shows  that  he  was  indebted  to  his  own 
pains  and  thought,  his  own  observation  and  retentive- 
ness,  for  the  gift  which  he  brought,  in  his  measure,  to 
perfection.  A  life  afield  conduced  to  mould  him  into 
the  poet  of  the  '  Works  and  Days/— ra  sort  of  Boeo- 
tian '  Shepherd's  Calendar/  interwoven  with  episodes 
of  fable,  allegory,  and  personal  history.  The  nearness 
of  his  native  hills,  as  well  as  the  traditions  of  elder 
bards,  conspired  to  impel  him  to  the  task  of  shaping  a 
theogony.  And  both  aims  are  so  congenial  and  com- 
patible, that  prima  facie  likelihood  will  always 
support  the  theory  of  one  and  the  same  authorship  foi 
both  poems  against  the  separatists*  who  can  no  more 

*  The  ancient  critics  who  believed  in  the  separate  authorship 


THE  LIFE  OF  IIESIOD.  9 

brook  an  individual  Hesiod  than  an  individual  Homer. 
But  be  this  as  it  may,  the  glimpses  which  the  poet 
gives  of  himself,  in  the  more  autobiographical  of  his 
reputed  works,  present  the  picture  of  a  not  very  loco- 
motive sage,  shrewd,  practical,  and  observant  within 
Ids  range_of  observation,  apt  to  learn,  and  apt  also  to 
teach,  storing  up  life's  everyday  lessons  as  they  strike 
him,  and  drawing  for  his  poetry  upon  a  well-filled  bank 
of  homely  truth  and  experience.  He  gives  the  distinct 
idea  of  one  who,  having  a  gift  and  believing  in  a  com- 
mission, sets  himself  to  illustrate  his  own  sentiment, 
that  "  in  front  of  excellence  the  gods  have  placed 
exertion  ;"  and  whilst  in  the  c  Works  and  Days '  it  is 
obvious  that  his  aim  and  drift  are  the  improvement  of 
his  fellow-men  by  a  true  detail  of  his  experiences  in 
practical  agriculture,  in  the  '  Theogony '  he  commands 
our  respect  and  reverence  for  the  pains  and  research 
by  which  he  has  worked  into  a  system,  and  this  too 
for  the  benefit  and  instruction  of  his  fellows,  the 
floating  legends  of  the  gods  and  goddesses  and  their 
offspring,  which  till  his  day  must  have  been  a  chaotic 
congeries.  On  works  akin  to  these  two  main  and 
extant  poems  we  may  conceive  him  to  have  spent 
that  part  of  his  mature  life  which  was  not  given  up 
to  husbandry.  Travelling  he  must  have  disliked — at 
any  rate,  if  it  involved  sea-voyages.  His  lists  of 
rivers  in  the  '  Theogony '  are  curiously  defective  where 
it  might  have  been  supposed  they  would  be  fullest — as 
regar  Is  Hellas  generally  ;  whereas  he  gives  many  names 

of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  were  so  called,  as  separating  what 
by  the  voice  of  previous  tradition  had  been  made  one. 


10  HESIOD. 

of  Asiatic  rivers,  and  even  mentions  the  Nile  and  the 
Phasis,  neither  of  which  occur  in  Homer.  But  this 
would  seem  to  have  "been  a  hearsay  knowledge  of 
geography,  for  he  distinctly  declares  his  experience  of 
his  father's  quondam  calling  to  he  limited  to  a  single 
passage  to  Euhcea  from  the  mainland ;  and  as  he  is  less 
full  when  he  should  enumerate  Greek  rivers,  the 
reasonable  supposition  is  that  he  was  no  traveller,  and, 
depending  on  tradition,  was  most  correct  and  com- 
municative touching  those  streams  of  which  he  had 
heard  most  in  childhood.  The  one  voyage  to  which 
lie  owned  was  made  with  a  view  to  ;the  musical  contest 
at  Chalcis  above  alluded  to ;  and  it  is  surely  not  with- 
out a  touch  of  quiet  humour  that  this  sailor's  son  owns 
himself  a  landlubber  in  the  following  verses  addressed 
to  his  ne'er-do-well  brother  : — . 

"  If  thy  rash  thought  on  merchandise  be  placed, 
Lest  debts  ensnare  or  woeful  hunger  waste, 
Learn  nowr  the  courses  of  the  roaring  sea, 
Though  ships  and  voyages  are  strange  to  me. 
Ne'er  o'er  the  sea's  broad  way  my  course  I  bore, 
Save  once  from  Aulis  to  the  Eubcean  shore  ; 
From  Aulis,  where  the  mighty  Argive  host, 
The  winds  awaiting,  lingered  on  the  coast, 
From  sacred  Greece  assembled  to  destroy 
The  guilty  walls  of  beauty-blooming  Troy." 

— <  Works  and  Days/  E.  901-910. 

This,  the  poet  goes  on  to  say,  is  all  he  knows  prac- 
tically about  navigation,  and  truly  it  is  little  enough ; 
for  it  is  no  exaggeration,  but  a  simple  fact,  that  the 
strait  which   constituted  Hesiod's  sole  experience  of  a 


THE  LIFE  OF  HES10D.  11 

sea  voyage  was  no  more  than  a  stretch  of  forty  yards — 
a  span  compared  with  which  the  Menai  •  Strait,  or  the 
Thames  at  any  of  the  metropolitan  bridges,  would  be  a 
serious  business.  Emile  Burnouf  might  literally  call 
the  Euripus  "  le  canal  Eubeen."  In  the  days  of  Thucy- 
dides  a  bridge  had  been  thrown  across  it. 

But  experimental  knowledge  was  reckoned  super- 
fluous by  one  who  could  rest  in  the  knowledge  he 
possessed  of  the  mind  of  Jove,  and  in  the  commission 
he  held  from  his  daughters, — who,  according  to  his  be- 
lief, taught  him  navigation,  astronomy,  and  the  rest  ol 
the  curriculum,  when  they  made  him  an  interpreter  of 
the  divine  will,  and  a  "  vates  "  in  a  double  sense, — to 
dictate  a  series  of  precepts  concerning  the  time  for 
voyaging  and  the  time  for  staying  ashore.  Besides,  in 
the  poet's  eye  seafaring  was  a  necessity  of  degenerate 
times.  In  the  golden  age  none  were  merchants. — 
('Works  and  Days,'  236.) 

Yet  the  even  flow  of  the  poet's  rural  life  was  not 
without  its  occasional  and  chronic  disturbances  and 
storms.  The  younger  brother,  to  whom  allusion  has 
been  made  more  than  once,  and  whom  he  generally 
addresses  as  "  simple,  foolish,  good-for-nought  Perses," 
had,  it  seems,  come  in  for  a  share  of  the  considerable 
property  which  Hesiod's  father  had  got  together,  after 
he  exchanged  navigation  and  merchandise  for  agricul- 
tural pursuits.  The  settlement  of  the  shares  in  this 
inheritance  lay  with  the  kings,  who  in  primitive  ages 
exercised  in  Bceotia,  as  elsewhere,  the  function  of  judges, 
and,  according  to  Hesiod's  account,  were  not  superior 
to  bribery  and  corruption.      Perses  found   means  to 


12  BES10D. 

purchase  their  award  to  him  of  the  better  half  of  the 
patrimony,  and,  after  this  fraud,  dissipated  his  ill-gotten 
wealth  in  luxury  and  extravagance,  a  favourite  mode 
of  spending  his  time  being  that  of  frequenting  the 
law-tribunals,  as  nowadays  the  idletons  of  a  town  or 
district  may  be  known  by  their  lounging  about  the  petty 
sessional  courts  when  open.  Perhaps  the  taste  for 
litigation  thus  fostered  furnished  him  with  the  idea 
of  repairing  his  diminished  fortunes  by  again  proceed- 
ing against  his  brother,  and  hence  Hesiod's  invectives 
against  the  unscrupulousness  of  the  claimant,  and  of  the 
judges,  who  were  the  instruments,  of  his  rapacity.  It 
is  not  distinctly  stated  what  was  the  issue  of  this 
second  suit,  which  aimed  at  stripping  Hesiod  of  that 
smaller  portion  which  had  already  been  assigned  to 
him  :  perhaps  it  was  an  open  sore,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  which  he  wrote  his  '  Works  and  Days,' — a 
persuasive  to  honest  labour  as  contrasted  with  the 
idleness  which  is  fertile  in  expedients  for  living  at  the 
expense  of  others — a  picture  from  life  of  the  active 
farmer,  and,  as  a  foil  to  him,  of  the  idle  lounger. 
Here  is  a  sample  of  it : — 

"  Small  care  be  his  of  wrangling  and  debate, 
For  whose  ungathered  food  the  garners  wait; 
Who  wants  within  the  summer's  plenty  stored, 
Earth's  kindly  fruits,  and  Ceres'  yearly  hoard : 
With  these  replenished,  at  the  brawling  bar 
F<>r  other's  wealth  go  instigate  the  war  : 
But  this  thou  may'st  no  more  ;  let  justice  guide, 
Best  boon  of  heaven,  and  future  strife  decide. 
Not  so  we  shared  the  patrimonial  land, 
When  greedy  pillage  filled  thy  grasping  hand  ; 


THE  LIFE   OF  HE  SI  OB.  13 

The  bribe-devouring  judges,  smoothed  by  thee, 
The  sentence  willed,  and  stamped  the  false  decree  : 
O  fools  and  blind  !  to  whose  misguided  soul 
Unknown  how  far  the  half  exceeds  the  whole, 
Unknown  the  good  that  healthful  mallows  yield, 
And  asphodel,  the  dainties  of  the  field." 

— E.  44-58. 

The  gnomic  cbaracter  of  tbe  last  four  lines  must  not 
blind  the  reader  to  the  fact  that  they  have  a  personal 
reference  to  the  poet  and  his  brother,  and  represent  the 
anxiety  of  the  former  that  the  latter  should  adopt, 
though  late,  his  own  life-conviction,  and  act  out  the 
truth  that  a  dinner  of  herbs  with  a  clear  conscience 
is  preferable  to  the  luxuries  of  plenty  purchased  by 
fraud.  Consistent  with  this  desire  is  the  unselfish 
tone  in  which  he  constantly  recurs  to  the  subject 
throughout  the  *  Works  and  Days,'  and  that  not  so 
much  as  if  he  sought  to  work  this  change  in  his 
brother  for  peace  and  quietness  to  himself,  as  for  a  real 
interest  in  that  brother's  amendment — we  do  not 
learn  with  what  success.  Perhaps,  as  has  been  surmised, 
Perses  had  a  wife  who  kept  him  up  to  his  extravagant 
ways,  and  to  the  ready  resource  of  recouping  his  failing 
treasure  by  endeavouring  to  levy  a  fresh  tax  upon 
Hesiod.  Such  a  surmise  might  well  account  for  the 
poet's  curious  misogynic  crotchets.  Low  as  is  the 
value  set  upon  a  "  help-meet "  by  Simonides,  Archilo- 
chus,  Bacchylides,  and,  later  still,  by  Euripides,  one 
might  have  expected  better  words  in  favour  of  marriage 
from  one  whose  lost  works  included  a  catalogue  of 
celebrated  women  of  old,  than  the  railing  tone  wlrich 


14  HES10D. 

accompanies  his  account  of  the  myth  of  Pandora,  the 
association  of  woman  with  unmixed  evil  in  that  legend, 
and  the  more  practical  advice  to  his  brother  in  a  later 
part  of  his  '  Works  and  Days/  where  he  bids  him  shun 
the  wiles  of  a  woman  "dressed  out  behind"  (crinolines 
and  dress-improvers  being,  it  would  seem,  not  by  any 
means  modern  inventions),  and  unsparingly  lashes  the 
whole  sex  in  the  style  of  the  verses  we  quote  : — 

"  Let  no  fair  woman  robed  in  loose  array, 
That  speaks  the  wanton,  tempt  thy  feet  astray; 
Who  soft  demands  if  thine  abode  be  near, 
And  blandly  lisps  and  murmurs,  in  thine  ear. 
Thy  slippery  trust  the  charmer  shall  beguile, 
For,  lo !  the  thief  is  ambushed  in  her  smile." 

— E.  511-516. 

Indeed,  it  might  be  maintained,  quite  consistently 
with  the  internal  evidence  of  Hesiod's  poems,  that 
he  lived  and  died  a  bachelor,  seeing  perhaps  the 
evil  influences  of  a  worthless  wife  on  his  brother's 
establishment  and  character.  It  is  true  that  in  certain 
cases  (which  probably  should  have  come  more  close  in 
the  text  to  those  above  cited,  whereas  they  have  got 
shifted  to  a  later  part  of  the  poem,  where  they  are  less 
to  the  point)  he  prescribes  general  directions  about 
taking  a  wife,  in  just  the  matter-of-fact  way  a  man 
would  who  wrote  without  passion  and  without  experi- 
ence. The  bridegroom  was  to  be  not  far  short  of 
thirty,  the  bride  about  nineteen.  Possibly  in  the  in- 
junction that  the  latter  should  be  sought  in  the  ranks 
of  maidenhood,  lurked  the  same  aversion  to  "  marrying 
a  widow "  which  animated  the  worldly-wise  father  of 


THE  LIFE   OF  IIESIOD.  16 

Mr  Samuel  Weller.  Anyhow,  he  would  have  had  the 
model  wife  fulfil  the  requirements  of  the  beautiful 
Latin  epitaph  on  a  matron,  for  he  prescribes  that  she 
should  be  "  simple  -  minded  "  and  "  home  -  keeping  " 
(though  he  says  nothing  about  her  being  a  worker  in 
wools),  in  lines  of  which,  because  Elton's  version  is 
here  needlessly  diffuse,  we  submit  a  closer  rendering 
of  our  own  : — 

"  And  choose  thy  wife  from  those  that  round  thee  dwell, 
Weighing,  lest  neighbours  jeer,  thy  choice  full  well. 
Than  wife  that's  good  man  finds  no  greater  gain, 
But  feast-frequenting  mates  are  simply  bane. 
Such  without  fire  a  stout  man's  frame  consume, 
And  to  crude  old  age  bring  his  manhood's  bloom." 

— '  Works  and  Days,'  700-705. 

This,  we  conceive,  was  Hesiod's  advice,  as  an  out- 
sider might  give  it,  to  others.  For  himself,  it  is  pro- 
bable he  reckoned  that  the  establishment  would  suf- 
fice which  he  elsewhere  recommends  to  the  farmer 
class — an  unmarried  bailiff,  a  housekeeper  without 
encumbrances ;  for  a  female  servant  with  children,  he 
remarks,  in  bachelor  fashion,  is  troublesome — and  a 
dog  that  bites  (see  <  Works  and  Days,'  602-604).  It 
is  indirectly  confirmatory  of  this  view  that  tradition, 
which  has  built  up  many  absurd  figments  upon  the 
scant  data  of  Hesiod's  autobiography,  has  signally 
failed  to  fasten  other  offspring  to  his  name  than  the 
intellectual  creations  which  have  kept  it  in  remem- 
brance. This  was  surely  Plato's  belief  when  he  wrote 
the  following  beautiful  sentences  in  his  l  Symposium.' 


16  HESIOD. 

"Who  when  he  thinks  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  and 
other  great  poets,  would  not  rather  have  their  children 
than  ordinary  human  ones  ?  Who  would  not  emulate 
them  in  the  creation  of  children  such  as  theirs,  which 
have  preserved  their  memory,  and  given  them  ever- 
lasting glory  1 "  * 

So  far  as  the  poet's  life  and  character  can  be  ap- 
proximately guessed  from  his  poems,  it  would  seem  to 
have  been  temperately  and  wisely  ordered,  placid,  and 
for  the  most  part  unemotional.  That  one  who  so 
clearly  saw  the  dangers  of  association  with  bad  women 
that  he  shrank  from  intimacy  with  good,  should  have 
met  his  death  through  an  intrigue  at  (Enoe,  in  Ozolian 
Locris,  with  Clymene,  the  sister  of  his  hosts,  is  doubt- 
less just  as  pure  a  bit  of  incoherent  fiction  as  that  his 
remains  were  carried  ashore,  from  out  of  the  ocean  into 
which  they  had  been  cast,  by  the  agency  of  dolphins  ;  or 
that  a  faithful  dog — no  doubt  the  sharp-toothed  speci- 
men we  have  seen  recommended  in  the  '  Works  and 
Days ' — traced  out  the  authors  of  the  murder,  and 
brought  them  to  the  hands  of  justice.  Some  accounts 
attribute  to  the  poet  only  a  guilty  knowledge  of  the 
crime  of  a  fellow-lodger ;  but  in  either  shape  the  legend 
is  an  after-thought,  as  is  also  the  halting  story  that 
Stesichorus,  who  lived  from  B.C.  643  to  B.C.  560,  was 
the  offspring  of  this  fabled  liaison.  All  that  can  be  con- 
cluded from  trustworthy  data  for  his  biography,  beyond 
what  has  been  already  noticed,  is  that  in  later  life  he 
must  have  exchanged  his  residence  at  Ascra  for  Orcho- 
menus,  possibly  to  be  further  from  the  importunities  of 
*  Jowett's  transl.,  i.  525. 


THE  LIFE   OF  HESIOD.  17 

Perses,  and  beyond  the  atmosphere  of  unrighteous 
judges.  Pausanias  states  that  Hesiod,  like  Homer, 
whether  from  fortune's  spite  or  natural  distaste,  en- 
joyed no  intimacy  with  kings  or  great  people ;  and  this 
consists  with  Plutarch's  story  that  the  Spartan  Cleo- 
menes  used  to  call  Hesiod  "  the  poet  of  the  Helots," 
in  contrast  with  Homer,  "  the  delight  of  warriors,"  and 
with  the  inference  from  an  expression  in  the  '  Works 
aud  Days'  that  the  poet  and  his  father  were  only 
resident  aliens  in  Boeotia.  In  Thespise,  to  which 
realm  he  belonged,  agriculture  was  held  degrading  to  a 
freeman,  which  helps  to  account  for  his  being,  in  his 
own  day,  a  poet  only  of  the  peasantry  and  the  lower 
classes.  Pausanias  and  Paterculus  do  but  retail  tradi- 
tion ;  but  this  suffices  to  corroborate  the  impression, 
derived  from  the  poet's  own  works,  of  a  calm  and  con- 
templative life,  unclouded  except  by  the  worthlessness 
of  others,  and  owing  no  drawbacks  to  faults  or  failings 
of  its  own.  Musing  much  on  the  deities  whose  his- 
tories he  systematised  as  best  he  might,  and  at  whose 
fanes,  notwithstanding  all  his  research  and  inquiry, 
he  still  ignorantly  worshipped  ;  regulating  his  life  on 
plain  and  homely  moral  principles,  and  ever  awake  to 
the  voice  of  mythology,  which  spoke  so  stirringly  to 
dwellers  in  his  home  of  Bceotia, — Hesiod  lived  and  died 
in  that  mountain-girded  region,  answerably  to  the  testi- 
mony of  the  epitaph  by  his  countryman  Chersias, 
which  Pausanias  read  on  the  poet's  sepulchre  at 
Orchomenus  : — 

"  Though  fertile  Ascra  gave  sweet  Hesiod  birth, 

Yet  rest  his  bones  beneath  the  Minyan  earth, 

a.  c.  vol.  xv.     .  B 


18  HES10D. 

Equestrian  land.     There,  Hellas,  sleeps  thy  pride, 
The  wisest  bard  of  bards  in  wisdom  tried." 

— Pausan.,  ix.  38,  §  4. 

The  question  of  Hesiod's  literary  offspring  has 
been  much  debated,  the  '  Works  and  Days '  alone  en- 
joying an  undisputed  genuineness.  But  it  does  not 
seem  that  the  'Theogony'  was  impugned  before  the 
time  of  Pausanias,*  who  records  that  Hesiod's  Heli- 
conian fellow  -  citizens  recognised  only  the  '  Works 
and  Days.'  On  the  other  hand — to  say  nothing  of 
internal  evidence  in  the  *  Theogony '  —  we  have  the 
testimony  of  Herodotus  to  Hesiod's,  authorship  ;  whilst 
the  ancient  popular  opinion  on  this  subject  finds  cor- 
roboration in  Plato's  direct  allusion  to  a  certain  passage 
of  the  '  Theogony'  as  Hesiod's  recognised  work.  Allud- 
ing to  vv.  116-118  of  the  'Theogony,'  the  philosopher 
writes  in  the  'Symposium'  (178),  —  "As  Hesiod 
says,— 

'  First  Chaos  came,  and  then  broad-bosomed  Earth, 
The  everlasting  seat  of  all  that  is, 
And  Love/ 

In  other  words,  after  Chaos,  the  Earth  and  Love, 
these  two  came  into  being."  Aristophanes,  also,  in 
more  than  one  drama,  must  be  considered  to  refer  to 
the  'Theogony'  and  the  "Works."  Furthermore, 
it  is  certain  that  the  Alexandrian  critics,  to  whom 
scepticism  in  the  matter  would  have  opened  a  con- 
genial field,  never  so  much  as  hinted  a  question  con- 
cerning the  age  and  authorship  of  the  'Theogony.' 
Besides  these  two  works,  but  one  other  poem  has 
ix.  31,  §  3. 


UNIVERSITY 
THE  LIFE   OF  HES10D.       ^^Ca  19 

descended  to  our  day  under  the  name  of  Hesiod, 
unless,  indeed,  we  take  as  a  sample  of  Lis  'Eoiae,  or 
Catalogue  of  Heroines/  the  fifty-six  verses  which, 
having  slipped  their  cable,  have  got  attached  to  the 
opening  of  '  The  Shield  of  Hercules.'  The  '  Shield ' 
is  certainly  of  questionable  merit,  date,  and  authorship, 
though  a  little  hesitation  would  have  been  wise  in 
Colonel  Mure,  before  expressing  such  wholesale  con- 
demnation and  contempt  as  he  heaps  upon  it*  These 
three  poems,  at  all  events,  are  what  have  come  down 
under  the  name  and  style  of  Hesiod,  and  are  our 
specimens  of  the  three  classes  of  poetical  composition 
which  tradition  imputes  to  him: — (1)  didactic;  (2) 
historical  and  genealogical ;  (3)  short  mythical  poems. 
Under  one  or  other  of  these  heads  it  is  easy  to  group 
the  Hesiodic  poems,  no  longer  extant,  of  which  notices 
are  found  in  ancient  authors.  Thus  the  '  Astronomy  ' 
and  the  '  Maxims  of  Chiron,'  with  the  '  Ornithoman- 
teia,  or  Book  of  Augury,'  belong  to  the  first  class  ;  the 
'Eoiae,  or  Catalogue  of  Women,'  which  is  probably 
the  same  poem  as  the  '  Genealogy  of  Heroes ; '  the 
*  Melampodia,'  which  treated  of  the  renowned  pro- 
phet, prince,  and  priest  of  the  Argives,  Melampus,  and 
of  his  descendants  in  genealogical  sequence ;  and  the 
'iEgimius,'  which  gathered  round  the  so-named  my- 
thical prince  of  the  Dorians,  and  friend  and  ally  of 
Hercules,  many  genealogical  traditions  of  the  Heraclid 
and  Dorian  races, — will,  with  the  extant  'Theogony,' 
represent  the  second  ;  while  the  smaller  epics  of  *  The 
Marriage  of  Ceyx,'  *  The  Descent  to  Hades  of  Theseus/ 
*  History  of  Greek  Lit.,  ii.  424. 


20  HESIOD. 

and  the  ( Epithalamium  of  Peleus  and  Thetis/  "will 
keep  in  countenance  the  sole  extant  representative  of 
the  third  class,  and  enhance  the  possibility  that  '  The 
Shield  of  Hercules '  is  at  least  Hesiodic,  though  it  is 
safer  to  put  it  thus  vaguely  than  to  affirm  it  Hesiod's. 
A  conveniently  wide  berth  is  afforded  by  the  modern 
solution,  that  several  imputed  works  of  Hesiod  are  the 
works  of  a  school  of  authors  of  which  Hesiod  was  the 
name-giving  patriarch.  The  truth  in  this  matter  can 
only  be  approximated.  Enough,  perhaps,  is  affirmed 
when  we  say  that  in  style,  dialect,  and  flavour  of  anti- 
quity, the  '  Theogony '  and  the  '  Works '  are  more  akin 
to  each  other  than  to  the  '  Shield ; '  while,  at  the 
same  time,  the  last-named  poem  is  of  very  respectable 
age.  The  two  former  poems  are  of  the  iEolo-Boeotic 
type  of  the  ancient  epic  dialect,  while  the  l  Shield '  is 
nearer  to  the  .^Eolo- Asia, tic  branch  of  it,  used  by 
Homer.  Discrepancies,  where  they  occur,  may  be  set 
down  to  the  interpolations  of  rhapsodists,  and  to  the 
accretions  incident  to  passage  through  the  hands  of 
many  different  workmen,  after  the  original  master. 
The  style  and  merits  of  each  work  will  best  be  dis- 
cussed separately ;  and  we  shall  give  precedence  to 
Hesiod's  most  undoubted  poem,  the  '  Works  and 
Days.' 


CHAPTER  TL 


THE   WORKS   AND   DAYS. 


The  meaning  of  the  title  prefixed  to  Hesiod's  great 
didactic  poem  appears  to  be  properly  "  Farming  Opera- 
tions," "Lucky  and  Unlucky  Days,"  or,  in  short, 
"The  Husbandman's  Calendar;"  but  if  the  ethical 
scope  of  it  be  taken  into  account,  it  might,  as  Colonel 
Mure  has  remarked,  be  not  inaptly  described  as  "A 
Letter  of  Kemonstrance  and  Advice  to  a  Brother." 
And  inasmuch  as  its  object  is  to  exhort  that  brother  to 
amend  his  ways,  and  take  to  increasing  his  substance 
by  agriculture,  rather  than  dreaming  of  schemes  to 
enhance  it  by  frequenting  and  corrupting  the  lawr- 
courts,  the  two  descriptions  are  not  inconsistent  with 
each  other.  It  has  been  imputed  as  blame  to  the 
poem  that  it  hangs  loosely  together,  that  its  connec- 
tion is  obscure  and  vague, — in  short,  that  its  constitu- 
ent parts,  larger  and  smaller,  are  seldom  fitly  jointed 
and  compacted.  But  some  allowance  is  surely  to  be 
made  for  occasional  tokens  of  inartistic  workmanship 
in  so  early  a  poet,  engaged  upon  a  task  wdiere  he  had 
neither  pattern  nor  master  to  refer  to;   and  besides 


22  IIES10D. 

tills,  a  closer  study  of  the  whole  will  prove  that  the 
want  of  connectedness  in  the  work  is  more  seeming 
than  real.  Didactic  poetry,  from  Hesiod's  day  until 
the  present,  has  ever  claimed  the  privilege  of  arrang- 
ing its  hortatory  topics  pretty  much  as  is  most  con- 
venient, and  of  enforcing  its  chief  idea,  be  that  what 
it  may,  by  arguments  and  illustrations  rather  congru- 
ous in  the  main  than  marshalled  in  the  best  order  of 
their  going.  But  the  '  Works  and  Days'  is  capable 
of  tolerably  neat  division  and  subdivision.  The  first 
part  (vv.  1-383)  is  ethical  rather  than  didactic, — a  set- 
ting-forth  by  contrast,  and  by  t}ie  accessory  aid  of 
myth,  fable,  allegory,  and  proverb-lore,  of  the  superi- 
ority of  honest  labour  to  unthrift  and  idleness,  and  of 
worthy  emulation  to  unworthy  strife  and  envying. 
The  second  part  (vv.  384-764)  consists  of  practical 
hints  and  rules  as  to  husbandry,  and,  in  a  true  didactic 
strain,  furnishes  advice  how  best  to  go  about  that 
which  was  the  industrious  Boeotian's  proper  and  chief 
means  of  subsistence.  It  thus  follows  naturally  on 
the  general  exhortation  to  honest  labour  which  formed 
the  first  part  of  the  poem.  The  third  and  last  part 
is  a  religious  calendar  of  the  months,  with  remarks 
upon  the  days  most  lucky  or  unpropitious  for  this  or 
that  duty  or  occupation  of  rural  and  nautical  life.  All 
three,  however,  more  or  less  address  Perses  as  "  a  sort 
of  ideal  reader,"  and  thus  hang  together  quite  suffi- 
ciently for  didactic  coherence ;  whilst  in  each  of  the 
two  first  parts  episodic  matter  helps  to  relieve  the  dry 
routine  of  exhortation  or  precept,  and  is  introduced,  as 
we  shall  endeavour  to  show,  with  more  skill  and  sys- 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  23 

tern  than  would  appear  to  a  perfunctory  reader.  The 
first  part,  as  is  almost  universally  agreed  by  editors 
and  commentators,  begins  properly  at  v.  11,  which 
in  the  Greek  reads  as  if  it  were  a  correction  of  the 
view  held  by  the  author  in  his  'Theogony/  that 
there  was  but  one  "Eris,"  or  "Contention,"  and  which  is 
therefore  of  some  slight  weight  in  the  question  of  unity 
of  authorship  for  the  two  poems.  The  introductory 
ten  verses  are  in  all  probability  nothing  more  than 
a  shifting  proem,  in  the  shape  of  an  address  to  Jove 
and  the  Muses,  available  for  the  use  of  the  Hesiodian 
rhapsodists,  in  common  with  divers  other  like  intro- 
ductions. According  to  Pausanias,  the  Heliconians, 
who  kept  their  countryman's  great  work  engraved  on 
a  leaden  tablet,  knew  nothing  of  these  ten  verses. 
Starting,  then,  at  this  point,  the  poet  distinguishes 
between  two  goddesses  of  strife,  the  one  pernicious 
and  discord-sowing,  the  other  provocative  of  honest 
enterprise.  The  elder  and  nobler  of  the  twain  is  the 
parent  of  healthy  competition,  and  actuates  mechanics 
and  artists,  as  well  as  bards  and  beggars,  between 
which  last  trades  it  is  obvious  that  the  poet  traces  a 
not  fortuitous  connection  : — 

"  Beneficent  this  better  envy  burns, — 
Thus  emulous  his  wheel  the  potter  turns, 
The  smith  his  anvil  beats,  the  beggar  throng 
Industrious  ply,  the  bards  contend  in  song." 

— E.  33-36. 

The  wandering  minstrel  and  the  professional  beggar 
of  the  heroic  age  exercise  equally  legitimate  callings 
in  Hesiod's  view,  and  the  picture  which  he  draws 


24  HESIOD. 

'  recalls  to  us  those  of  the  "banquet-hall  in  the  Odyssey. 
When  Antinous  rates  the  swine-herd  Eumseus  for 
bringing  Ulysses  disguised  as  a  beggar -man  into  the 
hall  of  feasting,  his  grievance  is  that 

"  Of  the  tribes 
Of  vagrants  and  mean  mendicants  that  prey, 
As  kill-joys,  at  our  banquets,  we  have  got 
A  concourse  ample.     Is  it  nought  to  thee 
That  such  as  these,  here  gathering,  all  the  means 
Of  thy  young  master  waste  ? " 

— Odyssey,  xvii.  624-628  (Musgrave). 

It  is  probable  that  the  beggar's  place  was  nearer  the 
threshold  than  that  of  Phemius  the  bard,  who  had 
just  before  been  singing  to  his  harp,  or  of  other  in- 
spired minstrels,  of  whom  it  is  said  that 

"  These  o'er  all  the  world 
At  all  feasts  are  made  welcome." 

— Odyssey,  xvii.  639-641  (Musgrave). 

But  that  he  had  an  assured  footing  and  dole  in  such . 
assemblies  is  plain  from  Irus's  jealousy  of  a  supposed 
rival  beggar,  which  results  in  the  boxing-match  with 
Ulysses  in  the  18th  Book. 

To  return  to  Hesiod.  The  bettermost  kind  of  rivalry 
is  the  goddess  to  whom  he  would  have  Perses  give 
heed,  and  not  her  wrangling  sister,  who  inspires 
wrongful  dealing,  chicanery,  and  roguish  shifts,  and 
has  no  fancy  for  fair-play  or  healthy  emulation.  She, 
says  the  poet,  has  had  it  too  much  her  own  way  since 
Prometheus  stole  the  fire  from  heaven,  because  Zeus, 
as  a  punishment,  made  labour  toilsome,  and  the  idle, 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  25 

to  shirk  their  inevitable  lot,  resort  to  injustice.  "  If 
the  gods  had  not  ordained  toil,  men  might  stow  away 
their  boat-paddles  over  the  smoke,  and  there  would  be 
an  end  to  ploughing  with  mules  and  oxen  : " — 

"  But  Zeus  our  food  concealed  :  Prometheus'  art 
With  fraud  illusive  had  incensed  his  heart ; 
Sore  ills  to  man  devised  the  heavenly  sire, 
And  hid  the  shining  element  of  fire. 
Prometheus  then,  benevolent  of  soul, 
In  hollow  reed  the  spark  recovering  stole, 
And  thus  the  god  beguiled,  whose  awful  gaze 
Serene  rejoices  in  the  lightning  blaze." 

— E.  67-74. 

Till  the  Titan's  offence,  toil  and  sickness  and  human 
ills  had  been  unknown ;  but  after  that  transgression 
they  were  introduced — as  sin  into  the  world  through 
our  mother  Eve — by  Zeus's  "  beauteous  evil,"  Pandora. 
The  Father  creates  her,  and  the  immortals  rival  each 
other  in  the  gifts  that  shall  make  her  best  adapted  for 
her  work  of  witchery,  and  presently  send  her  as  a  gift 
to  Epimetheus,  the  personification  of  "  Unreflection," 
who  takes  her  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  his 
elder  and  more  foresight ed  brother,  Prometheus.  If, 
as  has  been  suggested,  we  may  take  the  wise  Prome- 
theus to  represent  the  poet,  and  Perses  to  be  implied 
in  the  weaker  Epimetheus — and  if,  too,  in  Pandora 
there  is  a  covert  allusion  to  the  foolish  wife  of  Perses, 
who  encouraged  his  extravagance,  and  seems  to  have 
inspired  Hesiod  with  an  aversion  for  her  sex — it  will 
bring  home  the  more  closely  the  pertinence  of  this 
myth  to  the  moral  lesson  which,  in  the  first  part  of 


26  HES10D. 

the  poem,  the  poet  designed  to  teach.  The  creation 
and  equipment  of  Pandora  is  one  of  Hesiod's  finest 
nights  above  a  commonly-even  level : — 

"  The  Sire  who  rules  the  earth  and  sways  the  pole 
Had  said,  and  laughter  filled  his  secret  soul: 
He  hade  the  crippled  god  his  hest  obey, 
And  mould  with  tempering  water  plastic  clay ; 
With  human  nerve  and  human  voice  invest 
The  limbs  elastic,  and  the  breathing  breast ; 
Fair  as  the  blooming  goddesses  above, 
A  virgin's  likeness  with  the  looks  of  love. 
He  bade  Minerva  teach  the  skill  that  sheds 
A  thousand  colours  in  the  gliding  threads  ; 
He  called  the  magic  of  love's  golden  queen 
To  breathe  around  a  witchery  of  mien, 
And  eager  passion's  never-sated  flame, 
And  cares  of  dress  that  prey  upon  the  frame ; 
Bade  Hermes  last  endue  with  craft  refined 
Of  treacherous  manners,  and  a  shameless  mind." 

— E.  83-99. 

The  Olympians  almost  overdo  the  bidding  of  their 
chief,  calling  in  other  helpers  besides  those  named  in 
the  above  extract : — 

"  Adored  Persuasion  and  the  Graces  young, 
Her  tapered  limbs  with  golden  jewels  hung  ; 
Round  her  fair  brow  the  lovely-tressed  Hours 
A  golden  garland  twined  of  spring's  purpureal  flowers." 

— E.  103-106. 
And  when  the  conclave  deemed  that  they  had  per- 
fected an  impersonation  of  mischief, — 

"  The  name  Pandora  to  the  maid  was  given, 
For  all  the  gods  conferred  a  gifted  grace 
To  crown  this  mischief  of  the  mortal  race. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  27 

The  sire  commands  the  winged  herald  bear 
The  finished  nymph,  the  inextricable  snare  ; 
To  Epimetheus  was  the  present  brought, 
Prometheus'  warning  vanished  from  his  thought — 
That  he  disclaim  each  offering  from  the  skies, 
And  straight  restore,  lest  ill  to  man  should  rise. 
But  he  received,  and  conscious  knew  too  late 
The  invidious  gift,  and  felt  the  curse  of  fate." 

— E.  114-124. 

How  this  gift  of  "  woman  "  was  to  be  the  source  of  pro- 
lific evil  and  sorrow,  the  poet,  it  must  be  confessed,  does 
not  very  coherently  explain.  Nothing  is  said,  in  the 
account  of  her  equipment,  of  any  chest  or  casket  sent 
with  her  by  Zeus,  or  any  other  god,  as  an  apparatus 
for  propagating  ills.  And  when  in  v.  94  of  the  poem 
we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  chest  and  the  lid, 
and  Pandora's  fatal  curiosity,  the  puzzle  is  "  how  they 
got  there."  Homer,  indeed,  glances  at  two  chests, 
one  of  good  the  other  of  evil  gifts,  in  Jove's  heavenly 
mansion  : — 

"  Two  casks  there  stand  on  Zeus'  high  palace-stair, 
One  laden  with  good  gifts,  and  one  with  ill : 
To  whomso  Zeus  ordains  a  mingled  share, 
Now  in  due  time  with  foul  he  meeteth,  now  with  fair." 

— Conington,  II.  xxiv. 

And  those  who  hold  Hesiod  to  have  lived  after  Homer, 
or  to  have  availed  himself  here  and  there  of  the  same 
pre-existent  legends,  may  infer  that  the  poet  leaves  it 
to  be  surmised  that  Pandora  was  furnished  with  the 
less  desirable  casket  for  the  express  purpose  of  woe  to 
man.  But  it  is  a  more  likely  solution  that  Prometheus, 
the    embodiment   of    mythic   philanthropy,   had   im- 


28  HESIOD. 

prisoned  "  human  ills  "  in  a  chest  in  the  abode  of  Epi- 
metheus,  and  this  chest  was  tampered  with  through 
the  same  craving  for  knowledge  which  actuated  Mother 
Eve.  This  account  is  supported  by  the  authority  of 
Proclus.  In  Hesiod,  the  first  mention  of  the  chest  is 
simultaneous  with  the  catastrophe — 

"  The  woman's  hands  an  ample  casket  bear ; 
She  lifts  the  lid — she  scatters  ills  in  air. 
Hope  sole  remained  within,  nor  took  her  flight, 
Beneath  the  casket's  verge  concealed  from  sight. 
The  unbroken  cell  with  closing  lid  the  maid 
Sealed,  and  the  cloud-assembler's  voice  obeyed. 
Issued  the  rest,  in  quick  dispersion  hurled, 
And  woes  innumerous  roamed  the  breathing  world  ; 
With  ills  the  land  is  rife,  with  ills  the  sea ; 
Diseases  haunt  our  frail  humanity  : 
Self-wandering  through  the  noon,  the  night,  they  glide 
Voiceless — a  voice  the  Power  all-wise  denied.  . 
Know  then  this  awful  truth  :  it  is  not  given 
To  elude  the  wisdom  of  omniscient  Heaven." 

— E.  131-144. 

It  is  a  beautiful  commentary  on  that  part  of  the 
legend  which  represents  Hope  as  lying  not  at  the 
bottom  of  the  casket,  but  just  beneath  the  lid  which 
in  closing  shuts  her  in,  that  this  did  not  happen 
through  inadvertence  on  Pandora's  part,  but  with  her 
connivance,  and  that  of  her  divine  prompter,  who, 
though  desirous  to  punish  mankind,  represents  a  par- 
tial benefactor  to  the  race.  The  concluding  lines  of 
the  last  extract  recall  the  reader  to  the  drift  of  the 
first  part  of  the  poem,  by  repeating  that  the  moral 
governance  of  the  universe  will  not  suffer  wrong  to 


TEE    WORKS  AND   DAYS.  29 

go  unpunished,  or  allow  innocence  to  succumb  to 
fraud. 

And  yet,  the  poet  goes  on  to  argue,  the  times  in 
which  he  lives  are  out  of  joint.  Such  men  as  his 
brother  prosper  in  an  age  which  in  wickedness  dis- 
tances its  precursors.  His  lot,  he  laments,  is  cast  in 
the  fifth  age  of  the  world ;  and  here  he  takes  occasion 
to  introduce  the  episode  of  the  five  ages  of  the  world, 
and  of  the  increaseof  corruption  as  each  succeeds  the 
other.  In  this  episode,  which  Mr  Puley  considers  to 
bear  a  more  than  accidental  resemblance  to  the  Mosaic 
writings,  the  golden  age  comes  first  —  those  happy 
times  und^exlkonoaj^rj^  when  there  was  neither 

care  nor  trouble  nor  labour,  but  life  was  a  blameless 
holiday  spent  in  gathering  self-sown  fruits  ;  and  death, 
unheralded  by  decay  or  old  age,  coming  to  men  even 
as  a  sleep,  was  the  very  ideal  of  an  Euthanasia  : — 

"  Strangers  to  ill,  they  nature's  banquets  proved, 
Rich  in  earth's  fruits,  and  of  the  blest  beloved, 
They  sank  in  death,  as  opiate  slumber  stole 
Soft  o'er  the  sense,  and  whelmed  the  willing  soul. 
Theirs  was  each  good — the  grain-exuberant  soil 
Poured  its  full  harvest  uncompelled  by  toil : 
The  virtuous  many  dwelt  in  common  blest, 
'And  all  unenvying  shared  what  all  in  peace  possessed." 

— E.  155-162. 

It  was  with  sin^inJHesiod's  view  as  in  that  of  the 
author  of  the  Book  of  Genesis,  that  death,  deserving 
the  name,  came  into  the  world.  As  for  the  golden 
race,  when  earth  in  the  fulness  of  time  closed  upon  it, 
they  became  daemons  or  genii,  angelic  beings  invisibly 


30  I1ESIOD. 

moving  over  the  earth — a  race  of  which  Homer,  indeed, 
says  nought,  but  whose  functions,  shadowed  forth  in 
Hesiod,  accord  pretty  much  with  the  account  Diotima 
gives  of  them  in  the  *  Banquet  of  Plato.'  *  Here  is 
Hesiod's  account : — 

"  When  on  this  race  the  verdant  earth  had  lain, 
By  Jove's  high  will  they  rose  a  '  genii '  train  ; 
Earth-wandering  demons  they  their  charge  began, 
The  ministers  of  good,  and  guards  of  man  : 
Veiled  with  a  mantle  of  aerial  night, 
O'er  earth's  wide  space  they  wing  their  hovering  flight, 
Disperse  the  fertile  treasures  of  the  ground, 
And  bend  their  all-observant  glance  around ; 
To  mark  the  deed  unjust,  the  just  approve, 
Their  kingly  office,  delegates  of  Jove." 

— E.  163-172. 

With  this  dim  forecasting  by  a  heathen  of  the  "  min- 
istry of  angels  "  may  be  compared  the  poet's  reference 
further  on  in  the  poem  to  the  same  invisible  agency, 
where  he  uses  the  argument  of  the  continual  oversight 
of  these  thrice  ten  thousand  genii  as  a  dissuasive  to 
corrupt  judgments,  such  as  those  which  the  Boeotian 
judges  had  given  in  favour  of  his  brother  : — 

"  Invisible  the  gods  are  ever  nigh, 
Pass  through  the  midst,  and  bend  the  all-seeing  eye ; 
Who  on  each  other  prey,  who  wrest  the  right, 
Aweless  of  Heaven's  revenge,  are  open  to  their  sight. 
For  thrice  ten  thousand  holy  daemons  rove 
The  nurturirg  earth,  the  delegates  of  Jove  ; 
Hovering  they  glide  to  earth's  extremest  bound, 
A  cloud  aerial  veils  their  forms  around — 

*  Jowett's  transl.,  i.  519. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  31 

Guardians  of  man  ;  their  glance  alike  surveys 
The  upright  judgments  and  the  unrighteous  ways." 

— E.  331-340. 

In  the  second  or  silver  age  began  declension  an  I 
degeneracy.  The  blessedness  of  this  race  consisted  in 
long  retention  of  childhood  and  its  innocence — even 
ujTfcf  a  hundred  years.  Manhood  attained,  it  became 
quarrelsome,  irreligious,  and  ungrateful  to  the  gods — 
its  creators.     This  generation  soon  had  an  end  : — 

"  Jove  angry  hid  them  straight  in  earth, 
Since  to  the  blessed  deities  of  heaven 
They  gave  not  those  respects  they  should  have  given. 
But  when  the  earth  had  hid  these,  like  the  rest, 
They  then  were  called  the  subterrestrial  blest, 
And  in  bliss  second,  having  honours  then 
Fit  for  the  infernal  spirits  of  powerful  men." 

— C.  135-142. 

In  Hesiod's  account  of  this  race  it  is  curious  to  note 
a  correspondence  with  holy  Scripture  as  to  the  term  of 
life  in  primitive  man ;  curious,  too,  that  Jove  is  not 
said  to  have  created^Jbut  to  have  laid  to  sleep,  the 
silver  face.  It  obtained  from  men,  after  its  demise, 
the  honours  of  propitiatory  sacrifice,  and  represented  the 
"blessed  spirits  of  the  departed,"  and  perhaps  the 
"  Manes  "  of  the  Latin,  without,  however,  attaining  to 
immortality.  A  rougher  type  was  that  of  the  brazen 
age,  which  the  Elizabethan  translator  Chapman  seems 
light  in  designating  as 

"  Of  wild  ash  fashioned,  stubborn  and  austere," — 

though  another  way  of  translating  the  words  which  he 


32  HESIOD. 

so  interprets  represents  these  men  of  brass  as  "  mighty 
by  reason  of  their  ashen  spears."  The  question  is  set 
at  rest  by  the  context,  in  which  the  arms  of  this  race 
are  actually  said  to  have  been  of  brass.  This  age  was 
hard  and  ferocious,  and,  unlike  those  preceding  it, 
carnivorous.  It  perished  by  mutual  slaughter,  and 
found  an  end  most  unlike  the  posthumous  honours 
of  the  silver  race,  in  an  ignominious  descent  to 
Hades  : — 

"  Their  thoughts  were  bent  on  violence  alone, 
The  deeds  of  battle  and  the  dying  groan  : 
Bloody  their  feasts,  by  wheaten  bread  unblest ; 
Of  adamant  was  each  unyielding  breast. 
Huge,  nerved  with  strength,  each  hardy  giant  stands, 
And  mocks  approach  with  unresisted  hands  ; 
Their  mansions,  implements,  and  armour  shine 
In  brass — dark  iron  slept  within  the  mine. 
They  by  each  other's  hands  inglorious  fell, 
In  horrid  darkness  plunged,  the  house  of  hell. 
Fierce  though  they  were,  their  mortal  course  was  run, 
Death  gloomy  seized,  and  snatched  them  from  the  sun." 

— E.  193-204. 

At  this  stage  Hesiod  suspends  awhile  the  downward 
course  of  ages  and  races,  and  reflecting  that,  having 
commemorated  the  "  genii  V  on  earth  and  the  blessed 
spirits  in  Hades,  he  must  not  overlook  the  "  heroes,"  a 
veneration  for  whom  formed  an  important  part  of  the 
religion  of  Hellas,  brings  the  "  heroic  age  " — apparently 
unmetallic — into  a  place  to  which  their  prowess  en- 
titled them,  next  to  the  brazen  age  \  and  at  the  same 
time,  contrasting  their  virtues  with  the  character  of 
their  violent  predecessors,   assigns  to  them  an   after- 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  33 

state  nearer  to  that  of  the  gold  and  silver  races.  Of 
their  lives  and  acts  Hesiod  tells  us  that — 

"  These  dread  battle  hastened  to  their  end  ; 
Some  when  the  sevenfold  gates  of  Thebes  ascend, 
The  Cadmian  realm,  where  they  with  savage  might 
Strove  for  the  flocks  of  (Edipus  in  fight : 
Some  war  in  navies  led  to  Troy's  far  shore, 
O'er  the  great  space  of  sea  their  course  they  bore, 
For  sake  of  Helen  with  the  golden  hair, 
And  death  for  Helen's  sake  o'er  whelmed  them  there." 

— E.  211-218. 

Their  rest  is  in  the  Isles  of  the  Blest,  and  in 

"  A  life,  a  seat,  distinct  from  human  kind, 
Beside  the  deepening  whirlpools  of  the  main, 
In  those  black  isles  where  Cronos  holds  his  reign, 
Apart  from  heaven's  immortals  ;  calm  they  share 
A  rest  unsullied  by  the  clouds  of  care. 
And  yearly,  thrice  with  sweet  luxuriance  crowned, 
Springs  the  ripe  harvest  from  the  teeming  ground." 

— E.  220-226. 

Who  does  not  recognise  the  same  regions  beyond 
circling  ocean,  of  which  Horace  long  after  says  in  his 
sixteenth  Epode, —    . 

"  The  rich  and  happy  isles, 
Where  Ceres  year  by  year  crowns  all  the  untilled  land  with 

sheaves, 
And  the  vine  with  purple  clusters  droops,  unpruned  of  all 

her  leaves. 

Nor  are  the  swelling  seeds  burnt  up  within  the  thirsty 

clods, 
So  kindly  blends  the  seasons  there  the  king  of  all  the  gods. 
a.  c.  vol.  xv.  o 


34  HESIOD. 

For  Jupiter,  when  he  with  brass  the  golden  age  alloyed, 
That  blissful  region  set  apart  by  the  good  to  be  enjoyed." 
—Theodore  Martin,  p.  242. 

But  with  this  exception  and  interval,  the  ages  tend 
to  the  worse.  Now  comes  the  iron  age,  corrupt,  un- 
restful,  and  toilsome;  wherein,  in  strong  contrast  to  the 
silver  age,  which  enjoyed  a  hundred  years  of  childhood 
and  youth,  premature  senility  is  an  index  of  physical 
degeneracy  :— 

"  Scarcely  they  spring  into  the  light  of  day, 
Ere  age  untimely  shows  their  temples  grey." 

— E.  237,  238. 

"With  this  race,  Hesiod  goes  on  to  tell  us,  family  ties, 
the  sanctity  of  oaths,  and  the  plighted  faith,  are  dead 
letters.  Might  is  right.  Lynch-lawyers  get  the  upper 
hand.  All  is  "  violence,  oppression,  and  sword  law," 
and 

"  Though  still  the  gods  a  weight  of  care  bestow, 
And  still  some  good  is  mingled  with  the  woe," 

yet,  as  this  iron  age,  at  the  transition  point  of  which 
Hesiod's  own  lot  is  cast,  shades  off  into  a  lower  and 
worse  generation,  the  lowest  depth  will  at  length  be 
reached,  and  baseness,  corruption,  crooked  ways  and 
words,  will  supplant  all  nobler  impulses, 

"  Till  those  fair  forms,  in  snowy  raiment  bright, 

From  the  broad  earth  have  winged  their  heavenward  flight 

Called  to  th'  eternal  synod  of  the  skies, 

The  virgins,  Modesty  and  Justice,  rise, 

And  leave  forsaken  man  to  mourn  below 

The  weight  of  evil  and  the  cureless  woe." 

— E.  259-264. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  35 

Having  thus  finished  his  allegory  of  the  five  ages, 
and  identified  his  own  generation  with  the  last  and 
worst,  it  is  nowise  abrupt  or  unseasonable  in  the  poet 
to  bring  home  to  the  kings  and  judges  of  Boeotia  their 
share  in  the  blame  of  things  being  as  they  are,  by 
means  of  an  apologue  or  fable.  Some  have  said  that 
it  ought  to  be  entitled  "  The  HawTk  and  the  Dove,"  but 
Hesiod  probably  had  in  his  mind  the  legend  of  Tereus 
and.  Philomela  ;  and  the  epithet  attached  to  the  night- 
ingale in  v.  268  probably  refers  to  the  tincture  of 
green  on  its  dark-coloured  throat,  with  which  one  of 
our  older  ornithologists  credits  that  bird.  The  fable  is 
as  follows,  and  it  represents  oppression  and  violence  in 
their  naked  repulsiveness.  Contrary  to  the  use  of 
later  fabulists,  the  moral  is  put  in  the  mouth  of  the 
hawk,  not  of  the  narrator  : — 

"  A  stooping  hawk,  crook- taloned,  from  the  vale 

Bore  in  his  pounce  a  neck-streaked  nightingale, 

And  snatched  among  the  clouds  ;  beneath  the  stroke 

This  piteous  shrieked,  and  that  imperious  spoke  : 

1  Wretch,  why  these  screams  1  a  stronger  holds  thee  now; 

Where'er  I  shape  my  course  a  captive  thou, 

Maugre  thy  song,  must  company  my  way  ; 

I  rend  my  banquet,  or  I  loose  my  prey. 

Senseless  is  he  who  dares  with  power  contend  ; 

Defeat,  rebuke,  despair  shall  be  his  end." 

— E.  267-276. 

From  fable  the  poet  passes  at  once  to  a  more  direct 
appeal.  Addressing  Perses  and  the  judges,  he  points 
out  that  injustice  and  overbearing  conduct  not  only 
crush  the  poor  man,  but  eventually  the  rich  and  power- 
ful fail  to  stand  against  its  consequences.     He  pictures 


36  HESIOD. 

the  rule  of  wrong  and  the  rule  of  right,  and  forcibly 
contrasts  the  effects  of  each  on  the  prosperity  of  com- 
munities.    Here  are  the  results  of  injustice  : — 

"  Lo  !  with  crooked  judgments  runs  th'  avenger  stern 
Of  oaths  forsworn,  and  eke  the  murmuring  voice 
Of  Justice  rudely  dragged,  where  base  men  lead 
Thro'  greed  of  gain,  and  olden  rights  misjudge 
With  verdict  perverse.     She  with  mist  enwrapt 
Follows,  lamenting  homes  and  haunts  of  men, 
To  deal  out  ills  to  such  as  drive  her  forth, 
By  custom  of  wrong  judgment,  from  her  seats." — D. 

And  here,  by  contrast,  are  the  fruits  of  righteousness 
and  justice,  practised  by  cities  and  nations  : — 

"  Genial  peace 
Dwells  in  their  borders,  and  their  youth  increase. 
Nor  Zeus,  whose  radiant  eyes  behold  afar, 
Hangs  forth  in  heaven  the  signs  of  grievous  war. 
Nor  scathe  nor  famine  on  the  righteous  prey  : 
Earth  foodful  teems,  and  banquets  crown  the  day. 
Rich  wave  their  mountain  oaks  ;  the  topmost  tree 
The  rustling  acorn  fills,  its  trunk  the  murmuring  bee. 
Burdened  with  fleece  their  panting  flocks  ;  the  race 
Of  woman  soft  reflects  the  father's  face  : 
Still  flourish  they,  nor  tempt  with  ships  the  main; 
The  fruits  of  earth  are  poured  from  every  plain." 

— E.  303-314. 

In  the  lines  italicised  the  old  poet  anticipates  that 
criterion  of  honest  wedlock  which  Horace  shapes  into 
the  line,  "  The  father's  features  in  his  children  smile  " 
(Odes,  iv.  5-23,  Con.);  and  Catullus  into  the  beautiful 
wish  for  Julia  and  Manlius,  that  their  offspring 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  37 

"  May  strike 
Strangers  when  the  boy  they  meet 
As  his  father's  counterfeit ; 
And  his  face  the  index  be 
Of  his  mother's  chastity." 

— Epithalam.  (Theod.  Martin). 

After  a  recurrence,  suggested  by  this  train  of  thought, 
to  the  opposite  picture,  and  an  appeal  to  the  judges  to 
remember  those  invisible  watchers  who  evermore  sup- 
port the  right  and  redress  the  wrong,  as  well  as  the 
intercession  of  Justice  at  the  throne  of  Zeus  for  them 
that  are  defrauded  and  oppressed,  the  poet  for  a  moment 
resorts  to  irony,  and,  like  Job,  asks  "  what  profit  there 
is  in  righteousness,  when  wrong  seems  to  carry  all 
before  it  1 "  But  only  for  a  moment.  In  a  short  but 
fine  image,  Perses  is  invited  to  lift  up  his  eyes  to  the 
distant  seat, — 

"  Where  virtue  dwells  on  high,  the  gods  before 
Have  placed  the  dew  that  drops  from  every  pore. 
And  at  the  first  to  that  sublime  abode 
Long,  steep  the  ascent,  and  rough  the  rugged  road. 
But  when  thy  slow  steps  the  rude  summit  gain, 
Easy  the  path,  and  level  is  the  plain." 

— E.  389-394. 

He  is  urged  again  to  rely  on  his  own  industry,  and 
encouraged  to  find  in  work  the  antidote  to  famine,  and 
the  favour  of  bright-crowned  Demeter,-who  can  fill  his 
barns  with  abundance  of  corn.  That  which  is  laid  up 
m  your  own  granary  (he  is  reminded  in  a  series  of 
terse  economic  maxims,  which  enforce  Hesiod's  general 
exhortation)  does  not  trouble  you  like  that  which  you 


38  IIESIOD. 

borrow,  or  that  which  you  covet.  Honesty  is  the  "best 
policy.  Shame  is  found  with  poverty  born  of  idleness; 
whereas  a  just  boldness  inspirits  him  whose  wealth  is 
gained  by  honest  work  and  the  favour  of  Heaven. 
Some  of  these  adagial  maxims  will  form  part  of  the 
chapter  on  "  Hesiod's  Proverbial  Philosophy ; "  and  of 
the  rest  it  may  suffice  to  say,  that  the  poet  has  his  own 
quaint  forceful  way  of  prescribing  the  best  rules  for 
dealing  with  friends  and  neighbours,  as  to  giving  and 
entertaining,  and  with  regard  to  women,  children,  and 
domestics.  Tn  most  of  these  maxims  the  ruling  motive 
appears  to  be  expediency.  In  reference  to  the  fair  sex, 
it  is  plain  that  he  is  on  the  defensive,  and  regards 
them  as  true  representatives  of  Pandora,  with  whom 
the  less  a  man  has  to  do,  the  less  he  will  be  duped, 
the  less  hurt  will  there  be  to  his  substance.  As  old 
Chapman  renders  it, 

"  He  that  gives 
A  woman  trust  doth  trust  a  den  of  thieves." 

— C.  585. 

As  to  family,  his  view  is  that  "  the  more  children 
the  more  cares/'  *  The  best  thing  is  to  have  an  only 
son,  to  nurse  and  consolidate  the  patrimony;  and  if  a 
man  has  more,  it  is  to  be  desired  that  he  should  die 
old,  so  as  to  prevent  litigation  (a  personal  grievance 
this)  between  young  heirs.  And  yet,  adds  the  pious 
bard,  it  lies  with  Zeus  to  give  store  of  wealth  to  even 
a  large  family ;  and  he  seems  to  imply  that  where  such 

*  "  He  that  hath  a  wife  and  children  hath  given  pledges  to 
fortune. " — Bacon. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  39 

a  family  is  thrifty  there  will  be  the  greater  aggregate 
increase  of  property.  Such  is  the  advice,  he  remarks 
in  concluding  the  first  part  of  his  poem,  which  he  has 
to  offer  to  any  one  who  desires  wealth ;  to  observe  these 
rules  and  cautions,  and  to  devote  himself  to  the  system- 
atic routine  of  the  farming  operations,  which,  to  his 
mind,  constitute  the  highroad  to  getting  rich. 

From  the  very  outset  of  the  second  part  of  the 
'Works  and  Days/  a  more  definite  and  practical 
character  attaches  to  Hesiod's  precepts  touching  agri- 
culture. Hitherto  his  exhortation  to  his  brother  had 
harped  on  the  one  string  of  "  work,  work  ;*■■  and  now, 
as  agriculture  was  the  Boeotian's  work,  he  proceeds 
to  prescribe  and  illustrate  the  modus  operandi,  and 
the  seasons  best  adapted  for  each  operation.  This  is 
really  the  didactic  portion  of  Hesiod's  Georgics,  if  we 
may  so  call  his  poem  on  agriculture ;  and  it  is  curiously 
interesting  to  study,  by  the  light  he  affords,  the  theory 
and  practice  of  very  old-world  farming. 

As  apparently  he  was  ignorant  of  any  calendar  of 
months  by  which  the  time  of  year  might  be  described, 
he  has  recourse  to  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  stars, 
whose  annual  motion  was  known  to  him,  to  indicate 
the  seasons  of  the  year.  Thus  the  husbandman  is 
bidden  to  begin  cutting  his  corn  at  the  rising  of  the 
Pleiads  (in  May),  and  his  ploughing  when  they  set  (in 
November).  They  are  invisible  for  forty  days  and 
nights,  during  which  time,  as  he  tells  us  later  on, 
sailing,  which  with  the  Boeotian  was  second  in  im- 
portance to  agriculture  (inasmuch  as  it  subserved  the 
exportation  of  his  produce),  was  suspended,  and  works 


40  HESIOD. 

on   the   farm   came   on   instead.     To    quote    Elton's 
version : — 

"When  Atlas-born  the  Pleiad  stars  arise 
Before  the  sun  above  the  dawning  skies, 
'Tis  time  to  reap  ;  and  when  they  sink  below 
The  morn-illumined  west,  'tis  time  to  sow. 
Know  too,  they  set,  immerged  into  the  sun, 
While  forty  days  entire  their  circle  run  ; 
And  with  the  lapse  of  the  revolving  year, 
When  sharpened  is  the  sickle,  reappear. 
Law  of  the  fields,  and  known  to  every  swain 
Who  turns  the  laboured  soil  beside  the  main  ; 
Or  who,  remote  from  billowy  ocean's  gales, 
Fills  the  rich  glebe  of  inland- winding  vales." 

— E.  525-536. 

With  Hesiod,  therefore,  as  with  us,  ploughing  and 
sowing  began,  for  early  crops,  in  late  autumn ;  and  to 
be  even  with  the  world  around  him,  and  not  depend- 
ent on  his  neighbours,  a  man  must  (he  tells  his  ne'er- 
do-well  brother)  "  strip  to  plough,  strip  to  sow,  and 
strip  to  reap," — advice  which  Virgil  has  repeated 
in  his  first  Georgic.  He  seems  to  imply,  too,  in  v. 
398,  that  it  is  a  man's  own  fault  if  he  does  not  avail 
himself  of  the  times  and  the  seasons  which  the  Gods 
have  assigned  and  ordained,  and  of  which  the  stars  are 
meant  to  admonish  him.  If  he  neglect  to  do  so,  he 
and  his  wife  and  children  cannot  reasonably  complain 
if  friends  get  tired,  of  repeated  applications  for  relief. 
But  suppose  the  better  course  of  industrious  labour 
resolved  upon.  The  first  thing  the  farmer  has  to  do 
is  to  take  a  house,  and  get  an  unmarried  female  slave, 
and  an  ox  to  plough  with,  and  then  the  farming  ini- 


THE    WORKS  AND  DA  YS.  4'1 

plements  suited  to  his  hand.  It  will  never  do  to  be 
always  borrowing,  and  so  waiting  till  others  can  lend, 
and  the  season  has  glided  away.  Delay  is  always  bad 
policy : — 

a  The  work-deferrer  never 
Sees  full  his  barn,  nor  he  that  leaves  work  ever, 
And  still  is  gadding  out.     Care-flying  ease 
Gives  labour  ever  competent  increase  : 
He  that  with  doubts  Lis  needful  business  crosses 
Is  always  wrestling  with  uncertain  losses." 

— C.  48-53. 

Accordingly,  on  the  principle  of  having  all  proper 
implements  of  one's  own,  the  poet  proceeds  to  give 
instructions  for  the  most  approved  make  of  a  wain,  a 
plough,  a  mortar,  a  pestle,  and  so  forth.  The  time  to 
fell  timber,  so  that  it  be  not  worm-eaten,  and  so  that 
it  may  not  be  cut  when  the  sap  is  running,  is  when  in 
autumn  the  Dog-star,  Sirius,  "  gets  more  night  and  less 
day ;  " — in  other  words,  when  the  summer  heats  abate, 
and  men's  bodies  take  a  turn  to  greater  lissomness  and 
moisture.  The  pestle  and  mortar  prescribed  were  a 
stone  handmill  or  quern,  for  Crushing  and  bruising  corn 
and  other  grain,  and  bring  us  back  to  days  of  very 
primitive  simplicity,  though  still  in  use  in  the  days  of 
Aristophanes.  So  minute  is  the  poet  in  his  directions 
for  making  the  axle-tree  of  a  waggon,  that  he  recom- 
mends its  length  to  be  seven  feet,  but  adds  that  it  is 
well  to  cut  an  eight-foot  length,  that  one  foot  sawn  off 
may  serve  for  the  head  of  a  mallet  for  driving  in  stakes. 
The  axles  of  modern  carts  are  about  six  feet  long. 
But  his  great  concern  is,  to  give  full  particulars  about 


42  HESIOD. 

the  proper  wood  and  shape  for  the  various  parts  of  his 
plough.  The  plough-tail  (Virgil's  "buris,"Georg.  i.  170) 
is  to  be  of  ilex  wood,  which  a  servant  of  Athena — i.e., 
a  carpenter — is  to  fasten  with  nails  to  the  share-beam, 
and  fit  to  the  pole.  It  is  well,  he  says,  to  have  two 
ploughs,  in  case  of  an  accident  to  a  single  one.  And 
whilst  one  of  these  was  to  have  plough  -  tail,  share- 
beam,  and  pole  all  of  one  piece  of  timber,  the  other 
was  to  be  of  three  parts,  each  of  different  timber,  and 
all  fastened  with  nails.  This  latter  is  apparently  the 
better  of  the  two,  that  which  is  all  of  one  wood  being 
a  most  primitive  implement,  simply  "  a  forked  bough." 
The  soundest  poles  are  made  of  bay  or  elm,  share-beams 
of  oak,  and  plough-tails  of  ilex  oak.  For  draught 
and  yoking  together,  nine-year-old  oxen  are  besi,,  be- 
cause, being  past  the  mischievous  and  frolicsome  age, 
they  are  not  likely  to  break  the  pole  and  leave  the 
ploughing  in  the  middle.  Directions  follow  this  some- 
what dry  detail  as  to  the  choice  of  a  ploughman  : — 

"  In  forty's  prime  thy  ploughman  ;  one  with  bread 
Of  four-squared  loaf  in  double  portions  fed. 
He  steadily  will  cut  the  furrow  true, 
Nor  toward  his  fellows  glance  a  rambling  view, 
Still  on  his  task  intent :  a  stripling  throws 
Heedless  the  seed,  and  in  one  furrow  strows 
The  lavish  handful  twice,  while  wistful  stray 
His  longing  thoughts  to  comrades  far  away." 

— E.  602-609. 

The  loaf  referred  to  was  scored  crosswise,  like  the 
Latin  "quadra"  or  our  cross-bun,  and  the  object  in 
this  case  was  easy  and  equal  division  of  the  slaves' 


THE    WORKS  AND   DAYS.  43 

rations  Theocritus,  xxiv.  136,  speaks  of  "a  big 
Doric  loaf  in  a  basket,  such  as  would  safely  satisfy  a 
garden-digger ; "  and  it  is  probable  that,  in  prescribing 
a  loaf  with  eight  quarterings,  Hesiod  means  "  double 
rations,"  thereby  implying  that  it  is  good  economy  to 
feed  your  men  well,  if  you  would  have  them  work 
well. 

The  poet  next  proceeds  to  advise  that  the  cattle 
should  be  kept  in  good  condition,  and  ready  for  work, 
when  the  migratory  crane's  cry  bespeaks  winter's 
advent  and  the  prospect  of  wet  weather.  Everything 
should  be  in  readiness  for  this  ;  and  it  will  not  do  to 
rely  on  borrowing  a  yoke  of  oxen  from  a  neighbour  at 
the  busy  time.  The  wideawake  neighbour  may  up 
and  say, — 

"  Work  up  thyself  a  waggon  of  thine  own, 
For  to  the  foolish  borrower  is  not  known 
That  each  wain  asks  a  hundred  joints  of  wood : 
These  things  ask  forecast,  and  thou  shouldst  make  good 
At  home,  before  thy  need  so  instant  stood." 

— C.  122-126. 

A  farmer  who  knows  what  he  is  about  will  have, 
Hesiod  says,  all  his  gear  ready.  He  and  his  slaves 
will  turn  to  and  plough,  wet  and  dry,  early  and  late, 
working  manfully  themselves,  and  not  forgetting  to 
pray  Zeus  and  Demeter  to  bless  the  labour  of  their 
hand,  and  bestow  their  fruits.  An  odd  addition  to  the 
farmer's  staff  is  the  slave  who  goes  behind  the  plough 
to  break  the  clods,  and  give  trouble  to  the  birds  by 
covering  up  the  seed.  In  Wilkinson's  '  Ancient 
Egyptians'    (ii.    13),   an    engraving   representing   the 


44  HESIOD. 

processes  of  ploughing  and  hoeing  gives  a  slave  in 
the  rear  with  a  wooden  hoe,  engaged  in  breaking  the 
clods.  A  little  further  on,  a  reference  to  the  same 
interesting  work  explains  Hesiod's  meaning  where  he 
says,  that  if  ploughing  is  done  at  the  point  of  mid- 
winter, men  will  have  to  sit  or  stoop  to  reap  (on  ac- 
count, it  should  seem,  of  the  lowness  of  the  ears), 
"  enclosing  but  little  round  the  hand,  and  often  cov- 
ered with  dust  while  binding  it  up."  To  judge  by 
the  Egyptian  paintings,  wheat  was  reaped  by  men  in 
an  upright  posture,  because  they  cut  the  straw  much 
nearer  the  ear  than  the  ground.  Of  course,  if  the 
straw  was  very  short,  the  reaper  had  to  stoop,  or  to 
sit,  if  he  liked  it  better.  He  is  represented  by  Hesiod 
as  seizing  a  handful  of  corn  in  his  left  hand,  while 
he  cuts  it  with  his  right,  and  binding  the  stalks  in 
bundles  in  opposite  directions,  the  handfuls  being 
disposed  alternately,  stalks  one  way  and  ears  the 
other.  The  basket  of  which  Hesiod  speaks  as  carry- 
ing the  ears  clipped  from  the  straw,  has  its  illustration 
also  in  the  same  pages.  This  is  the  explanation  given 
also  by  Mr  Paley  in  his  notes.  On  the  whole,  the 
poet  is  strongly  against  late  sowing,  though  he  admits 
that  if  you  can  sow  late  in  the  dry,  rainy  weather  in 
early  spring  may  bring  on  the  corn  so  as  to  be  as  for- 
ward as  that  which  was  ear]y  sown  : — 

u  So  shall  an  equal  crop  thy  time  repair, 
With  his  who  earlier  launched  the  shining  share." 

— E.  676,  677. 

In  this  part  of  the  '  Works '  our  poet  is  exception- 
ally matter-of-fact ;  but  as  he  proceeds  to  tell  what  is 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  45 

to  be  done  and  what  avoided  in  the  wintry  season,  he 
becomes  more  amusing.  He  warns  against  the  error 
of  supposing  that  this  is  the  time  for  gossip  at  the 
smithy,  there  being  plenty  of  work  for  an  active  man 
to  do  in  the  coldest  weather.  In  fact,  then  is  the 
time  for  household  work,  and  for  so  employing  your 
leisure 

"  That,  famine-smitten,  thou  may'st  ne'er  be  seen 
To  grasp  a  tumid  foot  with  hand  from  hunger  lean  ;" — 

— E.  690,  691. 

a  figurative  expression  for  a  state  of  starvation,  which 
emaciates  the  hand  and  swells  the  foot  by  reason  of 
weakness.  As  a  proper  pendant  to  this  sound  advice, 
Hesiod  adds  his  much-admired  description  of  winter, 
the  storms  and  cold  of  which  he  could  thoroughly 
speak  of  from  the  experience  of  a  mountain  residence 
in  Boeotia.  This  episode  is  so  poetic, — even  if  over- 
wrought in  some  portions, — that  critics  have  suggested 
its  being  a  later  addition  of  a  rhapsodist  of  the  post- 
Hesiodic  school;  and  there  are  two  or  three  tokens 
(e.  g.,  the  mention  of  "  Lenseon  "  as  the  month  that 
answers  to  our  Christmastide  and  beginning  of  Janu- 
ary, whereas  the  Boeotians  knew  no  such  name,  but 
called  the  period  in  question  "Bucatius")  which  be- 
speak a  later  authorship.  And  yet  a  sensitiveness  to 
cold,  and  a  lively  description  of  its  phenomena,  is 
quite  in  keeping  with  the  poet's  disparagement  of 
Ascra ;  and  further,  it  is  quite  possible  that,  a  propos 
of  Hesiod  and  his  works,  theories  of  interpolation  have 
been  suffered  to  overstep  due  limits.     Inclination,  and 


46  HESIOD. 

absence  of  any  certain  data,  combine  to  facilitate  our 
acceptance  of  this  fine  passage  as  the  poet's  own  handi- 
work. Indeed,  it  were  a  hard  fate  for  any  poet  if,  in 
the  lapse  of  years,  his  beauties  were  to  be  pronounced 
spurious  by  hypercriticism,  and  his  level  passages  alone 
left  to  give  an  idea  of  his  calibre.  We  give  the  descrip- 
tion of  winter  from  Elton's  version  : — 

"  Beware  the  January  month  ;  beware 

Those  hurtful  days,  that  keenly-piercing  air 

Which  flays  the  steers,  while  frosts  their  horrors  cast, 

Congeal  the  ground,  and  sharpen  every  blast. 

From  Thracia's  courser-teeming  region  sweeps 

The  northern  wind,  and,  breathing  on  the  deeps, 

Heaves  wide  the  troubled  surge  :  earth,  echoing,  roars 

From  the  deep  forests  and  the  sea  beat  shores. 

He  from  the  mountain-top,  with  shattering  stroke, 

Rends  the  broad  pine,  and  many  a  branching  oak 

Hurls  'thwart  the  glen  :  when  sudden,  from  on  high, 

With  headlong  fury  rushing  down  the  sky, 

The  whirlwind  stoops  to  earth  ;  then  deepening  round 

Swells  the  loud  storm,  and  all  the  boundless  woods  resound. 

The  beasts  their  cowering  tails  with  trembling  fold, 

And  shrink  and  shudder  at  the  gusty  cold. 

Though  thick  the  hairy  coat,  the  shaggy  skin, 

Yet  that  all-chilling  breath  shall  pierce  within. 

Not  his  rough  hide  the  ox  can  then  avail, 

The  long-haired  goat  defenceless  feels  the  gale  ; 

Yet  vain  the  north  wind's  rushing  strength  to  wound 

The  flock,  with  sheltering  fleeces  fenced  around. 

And  now  the  horned  and  unhorned  kind, 
Whose  lair  is  in  the  wood,  sore  famished  grind 
Their  sounding  jaws,  and  frozen  and  quaking  fly, 
Where  oaks  the  mountain-dells  imbranch  on  high  ; 


f  UNIVERSITY 
TUB    WORKS  AXD  DATS.  47 

They  seek  to  couch  in  thickets  of  the  glen, 

Or  lurk  deep  sheltered  in  the  rocky  den. 

Like  aged  men  who,  propped  on  crutches,  tread 

Tottering,  with  broken  strength  and  stooping  head, 

So  move  the  beasts  of  earth,  and,  creeping  low, 

Shun  the  white  flakes  and  dread  the  drifting  snow.'7 

— E.  700-745. 

The  lines  italicised  scarcely  realise  the  poet's  compari- 
son of  the  crouching  beasts  to  three-footed  old  men,  or 
old  men  crawling  with  the  help  of  a  stick,  which  in 
the  original  recalls,  as  Hesiod  doubtless  meant  it  to 
do,  the  famous  local  legend  of  the  Sphinx. 

"Now,"  adds  the  poet,  "is  the  time  to  go  warm- 
clad,  thick-shod,  and  with  a  waterproof  cape  over  the 
shoulders,  and  a  fur  cap,  lined  with  felt,  about  the 
head  and  ears."  He  certainly  knew  how  to  take  care 
of  himself.  But  he  is  equally  thoughtful  for  his 
hinds.  When  at  this  season  the  rain  betokened  by  a 
misty  morning  sets  in  at  night,  and  cold  and  wet 
interfere  with  husbandry,  a  time  "  severe  to  flocks,  nor 
less  to  man  severe,"  then,  because  workmen  need  more 
food  in  cold  weather,  but  cattle,  having  little  work 
by  day  and  plenty  of  rest  at  night,  can  do  with  less, — - 

"  Feed  thy  keen  husbandmen  with  larger  bread, 
With  half  their  provender  thy  steers  be  fed. 
Them  rest  assists  ;  the  night's  protracted  length 
Becruits  their  vigour  and  supplies  their  strength. 
This  rule  observe,  while  still  the  various  earth 
Gives  every  fruit  and  kindly  seedling  birth  ; 
Still  to  the  toil  proportionate  the  cheer, 
The  day  to  night,  and  equalise  the  year." 

— E.  775-782. 


48  HESIOD. 

And  now  the  poet  turns  to  vine- dressing.  He  dates 
k  the  early  spring  by  the  rising  of  Arcturus,  sixty  days 
*,  after  the  winter  solstice  (February  19),  which  is  soon 
followed  by  the  advent  of  the  swallow.  This  is  the 
season  for  vine-trimming ;  but  when  the  snail  (which 
Hesiod  characteristically,  and  in  language  resembling 
that  used  in  oracular  responses,  designates  as  "  house- 
carrier")  quits  the  earth  and  climbs  the  trees,  to 
shelter  itself  from  the  Pleiads,  then  vine-culture  must 
give  place  (about  the  middle  of  May)  to  the  early 
harvest.     Then  must  men  rise  betimes  : — 

"  Lo  !  the  third  portion  of  thy  labours  cares 
The  early  morn  anticipating  shares  : 
In  early  morn  the  labour  swiftly  wastes, 
In  early  mom  the  speeded  journey  hastes, 
The  time  when  many  a  traveller  tracks  the  plain, 
And  the  yoked  oxen  bend  them  to  the  wain." 

— E.  801-806. 

A  brief  and  picturesque  episode  follows  about  the 
permissible  rest  and  enjoyment  of  the  summer  season, 
when  artichokes  flower,  and  the  "  cicala "  (as  Hesiod 
accurately  puts  it)  pours  forth  "  song  from  its  wings  " 
— the  result  of  friction  or  vibration.  "  Then,"  he 
says,  "fat  kids,  mellow  wine,  and  gay  maidens  are  fair 
relaxation  for  the  sun-scorched  rustic,"  who,  however, 
is  supposed  to  make  merry  with  temperate  cups,  and 
to  enjoy  the  cool  shade  and  trickling  rill  quite  as 
much  as  the  grape-juice.  Hesiod  prescribes  three 
cups  of  water  to  one  of  wine ;  and,  as  Cratinus's 
question     in     Athenseus  —  "  Will     it     bear     three 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  49 

parts  water?"  —  suggests,  only  generous  wine  will 
stand  such  dilution.  If  such  potations  are  ever  season- 
able, however,  it  will  be  in  the  greatest  heat  of  sum- 
mer, when  the  Dog  Star  burns.  The  rising  of  Orion  is 
the  time  for  threshing  and  winnowing  (i.e.,  about  the 
middle  of  July) ;  and  this  operation  appears  to  have 
been  performed  by  drawing  over  the  corn  the  heavy- 
toothed  plank  or  "  tribulum,"  or  trampling  it  by  means 
of  cattle  on  a  smooth  level  threshing-floor.  In  some 
parts  of  Europe,  Mr  Paley  informs  us,  the  old  process 
is  still  retained.  After  the  corn  has  been  winnowed, 
Hesiod  counsels  a  revision  of  the  household  staff,  in 
language  of  which  Chapman  catches  the  humour  : — 

"  Make  then  thy  man-swain  one  that  hath  no  house, 
Thy  handmaid  one  that  hath  nor  child  nor  spouse : 
Handmaids  that  children  have  are  ravenous. 
A  mastiff  likewise  nourish  still  at  home, 
Whose  teeth  are  sharp  and  close  as  any  comb, 
And  meat  him  well,  to  keep  with  stronger  guard 
The  day -sleep-night-wake  man  from  forth  thy  yard." 

—a  346-352. 

"When  Sirius  and  Orion  are  in  mid-heaven,  and  Arc- 
turus  is  rising,  then  the  grapes  are  to  be  gathered,  so 
that  Hesiod's  vintage  would  be  in  the  middle  of  Sep- 
tember ;  and  he  prescribes  exactly  the  process  of 
(1)  drying  the  grapes  in  the  sun,  (2)  drying  them  in 
the  shade  to  prevent  fermentation,  and  (3)  treading 
and  squeezing  out  the  wine  : — 

"  The  rosy-fingered  morn  the  vintage  calls  ; 

Then  bear  the  gathered  grapes  within  thy  walls. 
A.  C.  Vol.  XV.  D 


50  HESIOD. 

Ten  days  and  nights  exposed  the  clusters  lay, 
Basked  in  the  radiance  of  each  mellowing  day. 
Let  five  their  circling  round  successive  run, 
Whilst  lie  thy  grapes  o'ershaded  from  the  sun ; 
The  sixth  express  the  harvest  of  the  vine, 
And  teach  thy  vats  to  foam  with  joy-inspiring  wine." 

— E.  851-858. 

When  the  Pleiads,  Hyads,  and  Orion  set,  it  is  time 
to  plough  again.  But  not  to  go  on  a  voyage  !  Though, 
as  we  have  before  stated,  and  as  Hesiod  seems  particu- 
larly anxious  to  have  it  known,  he  was  no  sailor,  our 
poet  gives  now  directions  how  to  keep  boats  and 
tackle  safe  and  sound  in  the  wintry  season,  by  means 
of  a  rude  breakwater  of  stones,  and  by  taking  the 
plug  out  of  the  keel  to  prevent  its  rotting.  The 
best  season  for  voyaging  is  between  midsummer  and 
autumn,  he  says  ;  only  it  requires  haste,  to  avoid  the 
winter  rains.  The  other  and  less  desirable  time  is  in 
spring,  when  the  leaves  at  the  end  of  a  spray  have 
grown  to  the  length  of  a  crow's  foot  —  a  compara- 
tive measurement,  which  Mr  Paley  observes  is  still 
retained  in  the  popular  name  of  some  species  of 
the  ranunculus — crowfoot ;  but  Hesiod  calls  this  a 
"snatched  voyage,"  and  holds  the  love  of  gain  that 
essays  it  foolhardy.  He  concludes  his  remarks  on 
this  head  by  prudent  advice  not  to  risk  all  your 
exports  in  one  venture,  all  your  eggs — as  our  homely 
proverb  runs — in  one  basket : — 

"  Trust  not  thy  whole  precarious  wealth  to  sea, 
Tossed  in  the  hollow  keel :  a  portion  send : 
Thy  larger  substance  let  the  shore  defend. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  51 

Fearful  the  losses  of  the  ocean  fall, 

When  on  a  fragile  plank  embarked  thy  all : 

So  bends  beneath  its  weight  the  o'erburdened  wain, 

And  the  crushed  axle  spoils  the  scattered  grain. 

The  golden  mean  of  conduct  should  confine 

Our  every  aim, — be  moderation  thine  !  " 

— E.  954-962. 

After  this  fashion  the  poet  proceeds  to  give  the 
advice  on  marriage  which  has  been  already  quoted, 
and  which  probably  belongs  to  an  earlier  portion  of 
the  poem.  From  this  he  turns  to  the  duties  of  friend- 
ship, still  regulated  by  caution  and  an  eye  to  expe- 
diency. It  is  better  to  be  reconciled  to  an  old  friend 
with  whom  you  have  fallen  out  than  to  contract  new 
friendships ;  and,  above  all,  to  put  a  control  on  your 
countenance,  that  it  may  betray  no  reservations  or 
misgivings.  A  careful  and  temperate  tongue  is  com- 
mended, and  geniality  at  a  feast,  especially  a  club 
feast,  for 

"  When  many  guests  combine  in  common  fare, 
Be  not  morose,  nor  grudge  a  liberal  share : 
Where  all  contributing  the  feast  unite, 
Great  is  the  pleasure,  and  the  cost  is  light." 

— E.  1009-1012. 

And  now  come  some  precepts  of  a  ceremonial  nature, 
touching  what  Professor  Conington  justly  calls  "  smal- 
ler moralities  and  decencies,"  some  of  wThich,  it  has 
been  suggested,  savour  of  Pythagorean  or  of  Judaic 
obligation,  whilst  all  bespeak  excessive  superstition. 
Prayers  with  unw ashen  hands,  fording  a  river  without 
propitiatory  prayer,  paring  the  nails  off  your  "  bunch 


52  HESIOD. 

of  fives1*  (i.e.,  your  five  fingers*)  at  a  feast  after  sacri- 
fice, lifting  the  can  above  the  bowl  at  a  banquet, — all 
these  acts  of  commission  and  omission  provoke,  says 
Hesiod,  the  wrath  of  the  gods.  Some  of  his  precepts 
have  a  substratum  of  common  sense,  but  generally 
they  can  only  be  explained  by  his  not  desiring  to  con- 
travene the  authority  of  custom ;  and,  in  fact,  he 
finishes  his  second  part  with  a  reason  for  the  observ- 
ance of  such  rules  and  cautions  : — 

"  Thus  do,  and  shun  the  ill  report  of  men. 
Light  to  take  up,  it  brings  the  bearer  pain, 
And  is  not  lightly  shaken  off ;  nor  dies 
The  rumour  that  from  many  lips  doth  rise, 
But,  like  a  god,  all  end  of  time  defies." — D. 

And  now  comes  the  closing  portion  of  the  poem, 
designated  by  Chapman  "  Hesiod's  Book  of  Days," 
and,  in  point  of  fact,  a  calendar  of  the  lucky  and 
unlucky  days  of  the  lunar  month,  apparently  as  con- 
nected with  the  various  worships  celebrated  on  those 
days.  The  poet  divides  the  month  of  thirty  days,  as 
was  the  use  at  Athens  much  later,  into  three  decades. 
The  thirtieth  of  the  month  is  the  best  day  for  overlook- 
ing farm-work  done,  and  allotting  the  rations  for  the 
month  coming  on  ;  and  it  is  a  holiday,  too,  in  the  law- 
courts.  The  seventh  of  the  month  is  specially  lucky  as 
Apollo's  birthday  ;  the  sixth  unlucky  for  birth  or  mar- 
riage of  girls,  probably  because  the  birthday  of  the 
virgin  Artemis,  his  sister.  The  fifth  is  very  unlucky, 
because  on  it  Horcus,  the  genius  who  punishes  per- 

*"A  slang  term  for  the  fists,  in  use  among  pugilists."— See 
Palev's  note  on  v.  742. 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  53 

jury,  and  not,  as -Virgil  supposed,  the  Roman  Orcus  or 
Hades,  was  born,  and  taken  care  of  by  the  Erinnyes. 
The  seventeenth  was  lucky  for  bringing  in  the  corn  to 
the  threshing-floor,  and  for  other  works,  because  it  was 
the  festival-day,  in  one  of  the  months,  of  Demeter 
and  Cora,  or  Proserpine.  The  fourth  was  lucky  for 
marriages,  perhaps  because  sacred  to  Aphrodite  and 
Hermes.  Hesiod  lays  down  the  law,  however,  of 
these  days  without  giving  much  enlightenment  as  to 
the  "why"  or  "wherefore,"  and  our  knowledge  from 
other  sources  does  not  suffice  to  explain  them  all.  A 
fair  specimen  of  this  calendar  is  that  which  we  proceed 
to  quote : — 

"  The  eighth,  nor  less  the  ninth,  with  favouring  skies 
Speeds  of  th'  increasing  month  each  rustic  enterprise  : 
And  on  the  eleventh  let  thy  flocks  be  shorn, 
And  on  the  twelfth  be  reaped  thy  laughing  corn : 
Both  days  are  good  ;  yet  is  the  twelfth  confessed 
More  fortunate,  with  fairer  omen  blest. 
On  this  the  air-suspended  spider  treads, 
In  the  full  noon,  his  fine  and  self-spun  threads ; 
And  the  wise  emmet,  tracking  dark  the  plain, 
Heaps  provident  the  store  of  gathered  grain. 
On  this  let  careful  woman's  nimble  hand 
Throw  first  the  shuttle  and  the  web  expand." 

— E.  1071-1082. 

Hesiod's  account  of  the  twenty-ninth  of  the  month 
is  also  a  characteristic  passage,  not  without  a  touch  of 
the  oracular  and  mysterious.  "  The  prudent  secret," 
he  says,  "  is  to  few  confessed.'*  "  One  man  praises  one 
day,  another  another,  but  few  know  them."     "  Some- 


54  HESIOD. 

times  a  day  is  a  stepmother,  sometimes  a  mother." 
"  Blest  and  fortunate  lie  who  knowingly  doeth  all 
with  an  eye  to  these  days,  unblamed  by  the  immortals,- 
discerning  omens  and  avoiding  transgression." 

Such  is  the  appropriate  ending  of  Hesiod's  didactic 
poem — a  termination  which  ascribes  prosperity  in 
agricultural  pursuits  to  ascertainment  of  the  will  of 
the  gods,  and  avoidance  of  even  unwitting  transgres- 
sion of  their  festivals.  The  study  of  omens,  the  poet 
would  have  it  understood,  is  the  way  to  be  safe  in 
these  matters. 

The  '  Works  and  Days '  possesses  a  curious  interest 
as  Hesiod's  most  undoubted  production,  and  as  the 
earliest  sample  of  so-called  didactic  poetry ;  nor  is  it 
fair  or  just  to  speak  of  this  poem  as  an  ill-constructed, 
loose-hanging  concatenation  of  thoughts  and  hints  on 
farming  matters,  according  as  they  come  uppermost. 
That  later  and  more  finished  didactic  poems  have  only 
partially  and  exceptionally  borrowed  Hesiod's  manner 
or  matter  does  not  really  detract  from  the  interest  of  a 
poem  which,  as  far  as  we  know,  is  the  first  in  classical 
literature  to  afford  internal  evidence  of  the  writer's 
mind  and  thoughts, — the  first  to  teach  that  subjectivity, 
in  which  to  many  readers  lies  the  charm  and  attraction 
of  poetry.  No  doubt  Hesiod's  style  and  manner  be- 
token a  very  early  and  rudimentary  school ;  but  few 
can  be  insensible  to  the  quaintness  of  his  images,  the 
"Dutch  fidelity"  (to  borrow  a  phrase  of  Professor 
Coni ngton)  of  his  minute  descriptions,  or,  lastly,  the 
point  and  terseness  of  his  maxims.  To  these  the  fore- 
going chapter  on  the  *  Works  and  Days'  has  been 


THE    WORKS  AND  DAYS.  55 

unable  to  do  justice,  because  it  seemed  of  more  conse- 
quence to  show  the  connection  and  sequence  of  the 
parts  and  episodes  of  that  work.  It  is  proposed, 
therefore,  in  the  brief  chapter  next  following,  to  exa- 
mine "  the  Proverbial  Philosophy  of  Hesiod,"  which  is 
chiefly,  if  not  entirely,  found  in  the  poem  we  have 
been  discussing. 


CHATTEK    IIL 

hesiod's  proverbial  philosophy. 

A  chief  token  of  the  antiquity  of  Hesiod's  '  Works 
and  Days '  is  his  use  of  familiar  proverbs  to  illustrate 
his  vein  of  thought,  and  to  attract  a  primitive  audience. 
The  scope  and  structure  of  his  other  extant  poems  are 
not  such  as  to  admit  this  mode  of  illustration ;  but 
the  fact,  that  amidst  the  fragments  which  remain  of 
his  lost  poems  are  preserved  several  maxims  and 
saws  of  practical  and  homely  wisdom,  shows  that  this 
use  of  proverbs  was  characteristic  of  his  poetry,  or 
that  his  imitators — if  we  suppose  these  lost  poems 
not  to  have  been  really  his — at  all  events  held  it  to  be 
so.  It  is,  perhaps,  needless  to  remark  that  the  poems 
of  Homer  are  full  of  like  adagial  sentences — so  much 
so,  indeed,  that  James  Duport,  the  Greek  professor  at 
Cambridge,  published  in  1680  an  elaborate  parallelism 
of  the  proverbial  philosophy  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
with  the  adages  as  well  of  sacred  as  of  profane  writers. 
Other  scholars  have  since  followed  his  lead,  and  eluci- 
dated the  same  common  point  in  the  father  of  Greek 
poetry,  and  those  who  have  opened  a  like  vein   in 


HESIOD1  S  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  57 

other  nations  and  languages.  Obviously  an  appeal  to 
this  terse  and  easily-remembered  and  retained  wisdom 
of  the  ancients  is  adapted  to  the  needs  of  an  early 
stage  of  literature ;  and  its  kinship,  apparent  or  real, 
to  the  brief  "  dicta  "  of  the  oracles  of  antiquity,  would 
constitute  a  part  of  its  weight  and  popularity  with  an 
audience  of  wonder-stricken  listeners.  And  so  we 
come  to  see  the  fitness  of  such  bards  as  Homer  and 
Hesiod  garnishing  their  poems  with  these  gems  of 
antique  proverbial  wisdom,  each  drawing  from  a  store 
that  was  probably  hereditary,  and  pointing  a  moral  or 
establishing  a  truth  by  neat  and  timely  introduction 
of  saws  that  possessed  a  weight  not  unlike  that  of 
texts  of  Scripture  to  enforce  a  preacher's  drift. 
It  is,  furthermore,  a  minor  argument  for  the  common 
date  of  these  famous  poets,  that  both  Homer  and 
Hesiod  constantly  recur  to  the  use  of  adages.  With 
the  latter  the  vein  is  not  a  little  curious.  The  honest 
thrift-loving  poet  of  Ascra  has  evidently  stored  up 
maxims,  on  the  one  hand  of  homely  morality  and  good 
sense,  and  on  the  other  of  shrewdness  and  self-interest. 
He  draws  upon  a  rare  stock  of  proverbial  authority  for 
justice,  honour,  and  good  faith,  but  he  also  falls  back 
upon  a  well-chosen  supply  of  brief  and  telling  saws  to 
affirm  the  policy  of  "  taking  care  of  number  one,"  and 
is  provided  with  short  rules  of  action  and  conduct, 
which  do  credit  to  his  observation  and  study  of  the 
ways  of  the  world.  If,  as  we  have  seen  in  his  auto- 
biography (if  we  may  so  call  the  '  Works  and  Days '), 
his  life  was  a  series  of  chronic  wrestlings  with  a  worth- 
less brother  and  unjust  judges,  it  is  all  the  more  natu- 


58  HESIOD. 

ral  that  his  stock  of  proverbs  should  partake  of  the 
twofold  character  indicated  ;  and  we  proceed  to  illus- 
trate both  sides  of  it  in  their  order. 

In  distinguishing  the  two  kinds  of  contention, 
Hesiod  ushers  in  a  familiar  proverb  by  words  which 
have  themselves  taken  adagial  rank.  "  This  conten- 
tion," he  says,  "is  good  for  mortals  "  ('  Works  and  Days/ 
24-26) — viz.,  "  when  potter  vies  with  potter,  crafts- 
man with  craftsman,  beggar  is  emulous  of  beggar,  and 
bard  of  bard."  Pliny  the  younger,  in  a  letter  on  the 
death  of  Silius  Italicus,  uses  the  introductory  words 
of  Hesiod  apropos  of  the  rivalry, of  friends,  in  provok- 
ing each  other  to  the  quest  of  a  name  and  fame  that 
may  survive  their  perishable  bodies ;  *  and  Aristotle 
and  Plato  quote  word  for  word  the  lines  respecting 
"  two  of  a  trade "  to  which  it  will  be  observed  that 
Hesiod  attaches  a  nobler  meaning  than  that  which 
has  become  associated  with  them  in  later  days. 
He  seems  to  appeal  to  the  people's  voice,  succinctly 
gathered  up  into  a  familiar  saw,  for  the  confirma- 
tion of  his  argument,  that  honest  emulation  is  both 
wholesome  and  profitable.  The  second  of  Hesiod's 
adages  has  an  even  higher  moral  tone,  and  conveys  the 
lesson  of  temperance  in  its  broadest  sense,  by  declaring 

"  That  halfh  more  than  all ;  true  gain  doth  dwell 
In  feasts  of  herbs,  mallow,  and  asphodel." — D. 

Here  the  seeming  paradox  of  the  first  portion  of  the 
couplet  is  justified  and  explained  by  Cicero's  remark 
that  men  know  not  "  how  great  a  revenue  consists  in 

*  Epist.  III.,  vii.  15. 


HESIOVS  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  59 

moderation  ; "  and  whilst  in  the  first  clause  a  sound 
mind  is  the  end  proposed,  the  latter  part  evidently  has 
reference  to  the  frugal  diet,  which  bespeaks  content- 
ment and  an  absence  of  covetousness,  such  as  breathes 
in  Horace's  prayer  : — 

"  Let  olives,  endives,  mallows  light 
Be  all  my  fare," — 

—Odes,  I.  31,  15  (Theod.  Martin). 

and  which,  moreover,  favours  health  and  a  sound 
body.  It  is  unnecessary  to  point  out  the  similarity  of 
this  proverb  to  that  of  Solomon  respecting  the  "  dinner 
of  herbs,"  or  to  our  own  adage  that  "enough  is  as 
good  as  a  feast ; "  but  it  may  be  pertinent  to  note  that 
this  Hesiodian  maxim  is,  like  the  former,  quoted  by 
Plato,  who  in  his  Laws  (iii.  690)  explains  Hesiod's 
meaning,  "  that  when  the  whole  was  injurious  and  the 
half  moderate,  then  the  moderate  was  more  and  better 
than  the  immoderate."  The  next  which  presents  itself 
in  the  *  Works  and  Days '  owes  its  interest  as  much 
to  the  fact  that  it  occurs  almost  totidem  verbis  in 
Homer,  as  to  its  resemblance  to  a  whole  host  of 
later  proverbs  and  adages  amongst  all  nations.  When 
Hesiod  would  fain  enforce  the  advantage  of  doing 
right,  and  acting  justly,  without  constraint,  he,  as  it 
were,  glances  at  the  case  of  those  who  do  not  see 
this  till  justice  has  taught  them  its  lesson,  and  says, 
in  the  language  of  proverb, 

"  The  fool  first  suffers,  and  is  after  wise." 

— <  Works  and  Days/  218. 

In  the  17th  Book  of  the  Iliad,  Homer  has  the  same 


60  HESIOD. 

expression,  save  in  the  substitution  of  the  word  "  acts ' 
for  "  suffers ; "  and  it  is  exceedingly  probable  that 
both  adapted  to  their  immediate  purposes  the  words  of 
a  pre-existing  proverb.*  Hesiod  had  already  glanced 
at  the  same  proverb,  when,  in  v.  89  of  the  '  "Works 
and  Days/  he  said  of  the  improvident  Epimetheus 
that  "  he  first  took  the  gift  "  (Pandora)/'  and  after 
grieved;"  and  it  is  probable  that  we  have  in  it  the 
germ  of  very  many  adagial  expressions  about  the  teach- 
ing of  experience — such  as  those  about  "the  stung 
fisherman,"  "the  burnt  child,"  and  "the  scalded  cat" 
of  the  Latin,  English,  and  Spanish  languages  respect- 
ively. The  Ojis,  according  to  Burton,  say,  "  He  whom 
a  serpent  has  bitten,  dreads  a  slow-worm."  Of  a  kin- 
dred tone  of  high  heathen  morality  are  several  prover- 
bial expressions  in  the  'Works  and  Days'  touching 
uprightness  and  justice  in  communities  and  indi- 
viduals.    Thus  in  one  place  we  read  that 

"  Oft  the  crimes  of  one  destructive  fall, 
The  crimes  of  one  are  visited  on  all." 

— E.  319,  320. 

In  another,  that  mischief  and  malice  recoil  on  their 
author : — 

"  Whoever  forgeth  for  another  ill, 
With  it  himself  is  overtaken  still ; 
In  ill  men  run  on  that  they  most  abhor ; 
111  counsel  worst  is  to  the  counsellor.', 

— Chapman. 

*  Livy  has  "  Eventus  stultorum  magister  ; "  and  the  Proverbs 
of  Solomon,  xx.  2,  3 — "A  prudent  man  foreseeth  the  evil  and 
hideth  himself;  but  the  simple  pass  on  and  are  punished." 


HESIOD'S  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  Gl 

And  in  a  third,  that 

"  Far  best 
Is  heaven-sent  wealth  without  reproach  possest." 

The  second  of  these  sentences  recalls  the  story  of  the 
"  Bull  of  Phalaris  ; "  whilst  another,  not  yet  noticed, 
according  to  Elton's  version,  runs  on  this  wise  : — 

"  "Who  fears  his  oath  shall  leave  a  name  to  shine 
With  brightening  lustre  through  his  latest  line." 

— E.  383,  384. 

More  literally  rendered,  the  sentence  might  read,  "  Of 
a  man  that  regardeth  his  oath  the  seed  is  more  blessed 
in  the  aftertime  ; "  and  so  rendered,  it  curiously  recalls 
the  answer  of  the  oracle  to  Glaucus  in  Herodotus 
(vi.  86),  where  the  Greek  words  are  identical  with 
Hesiod's,  and  either  denote  an  acquaintance,  in  the 
Pythoness,  with  the  '  Works  and  Days/  or  a  com- 
mon source  whence  both  she  and  Hesiod  drew.  We 
give  Juvenal's  account  of  the  story  of  Glaucus,  from 
Jx^dgson's  version  : — 

u  The  Pythian  priestess  to  a  Spartan  sung, 
While  indignation  raised  her  awful  tongue : 
'  The  time  will  come  when  e'en  thy  thoughts  unjust, 
Thy  hesitation  to  restore  the  trust, 
Thy  purposed  fraud  shall  make  atonement  due — 
Apollo  speaks  it,  and  his  voice  is  true.' 
Scared  at  this  warning,  he  who  sought  to  try 
If  haply  Heaven  might  wink  at  perjury, 
Alive  to  fear,  though  still  to  virtue  dead, 
Gave  back  the  treasure  to  preserve  his  head. 
Vain  hope,  by  reparation  now  too  late, 
To  loose  the  bands  of  adamantine  fate  ! 


UNIVERSITY 

'califor^X, 


62  HESIOD. 

By  swift  destruction  seized,  the  caitiff  dies, 
Swept  from  the  earth  :  nor  he  sole  sacrifice — 
One  general  doom  o'erwhelms  his  cursed  line, 
And  verifies  the  judgment  of  the  shrine." 

—P.  251,  252. 

Within  a  couple  of  lines  of  the  proverb  last  cited 
occurs  a  maxim  almost  scriptural  in  its  phraseology. 
"  Wickedness,"  sings  the  poet,  "  you  might  choose  in 
a  heap ;  level  is  the  path,  and  it  lies  hard  at  hand." 
One  is  reminded  of  the  "  broad  and  narrow  roads  "  in 
our  Saviour's  teaching  ;  and  the  lines  which  follow,  and 
enforce  the  earnest  struggle  which  alone  can  achieve 
the  steep  ascent,  have  found  an  echo  in  many  noble 
outbursts  of  after-poetry.  The  passage  in  Tennyson's 
Ode,  which  expands  the  sentiment,  is  sufficiently 
well  known,  but  perhaps  it  is  itself  suggested  by  the 
20th  fragment  of  Simonides,  which  may  be  freely  tran- 
slated : — 

"  List  an  old  and  truthful  tale,- — 
Virtue  dwells  on  summits  high, 

Sheer  and  hard  for  man  to  scale, 

Where  the  goddess  doth  not  fail 
Her  pure  precincts,  ever  nigh, 

Unrevealed  to  mortal  sight, 

Unrevealed,  save  then  alone 
When  some  hero  scales  her  height, 
Whom  heart- vexing  toil  for  right 

Bringeth  up  to  virtue's  throne."  * 


*  Tennyson's  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  :— 
u  He  that  ever  follows  her  commands, 
Or  with  toil  of  heart  and  knees  and  hands. 


BESIOUS  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  63 

Of  a  less  exalted  tone  is  the  famous  graduation  ot 
man's  wisdom,  which  declares  "  that  man  far  best  who 
can  conceive  and  carry  out  with  foresight  a  wise 
counsel ;  next  in  order,  him  who  has  the  sense  to 
value  and  heed  such  counsel;  whilst  he  who  can  neither 
initiate  it,  nor  avail  himself  of  it  when  thrown  in  his 
way,  is  to  all  intents  worthless  and  good  for  nothing." — 
('Works  and  Days,'  294-297.)  This  passage,  however, 
has  been  thought  worthy  of  citation  by  Aristotle. 
Another  passage  of  proverbial  character,  but  subordi- 
nate moral  tone,  is  that  which  declares — 

*  Lo  !  the  best  treasure  is  a  frugal  tongue  ; 
The  lips  of  moderate  speech  with  grace  are  hung." 

— E.  1005,  1006. 

And  a  little  further  on  an  adage  of  mixed  character, 
moral  and  utilitarian,  deifies  the  offspring  of  our  unrulj 
member,  by  saying — 

u  No  rumour  wholly  dies,  once  bruited  wide, 
But  deathless  like  a  goddess  doth  abide." — D. 

When  we  turn  to  the  other  class  of  adages — those  which 
syllable  the  teaching  of  common-sense — we  are  struck 
more  by  the  poet's  shrewdness  than  his  morality.  The 
end  of  all  his  precepts  is,  "  Brother,  get  rich ; "  or 
"  Brother,  avoid  poverty  and  famine."  Even  the  wor- 
ship and  offerings  of  the  gods  are  inculcated  with  an 


Through  the  long  gorge  to  the  far  light  hath  won 

His  path  upward,  and  prevailed, 

Shall  find  the  toppling  crags  of  duty  scaled 

Are  close  beside  the  shining  table-lands 

To  which  our  God  Himself  is  moon  and  sun." 


64  H.ESIOD. 

eye  to  being  able  "  to  buy  up  the  land  of  others,  and 
not  others  thine"  (341).  He  says,  indeed,  in  v.  686, 
that  "  money  is  life  to  miserable  men,"  in  much  the 
same  terms  as  Pindar  after  him ;  but  this  is  only  as  a 
dissuasive  from  unseasonable  voyages,  and  because  "  in 
all  things  the  fitting  season  is  best."  In  effect  he 
upholds  the  maxim  that  "money  makes  the  man," 
though  it  is  but  fair  to  add  that  he  prescribes  right 
means  to  that  end.    To  get  rich,  a  man  must  work : — 

"  Famine  evermore 
Is  natural  consort  to  the  idle  boor." — C. 

"  Hard  work  will  best  uncertain  fortune  mend." — D. 

He  must  save,  too,  on  the  principle  that  "  many  a  little 
makes  a  mickle,"  or,  as  Hesiod  hath  it, 

"  Little  to  little  added,  if  oft  done, 
In  small  time  makes  a  good  possession." — C. 

It  is  no  use,  he  sagaciously  adds,  to  spare  the  liquor 
when  the  cask  is  empty  : — 

"  When  broached,  or  at  the  lees,  no  care  be  thine 
To  save  the  cask,  but  spare  the  middle  wine  ; " 

— E.  503,  504. 

nor  to  procrastinate,  because 

"  Ever  with  loss  the  putter-off  contends," 

—413. 

and  the  man  that  would  thrive  must  take  time  by  the 
forelock,  repeating  to  himself,  as  well  as  to  his  slaves 
at  midsummer, — 


HESIOD'S  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  65 

"  The  summer  day 
Endures  not  ever  :  toil  ye  wliile  ye  may," 

— E.  698,  699. 

and  rising  betimes  in  the  morning,  on  the  faith  that 

"  The  morn  the  third  part  of  thy  work  doth  gain  ; 
The  morn  makes  short  thy  way,  makes  short  thy  pain." — C. 

Shrewd  and  practical  as  all  this  teaching  is,  its 
author  deprecates  anything  that  is  not  honest  and 
straightforward.  "Dishonest  gains,"  he  declares  in 
v.  352,  "are  tantamount  to  losses;"  and  perhaps  his 
experience  of  the  detriment  of  such  ill  gains  to  his 
brother  enabled  him  to  judge  of  their  hurtfulness  the 
more  accurately.  Referable  to  this  experience  is  a 
maxim  that  is  certainly  uncomplimentary  to  brotherly 
love  and  confidence : — 

"  As  if  in  joke,  that  he  no  slight  may  feel, 
Call  witnesses,  if  you  with  brother  deal." 

— D.  371. 

And  there  is  a  latent  distrust  of  kinsfolk  and  connec- 
tions involved  in  another  proverb  : — 

"  When  on  your  home  falls  unforeseen  distress, 

Half-clothed  come  neighbours  :  kinsmen  stay  to  dress." 

— D.  345. 

Perhaps  his  bardic  character  won  him  the  goodwill  of 
his  neighbours,  and  so  he  estimated  them  as  he  found 
them ;  for  he  says  a  little  further  on,  with  considerable 
fervour — 

"  He  hath  a  treasure,  by  his  fortune  signed, 
That  hath  a  neighbour  of  an  honest  mind." 

— C.  347. 

A.  C.  Vol.  XV.  E 


66  HES10D. 

And  in  his  treatment  of  these  neighbours  there  was,  to 
judge  by  his  teaching,  a  very  fair  amount  of  liberality, 
though  scarcely  that  high  principle  of  benevolence 
which  is  content  "  to  give,  hoping  nothing  again." 
Self-interest,  indeed,  as  might  be  expected,  leavens 
the  mass  of  his  precepts  of  conduct,  which  may  be 
characterised  as  a  good  workaday  code  for  the  citizen 
of  a  little  narrow  world,  shut  up  within  Boeotian 
mountains.  We  laugh  at  the  suspicion  that  animates 
some,  and  the  homeliness  of  others,  but  cannot  fail 
withal  to  be  captivated  perforce  by  the  ingenuousness 
with  which  the  poet  speaks  his  inner  mind,  and  pre- 
tends to  no  higher  philosophy  than  one  of  self-defence. 
In  the  line  which  follows  the  couplet  last  quoted,  and 
which  says  that  "  where  neighbours  are  what  they 
should  be,  not  an  ox  would  be  lost,"  for  the  whole 
village  would  turn  out  to  catch  the  thief, — it  has  been 
surmised  that  there  is  allusion  to  an  early  "associa- 
tion for  the  prosecution  of  felons "  in  the  iEolian 
colony  from  which  Hesiod's  father  had  come ;  but 
these  glosses  of  commentators  and  scholiasts  only  spoil 
the  simplicity  of  the  poet's  matter-of-fact  philosophy, 
which  in  the  instance  referred  to  did  but  record  what 
Themistocles  afterwards  seems  to  have  seen,  when,  as  a 
recommendation  to  a  held  for  sale,  he  advertised  that 
it  had  "a  good  neighbour." 

Though  the  'Theogony'  is,  from  its  nature  and  scope, 
by  no  means  a  storehouse  of  proverbs  like  the  '  Works 
and  Days,'  it  here  and  there  has  allusions  and  refer- 
ences to  an  already  existing  stock  of  such  maxims. 
Where,  in  pointing  a  moral  a  prqpos  of  Pandora,  he 


HESIOD'S  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  67 

takes  up  his  parable  against  women,  and  likens  them 
to  the  drones, 

"  Which  gather  in  their  greedy  maw  the  spoils 
Of  others'  labour," — 

— E.  797,  798. 

Hesiod  has  in  his  mind's  eye  that  ancient  proverb 

touching  "  one  sowing  and  another  reaping,"  which 

Callimachus  gives  as  follows  in  his  hymn  to  Ceres 

(137)- 

"  And  those  who  ploughed  the  field  shall  reap  the  corn  " — 

but  which,  in  some  shape  or  other,  must  have  existed 
previously  even  to  Hesiod's  date.  In  most  modern 
languages  it  has  its  counterpart ;  and  it  was  recognised 
and  applied  by  our  Lord,  and  His  apostle  St  Paul.* 
Earlier  in  the  poem,  the  saw  that  "  Blest  is  he  whom 
the  Muses  love  "  is  probably  pre-Hesiodian  ;  but  it  is 
too  obviously  a  commonplace  of  poets  in  general  to 
deserve  commemoration  as  a  proverb.  We  cannot  cite 
any  adages  from  '  The  Shield,'  and  an  examination  of 
'  The  Fragments '  adds  but  few  to  the  total  of  Hesiod's 
stock.  These  few  are  chiefly  from  the  l  Maxims  of 
Chiron,'  supposed  to  have  been  dictated  by  that  philo- 
sophic Centaur  to  his  pupil  Achilles.  One  of  these, 
preserved  by  Harpocration  from  an  oration  of  Hyperi- 
des,  may  be  thus  translated  : — ■ 

u  Works  for  the  young,  counsels  for  middle  age  ; 
The  old  may  best  in  vows  and  prayers  engage." 

Another  savours  of  the  philosophy  of  the  '  Works 
and  Days  : ' — 

*  St  Matt.  xxv.  24 ;  Gal.  vi.  7  ;  2  Cor.  ix.  6. 


68  HESIOD. 

"  Gifts  can  move  gods,  and  gifts  our  godlike  kings." 

Whilst  a  third  might  well  be  a  stray  line  from  one  of 
the  exhortations  to  Perses ;  for  it  deprecates  the  pre- 
ference of  a  shadow  to  a  substance  in  some  such  lan- 
guage as  this  : — 

"  Only  a  fool  will  fruits  in  hand  forego, 
That  he  the  charm  of  doubtful  chase  may  know." 

Another  proverb,  preserved  by  Cicero  in  a  letter  to 
Atticus,*  looks  very  like  Hesiod's,  though  the  orator 
and  critical  man  of  letters  dubs  it  u  pseudo-Hesiod- 
ian."  It  bids  us  "  not  decide  a  case  until  both  sides 
have  been  heard."  And  yet  another  saw,  referred 
to  the  Ascraean  sage,  appears  -to  us  in  excellent  keep- 
ing with  the  maxims  respecting  industry  and  hard 
work  which  abound  in  his  great  didactic  poem.  We 
are  indebted  for  it  to  Xenophon's  Memorabilia,  and 
it  may  be  Englished — 

"  Seek  not  the  smooth,  lest  thou  the  rough  shouldst  find," — 

an  exhortation  in  accord  with  the  fine  passage  in  the 
'  Works  and  Days,'  which  represents  Virtue  and  Ex- 
cellence seated  aloft  on  heights  difficult  to  climb. 

Perhaps  also  the  following  extracts  from  the  extant 
fragments  of  the  '  Catalogue  of  Women/  though  not 
succinct  enough  to  rank  as  adages,  may  lay  some  claim 
to  containing  jets  and  sparkles  of  adagial  wisdom.  The 
first,  taken  from  the  pages  of  Athena3iis,t  concerns  wine 
that  rnaketh  sorry,  as  well  as  glad,  the  heart  of  man  : — 
*  vii.  18,  4.  tx.  428. 


HESIOUS  PROVERBIAL  PHILOSOPHY.  69 

a  What  joy,  what  pain  cloth  Dionysus  give 
To  men  who  drink  to  excess.     For  wine  to  such 
Acts  insolently,  binds  them  hand  and  foot, 
Yea,  tongue  and  mind  withal,  in  bondage  dire, 
Ineffable  !     Sleep  only  stands  their  friend." — D. 

The  second  is  a   curious  relic  of  the  ancient  notions 
about  comparative  longevity  : — 

"  Nine  generations  lives  the  babbling  crow 
Of  old  men's  life  ;  the  lively  stag  outlasts 
Four  crow-lives,  and  the  raven  thrice  the  stag's. 
Nine  raven's  terms  the  phcenix  numbers  out ; 
And  we,  the  long-tressed  nymphs,  whose  sire  is  Zeus, 
By  ten  times  more  the  phcenix  life  exceed." — D. 

Enough,  however,  has  been  set  down  of  Hesiod's 
proverbial  philosophy,  to  show  that  herein  consists 
one  of  his  titles  to  a  principal  place  among  didactic 
poets.  A  plain  blunt  man,  and  a  poet  of  the  people, 
he  knew  how  and  when  to  appeal  with  cogency  to 
that  "  wisdom  of  many  and  wit  of  one,"  which  has 
been  stjled  by  our  own  proverb  -  collector,  James 
Howell,  "  the  people's  voice." 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE    TtlEOGONY. 


The  geographer  Pausanias  was  the  first  to  cast  a  doubt 
upon  the  received  belief  of  the  ancients  that  the  '  The- 
ogony  '  and  the  '  Works  and  Days  '  originated  from  one 
and  the  same  author.  On  the  other  hand,  Herodotus 
attributed  to  Hesiod  the  praise  of  having  been  one  of 
the  earliest  systematisers  of  a  national  mythology;  and 
Plato  in  his  Dialogues  has  references  to  the  '  Theogony  * 
of  Hesiod,  which  apparently  correspond  with  passages 
in  the  work  that  has  come  down  to  us  as  such.  Un- 
less, therefore,  there  is  strong  internal  evidence  of  sepa- 
rate authorship  in  the  two  poems,  the  testimony  of  a 
writer  four  hundred  years  before  Christ  is  entitled  to 
outweigh  that  of  one  living  two  hundred  years  after. 
But  so  far  from  such  internal  evidence  being  forth- 
coming, it  would  be  easy  to  enumerate  several  strong 
notes  of  resemblance,  which  would  go  far  towards 
establishing  a  presumption  that  both  were  from  the 
same  hand.  The  same  economical  spirit  which  actu- 
ates the  poet  of  the  *  "Works '  is  visible  also  in  the 
'Theogony/  where  the  head  and  front  of  Pandora's 


THE    THEOGONY.  71 

offending  is,  that  the  "beauteous  evil,"  woman,  is  a 
drone  in  the  hive,  and  consumes  the  fruits  of  man's 
labour  without  adding  to  them.  The  author  of  the 
1  Theogony '  holds  in  exceptionally  high  esteem  the 
wealth-giving  divinity  Plutus,  and  this  is  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  hereditary  and  personal  antipathy  to 
poverty  and  its  visitations  so  manifest  in  the  bard  of 
the  '  Works/  Again,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that 
the  proper  commencement  of  the  '  Works  and  Days  ' 
— which,  to  translate  the  Greek  idiom,  might  run, 
"Well,  it  seems  that  after  all  Contention  is  of  two 
kinds,  and  not  of  one  only"  (v.  11) — is  nothing  less 
than  the  poet's  correction  of  a  statement  he  had  made 
in  his  poem  on  the  generation  of  the  gods,  that  Eris,  or 
Contention,  was  one  and  indivisible,  the  daughter  of 
Night,  and  the  mother  of  an  uncanny  progeny,  begin- 
ning with  Trouble  and  ending  with  Oath.*  We 
might  add,  too,  curious  coincidences  of  expression 
and  verse-structure,  such  as  the  use  of  a  character- 
istic epithet  standing  by  itself  for  the  substantive 
which  it  would  commonly  qualify  (e.  g.,  "  the  bone- 
less "  to  represent  "  the  caterpillar,"  and  "  the  silvery  " 
for  "  the  sea  "),  and  the  peculiarity  of  the  commence- 
ment of  three  consecutive  lines  with  one  and  the  same 
word.  Instances  of  both  are  common  to  the  two  poems. 
But  for  the  purposes  of  the  present  volume  it  is  perhaps 
sufficient  to  rest  our  acquiescence  in  a  common  author- 
ship upon  the  plausibility  and  reasonableness  of  Bishop 
Thirl  wall's  view,  that  Hesiod,  living  amidst  a  people 
rich  in  sacred  and  oracular  poetry,  and  engaged  for  the 
*  See  Theog.,  v.  225. 


72  HESIOD. 

most  part  in  husbandry,  "  collected  for  it  in  a  fuller 
and  a  more  graceful  body  the  precepts  with  which  the 
simple  wisdom  of  their  forefathers  had  ordered  their 
rural  labours  and  their  domestic  life ; "  at  the  same 
time  that,  "  from  the  songs  of  their  earlier  bards,  and 
the  traditions  of  their  temples,  he  drew  the  knowledge 
of  nature  and  of  superhuman  things  which  he  delivered 
in  the  popular  form  of  the  '  Theogony.' "  * 

Of  the  aim  which  he  proposed  to  himself  in  that 
ancient  poem,  no  better  description  has  been  given  than 
Mr  Grote's,  who  designates  it  as  "  an  attempt  to  cast 
the  divine  functions  into  a  systematic  sequence."  The 
work  of  Homer  and  Hesiod  was,  to  reduce  to  system 
the  most  authentic  traditions  about  the  Hellenic  gods 
and  demi-gods,  and  to  consolidate  a  catholic  "belief  in 
the  place  of  conflicting  local  superstitions.  So  far  as 
we  are  able  to  judge,  Homer's  share  in  the  task  con- 
sisted in  the  passing  notices  of  gods  and  goddesses 
which  are  scattered  up  and  down  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey.  For  Hesiod  may  be  claimed  the  first  incor- 
poration and  enumeration  of  the  generation  and  genea- 
logy of  the  gods  and  goddesses  in  a  coherent  system  ; 
and  so  it  was  from  his  '  Theogony,'  as  Mr  Grote  has 
shown,  that  "  men  took  their  information  respecting 
their  theogonic  antiquities ;  that  sceptical  pagans,  and 
later  assailants  of  paganism,  derived  their  subjects  of  at- 
tack; and  that,  to  understand  what  Plato  deprecated 
and  Xenophanes  denounced,  the  Hesiodic  stories  must 
be  recounted  in  naked  simplicity."  t  Whence  he  de- 
rived his  information,  which  is  older  than  the  so-called 
*  'Hist,  of  Greece,  I.,  c.  vi.  |*  Ibid.,  i.  15,  16. 


THE    TIIEOGONY.  73 

Orphic  Theogony — whether  from  Egypt,  India,  and 
Persia,  or.  as  some  have  thought,  from  the  Mosaic 
writings — it  is  lost  labour  to  inquire.  He  certainly 
systematised  and  consolidated  the  mass  of  traditions, 
which  came  to  his  hand  a  more  or  less  garbled  and 
distorted  collection  of  primitive  and  nearly  universal 
legendary  lore.  An  especial  interest  must  therefore 
attach  to  the  study  of  his  scheme  and  method,  and  it 
must  be  enhanced  by  the  position  which  antiquity 
has  almost  unanimously  accorded  to  him,  in  the  history 
of  its  earliest  poetry  and  religion. 

Hesiod's  *  Theogony  ■  consists  of  three  divisions  :  a 
cosmogony,  or  creation  of  the  world,  its  powers,  and 
its  fabric  ;  a  theogony  proper,  recording  the  history 
of  the  dynasties  of  Cronus  and  Zeus  ;  and  a  fragmen- 
tary generation  of  heroes,  sprung  from  the  intercourse 
of  mortals  with  immortals.  Hesiod  and  his  contem- 
poraries considered  that  in  their  day  Jupiter  or  Zeus 
was  the  lord  of  Olympus ;  but  it  was  necessary  to 
chronicle  the  antecedents  of  his  dynasty,  and  hence  the 
account  of  the  stages  and  revolutions  which  had  led  up 
to  the  established  order  under  which  Hesiod's  genera- 
tion found  itself.  And  so,  after  a  preface  containing 
amongst  other  matters  the  episode  of  the  Muses'  visit 
to  the  shepherd-poet,  at  which  we  glanced  in  Chapter 
I.,  Hesiod  proceeds  to  his  proper  task,  and  represents 
Chaos  as  primeval,  and  Earth,  Tartarus,  and  Eros 
(Love),  as  coming  next  into  existence  : — 

"  Love  then  arose, 
Most  beauteous  of  immortals  ;  he  at  once 
Of  every  god  and  every  mortal  man 


74  HE  SI  OB. 

Unnerves  the  limbs,  dissolves  the  wiser  "breast 
By  reason  steeled,  and  quells  the  very  soul." 

— E.  171-175. 

At  first  Chaos  spontaneously  produces  Erebus  and 
Night,  the  latter  of  whom  gives  birth  to  Ether  and 
Day;  whilst  Earth  creates  in  turn  the  heaven,  the 
mountains,  and  the  sea,  the  cosmogony  so  far  corre- 
sponding generally  wTith  the  Mosaic.  But  at  this 
point  Eros  or  Love  *  begins  to  work.  The  union  of 
Earth  with  Heaven  results  in  the  birth  of  Oceanus 
and  the  Titans,  the  Cyclopes,  and  the  hundred- 
handed  giants.  The  sire  of  so  numerous  a  progeny, 
and  first  ruler  of  creation,  Uranus,  conceiving  that  his 
sovereignty  is  imperilled  by  his  offspring,  resorts  to 
the  expedient  of  relodging  each  child,  as  soon  as  it  is 
born,  within  the  bowels  of  its  mother,  Earth.  Groan- 
ing under  such  a  burden,  she  arms  her  youngest  and 
wiliest  son,  Cronus,  with  a  sickle  of  her  own  product, 
iron,  and  hides  him  in  an  ambush  with  a  view  to  his 
mutilating  his  sire.  The  conspiracy  is  justified  on  the 
principle  of  retributive  justice.  Uranus  is  disabled 
and  dethroned,  and,  by  a  not  very  clear  nor  present- 
able legend,  the  foam  -  born  goddess  Aphrodite  is 
fabled  to  have  sprung  from  his  mutilation.  Here  is 
the  poet's  account  of  her  rise  out  of  the  sea  :  — 

"  So  severing  with  keen  steel 
The  sacred  spoils,  he  from  the  continent 
Amid  the  many  surges  of  the  sea 
Hurled  them.     Full  long  they  drifted  o'er  the  deeps, 
Till  now  swift-circling  a  white  foam  arose 
From  that  immortal  substance,  and  a  nymph 


THE    THEOGONY.  75 

Was  nourished  in  their  midst.     The  wafting  waves 

First  bore  her  to  Cythera  the  divine : 

To  wave-encircled  Cyprus  came  she  then, 

And  forth  emerged  a  goddess  in  the  charms 

Of  awful  beauty.      Where  her  delicate  feet 

Had  pressed  the  sands,  green  herbage  flowering  sprang. 

Her  Aphrodite  gods  and  mortals  name, 

The  foam-born  goddess  :  and  her  name  is  known 

As  Cytherea  with  the  blooming  wreath, 

For  that  she  touched  Cythera's  flowery  coast ; 

And  Cypris,  for  that  on  the  Cyprian  shore 

She  rose  amid  the  multitude  of  waves. 

Love  tracked  her  steps,  and  beautiful  Desire 

Pursued  ;  while  soon  as  born  she  bent  her  way 

Towards  heaven's  assembled  gods  :  her  honours  these 

From  the  beginning  :  whether  gods  or  men 

Her  presence  bless,  to  her  the  portion  falls 

Of  virgin  whisperings  and  alluring  smiles, 

And  smooth  deceits,  and  gentle  ecstasy, 

And  dalliance  and  the  blandishments  of  love." 

— F.  258-283. 

The  concluding  verses  of  this  passage  are  notable 
as  enumerating  the  fabled  assessors  of  Venus ;  and  the 
italicised  lines,  which  find  modern  parallels  in  Milton, 
Scott,  and  Tennyson,*  may  have  suggested  the  invo- 

*  "  Now  when  as  sacred  light  began  to  dawn 
In  Eden  on  the  humid  flowers  that  breathed 
Their  morning  incense,  when  all  things  that  breath© 
From  the  earth's  great  altar  send  up  silent  praise 
To  the  Creator ; "  &c. 

— Paradise  Lost,  ix. 

"  A  foot  more  light,  a  step  more  true, 
Ne'er  from  the  heath-flower  dash'd  the  dew ; 
E'en  the  slight  harebell  raised  its  head 
Elastic  from  her  airy  tread." 

—Lady  of  the  Lake,  i.  18. 


76  BESIOD. 

cation  of  the  benignant  goddess  in  the  opening  of 
Lucretius  : — 

"  Before  thee,  goddess,  thee  !  the  winds  are  hushed, 
Before  thy  coming  are  the  clouds  dispersed  ; 
The  plastic  earth  spreads  flowers  before  thy  feet ; 
Thy  presence  makes  the  plains  of  ocean  smile, 
And  sky  shines  placid  with  diffused  light." 

—  Lucret.  i.  7-12  (Johnson). 

By  the  act  of  Cronus,  the  Titans,  released  from  dur- 
ance, arose  to  a  share  in  the  deliverer's  dynasty,  the 
Cyclopes  and  giants  still,  it  would  seem,  remaining  shut 
up  in  their  prison-house.  But  before  the  poet  proceeds 
to  the  history  of  this  dynasty  and  succession  of  rulers, 
he  apparently  conceives  it  to  be  his  duty  to  go  through 
the  generations  of  the  elder  deities  with  a  genealogical 

"  But  light  as  any  wind  that  blows, 
So  fleetly  did  she  stir ; 
The  flower  she  touched  on  dipt  and  rose, 
And  turned  to  look  at  her." 

—Tennyson  :  <  The  Talking  Oak.' 

Even  more  to  the  point,  which  is  the  charm  to  create  verdure 
and  flower-growth  which  pertains  to  Aphrodite's  feet,  are  the 
following  citations  from  Ben  Jonson  and  Wordsworth  : — 

"  Here  she  was  wont  to  go,  and  here,  and  here, 
Just  where  those  daisies,  pinks,  and  violets  grow; 
The  world  may  find  the  spring  by  following  her, 
For  other  print  her  aery  steps  ne'er  left. 
And  where  she  went  the  flowers  took  thickest  root, 
As  she  had  sowed  them  with  her  odorous  foot." 

— Jonson :  '  Sad  Shepherd,'  i.  1. 

"  Flowers  laugh  before  thee  in  their  beds, 
And  fragrance  in  thy  footing  treads." 

-Wordsworth  :  '  Ode  to  Duty. 


THE    THEOGONY.  77 

minuteness  which,  it  must  he  confessed,  is  now  and 
then  tedious  ;  though,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  occa- 
sional points  of  interest  in  the  process,  which  would 
be  interminable  if  not  so  relieved.  It  is  curious,  for 
example,  to  find  "  the  Hesperian  maids  n — 

"  Whose  charge  o'ersees  the  fruits  of  bloomy  gold 
Beyond  the  sounding  ocean,  the  fair  trees 
Of  golden  fruitage  " — 

— E.  293-297. 

ranked  with  Death,  and  Sleep,  and  .Gloom  and  its 
kindred,  as  the  unbegotten  brood  of  Night.  Possibly 
the  clue  is  to  be  found  in  Hesiod's  having  a  glimmer- 
ing of  the  Fall  and  its  consequences,  because  death  and 
woe  were  in  the  plucking  of  the  fruit  of  "  that  forbid- 
den tree."  Again,  from  the  union  of  Nereus,  the  sea- 
god  par  excellence,  and  eldest  offspring  of  Pontus,  one 
of  the  original  powers,  with  the  Oceanid,  Doris,  are 
said  to  have  sprung  the  fifty  Nereids,  whose  names, 
taken  from  some  characteristic  of  the  sea — its  wonders, 
its  treasures,  and  its  good  auguries — correspond  in 
many  instances  with  Homer's  list  in  the  Iliad  (xviii. 
39-48),  and  point  to  a  pre-existent  legend  approached 
by  both  poets.  In  due  order,  also,  are  recorded  the 
children  of  Tethys  and  the  Titan  Oceanus, — to  wit, 
the  endless  rivers  and  springs,  and  the  water-nymphs, 
or  Oceanids,  whose  function  is  to  preside  over  these, 
and  to  convey  nourishment  from  the  Sire  to  all  things 
living.  As  to  the  list  of  rivers,  it  is  noticeable  that 
Hesiod  includes  the  Nile,  known  to  Homer  only  by 
the  name  of  iEgyptus — and  the  Eridanus,  supposed  to 


78  HESIOD. 

represent  the  Rhodanus  or  Rhone  ;  also  that  the  rivers 
of  Greece  appear  to  he  slighted  in  comparison  with 
those  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  Troad — a  circumstance  to 
he  accounted  for  hy  the  Asiatic  origin  of  the  poet's 
father,  which  would  explain  his  completer  geographi- 
cal knowledge  of  the  colonies  than  of  the  mother 
country.  The  names  of  the  water-nymphs  are  refer- 
able to  islands  and  continents — e.  g.,  Europa,  Asia, 
Doris,  Persia — or  to  physical  characteristics,  such  as 
clearness,  turbidness,  violet  hue,  and  the  like.  But 
the  poet  gives  .a  good  reason  for  furnishing  only  a 
selection : —  ■ 

"  More  remain  untold.     Three  thousand  nymphs 
Of  Oceanic  line,  in  beauty  tread 
With  ample  step,  and  far  and  wide  dispersed 
Haunt  the  green  earth  and  azure  depth  of  lakes, 
A  blooming  race  of  glorious  goddesses. 
As  many  rivers  also  yet  untold, 
Rushing  with  hollow  dashing  sound,  were  born 
To  awful  Tethys,  but  their  every  name 
Is  not  for  mortal  man  to  memorate, 
Arduous,  yet  known  to  all  the  dwellers  round." 

— E.  492  501. 

We  must  not  trespass  upon  our  readers'  patience,  by 
enumerating  with  the  conscientious  genealogist  the 
progeny  of  the  rest  of  the  Titans.  Two  goddesses, 
however,  stand  out  from  amidst  one  or  other  of  these 
broods,  as  of  more  special  note,  and  more  direct  bearing 
upon  the  world's  government  and  order.  Asteria,  the 
goddess  of  stars,  a  Titanid  in  the  second  generation, 
bears  to  Perses,  a  god  of  light,  and  a  Titan  of  the  original 
stock,  one  only  daughter,  Hecate.     The  attributes  of 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 
MB   MEOGONY.      \^cg% 

this  goddess,  as  described  by  Hesiod,  are  so  discrepant 
from  those  ascribed  to  her  by  later  poets,  as  to  afford 
strong  proof  of  the  antiquity  of  this  poem.  She  is  not, 
as  in  later  poetry,  the  patron  of  magic  arts,  but  the 
goddess  who  blesses  labour  and  energy,  in  field,  senate, 
and  forum  : — 

"  When  the  mailed  men  rise 
To  deadly  battle,  comes  the  goddess  prompt 
To  whom  she  wills,  bids  rapid  victory 
Await  them,  and  extends  the  wreath  of  fame. 
She  sits  upon  the  sacred  judgment-seat 
Of  venerable  monarchs.     She  is  found 
Propitious  when  in  solemn  games  the  youth 
Con  tending  strive  ;  there  is  the  goddess  nigh 
With  succour  :  he  whose  hardiment  and  strength 
Victorious  prove,  with  ease  the  graceful  palm 
Achieving,  joyous  o'er  his  father's  age, 
Sheds  a  bright  gleam  of  glory.     She  is  known 
To  them  propitious,  who  the  fiery  steed 
Rein  in  the  course,  and  them  who  labouring  cleave 
Through  the  blue  watery  waste  the  untractable  way." 

— E.  581-595. 

The  other  goddess,  Styx,  a  daughter  of  Oceanus,  is 
memorable  not  more  for  her  own  prominent  position 
in  ancient  fable,  than  for  having  amongst  her  off- 
spring those  iron-handed  ministers  of  Jove,  Strength 
(Kratos)  and  Force  (Bia),  whom  the  classical  reader 
meets  again  in  the  opening  of  the  '  Prometheus '  of 
iEschylus.  Their  nearness  to  Zeus  is  ascribed  by 
Hesiod  to  the  decision  with  which  their  mother 
espoused  his  cause  in  the  struggle  with  Cronus  and  the 
Titans :— 


80  HESIOD. 

"  Lo  !  then  incorruptible  Styx  the  first, 
Swayed  by  the  awful  counsels  of  her  sire, 
Stood  on  Olympus  and  her  sons  beside; 
There  graced  with  honour  and  with  goodly  gifts, 
Her  Zeus  ordained  the  great  tremendous  oath 
Of  deities ;  her  sons  for  evermore 
Indwellers  in  the  heavens.     Alike  to  all, 
E'en  as  he  pledged  his  sacred  word,  the  god 
Performed  ;  so  reigned  he  strong  in  might  and  power." 

— E.  537-545. 

But  here  Hesiod  has  been  anticipating  the  sequence 
of  events,  and  forestalling,  to  this  extent,  the  second 
stage  of  the  poem.  According  to  Hesiod,  Cronus  or 
Saturn  was  alive  to  the  faults  of  his  sire's  policy  of 
self-protection,  and  conceived  an  improvement  in  the 
means  of  checking  revolutionary  development  on  the 
part  of  his  offspring,  by  imprisoning  them  in  his  own 
bowels  rather  than  their  mother's.  Mindful  of  the 
destiny  that  "  to  his  own  child  he  should  bow  down 
his  strength,"  he  proceeded  to  swallow  up  his  progeny 
with  such  regularity,  that  the  maternal  feelings  of  his 
consort,  Ehea,  roused  her  to  a  spirit  of  opposition. 
When  about  to  be  delivered  of  her  sixth  child,  Zeus, 
she  called  in  the  aid  of  her  parents,  Heaven  and  Earth, 
in  the  concealment  of  his  birth  : — 

"  And  her  they  sent  to  Lyctus,  to  the  clime 
Of  fruitful  Crete  ;  and  when  her  hour  was  come, 
The  birth  of  Zeus,  her  youngest  born,  then  Earth 
Took  to  herself  the  mighty  babe,  to  rear 
"With  nurturing  softness,  in  the  spacious  isle 
Of  Crete  ;  so  came  she  then,  transporting  him 
Swift  through  the  darksome  air,  to  Lyctus  first, 


THE    THEOGONY.  81 

And  thence  upbearing  in  her  arms,  concealed 
Beneath  the  sacred  ground  in  sunless  cave, 
Where  shagged  with  densest  woods  the  iEgean  mount 
Impends.     But  to  the  imperial  son  of  heaven, 
"Whilom  the  King  of  gods,  a  stone  she  gave 
In  wrapt  in  infant  swathes,  and  this  with  grasp 
Eager  he  snatched,  and  in  his  ravening  breast 
Conveyed  away ;  unhappy  !  nor  once  thought 
That  for  the  stone  his  child  remained  behind 
Invincible,  secure  ;  who  soon  with  hands 
Of  strength  o'ercoming  him,  should  cast  him  forth. 
From  glory,  and  himself  the  immortals  rule." 

— E.  641-659. 

As  the  gods  in  ancient  mythology  grow  apace,  Zeus 
is  soon  ripe  for  the  task  of  aiding  his  mother,  whose 
craft  persuades  Cronus  to  disgorge  first  the  stone 
which  he  had  mistaken  for  his  youngest-born,  and 
then  the  five  children  whom  he  had  previously  de- 
voured. A  stone,  probably  meteoric,  was  shown  at  i 
Delphi  in  Pausanias's  day  as  the  stone  in  question,  \ 
and  an  object  of  old  memorial  to  the  devout  Greek. 
The  rescued  brethren  at  once  take  part  with  their  de- 
liverer. The  first  act  of  Zeus  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  advance  Force  and  Strength,  with  their  brothers 
Victory  and  Eivalry,  to  the  dignity  of  "  a  body- 
guard," and  to  give  their  mother  Styx  the  style  and 
functions  of  "  oath-sanctioner."  His  next  was  to  free 
from  the  prison  to  which  their  father  Uranus  had 
consigned  them,  the  hundred-handed  giants,  and  the 
Cyclopes,  who  furnished  his  artillery  of  lightnings  and 
hot  thunderbolts.  His  success  in  the  struggle  was 
assured  by  the  oracles  of  Gaea  (Earth),  if  only  he  could 

a.  c.  voL  xv.  p 


82  HESIOD. 

band  these  towers  of  strength  and  muscularity  against 
Cronus  and  his  Titans ;  and  so  the  battle  was  set  in 
array,  and  a  fierce  war  ensued — 

"  Each  with  each 
Ten  years  and  more  the  furious  battle  joined 
Unintermitted  ;  nor  to  either  host 
"Was  issue  of  stern  strife  nor  end  ;  alike 
Did  either  stretch  the  limit  of  the  war." 

— E.  846-850. 

Hesiod's  description  of  the  contest,  which  has  been 
justly  held  to  constitute  his  title  to  a  rank  near  Homer 
as  an  epic  poet,  is  prefaced  by  a  feast  at  which  Zeus 
addresses  his  allies,  and  receives  in  turn  the  assurance 
of  their  support.  The  speeches  are  not  wanting  in 
dignity,  though  briefer  than  those  which,  in  his  great 
epic,  Milton  has  moulded  on  their  model.  Our  Eng- 
lish poet  had  bathed  his  spirit  in  Hesiod  before  he 
essa}Ted  the  sixth  book  of  his  '  Paradise  Lost ; '  and  it 
was  well  and  wisely  done  by  the  translator  of  the  fol- 
lowing description  of  the  war  betwixt  Zeus  and  the 
Titans  to  aim  at  a  Miltonic  style  and  speech : — 

"  All  on  that  clay  roused  infinite  the  war, 

Female  and  male  ;  the  Titan  deities, 

The  gods  from  Cronus  sprang,  and  those  whom  Zer» 

From  subterranean  gloom  released  to  light : 

Terrible,  strong,  of  force  enormous  ;  burst 

A  hundred  arms  from  all  their  shoulders  huge : 

From  all  their  shoulders  fifty  heads  upsprang 

O'er  limbs  of  sinewy  mould.     They  then  arrayed 

Against  the  Titans  in  fell  combat  stood, 

And  in  their  nervous  grasp  wielded  aloft 

Precipitous  rocks.     On  the  other  side  alert 


THE    THEOGONY.  83 

The  Titan  phalanx  closed  :  then  hands  of  strength 

Joined  prowess,  and  displayed  the  works  of  war. 

Tremendous  then  the  immeasurable  sea 

Roared  :  earth  resounded  :  the  wide  heaven  throughout 

Groaned  shattering:  from  its  base  Olympus  vast 

Reeled  to  the  violence  of  the  gods :  the  shock 

Of  deep  concussion  rocked  the  dark  abyss 

Remote  of  Tartarus  :  the  shrilling  din 

Of  hollow  tramplings  and  strong  battle-strokes, 

And  measureless  uproar  of  wild  pursuit. 

So  they  reciprocal  their  weapons  hurled 

Groan-scattering,  and  the  shout  of  either  host 

Burst  in  exhorting  ardour  to  the  stars 

Of  heaven  •  with  mighty  war-cries  either  host 

Encountering  closed." 

— E.  883-908. 

A  pause  at  this  point  may  be  excused,  seeing  that 
it  affords  the  opportunity  of  noting  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  heathen  and  the  Christian  conceptions  of 
divine  strength.  In  Milton  the  Messiah  has  a  super- 
abundance of  might : — 

•  Yet  half  his  strength  he  put  not  forth,  but  checked 
His  thunder  in  mid  volley,  for  he  meant 
Not  to  destroy,  but  root  them  out  of  heaven." 

—Par.  Lost,  vi.  853-855. 

In  the  conflict  with  the  Titans,  Zeus  has  to  exert  all 
his  might  to  insure  victory  : — 

"  Nor  longer  then  did  Zeus 
Curb  his  full  power,  but  instant  in  his  soul 
There  grew  dilated  strength,  and  it  was  filled 
With  his  omnipotence.     At  once  he  loosed 
His  whole  of  might,  and  put  forth  all  the  god. 


84  HESJOD. 

The  vaulted  sky,  the  mount  Olympian  flashed 

With  his  continual  presence,  for  he  passed 

Incessant  forth,  and  scattered  fires  on  fires. 

Hurled  from  his  hardy  grasp  the  lightnings  flew 

Keiterated  swift :  the  whirling  flash 

Cast  sacred  splendour,  and  the  thunderbolt 

Fell :  roared  around  the  nurture-yielding  earth 

In  conflagration  ;  for  on  every  side 

The  immensity  of  forests  crackling  blazed : 

Yea,  the  broad  earth  burned  red,  the  streams  that  mix 

With  ocean  and  the  deserts  of  the  sea. 

Round  and  around  the  Titan  brood  of  earth 

Rolled  the  hot  vapour  on  its  fiery  surge. 

The  liquid  heat  air's  pure  expanse  divine 

Suffused  :  the  radiance  keen  of  quivering  flame 

That  shot  from  writhen  lightnings,  each  dim  orb, 

Strong  though  they  were,  intolerable  smote, 

And  scorched  their  blasted  vision  :  through  the  void 

Of  Erebus  the  preternatural  glare 

Spread  mingling  fire  with  darkness.     But  to  see 

With  human  eye  and  hear  with  the  ear  of  man 

Had  been  as  if  midway  the  spacious  heaven 

Hurtling  with  earth  shocked — e'en  as  nether  earth 

Crashed  from  the  centre,  and  the  wreck  of  heaven 

"Fell  ruinous  from  high.     So  vast  the  din 

When,  gods  encountering  gods,  the  clang  of  arms 

Commingled,  and  the  tumult  roared  from  heaven." 

— E.  908-939. 

To  heighten  the  turmoil,  the  winds  and  elements  fight 
on  the  side  of  Zeus.  The  tide  of  battle  turns.  Jove's 
huge  auxiliaries  overwhelm  the  Titans  with  a  succes- 
sion of  great  missiles,  send  them  sheer  beneath  the 
earth,  and  consign  them  to  a  durance  "  as  far  beneath, 
under  earth,  as  heaven  is  from  earth,  for  equal  is  the 


THE    THEOGONY.  85 

space  from  earth  to  murky  Tartarus/'  There,  iu  the 
deeper  chamber  of  an  abyss  from  which  there  is  no 
escape,  the  Titans  are  thenceforth  imprisoned,  with 
the  hundred-handed  giants  set  over  them  as  keepers, 
and  with  Day  and  Night  acting  as  sentries  or  janitors 
in  front  of  the  brazen  threshold  : — 

"  There  Night 
And  DajT,  near  passing,  mutual  greeting  still 
Exchange,  alternate  as  they  glide  athwart 
The  brazen  threshold  vast.     This  enters,  that 
Forth  issues,  nor  the  two  can  one  abode 
At  once  constrain.     This  passes  forth  and  roams 
The  round  of  earth,  that  in  the  mansion  waits 
Till  the  d  ue  season  of  her  travel  come. 
Lo  !  from  the  one  the  far-discerning  light 
Beams  upon  earthly  dwellers  :  but  a  cloud 
Of  pitchy  darkness  veils  the  other  round  : 
Pernicious  Night,  aye  leading  in  her  hand 
Sleep,  Death's  twin  brother  :  sons  of  gloomy  Night, 
There  hold  they  habitation,  Death  and  Sleep, 
Dread  deities  :  nor  them  doth  shining  sun 
E'er  with  his  beam  contemplate,  when  he  climbs 
The  cope  of  heaven,  or  when  from  heaven  descends. 
Of  these  the  one  glides  gentle  o'er  the  space 
Of  earth  and  broad  expanse  of  ocean  waves, 
Placid  to  man.     The  other  has  a  heart 
Of  iron  :  yea,  the  heart  within  his  breast 
Is  brass  unpitying  :  whom  of  men  he  grasps, 
Stern  he  retains  :  e'en  to  immortal  gods 
A  foe."  — E.  992-1014. 

Of  these  sentries  the  readers  of  Milton's  *  Paradise 
Lost '  may  recall  the  description  at  the  opening  of  the 
.sixth  book;  whilst  the  counterparts  of  the  twin  cliil* 


86  HESIOD. 

dren  of  Night  may  be  found  in  the  Iliad,*  as  well  as 
in  the  iEneid.t 

Another  wonder  of  the  prison-house,  in  Hesiod's 
account  of  it,  is  Cerberus  : — 

"  A  grisly  dog,  implacable, 
"Watching  before  the  gates.     A  stratagem 
Is  his,  malicious  :  them  who  enter  there, 
With  tail  and  bended  ears  he  fawning  soothes, 
But  suffers  not  that  they  with  backward  step 
Repass  :  whoe'er  would  issue  from  the  gates 
Of  Pluto  strong  and  stern  Persephone, 
For  them  with  marking  eye  he  lurks  :  on  them 
Springs  from  his  couch,  and  pitiless  devours." 

— E.  1018-1026. 

In  close  proximity  to  this  monster  was  the  fabled 
Styx,  in  some  respects  the  most  awful  personage  in 
the  'Theogony.'  The  legend  about  her  is  somewhat 
obscure,  but  it  is  curious  as  being  connected  with  that 
of  Iris,  the  rainbow,  whose  function  of  carrying  up 
water  when  any  god  has  been  guilty  of  falsehood 
seems  a  vague  embodiment  of  the  covenant  sealed  by 
the  "  bow  set  in  the  cloud  :  " — 

"  Jove  sends  Iris  down 
To  bring  the  great  oath  in  a  golden  ewer, 
The  far-famed  water,  from  steep,  sky-capt  rock 
Distilling  in  cold  stream.     Beneath  the  earth 
Abundant  from  the  sacred  river-head 
Through  shades  of  darkest  night  the  Stygian  horn 
Of  Ocean  flows  :  a  tenth  of  all  the  streams 
To  the  dread  Oath  allotted.     In  nine  streams 
Circling  the  round  of  earth  and  the  broad  seas 

*  II.  xiv.  231,  &c.  t  iEn.  vi.  278,  &c 


THE    THEOGONY.  87 

With  silver  whirlpools  twined  with  many  a  maze, 
It  falls  into  the  deep  :  one  stream  alone 
Glides  from  the  rock,  a  mighty  bane  to  gods. 
Who  of  immortals,  that  inhabit  still 
Olympus  topped  with  snow,  libation  pours 
And  is  forsworn,  he  one  whole  year  entire 
Lies  reft  of  breath,  nor  yet  approaches  once 
The  Hectare d  and  ambrosial  sweet  repast : 
But  still  reclines  on  the  spread  festive  couch 
Mute,  breathless  :  and  a  mortal  lethargy 
O'erwhelms  him  ;  but  his  malady  absolved 
With  the  great  round  of  the  revolving  year, 
More  ills  on  ills  afflictive  seize  :  nine  years 
From  everlasting  deities  remote 
His  lot  is  cast :  in  council  nor  in  feast 
Once  joins  he,  till  nine  years  entire  are  full. 

So  great  an  oath  the  deities  of  heaven 
Decreed  the  waters  incorruptible, 
Ancient,  of  Styx,  who  sweeps  with  wandering  wave 
A  rugged  region  :  where  of  dusky  Earth, 
And  darksome  Tartarus,  and  Ocean  waste, 
And  the  starred  Heaven,  the  source  and  boundary 
Successive  rise  and  end  :  a  dreary  wild 
And  ghastly,  e'en  by  deities  abhorred." 

— E.  1038-1072. 

Such,  according  to  Hesiod,  are  the  surroundings  of 
the  infernal  prison-house  which  received  the  vanquished 
Titans  when  Jove's  victory  was  assured.  Not  yet,  how- 
ever, could  he  rest  from  his  toil :  he  had  yet  to  scotch 
the  half-serpent,  half-human  Typhosus,  the  offspring  of 
a  new  union  betwixt  Earth  and  Tartarus, — a  monster  so 
terror-inspiring  by  means  of  its  hundred  heads  and  voices 
to  match,  that  Olympus  might  well  dread  another  and 


88  HMSIOD. 

less  welcome  master  should  this  pest  attain  full  devel- 
opment.    Zeus,  we  are  told,  foresaw  the  dangei : — 

"  Intuitive  and  vigilant  and  strong 
He  thundered  :  instantaneous  all  around 
Earth  reeled  with  horrible  crash  :  the  firmament 
Roared  of  high  heaven,  the  ocean  streams  and  seas, 
And  uttermost  caverns  !      While  the  king  in  wrath 
Uprose,  beneath  his  everlasting  feet 
Trembled  Olympus :  groaned  the  steadfast  earth. 
From  either  side  a  burning  radiance  caught 
The  darkly-rolling  ocean,  from  the  flash 
Of  lightnings  and  the  monster's  darted  flame, 
Hot  thunderbolts,  and  blasts  of  fiery  winds. 
Glowed  earth,  air,  sea  :  the  billows  heaved  on  high 
Foamed  round  the  shores,  and  dashed  on  every  side 
Beneath  the  rush  of  gods.     Concussion  wild 
And  unappeasable  arose  :  aghast 
The  gloomy  monarch  of  th'  infernal  dead 
Trembled  :  the  sub-Tartarean  Titans  heard 
E'en  where  they  stood  and  Cronus  in  the  midst ; 
They  heard  appalled  the  unextinguished  rage 
Of  tumult  and  the  din  of  dreadful  war. 
Now  when  the  god,  the  fulness  of  his  might 
Gathering  at  once,  had  grasped  his  radiant  arms, 
The  glowing  thunderbolt  and  bickering  flame, 
He  from  the  summit  of  th'  Olympian  mount 
Leapt  at  a  bound,  and  smote  him  :  hissed  at  once 
The  horrible  monster's  heads  enormous,  scorched 
In  one  conflagrant  blaze.     When  thus  the  god 
Had  quelled  him,  thunder-smitten,  mangled,  prone, 
He  fell :  beneath  his  weight  earth  groaning  shook. 
Flame  from  the  lightning-stricken  prodigy 
Flashed  'mid  the  mountain  hollows,  rugged,  dark, 
Where  he  fell  smitten.     Broad  earth  glowed  intense 
From  that  unbounded  vapour,  and  dissolved :— 


THE    THEOGONY.  89 

As  fusile  tin,  by  art  of  youths,  above 

The  wide-brimmed  vase  up-bubbling,  foams  with  heat ; 

Or  iron  hardest  of  the  mine,  subdued 

By  burning  flame,  amid  the  mountain  delis 

Melts  in  the  sacred  caves  beneath  the  hands 

Of  Vulcan, — so  earth  melted  in  the  glare 

Of  blazing  lire.     He  down  wide  Hell's  abyss 

His  victim  hurled,  in  bitterness  of  soul." 

— E.  1108-1149. 

The  italicised  lines  may  recall  the  noble  image  in  the 
'Paradise  Lost;'*  a  passage  wThich  Milton's  editor, 
Todd,  pronounces  grander  in  conception  than  Hesiod's. 
But,  as  Elton  fairly  answers,  it  is  only  in  Milton's 
reservation  that  he  is  superior.  "  The  mere  rising  of 
Zeus  causing  mountains  to  rock  beneath  his  everlast- 
ing feet,  is  sublimer  than  the  firmament  shaking  from 
the  rolling  of  wheels." 

After  quelling  this  monster,  Zeus  is  represented  be- 
thinking himself  of  a  suitable  consort,  and  espousing 
Metis  or  Wisdom,  so  as  to  effect  a  union  of  abso- 
lute wisdom  with  absolute  power.  As,  however,  in  the 
Hesiodic  view  of  the  divinity,  there  was  ever  a  risk  of 
dethronement  to  the  sire  at  the  hand  of  his  offspring, 
Zeus  hit  upon  a  plan  which  should  prevent  his  wife 
producing  a  progeny  that  might  hereafter  conspire  with 
her  to  dethrone  him,  after  the  hereditary  fashion.  He 
absorbed  Metis,  with  her  babe  yet  unborn,  in  his  own 
breast,  and,  according  to  mythology,  found  this  task 

*  "  Under  his  burning  wheels 
The  steadfast  empyrean  shook  throughout, 
All  but  the  throne  itself  of  God," 

— vi.  832-834. 


90  HESIOD. 

easier  through  having  persuaded  her  to  assume  the 
most  diminutive  of  shapes.  Thenceforth  he  blended 
perfect  wisdom  in  his  own  body,  and  in  due  time,  as 
from  a  second  womb — 

"  He  from  his  head  disclosed,  himself,  to  birth 
The  blue-eyed  maid  Tritonian  Pallas,  fierce, 
Rousing  the  war-field's  tumult,  unsubdued, 
Leader  of  armies,  awful,  whose  delight 
The  shout  of  battle  and  the  shock  of  war/' 

— E.  1213-1217. 

Yet,  notwithstanding  so  summary  a  putting  away  of 
his  first  wife,  Zeus,  it  appears,  had  no  mind  to  remain 
a  widower.  Themis  bare  him  the  Hours  ;  Eurynome 
the  Graces — 

"Whose  eyelids,  as  they  gaze, 
Drop  love  unnerving  ;  and  beneath  the  shade 
Of  their  arched  brows  they  steal  the  sidelong  glance 
Of  sweetness ; " 

— E.  1196-1199. 

and  Mnemosyne,  a  daughter  of  Uranus,  became  the 
mother  by  him  of  the  Nine  Muses,  celebrated  by 
Hesiod  at  the  beginning  of  the  poem.  With  Deme- 
ter  and  Latona  also  he  had  tender  relations,  before 
he  finally  resigned  himself  to  his  sister  Hera  (Juno), 
who  took  permanent  rank  as  Queen  of  the  Gods. 
From  this  union  sprang  Mars  and  Hebe,  and  Eilei- 
tbyia  or  Lucina  :  whilst  according  to  Hesiod,  who 
herein  differs  from  Homer,  Hephcestus  or  Vulcan 
was  the  offspring  of  Hera  alone,  as  a  set-off  to  Zeus's 
sole  parentage  of  Athena.  Of  the  more  illicit  amours 
of  the  fickle  king  of  the  gods,  and  of  their  issues,  and 


THE    THEOGONY.  91 

the  marriages  consequent  upon  these  children  of  the  gods 
espousing  nymphs  or  mortals,  Hesiod  has  still  much 
to  tell,  in  his  fashion  of  genealogising,  "before  we  reach 
the  Heroogony,  or  list  of  heroes  horn  of  the  union  of 
goddesses  with  mortal  men,  which  is  tacked  to  the  '  The- 
ogony' proper,  as  it  has  come  down  to  us.  It  is  indeed 
a  list  and  little  more ;  tracing,  for  example,  the  birth  of 
Plutus  to  the  meeting  of  Demeter  with  Iasius  in  the 
wheat-fields  of  Crete;  of  Achilles,  to  the  union  of  Peleus 
with  Thetis ;  of  Latinus,  Telegonus,  and  another,  to  the 
dalliance  of  Ulysses  with  the  divine  Circe. 

"  Lo  !  these  were  they  who,  yielding  to  embrace 
Of  mortal  men,  themselves  immortal,  gave 
A  race  resembling  gods." 

— E.  1324-1236. 
Thus  virtually  ends  the  *  Theogony '  in  its  extant 
form,  but  our  sketch  of  it  would  not  be  complete  were 
we  to  ignore  the  story  of  Pandora  and  Prometheus, 
which  has  been  passed  over  at  its  proper  place  in  the 
genealogy,  with  a  view  to  a  clearer  unfolding  of  the 
sequence  of  the  poem.  In  the  I. Works'  this  legend 
is  an  episode ;  in  the  *  Theogony '  it  is  a  piece  of  gen- 
ealogy, apropos  of  the  offspring  of  Iapetus,  the  brother 
of  Cronus,  and  Clymene.  Atlas,  one  of  their  sons,  was 
doomed  by  Zeus  to  bear  up  the  vault  of  heaven  as  an 
eternal  penalty  ;  Menoetius,  another,  was  for  his  inso- 
lence thrust  down  to  Erebus  by  the  lightning-flash. 
Of  Epimetheus,  who  in  the  *  Works '  accepts  the  gift 
of  Pandora,  it  is  simply  said  in  the  *  Theogony  '  that 
he  did  so,  and  brought  evil  upon  man  by  his  act. 
Nothing  is  said  of  heedlessness  of  his  brother's  cau- 


■\Tb  r  a  ^p* 

OF  THE 

"UNIVERSITY 


/ 


92  HESIOD. 

tion  ;  nothing  of  the  casket  of  evils,  from  which  in  the 
'Works,'  Pandora,  by  lifting  the  lid,  lets  mischief 
and  disease  loose  upon  the  world.  The  key  to  the 
difference  between  the  two  accounts  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  in  the  '  Works '  Hesiod  narrates  the 
consequences  of  the  sin  of  Prometheus  ;  in  the  '  The- 
ogony,'  the  story  of  the  sin  itself.  In  the  order  ol 
events  that  story  would  run  thus  :  Prometheus  enrage? 
Zeus  by  scoffing  at  sacrifices,  and  by  tricking  the  sage 
ruler  of  Olympus  into  a  wrong  choice  touching  the 
most  savoury  part  of  the  ox.  In  his  office  of  arbitrator, 
he  divides  two  portions,  the  flesh  and  entrails  covered 
with  the  belly  on  one  hand,  the  bones  under  a  cover 
of  white  fat  on  the  other.  Zeus  chooses  after  the 
outward  appearance,  but,  as  Hesiod  seems  to  imply, 
chooses  wittingly,  for  the  sake  of  having  a  grievance. 
Thenceforth  in  sacrifice  it  was  customary  to  offer  the 
whitening  bones  at  his  altars.  But  the  god  neither 
forgot  nor  forgave  the  cheat — 

"  And  still  the  fraud  remembering  from  that  hour, 
The  strength  of  unexhausted  fire  denied 
To  all  the  dwellers  upon  earth.     But  him 
Benevolent  Prometheus  did  beguile  : 
The  far-seen  splendour  in  a  hollow  reed 
He  stole  of  inexhaustible  flame.     But  then 
Besentment  stung  the  Thunderer's  inmost  soul, 
And  his  heart  chafed  With  anger  when  he  saw 
The  fire  far-gleaming  in  the  midst  of  men. 
Straight  for  the  flame  bestowed  devised  he  ill 
To  man." 

— E.  749-759. 

Outwitted  twice,  he  roused  himself  to  take  vengeance 


THE    THEOGONY.  93 

upon  Prometheus  as  well  as  his  clients.  On  the  latter 
he  inflicted  the  evil  of  winsome  womankind,  repre- 
sented by  Pandora,  and  placed  them  in  the  dilemma 
of  either  not  marrying,  and  dying  heirless,  or  of  find- 
ing in  marriage  the  lottery  which  it  is  still  accounted. 
As  to  Prometheus  and  his  punishment,  Hesiod's  ac- 
count is  as  follows  : — 

"  Prometheus,  versed 
In  various  wiles,  he  bound  with  fettering  chains 
Indissoluble,  chains  of  galling  weight, 
Midway  a  column.     Down  he  sent  from  high 
The  broad-winged  eagle  :  she  his  liver  gorged 
Immortal.     For  it  sprang  with  life,  and  grew 
In  the  night  season,  and  the  waste  repaired 
Of  what  by  day  the  bird  of  spreading  wing 
Devoured." 

— E.  696-704. 

This  durance  was  eventually  terminated  by  Hercules 
slaying  the  vulture  or  eagle,  and  reconciling  Zeus  and 
the  Titan.     Hesiod's  moral  will  sum  up  the  tale  : — 

"  Nathless  it  is  not  given  thee  to  deceive 
The  god,  nor  yet  elude  the  omniscient  mind  ; 
For  not  Prometheus,  void  of  blame  to  man, 
Could  'scape  the  burden  of  oppressive  wrath  ; 
And  vain  his  various  wisdom  ;  vain  to  free 
From  pangs,  or  burst  the  inextricable  chain." 

— E.  816-821. 

The  foregoing  sketch  will,  it  is  hoped,  have  enabled 
English  readers  to  discover  in  Hesiod's  'Theogony '  not  a 
mere  prosy  catalogue,  but  a  systematised  account  of  the 
generation  of  the  gods  of  Hellas,  relieved  of  excessive 


94  HESIOD. 

detail  by  fervid  descriptions,  stirring  battle-pieces,  noble 
images,  and  graceful  fancies.  Such  as  it  was,  it  appears 
to  have  found  extensive  circulation  and  acceptance  in 
Greece,  and  to  have  formed  the  chief  source  of  infor- 
mation amongst  Greeks  concerning  the  divine  antiquity. 
This  is  not  the  kind  of  work  to  admit  of  a  comparison 
of  the  so-called  Orphic  Theogony,  which,  in  point  of 
fact,  belongs  to  a  much  later  date,  with  that  of  Hesiod. 
Enough  to  state  that  the  former,  to  use  Mr  Grote's  ex- 
pression, "  contains  the  Hesiodic  ideas  and  persons, 
enlarged  and  mystically  disguised."  But  those  who 
have  the  time  and  materials  for,  carrying  out  the  com- 
parison for  themselves,  will  be  led  to  discover  in  the 
development  of  religious  belief,  in  the  bias  towards  a 
sort  of  unity  of  Godhead,  and  in  the  investment  of  the 
powers  of  nature  with  the  attributes  of  deity,  which 
characterise  the  Orphic  worship  and  theogonies,  in- 
direct corroboration  of  the  opinion  which  assigns  a 
very  early  date  to  the  simple,  unmystical,  and,  so  to 
speak,  unspiritual  view  of  the  divine  foretime,  hai  ded 
down  to  us  in  Hesiod's  theogonic  system. 


CHAPTEE    V. 


THE   SHIELD    OF   HERCULES. 


It  was  remarked  at  the  outset  that  one  class  of  Hesi- 
odic  poems  consisted  of  epics  in  petto  on  some  subject 
of  heroic  mythology.  The  '  Shield  of  Hercules  '  sur- 
vives as  a  sample,  if  indeed  it  is  to  be  received  as 
Hesiod's  work.  Its  theme  is  a  single  adventure  of 
Hercules,  his  combat  with  Cycnus  and  his  father,  the 
war-god,  near  Apollo's  Temple  at  Pagasae.  Shorn  of  a 
preface  of  fifty-six  verses  borrowed  from  the  '  Catalogue 
of  Women,'  and  having  for  their  burden  the  artifice 
of  Zeus  with  Alcmena,  which  resulted  in  the  birth  of 
Hercules,  a  preface  manifestly  in  the  wrong  place,  the 
'Shield '  is  a  fairly  compact  poem,  constructed  as  a  frame 
for  the  description  of  the  hero's  buckler,  to  which  the 
rest  of  the  poem  is  ancillary.  Among  the  ancients  the 
balance  of  opinion  leaned  to  the  belief  that  it  was 
written  by  the  author  of  the  '  Theogony  ; '  but  though 
there  is  insufficient  ground  for  the  wholesale  deprecia- 
tion cast  upon  it  by  Mure,  in  his  '  History  of  the  Lan- 
guage and  Literature  of  Ancient  Greece/  it  can  hardly 
be  maintained  that  the  '  Shield  of  Hercules  '  is  a  poem 


96  HESIOD. 

of  the  same  age  and  authorship  as  the  '  Works  *  or  the 
*  Theogony.'  The  sounder  criticism  of  Muller  deems 
it  worthy  to  be  set  side  by  side  with  Homer's  account 
t>f  the  Shield  of  Achilles  in  the  13th  book  of  the 
Iliad,  and  characterises  it  as  executed  in  the  genuine 
spirit  of  the  Hesiodian  school.  Were  it  desirable,  it 
might  be  shown  from  the  writings  of  the  same  critic* 
that  the  objects  represented  on  Hesiod's  shield  were  in 
fact  the  first  subjects  of  the  Greek  artificers  in  bronze, 
and  that  there  are  proofs  in  the  accoutrement  of  Her- 
cules, not  with  club  and  lion's  skin,  but  like  other 
heroes,  of  a  date  for  this  poem  not  posterior  to  the 
40th  Olympiad. 

It  has,  no  doubt,  been  the  ill-fortune  of  this  poem 
to  have  attracted  more  than  its  fair  share  of  botchers 
and  interpolators,  and  the  discrimination  of  the  true 
gold  from  the  counterfeit  and  base  metal  belongs  rather 
to  a  critical  edition  of  the  Hesiodic  remains ;  but  in 
the  glance  which  we  propose  to  bestow  upon  the  work 
as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  it  will  be  shown  that,  after 
considerable  allowance  for  interpolated  passages,  a 
residuum  of  fine  heroic  poetry  will  survive  the  pro- 
cess. 

The  poem  proper,  it  has  been  said,  begins  at  v.  57. 
Hercules,  on  reaching  manhood,  had  undertaken  an 
expedition  against  a  noted  robber,  Cycnus,  the  son  of 
Ares  and  Pelopia.  This  Cycnus  used  to  infest  the 
mountain-passes  between  Thessaly  and  Eceotia,  and 
sacrilegiously  waylay  the  processions  to  Delphi.  It 
seems  he  would  have  been  willing  to  buy  off  Apollo's 
*  Hist.  Gr.  Lit.,  i.  132. 


THE  SHIELD  OF  HERCULES.  97 

wrath  by  building  him  at  Pagasae  an  altar  of  the  horns 
of  captured  beasts ;  but  the  god  loved  his  shrine  too 
well  to  compound  matters  so  easily,  and  instead  of 
doing  so,  appears  to  have  commissioned  Hercules  to 
exact  reparation  from  the  robber.  The  poem  opens 
with  the  approach  of  the  hero,  with  his  charioteer  and 
kinsman,  Iolaus,  to  the  robber's  haunt : — 

"  There  in  the  grove  of  the  far-darting  god 
He  found  him,  and,  insatiable  of  war, 
Ares,  his  sire,  beside.     Both  bright  in  arms, 
Bright  in  the  sheen  of  burning  flame  they  stood 
On  their  high  chariot,  and  the  horses  fleet 
Trampled  the  ground  with  rending  hoofs  ;  around 
In  parted  circle  smoked  the  cloudy  dust, 
Up-dashed  beneath  the  trampling  hoofs,  and  cars 
Of  complicated  frame.     The  well-framed  cars 
Rattled  aloud  ;  loud  clashed  the  wheels,  while  wrapt 
In  their  full  speed  the  horses  flew.     Rejoiced 
The  noble  Cycnus  ;  for  the  hope  was  his 
Jove's  warlike  offspring  and  his  charioteer 
To  slay,  and  strip  them  of  their  gorgeous  mail. 
But  to  his  vaunts  the  prophet  god  of  day 
Turned  a  deaf  ear  :  for  he  himself  set  on 
The  assault  of  Heracles." 

— E.  81-97. 

Kone  but  Hercules,  we  are  told,  could  have  faced 
the  unearthly  light  with  which  the  sheen  of  the  war- 
god's  armour  and  the  glare  of  his  fire-flashing  eyes  lit 
up.  the  sacred  enclosure  and  its  environs.  He,  how- 
ever, is  equal  to  the  occasion.  Probably,  if  we  had  the 
poem  as  it  was  written,  the  hero  would  not  be  repre- 
sented as  in  the  text,  employing  this  critical  moment 
in  irrelevant  speeches  to  his  charioteer  to  the  effect 

a.  c.  vol.  xv.   '  G 


98  HESIOD. 

that  the  labours  (in  which,  by  the  way,  his  soul  de- 
lighted) were  all  occasioned  by  the  folly  of  that  chari- 
oteer's father,  Iphiclus.  It  was  an  odd  time  to  twit 
his  comrade  and  his  brother's  son  with  that  brother's 
errors,  when  a  fight  with  Ares,  the  god  of  war,  was 
imminent.  Iolaus's  answer  is  more  to  the  point.  He 
bids  his  chief  rely  on  Zeus  and  Poseidon  for  victory  in 
the  encounter,  and  urges  him  to  don  his  armour  in 
readiness  for  a  fray  in  which  the  race  of  Alcseus,  to 
which  Hercules  jputatively  belongs,  shall  get  the  vic- 
tory : — 

"  He  said,  and  Heracles  smiled  stern  his  joy, 
Elate  of  thought :  for  he  had  spoken  words 
Most  welcome.     Then  in  winged  accents  thus  : 
'Jove-fostered  hero,  it  is  e'en  at  hand, 
The  battle's  rough  encounter  :  thou,  as  erst, 
In  martial  prudence  firm,  aright,  aleft, 
"With  vantage  of  the  fray  unerring  guide 
Areion,  huge  and  sable-maned  ;  and  me 
Aid  in  the  doubtful  conflict,  as  thou  may'st.'" 

— E.  157-165.  ' 

It  would  appear  that  the  horse  here  mentioned  owes 
its  prominence  to  being  of  divine  strain,  and  the  off- 
spring of  the  sea-god.  The  other  member  of  the  pair 
is  not  named,  because  of  the  transcendent  breed  of  its 
yoke-fellow,  who  is,  in  the  twenty-third  book  of  the 
Iliad,  said  to  belong  to  Adrastus.     ' 

But  now  the  hero  begins  his  war-toilet,  donning  his 
greaves  of  mountain-brass,  the  corselet  which  is  Athe- 
na's gift,  and  the  sword  from  the  same  donor,  which 
he  slings  athwart  his  shoulders.  Of  the  arrows  in  his 
quiver  the  poet  says — 


THE  SHIELD   OF  HERCULES.  99 

"  Shuddering  horrors  these 
Inflicted,  and  the  agony  of  death 
Sudden,  that  chokes  the  suffocative  voice : 
The  points  were  barbed  with  death  and  bitter-steeped 
"With  human  tears  :  burnished  the  length'ning  shafts, 
And  they  were  feathered  from  the  tawny  plume 
Of  eagles." 

— E.  177-183. 

The  heroic  spear  and  helm  complete  his  equipment, 
save  and  except  the  shield,  to  which  it  has  been  above 
noted  that  all  the  rest  is  introductory.  This  would 
seem  to  have  been  a  circular  disc,  with  a  dragon  for 
centre,  and  the  parts  \between  it  and  the  outer  rim 
divided  by  layers  of  cyanus  or  blue  steel  into  four 
compartments  of  enamel,  ivory,  electrum,  and  gold. 
According  to  Miiller,*  a  battle  of  wild  boars  and  lions 
forms  a  narrow  band  round  the  middle.  The  first  con- 
siderable band  which  surrounds  the  centre-piece  in  the 
circle  consists  of  four  departments,  of  which  two  contain 
warlike,  and  two  peaceable  subjects,  so  that  the  entire 
shield  contains,  as  it  were,  a  sanguinary  and  a  tranquil 
side.  The  rim  of  the  shield  is  surrounded  by  the 
ocean.  An  idea  of  the  poem  is  best  gathered  from 
some  of  the  details  of  the  several  parts.  Perched  in 
the  centre  on  the  dragon's  head — 

"  Stern  Strife  in  air 
Hung  hovering,  and  arrayed  the  war  of  men  ; 
Haggard  ;  whose  aspect  from  all  mortals  reft 
All  mind  and  soul  ;  whoe'er  in  brunt  of  arms 
Should  match  their  strength,  and  face  the  son  of  Zeus, 
Below,  this  earth  their  spirits  to  the  abyss 

*  Hist.  Gr.  Lit.,  i.  132. 


100  HESIOD. 

Descend  ;  and  through  the  flesh  that  wastes  away 
Beneath  the  parching  Sun,  their  whitening  bones 
Start  forth  and  moulder  in  the  sable  dust." 

— E.  200-208. 

Around  this  central  image  are  grouped  the  appro- 
priate forms  of  "  Bout,"  "  Eailying,"  "  Terror,"  "  Tu- 
mult," "  Carnage,"  and  "  Discord  ;  "  but  in  close  proxi- 
mity to  the  dragon's  head  came  twelve  serpent-heads, 
freezing  with  dread  all  mortal  combatants,  and  endowed, 
it  should  seem,  with  properties  not  inherent  in  the 
metal  of  the  shield.     The  translation  is  as  follows  : — 

"Oft  as  he 
Moved  to  the  battle,  from  their  clashing  fangs 
A  sound  was  heard.     Such  miracles  displayed 
The  buckler's  held  with  living  blazonry 
Resplendent ;  and  those  fearful  snakes  were  streaked 
O'er  their  cerulean  backs  with  streaks  of  jet, 
And  their  jaws  blackened  with  a  jetty  dye." 

— E.  224-230. 

But  the  original  seems  to  imply  that  the  rows  of  teeth, 
with  which  each  serpent  was  finished,  actually  gnashed 
and  clashed  while  Hercules  was  fighting.  This,  as  Mr 
Paley  suggests,  may  have  been  a  mechanical  device 
like  that  in  the  Theban  Shields  mentioned  in  the 
'  Phoenissse '  of  Euripides,  v.  11-26  ;  or  a  bit  of  the  mar- 
vellous— a  "  Munchausenism,"  such  as  ancient  poets 
affect  in  enhancing  the  wonder  of  some  work  of  the 
gods.  Whichever  it  was,  a  like  demand  on  our 
credulity  is  made  in  two  other  passages  ;  one,  where  in 
another  compartment  Perseus  is  represented  as  seeming 
to  hover  over  the  shield's  surface,  like  a  man  flying 
low  in  air,  and  to  flit  like  a  thought : — ■ 


THE  SHIELD   OF  HERCULES.  101 

u  There  was  the  knight,  of  fair-haired  Danae  born, 
Perseus,  nor  yet  the  buckler  with  his  feet 
Touched,  nor  yet  distant  hovered  :  strange  to  think ; 
For  nowhere  on  the  surface  of  the  shield 
He  rested  :  so  the  crippled  artist  god, 
Illustrious,  framed  him  with  his  hands  in  gold." 

— E.  297  302. 

The  other  is  where  the  noise  of  the  Gorgons'  feet,  as 
they  tread,  is  represented  as  realised  in  connection 
with  the  sculptured  shield  : — 

"  Close  behind  the  Gorgons  twain 
Of  nameless  terror,  unapproachable, 
Came  rushing  :  eagerly  they  stretched  their  arms 
To  seize  him  :  from  the  pallid  adamant 
Audibly  as  they  rushed,  the  clattering  shield 
Clanked  with  a  sharp  shrill  sound/' 

— E.  314-319. 

Next  to  the  serpent-heads  on  the  shield  was  wrought 
a  fight  betwixt  boars  and  lions — an  occasion  to  the  poet 
of  spirited  description  : — 

"  Wild  from  the  forest,  herds  of  boars  were  there, 
And  lions,  mutual  glaring  :  these  in  wrath 
Leaped  on  each  other  ;  and  by  troops  they  drove 
Their  onset :  nor  yet  these  nor  those  recoiled, 
Nor  quaked  in  fear  :  of  both  the  backs  uprose, 
Bristling  with  anger :  for  a  lion  huge 
Lay  stretched  amidst  them,  and  two  boars  beside, 
Lifeless  :  the  sable  blood  down-dropping  oozed 
Into  the  ground.     So  these  with  bowed  backs 
Lay  dead  beneath  the  terrible  lions  ;  they 
For  this  the  more  incensed,  both  savage  boars 
And  tawny  lions,  chafing  sprang  to  war." 

— E.  231-242. 


102  IIES10D. 

Next  came  tlie  battle  of  the  Lapiths  and  Centaurs, 
the  names  of  both  races  corresponding  in  the  main  with 
those  in  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad.  Both  bands  are 
wrought  in  silver,  their  arms  and  missiles  in  gold. 
The  Centaurs,  it  is  noteworthy,  have  not  yet  assumed 
the  double  form  of  man  and  beast,  of  which  the  first 
mention  occurs  in  Pindar  (Pyth.  ii.  80),  but  are  hero 
the  rude  monsters  we  find  under  the  same  name  in  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey — a  fact  which  is  of  some  importance 
in  fixing  the  comparatively  early  date  of  the  shield. 
On  the  same  compartment  is  wrought,  the  poet  tells 
us,  Ares  in  his  war- chariot,  attended  by  Pear  and 
Consternation ;  whilst  Pallas,  taking  the  spoil,  spear 
in  hand,  with  helmed  brow  and  her  aegis  athwart  her 
shoulders,  is  depicted  as  she  sets  the  battle  in  array, 
and  rushes  forth  to  mingle  in  the  war  din. 

After  a  description  following  next  of  the  material 
wealth  of  Olympus,  which  has  been  suspected  of 
spuriousness,  as  savouring  of  post-Homeric  style  and 
ideas,  occurs  a  curious  presentment  of  a  harbour  and 
surging  sea,  wrought  of  tin,  in  which  silver  dolphins  are 
chasing  the  lesser  fish,  and  amusing  themselves  with 
gorging  these,  and  spouting  up  water,  whale  fashion. 
The  little  fish  are  wrought  in  brass.  A  later  addition 
to  the  picture  is  obviously  interpolated  from  Theo- 
critus (i.  39),  namely,  the  fisherman  on  a  crag — 

"  Observant,  in  his  grasp  who  held  a  net, 
Like  one  that  poising  rises  to  the  throw." 

What   is   needed   to    complete   the   picture    in    the 
Alexandrian  poet  is,  however,  de  trop  here. 


THE  SHIELD   OF  HERCULES.  103 

The  description  of  Perseus,  and  his  encounter  with 
the  Gorgon s,  has  been  partially  anticipated,  though  our 
citations  did  not  include  the  Gorgon's  head  covering  all  ( 
his  hack,  his  silver  knapsack  with  gold  tassels,  or  his 
invisible  cap,  the  "  helmet  of  Hades,"  which  occurs  in 
the  fifth  book  of  the  Iliad,  and  has  passed  into  a  proverb. 
Above  this  group  were  wrought  two  cities,  one  at  war, 
the  other  at  peace.  The  details  of  the  former  are  life- 
like ;  able-bodied  men  engaged  in  fight,  women  beat- 
ing their  breasts  upon  the  walls,  the  elders  at  the 
gates  asking  help  of  the  blessed  gods ;  whilst  the 
Fates  with  interest  survey  and  fan  the  work  of  siege 
and  slaughter  with  a  prospect  to  a  coming  banquet  of 
blood : — 

"  Hard  by  there  stood 
Clotho,  and  Lachesis,  and  Atropos 
Somewhat  in  years  inferior  :  nor  was  she 
A  mighty  goddess  ;  yet  those  other  Fates 
Exceeding,  and  of  birth  the  elder  far." 

— E.  346-350. 

Had  the  translator  read  size  for  years,  Hesiod's  ac- 
count would  have  tallied  with  the  evidence  of  vases  and 
terra-cottas,  which  represent  Clotho  as  the  tallest,  and 
Atropos  the  most  decrepit  of  the  weird  sisters.  Ap- 
propriately near  this  group  is  seen — 

u  Misery,  wan  and  ghastly,  worn  with  woe, 
Arid  and  swoln  of  knee,  with  hunger's  pains 
Faint  falling  :  from  her  lean  hands  long  the  nails 
Outgrew  :  an  ichor  from  her  nostrils  flowed. 
Blood  from  her  cheeks  distilled  to  earth  :  with  teeth 
All  wide,  disclosed  in  grinning  agony 


104  HESIOD. 

She  stood  :  a  cloud  of  dust  her  shoulders  spread, 
And  her  eyes  ran  with  tears  " 

— E.  355-362. 

The  italicised  words  in  the  above  description  recall 
a  curious  image  of  starvation,  "  pressing  a  tumid  foot 
with  hand  from  hunger  lean,"  in  the  'Works  and 
Days  ■  (v.  692),  and  to  some  extent  point  to  a  kindred 
authorship  of  the  two  poems. 

From  this  ghastly  picture  the  poet  soon  carries  his 
readers  to  a  contrast  on  the  same  band  of  the  shield — 
a  city  at  peace,  which  has  been  supposed  to  be  meant 
for  Thebes.  We  recognise  the  towers  and  the  seven 
gates,  and  become  spectators  of  bridal  processions  to 
the  sound  of  the  flute,  as  opposed  as  possible  to  the 
revels  of  the  war-god  in  that  city  in  its  day  of  trouble — 
revels  which  Euripides  described  as  "  most  unmusical." 
Here  is  some  account  of  what  is  passing  : — 

"  Some  on  the  smooth-wheeled  car 
A  virgin  bride  conducted  :  then  burst  forth 
Aloud  the  marriage  song,  and  far  and  wide 
Loud  splendours  flashed  from  many  a  quivering  torch, 
Borne  in  the  hands  of  slaves.     Gay  blooming  girls 
Preceded  ;  and  the  dancers  followed  blithe. 
These  with  shrill  pipe  indenting  the  soft  lip 
Breathed  melody,  while  broken  echoes  thrilled 
Around  them  :  to  the  lyre  with  flying  touch, 
Those  led  the  love-enkindling  dance.    A  group 
Of  youths  was  elsewhere  imaged  ;  to  the  flute 
Disporting,  some  in  dances  and  in  song, 
In  laughter  others.     To  the  minstrel's  pipe 
So  passed  they  on,  and  the  whole  city  seemed 
As  filled  with  pomps,  with  dances,  and  with  feasts.** 

— E.  366-380. 


•  n  y 


THE  SHIELD   OF  HERCU^§^F^^^ 

A  comparison  of  this  passage  with  its  parallel  in 
Homer's  shield  of  Achilles  (II.  xviii.),  encourages  the 
theory  that  hoth  poets  had  a  common  ideal,  though  the 
representation  is  more  full  and  prolix  in  Hesiod.  We 
quote  the  Homeric  description  from  an  unpublished 
translation :  * — 

"  Two  cities  of  mankind  he  wrought.     In  one 
Marriage  was  made  and  revelry  went  on. 
Here  brides  environed  with  bright  torches'  blaze 
Forth  from  their  bowers  they  lead,  and  loudly  raise 
The  nuptial  chant ;  and  dancers  blithely  spring, 
Cheered  by  the  sweet-breathed  pipe  and  harper's  string, 
And  women  at  their  doors  stand  wondering." 

A  distinct  subject,  having  nothing  to  do  with  the 
nuptial  procession,  though  perhaps  an  accessory  illus- 
tration of  a  city  at  peace,  is  formed  in  the  operations 
of  husbandry  ;  plough ers  tucked  up  and  close  girt  are 
making  the  furrow,  as  on  the  Homeric  shield,  yield 
before  the  coulter.  The  equipment  of  these  plough- 
men carries  us  back  again  to  the  '  Works/  where  the 
husbandman  is  advised  "to  sow  stripped,  plough 
stripped,  and  reap  stripped,"  if  he  would  enjoy  the  gift 
of  Ceres ;  and  where  "  stripping "  means  probably 
getting  rid  of  the  cloak,  and  wearing  only  the  close 
tunic : — 

"  Next  arose 
A  field  thick  set  with  depth  of  corn  :  where  some 
"With  sharpened  sickle  reaped  the  club-like  stalks, 
Some  bound  them  into  bands,  and  strewed  the  floor 
For  thrashing."— E. 

*  By  Mr  Richard  Garnett. 


106  RESIOD. 

And  in  close  proximity  was  the  delineation  of  a  vin- 
tage; some  gathering  the  fruit,  vine-sickle  in  hand,  and 
others  carrying  it  away  in  baskets.  By  a  marvellous 
skill  in  metals,  a  row  of  vines  had  been  wrought  in 
gold,  waving  with  leaves  and  trellises  of  silver,  and 
bending  with  grapes  represented  in  some  dark  metal. 
Treading  the  winepress,  and  expressing  the  juice,  com- 
pleted the  picture,  which  is  less  perfect  than  Homer's 
parallel  passage. 

But  there  was  room  found,  it  would  seem,  on  this 
part  of  the  shield,  for  athletic  and  field  sports  of  vari- 
ous kinds,  the  chariot-race  being  the  most  elaborate 
description  of  the  set : — 

"  High  o'er  the  well-compacted  chariots  hung 
The  charioteers  :  the  rapid  horses  loosed 
At  their  full  stretch,  and  shook  the  floating  reins. 
Rebounding  from  the  ground  with  many  a  shock 
Flew  clattering  the  firm  cars,  and  creaked  aloud 
The  naves  of  the  round  wheels.     They  therefore  toiled 
Endless  :  nor  conquest  yet  at  any  time 
Achieved  they,  but  a  doubtful  strife  maintained." 

— E.  413-420. 

Around  the  shield's  verge  was  represented  the  cir- 
cumambient ocean,  girding,  as  it  did  in  Homer's  view^ 
the  flat  and  circular  earth  with  its  boundless  flood  : — 

"  Rounding  the  utmost  verge  the  ocean  flowed 
As  in  full  swell  of  waters  :  and  the  shield 
All  variegated  with  whole  circle  bound. 
Swans  of  high-hovering  wing  there  clamoured  shrill, 
Who  also  skimmed  the  breasted  surge  with  plume 
Innumerous  :  near  them  fishes  'midst  the  waves 
Frolicked  in  wanton  leaps,"- 

E.  424-429. 


THE  SHIELD   0I<   HERCULES.  107 

so  like  the  life,  the  poet  adds,  as  to  exact  the  admira- 
tion of  even  Zeus,  the  artificer's  sire  and  patron. 

So  much  for  the  shield  :  what  remains  concerns  the 
combat  betwixt  Hercules,  and  Cycnus  with  the  war- 
god  to  help  him.  The  odds  are  partially  balanced  by 
the  aid  of  the  blue-eyed  Pallas  to  the  hero,  who  by 
her  counsel  forbears  to  dream  of  "  spoiling  the  steeds 
and  glorious  armour  of  a  god,"  a  thing  which  he  finds 
is  against  the  decrees  of  fate.  Nor  does  the  goddess 
stop  at  advice,  but  vouchsafes  her  invisible  presence 
in  the  hero's  car.  As  the  combatants  come  to  close 
quarters  Hercules  resorts  to  mock  civilities,  and  with 
taunting  allusions  asks  free  passage  to  the  court  of 
Ceyx,  king  of  Iolchos,  the  father-in-law  of  Cycnus. 
As  a  matter  of  course  the  permission  is  denied.  Her- 
cules and  Cycnus  leap  to  the  ground,  and  their  chariot- 
eers drive  a  little  aside  to  give  free  scope  for  the  tug 
of  war : — 

u  As  rocks 
From  some  high  mountain-top  precipitate 
Leap  with  a  bound,  and  o'er  each  other. whirled 
Shock  in  the  dizzying  fall ;  and  many  an  oak 
Of  lofty  branch,  pine-tree,  and  poplar,  deep 
Of  root,  are  crashed  beneath  them  ;  as  their  course 
Rapidly  rolls,  till  now  they  reach  the  plain  ; 
So  met  these  foes  encountering,  and  so  burst 
Their  mighty  clamour.     Echoing  loud  throughout 
The  city  of  the  Myrmidons  gave  back 
Their  lifted  voices,  and  Iolchos  famed, 
And  Arne,  and  Anthea's  grass-girt  walls, 
And  Helice.     Thus  with  amazing  shout 
They  joined  in  battle  :  all-consulting  Zeus 
Then  greatly  thundered :  from  the  clouds  of  heaven 


108  HESIOD. 

He  cast  forth  dews  of  blood,  and  signal  thus 
Of  onset  gave  to  his  high-daring  son." 

— E.  506-522. 

The  simile  of  the  dislodged  rocks  reminds  us  of 
Hector's  onslaught  in  the  thirteenth  book  of  the 
Iliad ;  but  the  poetical  figure  of  the  cities  re-echoing 
the  din  and  clamour  of  the  conflict,  and  the  portent  of 
the  bloody  rain-drops,  are  due  to  Hesiod's  own  ima- 
gination. Close  following  upon  these  comes  a  tissue 
of  similes,  so  prodigally  strewn  that  they  strike  the 
critical  as  later  interpolations.  The  issue  of  the  fight 
is  conceived  in  a  more  genuine  strain  : — 

"  Truly  then 
Cycnus,  the  son  of  Zeus  unmatched  in  strength 
Aiming  to  slay,  against  the  buckler  struck 
His  brazen  lance,  but  through  the  metal  plate 
Broke  not.     The  present  of  a  god  preserved. 
On  the  other  side,  he  of  Amphitryon  named, 
Strong  Heracles,  between  the  helm  and  shield 
Drave  his  long  spear,  and,  underneath  the  chin 
Through  the  bare  neck  smote  violent  and  swift. 
The  murderous  ashen  beam  at  once  the  nerves 
Twain  of  the  neck  cleft  sheer  :  for  all  the  man 
Dropped,  and  his  force  went  from  him  :  down  he  fell 
Headlong.     As  falls  a  thunder- blasted  oak, 
Or  perpendicular  rock,  riven  with  the  flash 
Of  Zeus,  in  smouldering  smoke  is  hurled  from  high, 
So  fell  he." 

— E.  558-573. 

Hercules,  so  far  victorious,  awaits  the  onset  of  the 
bereaved  war-god  with  a  devout  heedfulness  of  his 
assessor's  injunctions.  She  from  her  seat  at  his  side 
interposes  to  apprise  Ares  that  any  attempt  at  revenge 


THE  SHIELD   OF  HERCULES.  109 

or  reprisals  must  involve  a  conflict  with  herself.  But 
the  god,  sore  at  his  bereavement,  heeds  not  her  word, 
and  with  violent  effort  hurls  his  brazen  spear  at  the 
liuge  shield  of  his  antagonist.  In  vain;  for  Pallas 
diverts  the  javelin's  force.  Ares  rushes  upon  Hercu- 
les, and  he,  having  watched  his  opportunity, — 

"  Beneath  the  well-wrought  shield  the  thigh  exposed 
Wounded  with  i.ll  his  slrtiigth,  bud  thrusting  rived 
The  shield's  large  disk,  and  cleft  it  with  his  lance, 
And  in  the  midway  threw  him  to  the  earth 
Prostrate." 

— E.  624-628. 

a  curious  denouement,  wherein  an  immortal  is  in  bit- 
ter need  of  a  Deus  ex  machina.  The  author  of  the 
'  Shield/  however,  has  provided  for  the  contingency. 
Pear  and  Consternation  had  sat  as  helpers  in  the 
chariot  of  Cycnus,  as  Pallas  in  that  of  Hercules. 
They  hurry  the  vanquished  god  into  his  car,  and, 
lashing  the  steeds,  transport  him  without  more  ado  to 
Olympus.  Here  the  poem  should  have  ended;  but  a 
later  chronicler  seems  to  have  felt,  like  many  a  modern 
novelist,  that  the  minor  dramatis  personce  must  be 
accounted  for.  And  so  we  have  a  few  lines  about  the 
victor  spoiling  Cycnus,  whose  obsequies  were  after- 
wards duly  performed  by  his  respectable  father-in-law 
Ceyx  at  lolchos.  But  the  tomb  erected  over  the 
brigand  and  fane-robber  was  not  suffered  to  remain  in 
honour.     In  requital  for  repeated  sacrilege  — 

u  Anaurus  foaming  high  with  wintry  rains 
Swept  it  from  sight  away.     Apollo  thus 


110  HESIOD- 

Commanded  :  for  that  Cycnus  ambushed  spoiled 
By  violence  the  Delphic  hecatombs." 

— E.  681-654 

Thus  ends  our  sole  sample  extant  of  the  short  epiv* 
which  antiquity  attributes  to  Hesiod.  With  all  its 
repetitions  and  interpolations,  there  is  in  it  a  residuum 
of  genuine  poetry  which  is  happily  rescued  from  the 
spoils  of  time.  Even  as  a  "  fugitive  ballad,"  which 
Mure  has  designated  it,  it  is  too  good  to  be  lost ;  and 
though  we  may  not  venture  to  attribute  it  confidently 
to  Hesiod,  the  l  Shield '  has  its  place  in  classical 
literature,  if  we  can  even  accept  it  as  "  Hesiodian." 


CHAPTEK    VI. 

IMITATORS     OF     HESIOD. 

Although  it  would  be  impossible  to  point  to  any 
direct  imitation  of  Hesiod  in  poetry  subsequent  tc 
Virgil's,  and  though  even  his  is  only  imitation  within 
certain  conditions,  it  seems  incumbent  on  us  to  notice 
briefly  the  influence,  for  the  most  part  indirect  and 
unconscious,  which  his  poetry,  especially  his  didactic 
poetry,, has  had  upon  later  poets.  Those  shorter  epic 
scraps,  of  which  the  '  Shield  of  Hercules '  is  a  sample, 
have  their  modern  presentment,  if  anywhere,  in  idyls 
and  professed  fragments ;  but  the  differences  here 
betwixt  the  old  and  the  new  are  so  considerable  as  to 
make  it  unsafe  to  press  the  likeness.  For  the  'Theo- 
gony '  we  have  one  or  two  modern  parallels,  though  it, 
too,  has  served  rather  for  a  mine  into  which  Christian 
apologists  might  dig  for  relics  of  heathen  mythology, 
than  as  a  type  to  be  reproduced  at  the  risk  of  that 
endlessness  which  is  associated  with  genealogies.  But 
as  regards  Hesiod's  '  Works  and  Days,'  there  can  be 
no  question  that  its  form,  and  its  union  of  practical 
teaching   with   charm   of  versification,    possessed   an 


112  HESIOD. 

attraction  for  subsequent  generations  of  poets,  and, 
having  "been  more  or  less  borrowed  from  and  remod- 
elled, according  to  the  demands  of  their  subjects,  by 
the  poetical  grammarians  of  Alexandria,  was  handed 
over  as  an  example  to  the  Alexandrianising  poets 
of  Eome.  "  The  '  Phenomena '  of  Aratus,"  writes 
Professor  Conington,  in  his  introduction  to  the 
'  Georgics '  "  found  at  least  two  distinguished  trans- 
lators :  Lucretius  and  Manilius  gave  the  form  and 
colour  of  poetry  to  the  truths  of  science ;  Virgil  and 
Horace  to  the  rules  of  art ;  and  the  rear  is  brought  up 
by  such  poets  as  Gratius,  Nemesianus,  and  Serenus 
Sammonicus."  But  the  'Phaenomena'  of  Aratus,  and 
its  Poman  parallel,  the  *  Astronomica'  of  Manilius, 
though  conversant  with  a  portion  of  the  same  topics 
as  Hesiod's  didactic  poem,  essay  a  loftier  flight  of 
admonitory  poetry ;  and  in  them  the  advance  of  time 
has  substituted  for  the  simplicity  and  directness  of 
Hesiod,  rhetorical  turns  and  artifices,  and  the  efforts  of 
picturesque  description.  It  is  the  same  with  Ovid's 
contemporary,  Gratius  Faliscus,  if  we  may  judge  of 
him  by  his  fragmentary  '  Cynegetica.'  In  carrying 
out  his  design  of  a  didactic  poem  on  the  chase  and  its 
surroundings,  he  barters  simplicity  for  a  forced  eleva- 
tion of  moral  tone,  and  spoils  the  effect  of  his  real 
insight  into  his  subject  by  a  fondness  for  sententious 
maxims  "in  season  and  out  of  season."  Nemesianus, 
who  wrote  two  centuries  or  more  after  Gratius,  seems 
to  have  so  completely  made  Virgil  his  model  that  the 
influence  of  Hesiod  is  imperceptible  in  his  poetry, 
which  is  diffuse  and  laboured,  and  instinct  with  exag- 


IMITATORS  OF  HESIOD.  113 

gerated  imitation  of  the  Augustan  poets.  On  the 
whole,  it  is  only  between  Hesiod  and  Virgil  that  solid 
ground  for  comparison  exists  ;  and  such  as  institute 
this  comparison  will  be  constrained  to  admit  Mr 
Conington's  conclusion,  that  the  ' Works  and  Days' 
as  distinctly  stimulated  Virgil's  general  conception 
of  the  Georgics,  as  the  Idyls  of  Theocritus  that  of 
his  Bucolics,  or  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  that  of  his 
iEneid.  Uncertainty  as  to  the  extent  of  the  frag- 
mentariness  of  the  model  undoubtedly  bars  a  confident 
verdict  upon  the  closeness  of  the  copy.  Propertius 
may  have  had  other  and  lost  works  of  Hesiod  in  his 
mind's  eye  when  he  addressed  his  great  contemporary 
as  repeating  in  song  the  Ascraean  sage's  precepts  on 
vine-culture  as  well  as  corn-crops  (iii.  26,  v.  77).  Yet 
enough  of  direct  imitation  survives  in  the  large  portion 
of  the  first  book  of  the  Georgics  (wherein  Virgil 
treads  common  ground)  to  show  that,  with  many 
points  of  contrast,  there  are  also  many  correspondences 
between  the  old  Boeotian  bard  and  his  smoother  Roman 
admirer  ;  and  that  where  Virgil  does  copy,  his  copying 
is  as  unequivocal  as  it  is  instructive  for  a  study  of 
finish  and  refinement.  Each  poet  takes  for  his  theme 
the  same  "  glorification  of  labour  "  which  Dean  Meri- 
vale  discerns  as  the  chief  aim  of  the  Georgics,  the 
difference  consisting  in  the  homeliness  of  the  manner 
of  the  Greek  poet  and  the  high  polish  of  that  of  the 
Roman.  Each  also  recognises  the  time  of  man's 
innocency,  when  this  labour  was  not  yet  the  law 
of  his  being ;  and  the  treatment  by  each  of  the 
myth  of  a  golden  or  Saturnian  age  is  not  an  inappro- 
A.  c.  vol.  xv.  H 


3d  by :  ^ 
iiigfc :  V 
die.         ) 


114  HESIOD. 

priate  ground  on  which  to  trace  their  likeness  and 
unlikeness.  As  Hesiod's  passage  was  not  quoted  in 
our  second  chapter,  its  citation  will  be  forgiven  here, 
the  version  selected  being  that  of  Mr  Elton  : — 

"  When  gods  alike  and  mortals  rose  to  birth, 
A  golden  race  the  immortals  formed  on  earth 
Of  many-Ian guaged  men :  they  lived  of  old, 
When  Saturn  reigned  in  heaven,  an  age  of  gold. 
Like  gods  they  lived,  with  calm  untroubled  mind, 
Free  from  the  toils  and  anguish  of  our  kind. 
Nor  e'er  decrepit  age  misshaped  their  frame, 
The  hand's,  the  foot's  proportions  still  the  same. 
Strangers  to  ill,  their  lives  in  feasts  flowed  by  : 
Wealthy  in  flocks  ;  dear  to  the  blest  on  hi; 
Dying  they  sank  in  sleep,  nor  seemed  to  die. 
Theirs  was  each  good  ;  the  life-sustaining  soil 
Yielded  its  copious  fruits,  unbribed  by  toil. 
They  with  abundant  goods  'midst  quiet  lands 
All  willing  shared  the  gathering  of  their  hands." 

— E.  147-162. 

Yirgil  does  not  set  himself  to  reproduce  the  myth  of 
the  metallic  ages  of  mankind ;  but  having  assuredly 
the  original  of  the  passage  just  quoted  before  him, 
has  seen  that  certain  features  of  it  are  available  for 
introduction  into  his  account  of  Jove's  ordinance  of 
labour.  He  dismisses,  we  shall  observe,  the  realistic 
allusions  to  the  sickness,  death,  and  decrepit  old  age, 
which  in  the  golden  days  were  "  conspicuous  by  their 
absence,"  and  of  which  Hesiod  had  made  much.  These 
apparently  only  suggest  to  him  a  couple  of  lines,  in 
which  mortal  cares  are  made  an  incentive  to  work, 
instead  of  a  destiny  to  be  succumbed  to  ;  and  the  death 


IMITATORS  OF  HESIOD.  115 

of  the  body  is  transferred  to  the  sluggish  lethargy  of 
nature.  To  quote  a  very  recent  translator  of  the 
Georgics,  Mr  R  D.  Blackmore  : — 

"  'Twas  Jove  who  first  made  husbandry  a  plan. 
And  care  a  whetstone  for  the  wit  of  man  ; 
Nor  suffered  he  his  own  domains  to  lie 
Asleep  in  cumbrous  old-world  lethargy. 
Ere  Jove,  the  acres  owned  no  master  swain, 
None  durst  enclose  nor  even  mark  the  plain  ; 
The  world  was  common,  and  the  willing  land 
More  frankly  gave  with  no  one  to  demand." 

— Georg.  i.  121-128. 

In  the  same  spirit  Yirgil,  in  the  second  book  of  the 
Georgics,  idealises  the  serenity  of  a  rural  existence, 
when  he  says  of  him  who  lives  it : — 

"  Whatever  fruit  the  branches  and  the  mead 
Spontaneous  bring,  he  gathers  for  his  need." 

—Georg.  ii.  500. 

It  is  the  idea  of  this  spontaneity  of  boon  nature  which  he 
has  caught  from  Hesiod,  as  worth  transferring  ;  and  the 
task  is  achieved  with  grace,  and  without  encumbrance. 
In  the  description  of  the  process  of  making  a  plough, 
Yirgil  appears  to  copy  Hesiod  more  closely  than  in  the 
above  passage ;  and  if  we  may  accept  Dr  Daubeny's 
translation  of  the  passage  in  the  Georgics,  the  accounts 
correspond  with  a  nicety  almost  incredible,  consider- 
ing the  interval  between  the  two  poets.  The  curved 
piece  of  wood  (or  buris)  of  Virgil;  the  eight-foot- 
pole  (temo)  joined  by  pins  to  the  hurts  (or  basse, 
as  it  is  called  in  the  south  of  France)  ;  the  bent 
handle  (stiva)  and  the  wooden  share  (dentale), — have 


116  HESIOD. 

all  their  counterparts  in  the  directions  for  making 
this  implement  given  by  Hesiod  ; — and  the  learned 
author  of  '  Lectures  on  Eoman  Husbandry '  considers 
that  both  the  Boeotian  and  the  Eoman  plough  may  be 
identified  with  the  little  improved  Herault  plough,  still 
in  use  in  the  south  of  France.*  The  storm-piece  of 
the  earlier  poet,  again,  is  obviously  present  to  the 
mind  of  the  graphic  improver  of  it  in  the  Augustan 
age ;  though,  in  place  of  one  point,  the  latter  makes  at 
least  half-a-dozen,  and  works  up  out  of  his  predecessor's 
hints  a  masterpiece  of  elaborate  description.  It  need 
scarcely  be  remarked,  for  it  must  strike  every  reader  of 
these  poets,  whether  at  first  hand  or  second,  that  Yirgil 
constructs  his  "natural  calendar  *  upon  the  very  model 
of  Hesiod's.  He  catches  the  little  hints  of  his  model 
with  reference  to  the  bird-scarer  who  is  to  follow  the 
plough-track ;  about  the  necessity  of  stripping  to  plough 
or  sow;  about  timing  ploughing  and  seed-time  by 
the  setting  of  the  Pleiads ;  and  about  divers  other 
matters  of  the  same  rural  importance.  To  quit  the 
first  book  of  the  Georgics,  we  see  Hesiod's  influence 
occasionally  exerting  itself  in  the  third ;  for,  a  propos 
of  the  sharp-toothed  dog  which  Hesiod  prescribes  in 
his  l  Works  and  Days '  (604,  &c),  and  would  have 
the  farmer  feed  well,  as  a  protection  from  the  night- 
prowling  thief,  we  find  a  parallel  in  Yirgil :  t — 

"  Nor  last,  nor  least,  the  dogs  must  have  their  place  ! 
With  fattening  whey  support  that  honest  race  : 
Swift  Spartan  whelps,  Molossian  mastiffs  bold  : — 
With  these  patrolling,  fear  not  for  the  fold, 

*  Rom.  Husb.,  100-102.  +  Georg.  iii.  403-408. 


IMITA  TORS  OF  HESIOD.  1 1 7 

Though  nightly  thieves  and  wolves  would  fain  attack, 
And  fierce  Iberians  never  spare  thy  hack." 

— Blackmore,  94,  95. 

And  a  lover  of  Hesiod's  simple  muse  would  be  struck 
again  and  again,  in  the  perusal  of  the  four  Georgics, 
with  expansions  of  some  germ  from  the  older  poet, 
calculated  to  make  him  appreciate  more  thoroughly  the 
genius  of  both  the  original  and  the  imitator.  The 
landmarks  and  framework,  as  it  were,  of  both,  are  the 
risings  and  settings  of  stars,  the  migrations  of  birds, 
and  so  forth  :  and  though  with  Hesiod  it  was  sim- 
plicity and  nature  that  prompted  him  to  avail  himself 
of  these,  it  is  no  small  compliment  that  Virgil  saw 
their  aptitude  for  transference,  and  turned  what  was 
so  spontaneous  and  unstudied  to  the  purposes  of  art 
and  culture.  It  is  no  fault,  by  the  way,  of  Yirgil, 
that  he  has  not  reproduced  more  fully  and  faithfully 
Hesiod's  catalogue  of  "  Lucky  and  Unlucky  Days,"  at 
the  end  of  his  poem.  The  original  is  obscure  and 
ambiguous.  Yirgil  has  caught  all  the  transmutable 
matter  in  his  passage  of  the  first  Georgic.  * 

As  has  been  already  said,  when  we  have  done  with 
Yirgil  the  resemblances  of  his  successors  and  imitators 
to  Hesiod  are  very  faint  and  indistinct.  To  pass  to 
our  own  poetry,  it  is  natural  to  inquire,  Have  we 
aught  of  a  kindred  character  and  scope,  that  can  claim 
to  be  accounted  in  any  degree  akin  to  Hesiod's  '  Works 
and  Days'?  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  there  is  not 
a  shadow  of  resemblance  between  him  and  Darwin 

*  v.  276-286 


118  HESIOD. 

or  Bloomfield,  though  we  have  somewhere  seen  their 
names,  as  poets,  set  in  juxtaposition.  He  is  their 
master  as  a  poet ;  he  is  their  superior  in  simplicity. 
He  is  essentially  ancient ;  they  are  wholly  and  entirely 
modern  in  thought,  form,  and  expression.  The  didac- 
tic style,  no  doubt,  has  lent  Hesiod's  form  to  many 
of  the  compositions  of  the  Augustan  period  of  English 
literature.  "We  have  had,"  says  Mr  Conington,  in 
his  introduction  to  the  Georgics,  "Essays  on  Satire, 
Essays  on  unnatural  Flights  in  Poetry,  Essays  on 
translated  Yerse,  Essays  on  Criticism,  Essays  on  Man, 
Arts  of  preserving  Health,  Arts  of  Dancing,  and  even 
Arts  of  Cookery;  the  Chase,  the  Eleece,  and  the 
Sugar-cane."  But,  with  his  usual  clear-sightedness, 
the  late  Oxford  Professor  of  JLatin  saw  that  all  these 
have  grasped  simply  the  form,  and  let  go  the  spirit,  of 
their  model.  The  real  parallel  is  to  be  found  between 
the  Ascrsean  farmer -poet  and  the  quaint  shrewd 
"  British  Yarro  "  of  the  sixteenth  century— 

"  Who  sometime  made  the  points  of  husbandry  " — 

Thomas  Tusser,  gentleman :  a  worthy  whose  "  five 
hundred  points,  as  well  for  the  champion  or  open 
country  as  for  the  woodland  or  several,"  are  quite 
worth  the  study  of  individual  readers,  not  to  say 
of  agricultural  colleges  ;  so  much  wisdom,  wit,  and 
sound  sense  do  they  bring  together  into  verse,  which 
is,  in  very  many  characteristics,  truly  Hesiodian. 

Endowed  with  an  ear  for  music  and  a  taste  for 
farming,  a  compound  of  the  singing-man  (of  St  Paul's 
and  Norwich  cathedrals)  and  of  the  Suffolk  grazier,  a 


IMITATORS  OF  1IESI0D.  119 

liberally-educated  scholar  withal  for  his  day,  this  Tusser 
possessed  several  qualifications  for  the  rank  of  our 
"  English  Hesiod."  But  unlike,  so  far  as  we  know,  the 
father  of  didactic  poetry,  neither  his  fanning  nor 
his  poetry  brought  him  success  or  profit ;  and  his  own 
generation  regarded  him  as  one  who,  with  "the  gift 
of  sharpening  others  by  his  advice  of  wit,"  combined 
an  inaptitude  to  thrive  in  his  own  person.  He  was 
born  in  1523,  and  died  in  1580.  His  'Five  Hundred 
Points  of  Good  Husbandry '  was  printed  in  1557  ;  and 
no  one  will  gainsay,  after  perusal  of  them,  the  opinion 
that,  in  the  wrords  of  Dr  Thomas  Warton,*  "  this  old 
English  Georgic  has  much  more  of  the  simplicity  of 
Hesiod  than  of  the  elegance  of  Virgil."  Homely, 
quaint,  and  full  of  observation,  his  matter  is  curiously 
akin  to  that  of  the  old  Boeotian,  after  a  due  allowance 
for  the  world's  advance  in  age ;  while  the  manner  and 
measures  are  Tusser's  own,  and  notable,  not  indeed  as 
bearing  any  resemblance  to  the  Hesiodic  hexameters, 
but  for  a  facility  and  variety  consistent  with  the 
author's  musical  attainments,  which  are  demonstrated 
in  his  use — indeed  it  may  be  his  invention — of  more 
than  one  popular  English  metre. 

Although  Tusser  was  indebted  to  Eton  and  King's 
College  for  his  education,  we  have  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  he  had  such  acquaintance  with  Hesiod 
as  could  have  suggested  the  shape  and  scope  of  his 
poem.  It  is  better  to  attribute  the  coincidence  of 
form  to  the  practical  turn  and  homely  bent  of  the 
muse  of  each.  That  there  is  such  coincidence  will 
*  History  of  English  Poetry,  iii.  298-310. 


120  HESIOD. 

be  patent  to  the  most  cursory  reader  :  the  arrangement 
by  months  and  by  seasons,  the  counsels  as  to  thrift 
and  good  economy,  the  eye  to  a  well-ordered  house, 
ever  and  anon  provoke  comparison.  Warton,  in- 
deed, by  a  slip  of  the  pen,  denies  the  English  Hesiod 
the  versatility  which  indulges  in  digressions  and  invo- 
cations, and  avers  that  "  Ceres  and  Pan  are  not  once 
named"  by  Tusser.  But  in  an  introduction  to  his 
book  may  be  found  at  once  a  refutation  of  this  not 
very  serious  charge,  and,  what  is  perhaps  more  to 
the  point,  a  profession  of  the  author's  purpose  in  the 
volume,  which  has  entitled  him  to  a  place  of  honour 
among  early  English  poets.     He  writes  as  follows  : — 

"  Though  fence  well  kept  is  one  good  point, 

And  tilth  well  done  in  season  due  ; 
Yet  needing  salve,  in  time  t'  anoint, 
Is  all  in  all,  and  needful  true : 
As  for  the  rest, 
Thus  think  I  best, 
As  friend  doth  guest, 
With  hand  in  hand  to  lead  thee  forth 

To  Ceres'  camp,  there  to  behold 
A  thousand  things  as  richly  worth 
As  any  pearl  is  worthy  gold." 

— Mavor's  Tusser,  xiii. 

In  the  body  of  the  work,  expressions,  sentiments,  and 
sage  counsels  again  and  again  remind  us  of  Hesiod's 
lectures  to  Perses.  The  lesson  that  "  'tis  ill  sparing 
the  liquor  at  the  bottom  of  the  cask  "  reappears  in  such 
stanzas  as — ; 

"  Son,  think  not  thy  money  purse-bottom  to  burn. 
But  keep  it  for  profit  to  serve  thine  own  turn  : 


IMITATORS  OF  HESIOD.  121 

A  fool  and  his  money  be  soon  at  debate, 
Which  after,  with  sorrow,  repents  him  too  late." 

— xxiii.  .11. 

"  Some  spareth  too  late,  and  a  number  with  him — 
The  fool  at  the  bottom,  the  wise  at  the  brim  : 
Who  careth  nor  spareth  till  spent  he  hath  all, 
Of  bobbing,  not  robbing,  be  careful  he  shall." 

— xxviii.  34. 

At  the  same  time  he  commends,  quite  in  Hesiod's 
style,  a  prudent  avoidance  of  the  law-courts  : — 

u  Leave  princes'  affairs  undescanted  on, 
And  tend  to  such  doings  as  stands  thee  upon. 
Fear  God,  and  oifend  not  the  prince  nor  his  laws, 
And  keep  thyself  out  of  the  magistrate's  claws." 

— xxix.  39. 

Quite  in  Hesiod's  groove,  too,  is  Tusser's  opinion  about 
borrowing  and  lending ;  and  his  adagial  way  of  dis- 
couraging the  claims  of  relations  and  connections  to  a 
share  in  our  farm  profits  savours  curiously  of  the  coun- 
sel of  the  *■  Works  and  Days  :  ■ — 

"  Be  pinched  by  lending  for  kiffe  nor  for  kin, 
Nor  also  by  spending,  by  such  as  come  in : 
Nor  put  to  thine  hand  betwixt  bark  and  the  tree, 
Lest  through  thine  own  folly  so  pinched  thou  be. 

As  lending  to  neighbour  in  time  of  his  need 
Wins  love  of  thy  neighbour,  and  credit  doth  breed  : 
So  never  to  crave,  but  to  live  of  thine  own, 
Brings  comforts  a  thousand,  to  many  unknown." 

— xxvii.  30,  3L 

We  have  seen,  too,  how  Hesiod  makes  a  point  of  pre- 
scribing very  strictly  the  staff  which  a  farmer  may 


122  HESIOD. 

keep  without  detriment  to  his  purse  and  garner,  of 
cautioning  against  too  many  helps,  and  so  forth. 
Tusser  is  a  little  in  advance  of  the  Boeotian  farmer- 
poet  as  to  the  full  complement  of  hinds  and  dairy- 
maids;  hut  the  spirit  of  the  following  stanza  is  in 
exact  keeping  with  the  tone  of  the  elder  bard  : — 

"  Delight  not  for  pleasure  two  houses  to  keep, 
Lest  charge  above  measure  upon  thee  do  creep ; 
And  Jankin  and  Jennykin  cozen  thee  so, 
To  make  thee  repent  it  ere  year  about  go." 

— xxx.  45. 

It  might  be  shown  by  other  quotations  that  Tusser, 
like  Hesiod,  attaches  due  importance  to  the  perform- 
ance of  religious  ceremonies,  and  inculcates  in  fitting 
language  seasonable  offerings  of  thankfulness  to  a  boun- 
teous Providence ;  that  he  upholds  well-timed  hospi- 
tality, and  commends  a  principle  of  liberality  towards 
man  or  beast,  if  they  deserve  it.  Of  course,  too,  even 
in  his  shrewd  homeliness,  he  does  not  so  entirely  as 
Hesiod  calculate  his  hospitalities  and  liberalities  with 
a  sole  eye  to  getting  a  quid  pro  quo.  But  it  is  perhaps 
more  to  the  purpose  to  cite  a  few  additional  stanzas  of 
Tusser's  "Advice  to  Husbandmen,"  according  to  the 
season  or  month,  with  a  stray  verse  or  two  which, 
mutatis  mutandis,  may  serve  to  show  that  the  spirit 
of  Tusser  was  in  effect  the  same  which  animated 
Hesiod  so  many  centuries  before  him.  This  quatrain 
from  "  December's  Husbandry  "  is  an  obvious  parallel, 
to  begin  with  : — 

"  Yokes,  forks,  and  such  other  let  bailiff  spy  out, 
And  gather  the  same,  as  he  walketh  about ; 


IMITATORS  OF  IIESIOD.  123 

And»after,  at  leisure,  let  this  be  his  hire, 
To  heath  them  and  trim  them  at  home  by  the  fire."* 

— lx.  9. 

Here  again,  in  "  June's  Husbandry,"  is  good  provision 
for  hay-making  and  hauling  : — 

"  Provide  of  thine  own  to  have  all  things  at  hand, 
Lest  work  and  the  workman  unoccupied  stand : 
Love  seldom  to  borrow,  that  thinkest  to  save, 
For  he  that  once  lendeth  twice  looketh  to  have. 

Let  cart  be  well  searched  without  and  within, 
Well  clouted  and  greased,  ere  hay-time  begin  : 
Thy  hay  being  carried,  though  carter  had  sworn, 
Cart's  bottom  well  boarded  is  saving  of  corn." 

—p.  163. 

And  here  sound  practical  counsel  (sadly  neglected  too 
often)  for  insuring  a  safe  corn-harvest : — 

"  Make  suer  of  reapers,  get  harvest  in  hand  : 
The  corn  that  is  ripe  doth  but  shed  as  it  stand. 
Be  thankful  to  God  for  His  benefits 'sent, 
And  willing  to  save  it  by  honest  intent." 

—p.  182. 

One  would  have  liked  to  be  able  to  think  that  so 
sound  a  counsellor  had  niade  a  better  trade  of  farming 
than  he  seems  to  have  done.  His  ideas  of  being  him- 
self captain  of  every  muster  of  his  hands  (p.  169),  of 
encouraging  them  by  extra  wages  at  time  of  stress,  and 
indeed  all  his  suggestive  hints,  are  fresh  and  pertinent 
even  at  this  latter  day ;  and  if  Thomas  Tusser  were 
more  read,  he  would  not  fail  of  being  ol'tener  quoted. 

*  To  heath  or  hath  is  to  set  green  wood  by  the  heat  of  a  fire. 
—Norfolk  and  Suffolk  Dialect. 


124  HESIOD. 

How  timely,  for  example,  is  this  advice  to  the 
farmer,  which  in  a  Christian  land  should  find  thorough 
acceptance,  no  matter  what  may  have  "been  the 
demands  upon  him  of  the  ill-advised  amongst  his 
labourers  ! — 

"  Once  ended  the  harvest,  let  none  be  beguiled  ; 
Please  such  as  did  help  thee — man,  woman,  and  child : 
Thus  doing,  with  alway  such  help  as  they  can, 
Thou  winnest  the  praise  of  the  labouring  man." 

—p.  188. 

But,  to  complete  our  parallel  with  Hesiod,  Tusser 
has  his  descriptions  of  the  winds  and  planets  ;  is  alive 
to  the  wisdom  of  the  "  farm  and  fruit  of  old,"  as  well 
as  of  the  improved  courses  of  husbandry  in  his  own 
day :  and  if  he  now  and  then  strikes  out  paths  which 
have  no  parallel  in  Hesiod,  even  in  such  cases  the 
homeliness  and  naivete  of  his  counsel  savours  of  the 
ancient  poet  in  whose  footsteps  he  so  distinctly  treads. 
Though  the  domestic  fowl  does  not  figure  in  the 
4  Works  and  Days,'  and  the  domestic  cat  is  equally 
unmentioned  by  the  Boeotian  didactic  poet,  the  follow- 
ing mention  of  them  both  by- Tusser  reminds  us  of  his 
practical  economic  views,  and  would  not  have  been 
deemed  by  him  beneath  the  dignity  of  the  subject, 
had  poultry  and  mousers  asserted  the  importance  in 
old  days  which  they  now  demand  : — 

"  To  rear  up  much  poultry  and  want  the  barn-door 
Is  nought  for  the  ponlter,  and  worse  for  the  poor  ; 
So  now  to  keep  hogs,  and  to  starve  them  for  meat, 
Is  as  to  keep  dogs  for  to  bawl  in  the  street. 


IMITATORS  OF  HES10D.  125 

As  cat,  a  good  mouser,  is  needful  in  house, 
Because  for  her  commons  she  killeth  the  mouse  ; 
So  ravening  curs,  as  a  many  do  keep, 
Makes  master  want  meat,  and  his  dog  to  kill  sheep." 

—p.  48,  49. 

Dr  Thomas  "Warton,  indeed,  was  disposed  to  regard 
Tusser  as  the  mere  rude  beginner  of  what  Mason  per- 
fected in  his  '  English  Garden  ; '  but  it  is  a  reasonable 
matter  of  taste  whether  the  latter  work  at  all  comes  up 
to  the  former  in  aught  save  an  elegance  bordering  on 
affectation  ;  and  certainly  there  is  nothing  in  Mason  to 
suggest  the  faintest  comparison  with  Hesiod's  didactic 
poem.  Tusser's  work  is  probably  its  closest  parallel 
in  all  the  intervening  ages. 

It  remains  to  inquire  whether  Hesiod's  '  Theogony ' 
has  found  with  posterity  as  close  an  imitator  as  the  work 
on  which  we  have  been  dwelling.  But  this  question 
is  easily  answered  in  the  negative.  The  attempts  of 
the  so-called  Orphic  poets — the  most  considerable  of 
whom  were  Cercops,  a  Pythagorean,  and  Onomacritus, 
a  contemporary  of  the  Pisistratids — to  improve  on  the 
elder  theogonies  and  cosmogonies,  can  hardly  be  men- 
tioned in  this  category,  being  more  mystical  than 
mythical,  and  in  the  nature  of  refinements  and  ab- 
stractions, higher  than  the  Hesiodic  chaos.  Nor, 
though  full  of  mythologic  learning  even  to  cumbrous- 
ness,  can  the  five  hymns  of  the  Alexandrian  Callima- 
chus  be  said  to  have  aught  of  resemblance  to  tl^e 
venerable  system  of  Greek  theogonies,  which  owes  its 
promulgation  to  the  genius  of  Hesiod.  Studied  and 
laboured  to  a  fault,  the  legends   which  he  connects 


J^*  CALIFOK* 


126  HESIOD. 

with  the  subjects  of  each  hymn  in  succession  are- 
tricked  out  with  poetic  devices  very  alien  to  the  more 
direct  muse  of  Hesiod  ;  and  though  Callimachus  pro- 
fesses to  record  the  speeches  of  Zeus  and  Artemis,  and 
to  divine  the  thoughts  and  feelings  that  animate  the 
Olympians,  his  readers  cannot  help  feeling  that  he 
lacks  the  "  afflatus"  in  which  Hesiod  implicitly  believed, 
and  which,  though  it  suited  the  sceptical  Lucian  to 
twit  as  assumed,  and  unattended  by  results,  certainly 
imparts  an  air  of  earnestness  to  his  poetry.*  Further- 
more— and  this  is  the  plainest  note  of  difference — the 
hymns  of  Callimachus  have  little  or  no  pretence  to  be 
"genealogies," — a  form  of  poetry,  to  say  the  truth,  not 
sufficiently  attractive  to  please  an  advanced  stage  of 
literary  cultivation,  and  a  form,  too,  that  lacks  any 
memorable  imitation  in  Latin  poetry.  To  glance  at 
our  own  poetic  literature,  the  nearest  approach  to  the 
form  and  scope  of  the  '.  Theogony '  is  to  be  found,  it 
strikes  us,  in  Drayton's  '  Polyolbion,'  a  poem  charac- 
terised by  the  same  endeavour  to  systematise  a  vast 
mass  of  information,  and  to  genealogise,  so  to  speak, 
the  British  hills,  and  woods,  and  rivers,  which  are 
personified  in  it. 

Drayton,  it  cannot  be  denied,  has  infinitely  more 
fancy,  and  lightens  the  burden  of  his  accumulated 
detail  by  much  greater  liveliness  and  idealism  ;  yet  it 
is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  also  with  his  enumeration 
of  the  streams  and  mountains  of  a  given  district,  each 
invested  with  a  personality,  each  for  the  nonce  regarded 
as  of  kin  to  its  fellow,  as  a  singular  revival  of  Hesiod's 
*  Dialogue  between  Lucian  and  Hesiod,  i.  35. 


IMITATORS  OF  IIESIOD.  127 

method  in  his  '  Theogony ; '  a  revival,  to  judge  from  a 
passage  in  his  first  song,  surely  not  undesigned : — 

"  Ye  sacred  bards,  that  to  your  harps'  melodious  strings 
Sung  the  ancient  heroes'  deeds  (the  monuments  of  kings), 
And  in  your  dreadful  verse  engraved  the  prophecies, 
The  aged  world's  descents,  and  genealogies  ; 
If  as  those  Druids  taught,  which  kept  the  British  rites 
And   dwelt  in   darksome   caves,   there   counselling    with 

sprites 
(But  their  opinion  failed,  by  error  led  away, 
As  since  clear  truth  hath  showed  to  their  posterity), 
When  these  our  souls  by  death  our  bodies  do  forsake, 
They  instantly  again  do  other  bodies  take  ; 
I  could  have  wished  your  spirits  redoubled  in  my  breast, 
To  give  my  verse  applause  to  time's  eternal  rest." 

— Polyolb.,  Song  i.  30-42. 

Our  theory  of  a  conscious  reference  to  Hesiod's 
1  Theogony  '  by  Drayton  depends  on  the  fourth  verse 
of  this  extract;  but,  independently  of  this,  almost  any 
page  in  the  '  Polyolbion  ■  would  furnish  one  or  more 
illustrations  of  genealogism  curiously  Hesiodic.  We 
might  cite  the  rivers  of  Monmouth,  Brecon,  and 
Glamorgan,  in  the  fourth  song,  or  the  Herefordshire 
streams  in  the  seventh ;  but  lengthy  citations  are  im- 
possible, and  short  extracts  will  ill  represent  the  like- 
ness which  a  wider  comparison  would  confirm.  In 
Pope's  "Windsor  Forest,"  the  enumeration  of  the  "  sea- 
born brothers  "  of  Old  Father  Thames,  from  "  winding 
Isis  "  to  "  silent  Darent," 

"  Who  swell  with  tributary  urns  his  flood," 

is  indubitably  a  leaf  out  of  Drayton's  book,  and  so 


128  HESIOD. 

indirectly  a  tribute  to  Hesiod.  Darwin's  '  Botanic 
Garden/  and  the  '  Loves  of  the  Plants/  affect  indeed 
the  genesis  of  nymphs  and  sylphs,  of  gnomes  and 
salamanders  ;  but  the  fanciful  parade  of  these,  amidst 
a  crowd  of  metaphors,  tropes,  and  descriptions,  has 
nothing  in  it  to  remind  us  of  Hesiod's  '  Theogony/ 
unless  it  be  a  more  tedious  minuteness,  and  an  exag- 
gerated affectation  of  allegoric  system.  In  truth, 
however,  Hesiod's  l  Theogony '  is  a  work  of  which 
this  or  that  side  may  be  susceptible  of  parallel,  but  to 
which,  in  its  own  kind,  and  taken  as  a  whole,  none 
like  nor  second  has  arisen.  , 

The  '  Shield'  and  the  'Fragments'  are  of  too  doubt- 
ful authorship  to  call  for  the  reflected  light  of  parallel- 
ism; and  so  our  task  of  laying  before  the  reader  a 
sketch  of  the  life,  works,  and  after-influence  of  the 
Ascrsean  poet  is  completed. 


THEOGNIS. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THEOGNIS   IN    YOUTH   AND   PROSPERITY. 

With  the  life  of  Hesiod  politics  have  little  or  no  con- 
nection ;  in  that  of  Theognis  we  find  them  playing  an 
essential  inseparable  part.  And  it  is  curious  that  the 
very  feature  which  both  poets  have  in  common,  their 
subjectivity,  is  that  which  introduces  us  to  this  point  of 
contrast  and  token  of  the  ancient  world's  advancement 
— namely,  that  whereas  Hesiod' s  political  status  is  so 
unimportant  as  to  be  overlooked  even  by  himself,  with 
Theognis  it  occupies  more  space  in  his  elegies  than  his 
social  relations  or  his  religious  opinions.  In  fact,  his 
personal  and  political  life  are  so  intermixed,  that  the 
internal  evidence  as  to  both  must  be  collected  in  one 
skein,  and  cannot  be  separately  unwound,  unless  at  the 
risk  of  missing  somewhat  of  the  interest  of  his  remains, 
which  consists  chiefly  in  the  personality  of  the  poet. 
It  is  true  that  later  Greek  writers  regarded  Theognis 
A.  0.  vol.  xv.  I 


130  THEOGNIS 

as  a  teacher  of  wisdom  and  virtue,  by  means  of  de- 
tached maxims  and  apothegms  in  elegiac  verse,  and 
would  probably  have  been  loath  to  recognise  any  ele- 
ment in  his  poetry  which  was  personal  or  limited  to 
particular  times  and  situations ;  yet  it  is  now  fully 
established  that  he  was  one  of  the  same  section  of 
poets  with  Callinus,  Tyrtaeus,  Solon,  and  Phocyllides, 
all  of  whom  availed  themselves  of  a  form  of  versifica- 
tion, the  original  function  of  which  was  probably  to 
express  mournful  sentiments,  to  inspire  their  country- 
men with  their  own  feelings  as  to  the  stirring  themes 
of  war  and  patriotism,  of  politics,  and  of  love.  With 
Theognis  it  is  clear  that  the  elegy  was  a  song  or  poem 
sung  at  banquets  or  symposia  after  the  libation,  and 
between  the  pauses  of  drinking,  to  the  sound  of  the 
flute ;  and,  furthermore,  that  it  was  addressed  not  as 
elsewhere  to  the  company  at  large,  but  to  a  single 
guest.  Many  such  elegies  were  composed  by  him  to 
friends  and  boon-companions,  as  may  be  inferred  from 
his  remains,  and  from  the  tradition  which  survives, 
that  he  wrote  an  elegy  to  the  Sicilian  Megarians  on 
their  escape  from  the  siege  of  their  city  by  Gelon 
(483  B.C.) ;  but  owing  to  the  partiality  of  a  later  age 
for  the  maxims  and  moral  sentiments  with  which  these 
elegies  were  interspersed,  and  which,  as  we  learn  from 
Xenophon  and  Isocrates,  were  used  in  their  day  for 
educational  purposes,  the  shape  in  which  the  poetry  of 
Theognis  has  come  down  to  us  is  as  unlike  the  original 
form  and  drift  as  a  handbook  of  maxims  from  Shake- 
speare is  unlike  an  undoctored  and  un-Bowdlerised 
play.     Thanks  to  the  German  editor  Welcker,  and  to 


IN   YOUTH  AND  PROSPERITY.  131 

the  ingenious  "restitution"  of  Hookham  Frere,  the 
original  type  of  these  poems  has  been  approximately 
realised,  and  we  are  able,  in  a  great  measure,  to  con- 
nect the  assorted  links  into  a  consistent  and  personal 
autobiography.  For  the  clearer  apprehension  of  this,  it 
seems  best  to  give  a  very  brief  sketch  of  the  political 
condition  of  the  poet's  country  at  the  time  he  flourished, 
and  then  to  divide  our  notice  of  himself  and  his  works 
into  three  epochs,  defined  and  marked  out  by  circum- 
stances which  gravely  influenced  his  career  and  tone  of 
thought. 

The  poet's  fatherland,  the  Grecian,  not  Sicilian, 
Megara,  after  asserting  its  independence  of  Corinth,  of 
which  it  had  been  a  colony,  fell  under  the  sway  of  a 
Doric  nobility,  which  ruled  it  in  right  of  descent  and 
of  landed  estates.  But  before  the  legislation  of  Solon, 
Theagenes,  the  father-in-law  of  Gelon,  had  become 
tyrant  or  despot  of  Megara,  like  Cypselus  and  Periander 
at  Corinth,  by  feigned  adoption  of  the  popular  cause. 
His  ascendancy  was  about  B.C.  630-600,  and  upon  his 
overthrow  the  aristocratic  oligarchy  again  got  the  upper 
hand  for  a  brief  space,  until  the  commons  rose  against 
them,  and  succeeded  in  establishing  a  democracy  of 
such  anarchical  tendency  and  character,  that  it  was  not 
long  ere  the  expelled  nobles  were  reinstated.  The 
elegies  of  Theognis,  who  was  born  about  570  B.C.,  date 
from  about  the  beginning  of  the  democratic  rule,  and, 
as  he  belonged  to  the  aristocracy,  deplore  the  sufferings 
of  his  party,  and  the  spoliation  of  their  temples  and 
dwellings  by  the  poor,  who  no  longer  paid  the  interest 
of  their  debts.     Frequent  reference  will  be  found  in 


132  TIIEOGiVIS 

his  poetry  to  violent  democratic  measures,  such  as  the 
adoption  of  the  periaeei,  or  cultivators-without-political- 
rights,  into  the  sovereign  community ;  and,  as  might 
be  imagined,  in  the  case  of  one  who  was  of  the  best 
blood  and  oldest  stock,  he  constantly  uses  the  term  "the 
good"  as  a  synonym  for  "  the  nobles,"  whilst  the  "  bad 
and  base "  is  his  habitual  expression  to  denote  "  the 
commonalty."  In  his  point  of  view  nothing  brave 
and  honourable  was  to  be  looked  for  from  the  latter, 
whilst  nothing  that  was  not  so  could  possibly  attach 
to  the  former.  This  distinction  is  a  key  to  the  due 
interpretation  of  his  more  political  poems,  and  it  ac- 
counts for  much  that  strikes  the  reader  as  a  hurtful 
and  inexpedient  prejudice  on  the  part  of  the  poet. 
For  some  time  he  would  appear  to  have  striven  to 
preserve  a  neutralit}^,  for  which,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
he  got  no  credit  from  either  side ;  but  at  last,  whilst 
he  was  absent  on  a  sea  voyage,  the  "  bad  rich "  re- 
sorted to  a  confiscation  of  his  ancestral  property,  with 
an  eye  to  redistribution  among  the  commons.  From 
this  time  forward  he  is  found  engaged  in  constant  com- 
munications with  Cyrnus,  a  young  noble,  who  was 
evidently  looked  to  as  the  coming  man  and  saviour  of 
his  party ;  but  the  conspiracy,  long  in  brewing,  seems 
only  to  have  come  to  a  head  to  be  summarily  crushed, 
and  the  result  is  that  Theognis  has  to  retire  into  exile 
in  Eubcea,  Thebes,  and  Syracuse  in  succession.  How 
he  maintained  himself  in  these  places  of  refuge,  turn- 
ing his  talents  to  account,  and  holding  pretty  staunch- 
ly to  his  principles,  until  a  seasonable  aid  to  the  popu- 
lar cause  at  the  last-named  sojourn,  and  a  still  more 


IN  YOUTH  AND  PROSPERITY.  133 

seasonable  douceur  to  the  Corinthian  general,  paved 
the  way  to  his  recall  to  Megara,  will  he  seen  in  the 
account  we  propose  to  give  of  the  last  epoch  of  his  life, 
which  is  supposed  to  have  lasted  till  beyond  480  B.C., 
as  he  distinctly  in  two  places  refers  to  the  instant  ter- 
ror of  a  Median  invasion.  That  life  divides  itself  into 
the  periods  of  his  youth  and  prosperous  estate,  his 
clouded  fortunes  at  home,  and  his  long  and  wearisome 
exile.  The  remainder  of  this  chapter  will  serve  for  a 
glance  at  the  first  period. 

That  our  poet  was  of  noble  birth  may  be  inferred 
from  the  confidence  with  which,  in  reply  to  an  in- 
dignity put  upon  him  in  his  exile  at  Thebes,  to  which 
we  shall  refer  in  due  course,  he  asserts  his  descent 
from  "  noble  iEthon,"  as  if  the  very  mention  of  the 
name  would  prove  his  rank  to  his  contemporaries  ;  and 
in  the  first  fragment  (according  to  the  ingenious 
chronological  arrangement  of  Frere,  which  we  follow 
throughout),  Theognis  is  found  in  the  heyday  of  pro- 
sperity, praying  Zeus,  and  Apollo,  the  special  patron 
of  his  fatherland,  to  preserve  his  youth 

"  Free  from  all  evil,  happy  with  his  wealth, 
In  joyous  easy  years  of  peace  and  health." 

Interpreting  this  language  by  its  context,  we  learn 
that  his  ideal  of  joyous  years  was  to  frequent  the  ban- 
quets of  his  own  class,  and  take  his  part  in  songs 
accompanied  by  the  flute  or  lyre, — 

"  To  revel  with  the  pipe,  to  chant  and  sing— 
This  also  is  a  most  delightful  thing. 
Give  me  but  ease  and  pleasure  !  what  care  I 
For  reputation  or  for  property  ? " — (F.) 


134  TIIEOGNIS 

But  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  such  language  as  the 
last  couplet  wore  so  much  the  expression  of  his  serious 
moods  as  of  a  gaiety  rendered  reckless  "by  potations 
such  as,  we  are  obliged  to  confess,  lent  a  not  infrequent 
inspiration  to  his  poetry.  Theognis  is,  according  to 
his  own  theory,  quite  en  regie  when  he  retires  from  a 
banquet 

"  Not  absolutely  drunk  nor  sober  quite." 

He  glories  in  a  state  which  he  expresses  by  a  Greek 
word,  which  seems  to  mean  that  of  being  fortified  or 
steeled  with  wine,  an  ironical  arming  against  the  cares 
of  life  to  which  he  saw  no  shame  in  resorting.  And 
perhaps  too  implicit  credence  is  not  to  be  given  to  the 
professions  of  indifference  to  wealth  and  character 
which  are  made  by  a  poet  who  can  realise  in  verse 
such  an  experience  as  is  portrayed  in  the  fragment 
we  are  about  to  cite  : — 

"  My  brain  grows  dizzy,  whirled  and  overthrown 
"With  wine  :  my  senses  are  no  more  my  own. 
The  ceiling  and  the  walls  are  wheeling  round  !  * 
But  let  me  try  !  perhaps  my  feet  are  sound. 
Let  me  retire  with  my  remaining  sense, 
For  fear  of  idle  language  and  offence." — (F.) 

In  his  more  sober  moments  the  poet  could  appreciate 

*  Juvenal,  in  Satire  vi.    477-479,   describes  drinking-bouts 
in  imperial  Rome  prolonged — 

"  Till  round  and  round  the  dizzy  chambers  roll, 
Till  double  lamps  upon  the  table  blaze, 
And  stupor  blinds  the  undiscerning  gaze." 

—Hodgson,  107. 


IN   YOUTH  AND  PROSPER!'. 


pursuits  more  congenial  to  his  vocation  and  intellec- 
tual cultivation,  as  is  seen  in  his  apparently  early 
thirst  for  knowledge,  and  discovery  that  such  thirst 
does  not  admit  of  thorough  satisfaction  : — 

"  Learning  and  wealth  the  wise  and  wealthy  find  \ 
Inadequate  to  satisfy  the  mind —  > 

A  craving  eagerness  remains  behind  ;  ) 

Something  is  left  for  which  we  cannot  rest,  ) 

And  the  last  something  always  seems  the  best —        > 
Something  unknown,  or  something  unpossest." — (F.)  ) 

One  wdio  could  give  vent  to  such  a  sentiment  may  be 
supposed  to  have  laid  up  in  youth  a  store  of  the  best 
learning  attainable  ;  and  the  bent  of  his  talents,  which 
was  towards  vocal  and  instrumental  music  and  com- 
position of  elegies,  was  so  successfully  followed  that  in 
time  of  need  he  was  able  to  turn  it  to  means  of  sub- 
sistence. Indeed,  that  he  knew  what  was  really  the 
real  secret  of  success  in  a  concert  or  a  feast  is  seen 
in  a  remark  which  he  addressed  to  a  certain  Simonides 
(whom  there  is  no  reason  to  identify  with  the  famous 
poet),  recommending 

*  Inoffensive,  easy  merriment, 
Like  a  good  concert,  keeping  time  and  measure  ; 
Such  entertainments  give  the  truest  pleasure." — (F.) 

But  if  the  poet  was  able  to  preserve  the  health 
which  he  besought  the  gods  to  grant  him,  in  spite  of 
what  we  should  call  hard  living,  there  are  hints  in  his 
poetry  that  the  "  peace  "  which  he  coupled  with  it  did 
not  bless  him  uninterruptedly.  In  one  of  his  earlier 
elegiac  fragments  there  is  a  h'ut  of  a  youthful  passion, 


136  TIIE0GN1S 

broken  off  by  him  in  bitterness  at  the  Megarian  flirt's 
"  love  for  every  one."  Such,  at  least,  seems  to  be  the 
interpretation  of  four  lines  which  may  be  closely  ren- 
dered,— 

"  While  only  I  quaffed  yonder  secret  spring, 
'Twas  clear  and  sweet  to  my  imagining. 
'Tis  turbid  now.     Of  it  no  more  I  drink, 
But  hang  o'er  other  stream  or  river-brink." — (D.) 

He  was  determined,  it  seems,  to  be  more  discursive  in 
his  admiration  for  the  future.  How  that  plan  suc- 
ceeded does  not  appear,  though  in  several  passages  he 
arrogates  to  himself  a  degree  of  experience  as  regards 
women,  and  match-making,  and  the  like.  In  the  end 
we  have  his  word  for  it,  that  he  proved  his  own 
maxim, — 

"  Of  all  good  things  in  human  life, 
Nothing  can  equal  goodness  in  a  wife." — (F.) 

But  this  could  not  have  been  till  long  after  he  had 
suffered  rejection  of  his  suit  for  a  damsel  whose 
parents  preferred  a  worse  man — i.e.,  a  plebeian — and 
had  carried  on  secret  relations  with  her  after  her 
"mating  to  a  clown."  His  own  account  of  this  is 
curious,  as  its  opening  shows  that  he  vented  his 
chagrin  on  himself : — 

a  Wine  I  forswear,  since  at  my  darling's  side 
A  meaner  man  has  bought  the  right  to  bide. 
Poor  cheer  for  me  !     To  sate  her  parents'  thirst 
She  seeks  the  well,  and  sure  her  heart  will  burst 
In  weeping  for  my  love  and  lot  accurst. 
I  meet  her,  clasp  her  neck,  he^lips  I  kiss, 
And  they  responsive  gently  murmur  this  : 


IN  YOUTH  AND  PROSPERITY.  137 

'  A  fair  but  luckless  girl,  my  lot  has  been 
To  wed  perforce  the  meanest  of  the  mean. 
Oft  have  I  longed  to  burst  the  reins,  and  flee 
From  hateful  yoke  to  freedom,  love,  and  thee." 

Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  he  had  no  great  reason  to 
speak  well  of  the  sex,  for  in  one  place,  as  if  he  looked 
upon  marriage,  like  friendship,  as  a  lottery,  he  moralises 
to  the  effect — 

"  That  men's  and  women's  hearts  you  cannot  try 
Beforehand,  like  the  cattle  which  you  buy ; 
Nor  human  wit  and  wisdom,  when  you  treat  \ 
For  such  a  purchase,  can  escape  deceit :  I 

Fancy  betrays  us,  and  assists  the  cheat." — (F.)  ) 

But,  if  his  witness  is  true,  mercenary  parents  were  as 
common  of  old  as  in  our  own  day.  He  was  led,  both 
by  his  exclusiveness  as  an  aristocrat,  and  his  impa- 
tience of  a  mere  money-standard  of  worth,  to  a  disgust 
of— 

"  The  daily  marriages  we  make, 
Where  price  is  everything  :  for  money's  sake 
Men  marry  ;  women  are  in  marriage  given. 
The  churl  or  ruffian  that  in  wealth  has  thriven 
May  match  his  offspring  with  the  proudest  race  ; 
Thus  everything  is  mixt,  noble  and  base  ! " — (F.) 

And  that  he  did  ponder  the  regeneration  of  society, 
and  strive  to  fathom  the  depths  of  the  education  ques- 
tion agitated  in  the  old  world,  we  know  from  a  passage 
in  his  elegies,  which,  though  we  have  no  clue  to  the 
time  he  wrote  it,  deserves  to  be  given  in  this  place, 
both  as  connected  with  his  notions  about  birth,  and  as 


138  TIIEOGNIS 

a  set-off  to  the  passages  which  have  led  us  to  picture 
him  as  more  or  less  of  an  easy  liver  : — 

"  To  rear  a  child  is  easy,  hut  to  teach 
Morals  and  manners  is  heyond  our  reach  ; 
To  make  the  foolish  wise,  the  wicked  good, 
That  science  yet  was  never  understood. 
The  sons  of  Esculapius,  if  their  art 
Could  remedy  a  perverse  and  wicked  heart, 
Might  earn  enormous  wages  !     But  in  fact 
The  mind  is  not  compounded  and  compact 
Of  precept  and  example  ;  human  art 
In  human  nature  has  no  share  or  part. 
Hatred  of  vice,  the  fear  of  shame  and  sin, 
Are  things  of  native  growth,  not  grafted  in : 
Else  wives  and  worthy  parents  might  correct 
In  children's  hearts  each  error  and  defect : 
Whereas  we  see  them  disappointed  still,      "j 
No  scheme  nor  artifice  of  human  skill  > 

Can  rectify  the  passions  or  the  will." — (F.)  ) 


Not  often,  however,  despite  his  sententiousness,  which 
has  been  the  cause  of  his  metamorphose  by  posterity 
into  a  coiner  of  maxims  for  the  use  of  schools  and  the 
instruction  of  life  and  morals,  does  Theognis  muse  in 
such  a  strain  of  seriousness.  Ofrser  far  his  vein  is 
bnght  and  gay,  as  when  he  makes  ready  for  a  feast, 
which,  if  we  are  not  mistaken,  was  destined  to  take 
most  of  the  remainder  of  his  "  solid  day." 

"  Now  that  in  mid  career,  checking  his  force, 
The  bright  sun  pauses  in  his  pride  and  force, 
Let  us  prepare  to  dine  ;  and  eat  and  drink 
The  best  of  everything  that  heart  can  think  : 


IS   YOUTH  AND  PROSPERITY,  139 


•air  } 
ul  air  > 
iair :   ) 


And  let  the  shapely  Spartan  damsel  fair 

Bring  with  a  rounded  arm  and  graceful  ai 

Water  to  wash,  and  garlands  for  our  hair : 

In  spite  of  all  the  systems  and  the  rules 

Invented  and  observed  by  sickly  fools, 

Let  us  be  brave,  and  resolutely  drink  ; 

Not  minding  if  the  Dog-star  rise  or  sink." — (F.) 

I  very  pretty  vignette  might  be  made  of  this,  or  of  a 

indred  fragment  that  seems  to  belong  to  his  later 

ays.     And  to  tell  the  truth,  the  poet's  rule  seems  to 

ave  been  that  you  should  "  live  while   you  may." 

Whether,  as  has  been  surmised  by  Mr  Frere,  he  refers 

o  the  catastrophe  of  Hipparchus  or  not,  the  four  lines 

which    follow    indicate    Theognis's    conviction    that 

everything  is  fated, — a  conviction  very  conducive  to 

enjoyment  of  the  passing  hour.    '  Let  us  eat  and  drink, 

for  to-morrow  we  die  ' : — 

"  No  costly  sacrifice  nor  offerings  given 
Can  change  the  purpose  of  the  powers  of  Heaven  ; 
Whatever  Fate  ordains,  danger  or  hurt, 
Or  death  predestined,  nothing  can  avert." — (F.) 

This  conviction,  no  doubt,  to  a  great  degree  influenced 
the  poet's  indifference  to  the  honours  of  a  pompous 
funeral,  for  which,  considering  his  birth  and  traditions, 
he  might  have  cherished  a  weakness.  But  his  tone  of 
mind,  we  see,  was  such  that  he  could  anticipate  no 
satisfaction  from  "  hat-bands  and  scarves,"  or  what- 
ever else  in  his  day  represented  handsome  obsequies. 
When  some  great  chiif,  perhaps  a  tyrant,  perhaps  one 
of  the  heads  of  his  party  at  Megara,  was  to  be  borne  to 
his  long  home  with  a  solemn  pageant,  Theognis  has 


140  THEOQN1S. 

no  mind  to  take  a  part  in  it,  and  expresses  his  reasons 
in  language  wherein  the  Epicurean  vein  is  no  less 
conspicuous  than  the  touching  common-sense  : — 

"  I  envy  not  these  sumptuous  obsequies, 
The  stately  car,  the  purple  canopies  ; 
Much  better  pleased  am  I,  remaining  here, 
With  cheaper  equipage,  and  better  cheer. 
A  couch  of  thorns,  or  an  embroidered  bed, 
Are  matters  of  indifference  to  the  dead." — (F.) 

This  old-world  expression  of  the  common-place  that 
the  grave  levels  all  distinctions  is  not  unlike,  save  that 
it  lacks  the  similitude  of  life  to  a  river,  the  stanzas  on 
"  Man's  Life,"  by  a  Spanish  poet,  Don  Jorge  Manrique, 
translated  by  Longfellow  : — 

"  Our  lives  are  rivers,  gliding  free 
To  that  unfathomed  boundless  sea, 
The  silent  grave  ! 
Thither  all  earthy  pomp  and  boast 
Roll  to  be  swallowed  up  and  lost 
In  one  dark  wave. 

Thither  the  mighty  torrents  stray  : 
Thither  the  brook  pursues  its  way  ; 
And  tinkling  rill. 
There  all  are  equal :  side  by  side, 
The  poor  man  and  the  son  of  pride 
Lie  calm  and  still." 

But  before  Theognis  could  give  proof  of  this  levelling 
change,  he  had  a  stormy  career  to  fulfil^  as  we  shall 
find  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THEOGNIS    IN    OPPOSITION. 

From  the  indistinctness  of  our  knowledge  as  to  the 
sequence  of  events  in  Megara,  it  is  impossible  to  fix 
the  point  of  time  when  Theognis  began  to  be  a  politi- 
cal plotter ;  but  as,  during  the  whole  of  his  mature 
life,  his  party  was  in  opposition,  it  will  be  enough  to 
trace  the  adverse  influence  of  the  dominant  democracy 
upon  his  career  till  it  terminated  in  exile.  We  have 
seen  that  he  was  a  member  of  a  club  composed  of 
exclusive  and  aristocratic  members,  meeting  ostensibly 
for  feasting  and  good-fellowship,  but  really,  as  their 
designation  "  the  good  " — in  a  sense  already  explained 
— clearly  indicated,  designed  and  pledged  to  cherish 
the  traditions  of  a  constitution  to  which  they  were 
devoted,  and  which  for  the  time  being  was  suffering 
eclipse. 

Of  this  club  a  certain  Simonides  was  president,  one 
Onomacritus  a  boon-companion,  and  Cyrnus,  to  whom 
are  addressed  some  two-thirds  of  the  extant  verses  of 
Theognis,  a  younger  member,  of  whom,  politically,  the 
greatest  things  were  expected.     Though  its  soirees  seem 


142  THEOGNIS 

to  have  been  often  noisy  and  Bacchanalian,  we  must 
suppose  the  Aristocratic  Club  at  Megara  to  have  been 
as  busy  in  contemporary  politics  as  the  "  Carlton  " 
or  the  "  Eeform  "  in  our  general  elections  ;  and  there 
are  tokens  that  Theognis  was  a  sleepless  member  of 
the  Committee,  although  some  of  his  confreres,  of  whom 
little  more  than  the  names  survive,  cared  more  for 
club -life  than  club-politics.  There  was  one  notable 
exception.  In  spite  of  the  waywardness  of  youth, 
and  the  fickleness  characteristic  of  one  so  petted  and 
caressed  by  his  friends,  Cyrnus  must  have  lent  his 
ears  and  hands  to  various  schemes  of  Theognis  for  up- 
setting the  democracy,  and  restoring  the  ascendancy  of 
the  "  wise  and  good."  At  times  it  is  plain  that  Cyrnus 
considered  himself  to  have  a  ground  of  offence  against 
Theognis  ;  and  there  are  verses  of  the  latter  which 
bespeak  recrimination  and  open  rupture,  though  of 
course  the  poet  compares  himself  to  unalloyed  gold, 
and  considers  his  good  faith  stainless.  The  elder  of 
the  pair  was  probably  tetchy  and  jealous,  the  younger 
changeable  and  volatile ;  but  there  is  certainly  no 
reason  for  supposing  that  Cyrnus's  transference  of  his 
friendship  to  some  other  political  chief  resulted  in  either 
party-success  or  increase  of  personal  distinction,  for  his 
name  survives  only  in  the  elegiacs  of  Theognis,  as 
indeed  that  poet  has  prophesied  it  would,  in  a  frag- 
ment the  key  to  which  Hookham  Frere  finds  in  a  com- 
parison of  bardic  celebration  with  the  glory  resulting 
from  an  Olympic  victory  ; — 

"  You  soar  aloft,  and  over  land  and  wave 
Are  borne  triumphant  on  the  wings  I  gave, 


IN   OPPOSITION.  H3 

(The  swift  and  mighty  wings,  Music  and  Verse). 
Your  name  in  easy  numbers  smooth  and  terse 
Is  wafted  o'er  the  world  ;  and  heard  among 
The  banquetings  and  feasts,  chaunted  and  sung, 
Heard  and  admired  :  the  modulated  air 
Of  flutes,  and  voices  of  the  young  and  fair 
Eecite  it,  and  to  future  times  shall  tell  ; 
When,  closed  within  the  dark  sepulchral  cell, 
Your  form  shall  moulder,  and  your  empty  ghost 
Wander  along  the  dreary  Stygian  coast. 

Yet  shall  your  memory  flourish  green  and  young, 
Recorded  and  revived  on  every  tongue, 
In  continents  and  islands,  every  place 
That  owns  the  language  of  the  Grecian  race. 

No  purchased  prowess  of  a  racing  steed, 
But  the  triumphant  Muse,  with  airy  speed, 
Shall  bear  it  wide  and  far,  o'er  land  and  main, 
A  glorious  and  imperishable  strain  ; 
A  mighty  prize  gratuitously  won, 
Fixed  as  the  earth,  immortal  as  the  sun." — (F.) 

But,  to  catch  the  thread  of  Theognis's  story,  we 
must  go  back  to  earlier  verses  than  these,  addressed  to 
the  young  noble  whom  he  regarded  with  a  pure  and 
almost  paternal  regard — the  growth,  it  may  be,  in  the 
first  instance  of  kindred  political  views.  The  verses 
of  Theognis  which  refer  to  the  second  period  of  his 
life  begin  with  a  caution  to  Cyrnus  to  keep  his  strains 
as  much  a  secret  as  the  fame  of  his  poetry  will  allow, 
and  evince  the  same  sensitiveness  to  public  opinion 
as  so  many  other  of  his  remains.  He  cannot  gain  and 
keep,  he  regrets  to  own,  the  goodwill  of  his  fellow- 
citizens,  any  more  than  Zeus  can  please  all  parties, 
whilst — 


144-  THEOGNIS 

*  Some  call  for  rainy  weather,  some  for  dry" 

What  the  advice  was  which  required  such  a  seal  of 
secrecy  begins  to  appear  shortly,  in  a  fragment  which 
presages  a  revolution,  in  which  Cyrnus  is  looked-to 
to  play  a  leader's  part.  It  is  interesting  as  a  picture 
of  the  state  of  things  which  one  revolution  had 
brought  about,  and  for  which  Theognis  was  hatching 
a  panacea  in  another.  Slightly  altered,  to  meet  the 
political  sense  of  the  "  good  "  and  "  bad,"  the  "  better- 
most  "  and  the  "  worse  M  in  Megarian  parlance,  the  fol- 
lowing extract  from  Mr  Frere  is  a  faithful  transcript : — 

11  Our  commonwealth  preserves  its  former  frame, 
Our  common  people  are  no  more  the  same  ; 
They  that  in  skins  and  hides  were  rudely  dressed, 
Nor  dreamed  of  law,  nor  sought  to  be  redressed 
By  rules  of  right,  but,  in  the  days  of  old, 
Without  the  walls,  like  deer,  their  place  did  hold, 
Are  now  the  dominant  class,  and  we,  the  rest, 
Their  betters  nominally,  once  the  best, 
Degenerate,  debased,  timid,  and  mean  ; 
Who  can  endure  to  witness  such  a  scene  ? 
Their  easy  courtesies,  the  ready  smile 
Prompt  to  deride,  to  flatter,  to  beguile  ! 
Their  utter  disregard  of  right  or  wrong, 
Of  truth  or  honour  !     Out  of  such  a  throng 
Never  imagine  you  can  choose  a  just 
Or  steady  friend,  or  faithful  to  his  trust. 

But  change  your  habits  !  let  them  go  their  way  t 
Be  condescending,  affable,  and  gay ! 
Adopt  with  every  man  the  style  and  tone, 
Most  courteous,  most  congenial  with  his  own! 
But  in  your  secret  counsels  keep  aloof 
From  feeble  paltry  souls,  that  at  the  proof 


IN   OPPOSITION.  145 

Of  danger  and  distress  are  sure  to  fail, 

For  whose  salvation  nothing  can  avail."— (F.) 

The  last  lines  assuredly  betoken  the  brewing  of  a 
conspiracy ;  but  the  poet  goes  on  to  lament  a  state  of 
things  where  a  generation  of  spiritless  nobles  replaces 
an  ancestry  remarkable  for  spirit  and  magnanimity. 
Though  a  government  by  an  aristocracy  of  caste,  if  of 
this  latter  calibre,  could  not  be  upset,  he  has  evident 
misgivings  in  reference  to  the  present  leaders  of  the 
party,  whose  pride  he  likens  to  that  which  ruined  the 
centaurs,  destroyed  "  Smyrna  the  rich  and  Colophon 
the  great,"  and  made  "  Magnesian  ills  " — in  reference 
to  the  punishment  of  the  oppressive  pride  of  the 
Magnesians  by  the  Ephesians  at  the  river  Mseander — 
a  by-word  and  a  proverb  in  the  verse  of  Archilochus, 
as  well  as  of  Theognis.  In  such  a  posture  of  affairs 
our  poet  professes  an  intention  to  hold  aloof  from 
pronounced  politics  and  party — 

"  Not  leaguing  with  the  discontented  crew, 
Nor  with  the  proud  and  arbitrary  few  : " — (F.) 

just  as  elsewhere  he  advises  Cyrnus  to  do,  in  a  coup- 
let which  may  be  translated — 

"  Fret  not,  if  strife  the  townsmen  reckless  make, 
But  'twixt  both  sides,  as  I,  the  mid- way  take." — (D.) 

He  was  old  enough  to  foresee  the  danger  of  reprisals, 
and,  from  policy,  counselled  younger  blood  to  abstain 
from  injustice  and  rapine,  when  the  tide  turned,— 

"  Cyrnus,  proceed  like  me  !  walk  not  awry  ! 

Nor  trample  on  the  bounds  of  property." — (F.) 
A.  c.  vol.  xv.  K 


146  THEOGNIS 

but  he  soon  found  that  his  neutrality  only  procured 
him  the  hatred  and  abuse  of  both  friends  and  foes 
a  discovery  which  he  expresses  thus  : — 

"  The  city's  mind  I  cannot  comprehend — 
Do  well  or  ill,  they  hold  me  not  their  friend. 
From  base  and  noble  blame  is  still  my  fate, 
Though  fools  may  blame,  who  cannot  imitate." — (D.) 

It  was  hard,  he  thought,  that  his  friends  should  look 
coolly  upon  him,  if,  with  a  view  to  the  wellbeing  of 
his  party,  he  gave  no  offence  to  the  opposite  faction, — 
if,  as  he  puts  it, 

"  I  cross  not  my  foe's  path,  brtt  keep  as  clear, 
As  of  hid  rocks  at  sea  the  pilots  steer." — (D.) 

And  he  is  almost  querulous  in  his  sensibility  to  public 
opinion,  when  he  sings, — 

u  The  generous  and  brave  in  common  fame 
From  time  to  time  encounter  praise  or  blame : 
The  vulgar  pass  unheeded  :  none  escape 
Scandal  or  insult  in  some  form  or  shape.   , 
Most  fortunate  are  those,  alive  or  dead, 
Of  whom  the  least  is  thought,  the  least  is  said." — (F.) 

It  is  as  if  he  administered  to  himself  the  comfort 
which  Adam  gives  Orlando — 

"  Know  you  not,  master,  to  some  kind  of  men 
Their  graces  serve  them  but  as  enemies  ? 
No  more  do  yours  ;  your  virtues,  gentle  master, 
Are  sanctified  and  holy  traitors  to  you." 

— '  As  you  like  it/  II.  hi. 

But  a  candid  study  of  the  character  of  Theognis  in- 
duces the  impression  that  his  neutrality  was  only  fit- 


IN    OPPOSITION.  U7 

ful  or  temporary.  A  great  deal  of  his  counsel  to  his 
friend  exhibits  him  in  the  light  of  a  politic  watcher  of 
events,  at  one  time  deprecating  what  at  another  he 
advocated.  Who  would  recognise  the  champion  of 
the  "wise  and  good"  and  of  their  policy,  pure  and 
simple,  in  these  verses,  breathing  a  spirit  of  progress 
and  expediency  ? — 

"  Waste  not  your  efforts  :  struggle  not,  my  friend, 
Idle  and  old  abuses  to  defend. 
Take  heed  !  the  very  measures  that  you  press, 
May  bring  repentance  with  their  own  success." — (F.) 

There  is  also  an  inconsistency  to  be  accounted  for 
doubtless  upon  politic  grounds,  in  the  discrepant  advice 
which  he  gives  Cyrnus  as  to  the  friend  to  be  chosen 
in  the  crisis  then  imminent.  At  one  time  he  is  all 
for  "determined  hearty  partisans,"  and  deprecates  associ- 
ation with  reckless  associates,  as  well  as  with  fair- 
weather  friends  : — 

"  Never  engage  with  a  poltroon  or  craven, 
Avoid  him,  Cyrnus,  as  a  treacherous  haven. 
Those  friends  and  hearty  comrades,  as  you  think, 
Keady  to  join  you,  when  you  feast  or  drink, 
Those  easy  friends  from  difficulty  shrink." — (F.) 

But  anon  he  is  found  subscribing  to  the  principle  that 
"no  man  is  wholly  bad  or  wholly  good,"  and  recommend- 
ing his  friend  to  cor^iliate,  as  we  say,  Tom,  Dick,  and 
Harry,  so  as  to  be  "  O  things  to  all  men." 

"  Join  with  the  world  ;  adopt  with  every  man 
His  party  views,  his  temper,  and  his  plan ; 


U8  TIIEOGNIS 

Strive  to  avoid  offence,  study  to  please 
Like  the  sagacious  inmate  of  the  seas,* 
That  an  accommodating  colour  brings, 
Conforming  to  the  rock  to  which  he  clings : 
"With  every  change  of  place  changing  his  hue  ; 
The  model  for  a  statesman  such  as  you.1' — (F.) 

Perhaps  the  clue  to  this  riddle  is,  that  circumstances 
about  this  time  drove  Theognis  into  a  more  pronounced 
course, — as  men  get  desperate  when  they  lose  those 
possessions  which,  whilst  intact,  justify  them  in 
being  choice,  and  conservative,  and  exclusive.  Either 
in  a  fresh  political  revolution  and  a  new  partition  of 
the  lands  of  the  republic,  or,  as  Mr  Grote  thinks,  in 
a  movement  in  favour  of  a  single- headed  despot  accom- 
plished by  some  of  Theognis's  own  party,  who  were 
sick  of  the  rule  of  the  "  bad  rich,"  he  lost  his  estate 
whilst  absent  on  an  unfortunate  voyage.  Thenceforth 
he  is  a  conspirator  at  work  to  recover  his  confiscated 
lands  by  a  counter-revolution  :  thenceforth  his  verses 
are  a  mixture  of  schemes  for  revenge,  of  murmurs 
against  Providence,  and  of  suspicion  of  the  comrades 
whose  partisanship  he  hoped  might  yet  reinstate 
the  old  possessors  of  property.  The  two  or  three 
fragments  which  refer  more  or  less  directly  to  this  loss 
may  be  given  together.  Here  is  one  which  speaks  to 
the  extent  and  nature  of  it  : — 

"  Bad  faith  has  ruined  me  :  distrust  alone 
Has  saved  a  remnant :  all  the  rest  is  gone 

*  The  creature  referred  to  is  the  Sea-Polypus  —  Sepia 
Octopodia  of  Linnaeus — which  is  referred  to  in  Hesiod's  '  "Works 
and  Days  '  (524)  under  the  epithet  of  "  the  boneless." 


IN    OPPOSITION.  149 

To  ruin  and  the  clogs  :  the  powers  divine 

I  murmur  not  against  them,  nor  repine  : 

Mere  human  violence,  rapine,  and  stealth 

Have  brought  me  down  to  poverty  from  wealth." — (F.) 

In  another  he  invokes  the  help  of  Zeus  in  requiting 
his  friends  and  foes  according  to  their  deserts,  whilst 
he  describes  himself  as  one  who —  ' 

"  Like  to  a  scared  and  hunted  hound 
That  scarce  escaping,  trembling  and  half  drowned, 
Crosses  a  gully,  swelled  wTith  wintry  rain, 
Has  crept  ashore  in  feebleness  and  pain." — (F.) 

The  bitterness  of  his  feelings  at  the  wrong  he  has 
suffered  is  intensified,  in  the  sequel  of  this  fragment, 
into  the  expression  of  a  wish  "  one  day  to  drink  the 
very  blood  "  of  them  that  have  done  it.  Eut  perhaps 
the  most  touching  and  specific  allusion  to  his  spolia- 
tion is  where  the  return  of  spring — to  send  another's 
plough  over  his  ancestral  fields — brings  up  to  his 
remembrance  the  change  in  his  fortunes  : — 

"  The  yearly  summons  of  the  creaking  crane, 
That  warns  the  ploughman  to  his  task  again, 
Strikes  to  my  heart  a  melancholy  strain — 
When  all  is  lost,  and  my  paternal  lands 
Are  tilled  for  other  lords  with  other  hands, 
Since  that  disastrous  wretched  voyage  brought 
Riches  and  lands  and  everything  to  nought." — (F.) 

A  kindred  feeling  of  pain  breathes  in  another  passage 
apropos  of  autumn  and  its  harvest-homes.  And  this 
pain  he  seeks  to  allay  sometimes  by  reminding  himself 
that  womanish  repinings  will  but  gratify  his  foes,  and 


150  THEOGN1S 

at  other  times  by  plans  for  setting  Providence  to 
rights.  Now  he  admits  that  patience  is  the  only 
cure,  and  that,  if  impatient, — 

"  We  strive  like  children,  and  the  Almighty  plan 
Controls  the  froward,  weak  children  of  man." 

Now  again,  he  seems  to  think  sullen  resistance  is  a 
better  policy;  and  in  another  curious  musing  he  argues 
against  the  justice  of  visiting  the  sins  of  the  fathers 
on  the  children : — 

"  The  case  is  hard  where  a  good  citizen, 
A  person  of  an  honourable  mind, 
Religiously  devout,  faithful,  and  kind, 
Is  doomed  to  pay  the  lamentable  score 
Of  guilt  accumulated  long  before. 

Quite  undeservedly  doomed  to  atone, 

In  other  times,  for  actions  not  his  own." — (F.) 

In  the  midst  of  these  conflicting  emotions  it  is  pleasant 
to  find  that  he  can  extend  a  welcome  out  of  the 
remnant  of  his  fortunes  to  such  hereditary  friends  as 
one  Clearistus,  who  has  come  across  the  sea  to  visit 
him  •  and  it  is  consistent  with  his  early  habits  that  he 
should  try  the  effect  of  drowning  care  in  the  bowl, 
though  he  is  forced  to  admit  that  this  factitious 
oblivion  soon  gives  place  to  bitter  retrospects,  and 
equally  bitter  prospects. 

We  must  not  however  suppose  that  Theognis  and 
his  fellow-sufferers  brooded  altogether  passively  over 
their  wrongs.  His  famous  political  verses,  likening  the 
state  to  a  ship  in  a  storm,  betray  a  weakness  in  the 


IN    OPPOSITION.  151 

ruling  powers,  eminently  provocative  of  the  emeute  or 
insurrection  which  was  to  follow: — 

"  Such  is  our  state  !  in  a  tempestuous  sea, 
With  all  the  crew  raging  in  mutiny ! 
No  duty  followed,  none  to  reef  a  sail, 
To  work  the  vessel,  or  to  pump  or  bale : 
All  is  abandoned,  and  without  a  check 
The  mighty  sea  conies  sweeping  o'er  the  deck. 
Our  steersman,  hitherto  so  bold  and  steady, 
Active  and  able,  is  deposed  already. 
No  discipline,  no  sense  of  order  felt, 
The  daily  messes  are  unduly  dealt. 
The  goods  are  plundered,  those  that  ought  to  keep 
Strict  watch  are  icily  skulking,  or  asleep  ; 
All  that  is  left  of  order  or  command 
Committed  wholly  to  the  basest  hand. 
In  such  a  case,  my  friend,  I  needs  must  think 
It  were  no  marvel  though  the  vessel  sink. 
This  riddle  to  my  worthy  friends  I  tell, 
But  a  shrewd  knave  will  understand  it  well!" — (F.) 

It  is  easy  to  discern  in  the  last  couplet  a  hint  to  his 
partisans  to  take  advantage  of  this  posture  of  affairs, 
and  the  fragments  which  serve  as  a  context  revert  to 
the  drowning  state,  discuss  who  is  staunch  and  what 
is  rotten  in  it,  and  imply  generally  that  the  sole  reason 
for  not  striking  is  distrust  of  the  number  and  fitness 
of  the  tools  : — 

"  The  largest  company  you  could  enroll, 
A  single  vessel  could  embark  the  whole  ! 
So  few  there  are  :  the  noble  manly  minds, 
Faithful  and  firm,  the  men  that  honour  binds  ; 
Impregnable  to  danger  and  to  pain 
And  low  seduction  in  the  shape  of  gain." — (F.) 


15l2  THEOGNIS 

But  the  time  comes  when  such  a  chosen  few  have  to  be 
resorted  to,  as  a  last  resource,  in  preference  to  the  ruin 
certain  to  overtake  them  if,  after  their  plots  have  "been 
divulged,  they  sit  still  and  await  it.  There  is  extant 
a  passage  of  some  length,  which  Mr  Frere  ingeniously 
conceives  to  have  been  the  heads  of  Theognis's  speech 
to  the  conspirators.  Its  conclusion  represents  the 
oath  of  the  malcontents,  a  formula  pledging  assistance 
to  friends  and  requital  to  foes  to  the  very  uttermost. 
It  breathes  the  courage  of  desperation,  but  does  not 
hold  out  a  prospect  of  success  which  could  justify 
the  resort  to  action.  The  precise  nature  of  what  fol- 
lowed we  know  not.  An  elegiac  and  subjective  poet 
like  Theognis  is  readier  to  moralise  than  to  describe. 
The  outbreak  may  have  had  a  gleam  of  success,  or 
may  have  been  crushed  at  the  beginning  by  the  fore- 
sight of  its  opponents,  or  the  despair  and  faint  heart  of 
its  promoters.  It  seems  quite  clear,  however,  that, 
perhaps  by  the  aid  of  an  armed  force  from  some  demo- 
cratic state,  most  likely  Corinth,  the  insurrection  is 
beaten  to  its  last  breathing-place.  Here  is  a  fragment 
which  vividly  pictures  the  hurried  resolve  of  the  party 
of  Cyrnus  and  Theognis  to  abandon  their  country  and 
ill-starred  enterprise  : — 

"  A  speechless  messenger,  the  beacon's  light, 
Announces  danger  from  the  mountain's  height  I 
Bridle  your  horses  and  prepare  to  fly  ; 
The  final  crisis  of  our  fate  is  nigh. 
A  momentary  pause,  a  narrow  space, 
Detains  them  ;  but  the  foes  approach  apace  ! 


IN    OPPOSITION.  153 

We  must  abide  what  fortune  lias  decreed, 
And  hope  that  Heaven  will  help  us  at  our  need. 
Make  your  resolve  !     At  home  your  means  were  great ; 
Abroad  you  will  retain  a  poor  estate  ; 
Unostentatious,  indigent,  and  scant, 
Yet  live  secure,  at  least  from  present  want." — (F.) 

Such,  then,  was  tho  issue  ol  all  our  poet's  plotting  and 
club-intrigues,  bis  poetic  exhortations,  and  his  hopes 
of  a  saviour  in  Cyrrms.  Not  only  did  he  fail  of  the 
aggrandisement  of  his  party  and  the  recovery  of  his 
estate :  he  had  henceforth  also  to  realise  the  miseries 
of  exile. 


CHAPTER  TIL 

THEOGNIS     IN    EXILE. 

Driven  from  his  country  through  an  unsuccessful  ris- 
ing against  the  party  in  power,  Theognis  next  appears 
as  a  refugee  in  Eubcea,  where  a  faction  of  congenial 
political  views  has  tempted  him  to  take  up  his  residence. 
But  his  sojourn  must  have  been  brief.  The  aristocracy 
of  the  island  was  no  match  for  the  commonalty,  when 
the  latter  was  backed  by  Corinthian  sympathisers, 
whose  policy  was  to  upset  hereditary  oligarchies,  and 
to  lift  an  individual  to  supreme  power  on  the  shoulders 
of  the  people.  Before  this  strong  and  sinister  influence 
our  poet  probably  had  to  bow  in  Euboea,  as  he  had 
already  bowed  in  Megara.  The  principles  to  which  he 
clung  so  tenaciously  were  doomed  to  ill  luck,  and  he 
felt  the  disasters  of  his  party  little  short  of  a  personal 
disgrace.  It  was  the  old  story  of  the  good  and  bad, 
in  the  political  and  social  sense  already  noticed ;  and, 
as  at  Megara,  the  good  got  the  worst  of  it : — 

"  Alas  for  our  disgrace  !     Cerinthus  lost  * 
The  fair  Lelantian  plain  !     A  plundering  host 


*  Cerinthus  was  a  city  of  Euboea,  and  Lelantum  a  well-watered 
plain,  which  was  an  old  source  of  cortention  betwixt  the  Ere- 
trians  and  Chalcidians. 


TIIEOGNIS  IN  EXILE.  155 

Invade  it — all  the  brave  banished  or  fled  ! 
Within  the  town  lewd  ruffians  in  their  stead 
Rule  it  at  random.     Such  is  our  disgrace. 
May  Zeus  confound  the  Cypselising  race  ! " — (F.) 

Breathing  from  his  heart  this  curse  against  the  policy 
of  the  Corinthians  above  referred  to,  and  conveniently 
named  after  the  usurper  who  founded  the  system, 
Theognis  soon  retired  to  Thebes,  as  a  state  which, 
from  its  open  sympathy  with  the  politics  of  the  ban- 
ished Megarians,  would  be  likeliest  to  offer  them  an 
asylum,  and  to  connive  at  their  projects  for  recovering 
their  native  city  by  force  or  subtlety.  The  first 
glimpse  we  have  of  him  at  Thebes  is  characteristic  of 
the  man  in  more  ways  than  one.  At  the  house  of  a 
noble  host,  his  love  of  music  led  him  to  an  interfer- 
ence with,  or  a  rivalry  of,  the  hired  music-girl  Argyris 
and  her  vocation,  which  provoked  the  gibes  of  the 
glee-maiden,  and  possibly  lowered  him  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  company.  But  the  love  of  music  and 
song,  which  led  him  into  the  scrape,  sufficed  also  to 
furnish  him  with  a  ready  and  extemporised  retort  to 
the  girl's  insinuation  that  perhaps  his  mother  was  a 
flute-player  (and,  by  implication,  a  slave) — a  retort 
which  he,  no  doubt,  astonished  his  audience  by  sing- 
ing to  his  own  accompaniment : — 

"  I  am  of  iEthon's  lineage.     Thebes  has  given 
Shelter  to  one  from  home  and  country  driven. 
A  truce  to  jests  :  my  parents  mock  thou  not, 
For  thine,  not  mine,  girl,  is  the  slavish  lot. 
Full  many  an  ill  the  exile  has  to  brave : 
This  good  I  clasp,  that  none  can  call  me  slave, 


156  THEOGNIS 

Or  bought  with  price.     A  franchise  I  retain, 
Albeit  in  dreamland,  and  oblivion's  plain." — (D.) 

The  verses  seem  to  be  instinct  with  a  hauteur  bred 
from  consciousness  of  his  aristocratic  connections,  even 
whilst  the  singer's  dependence  upon  his  own  talents 
rather  than  on  hired  minstrelsy  bespeaks  him  a  citi- 
zen of  the  world.  But,  apart  from  such  scenes 
and  such  entertainments  in  hospitable  Thebes,  our 
poet  found  time  there  for  schemes  of  revenge  and 
reprisals,  and  for  the  refugee's  proverbial  solace,  the 
pleasures  of  hope.  Whilst  a  portion  of  his  day  was 
spent  in  the  congenial  society  of  the  cultivated  noble — 
the  contretemps  at  whose  house  does  not  seem  to  have 
interrupted  their  friendship — another  portion  was  de- 
voted to  projects  of  return,  which  a  fellow-feeling 
would  prevent  from  appearing  tedious  to  the  ear  of  his 
partner  in  exile,  Cyrnus.  To  him  it  is  amusing  to 
lind  him  comparing  his  hardships  to  those  of  Ulysses, 
and  gathering  hope  of  vengeance  from  the  sequel  of 
the  wanderings  of  that  mythical  hero  : — 

"  Doomed  to  descend  to  Pluto's  dreary  reign, 
Yet  he  returned  and  viewed  his  home  again, 
And  wreaked  his  vengeance  on  the  plundering  crew, 
The  factious,  haughty  suitors,  whom  he  slew : 
Whilst  all  the  while,  with  steady  faith  unfeigned, 
The  prudent,  chaste  Penelope  remained 
With  her  fair  son,  waiting  a  future  hour 
For  his  arrival  and  return  to  power." — (F.) 

According,  indeed,  to  Theognis's  testimony,  it  should 
soem  that  his  Penelope  at  Megara  was  as  blameless  as 


IN   EXILE.  157 

the  Ithacan  princess  of  that  name,  for  he  takes  Cyrnus 
to  witness,  in  a  quaint  fashion  enough,  that 

"  Of  all  good  things  in  human  life, 
Nothing  can  equal  goodness  in  a  wife. 
In  our  own  case  we  prove  the  proverb  true  ; 
You  vouch  for  me,  my  friend,  and  I  for  you." — (F.) 

It  must  be  allowed  that  this  is  a  confirmation,  under 
the  circumstances,  of  the  poet's  dictum,  "  that  absence 
is  not  death  to  those  that  love ; "  but  still  one  is 
tempted  to  wonder  what  their  wives  at  Megara  thought 
of  these  restless,  revolution-mongering  husbands,  as 
they  beheld  them  in  the  mind's  eye  hobbing  and  nob- 
bing over  treason  in  some  "  Leicester  Square  "  tavern 
of  Eubcea  or  of  Thebes.  In  such  tete-a-tetes  Theognis, 
no  doubt,  was  great  in  aesthetics  as  well  as  moralities ; 
and  the  sole  deity  still  left  to  reverence,  Hope,  became 
more  winsome  to  his  fancy  as  he  dwelt  on  the  refine- 
ments he  had  to  forego,  now  that  he  was  bereft  of 
home  and  property.  The  following  fragment  repre- 
sents this  state  of  feeling  : — 

"  For  human  nature  Hope  remains  alone 
Of  all  the  deities — the  rest  are  flown. 
Faith  is  departed  ;  Truth  and  Honour  dead  ; 
A  nd  all  the  Graces  too,  my  friend,  are  fled. 
The  scanty  specimens  of  living  worth 
Dwindled  to  nothing  and  extinct  on  earth. 
Yet  while  I  live  and  view  the  light  of  heaven 
(Since  Hope  remains,  and  never  hath  been  driven 
From  the  distracted  world)  the  single  scope 
Of  my  devotion  is  to  worship  Hope  : 
Where  hecatombs  are  slain,  and  altars  burn, 
With  all  the  deities  adored  in  turn, 


158  THEOGNIS 

Let  Hope  be  present :  and  with  Hope,  my  friend, 
Let  every  sacrifice  commence  and  end."— (F.) 

•  Mr  Frere  notes  the  characteristic  touch  in  the  fourth 
line,  "The  victim  of  a  popular  revolution  lamenting 
that  democracy  has  destroyed  the  Graces."  But  as 
time  passed,  and  the  exiles  still  failed  to  compass  their 
return,  distrust  and  impatience  begin  to  be  rife  amongst 
them.  Theognis  applies  the  crucible,  which  frequently 
figures  in  his  poetry,  and  might  almost  indicate  a 
quondam  connection  with  the  Megarian  Mint,  and  fails 
to  discover  a  sterling  unadulterated  mind  in  the  whole 
range  of  his  friends.  In  bitterness  of  spirit  he  finds 
out  at  last  that 

"An  exile  has  no  friends  !  no  partisan 
Is  firm  or  faithful  to  the  banished  man ; 
A  disappointment  and  a  punishment 
Harder  to  bear  and  worse  than  banishment." — (F.) 

And  under  these  circumstances  he  is  driven  in  earnest 
to  the  course  which,  in  his  *  Acharnians,'  Aristophanes 
represents  Dicaeopolis  as  adopting — namely,  private 
negotiations  with  the  masters  of  the  situation  at  Megara. 
Ever  recurring  to  his  "  pleasant  gift  of  verse "  when 
he  had  "  a  mot "  to  deliver,  a  shaft  of  wit  to  barb,  or 
a  compliment  to  pay,  Theognis  makes  it  the  instrument 
wherewith  to  pave  the  way  to  his  reconciliation  and 
restoration.  If  the  whole  poems  were  extant,  of  which 
the  lines  we  are  about  to  cite  represent  Frere's  mode  of 
translating  the  first  couplet,  it  would,  as  the  translator 
acutely  surmises,  be  found  to  contain  a  candid  review 
of  the  past,  an  admission  of  errors  on  his  own  side,  an 


IJV  EXILE.  159 

advance  towards  making  things  pleasant  with  the 
other,  and  a  first  overture  to  the  treaty  he  was  desir- 
ous to  negotiate  with  the  victorious  party. 

"  No  mean  or  coward  heart  will  I  commend 
In  an  old  comrade  or  a  party  friend  ; 
Nor  with  ungenerous  hasty  zeal  decry 
A  noble-minded  gallant  enemy." — (F.) 

But  the  bait,  though  specious,  did  not  tempt  those 
for  whom  it  was  designed.  In  another  short  fragment 
is  recorded  the  outburst  of  the  poet's  disappointment 
at  finding  it  "  labour  lost."  He  seems  to  have  aban- 
doned hope  at  last  in  the  words — 

*  Not  to  be  born — never  to  see  the  sun — . 
No  worldly  blessing  is  a  greater  one  ! 
And  the  next  best  is  speedily  to  die, 
And  lapt  beneath  a  load  of  earth  to  lie." — (F.) 

But  even  a  man  without  hope  must  live — that  is, 
unless  he  terminate  his  woes  by  self-slaughtur,  a  der- 
nier ressort  to  which,  to  do  him  justice,  Theog»i«  makes 
no  allusion.  And  so — it  would  seem  because  Thebes, 
though  it  gave  sympathy  and  hospitality,  did  ivot  give 
means  of  earning  a  subsistence  to  the  Meghan  re- 
fugees— we  find  him  in  the  next  fragment — tlx©  last 
fjf  those  addressed  to  Cyrnus — announcing  a  resolu- 
tion to  flee  from  poverty,  the  worst  of  miseries  :- 

"  In  poverty,  dear  Cyrnus,  we  forego 
Freedom  in  word  and  deed — body  and  mind, 
Action  and  thought  are  fettered  and  confined. 
Let  us  then  fly,  dear  Cyrnus,  once  again  i 
Wide  as  the  limits  of  the  land  and  maim 


160  THEOGNIS 

From  these  entanglements  ;  with  these  in  view, 
Death  is  the  lighter  evil  of  the  two." — (F.) 

Possibly,  as  we  hear  no  more  of  him,  the  poet's 
younger  and  less  sensitive  comrade  did  not  respond  to 
the  invitation.  Certainly  Theognis  shortly  transferred 
his  residence  to  Sicily,  that  isle  of  the  west,  which 
was  to  his  countrymen  what  America  is  to  ours,  the 
refuge  of  unemployed  enterprise  and  unappreciated 
talent.  Arrived  there,  he  quickly  shakes  off  the  gloom 
which  the  impressions  of  a  sea-voyage  w  ould  not  tend 
to  lighten,  and  prepares  to  grapple  in  earnest  the 
problem  uhow  to  manage  to  live."  Though  he  gives 
vent  to  expressions  which  show  what  an  indignity 
work  must  have  seemed  to 

"  A  manly  form,  an  elevated  mind, 
Once  elegantly  fashioned  and  refined," 

his  pluck  and  good  sense  come  to  his  aid,  and  he  con- 
soles himself  with  the  generalisation  that 

"  All  kinds  of  shabby  shifts  are  understood, 
All  kinds  of  art  are  practised,  bad  and  good, 
All  kinds  of  ways  to  gain  a  livelihood." — (F.) 

Not  that  he  descends  in  his  own  person  to  any  un- 
worthy art  or  part.  Having  satisfied  himself  that  his 
voice  and  skill  in  music  were  his  most  marketable 
gifts,  he  set  up  as  an  assistant  performer  at  musical 
festivals ;  and,  in  one  of  his  pieces,  he  apologises  for 
his  voice  being  likely  to  fail  at  one  of  those  entertain- 
ments, because  he  had  been  out  late  the  night  before 
serenading  for  hire.      The  poor  gentleman  no  doubt 


OF  THE  X 

'VERSITY  J 


IN   EXILE.  161 

had  to  do  dirty  work,  and  to  put  up  with  snubs  he 
never  dreamed  of  in  his  palmy  club-life  at  home.  His 
sensibilities  were  outraged  by  vulgar  nouveaux  riches 
who  employed  his  talent,  as  well  as  by  professionals 
who  quizzed  him  as  an  amateur.  Fortunately  he 
could  get  his  revenge  in  a  cheap  way  upon  both 
classejs.     Here  is  his  thrust  at  the  former : — 

"  Dunces  are  often  rich,  while  indigence 
Thwarts  the  designs  of  elegance  and  sense. 
Nor  wealth  alone,  nor  judgment  can  avail ; 
In  either  case  art  and  improvement  fail." — (F.) 

As  to  the  latter,  nothing  can  be  more  fair  and  open 
than  the  test  to  which  he  proposes  to  submit  his  own 
pretensions,  and  those  of  one  Academus,  who  had 
twitted  him  with  being  a  cross  between  an  artist  and 
an  amateur : — 

"  I  wish  that  a  fair  trial  were  prepared, 
Friend  Academus  !  with  the  prize  declared, 
A  comely  slave,  the  conqueror's  reward  ; 
For  a  full  proof  betwixt  myself  and  you, 
Which  is  the  better  minstrel  of  the  two. 
Then  would  I  show  you  that  a  mule  surpasses 
In  his  performance  all  the  breed  of  asses. 

Enough  of  such  discourse  :  now  let  us  try 
To  join  our  best  endeavours,  you  and  I, 
With  voice  and  music  ;  since  the  Muse  has  blessed 
Us  both  writh  her  endowments  ;  and  possessed 
With  the  fair  science  of  harmonious  sound 
The  neighbouring  people,  and  the  cities  round."— ^F.) 

The  retort  was  two-edged.      Whilst  Theognis  turns 
a.  c.  voL  xv.  l 


162  THEOONIS 

the  laugh  against  an  ungenerous  rival,  and  this  in  the 
spirit  of  a  true  gentleman,  he  finds  a  sly  means  of 
paying  a  delicate  compliment  to  the  taste  of  the  public, 
upon  whose  appreciation  of  music  he  had  to  depend 
for  support.  It  is  plain  that  he  gauged  that  public  ac- 
curately. By  degrees  it  becomes  evident  that  he  is 
getting  on  in  his  chosen  profession — not  indeed  to  the 
extent  of  being  able,  as  he  puts  it  in  a  terse  couplet, 
"  to  indulge  his  spirit  to  the  full  in  its  taste  for  the 
graceful  and  beautiful,"  but,  at  all  events,  of  having 
wherewithal  to  discourse  critically  on  the  question  of 
indulgence  and  economy,  from  which  we  infer  that  he 
had  made  something  to  save  or  to  lose.  After  weigh- 
ing the  pros  and  cons  in  a  more  than  usually  didactic 
passage,  he  confides  to  his  hearers  and  readers  the 
reason  why  he  inclines  to  a  moderate  rather  than  a 
reckless  expenditure : — 

"  For  something  should  be  left  when  life  is  fled 
To  purchase  decent  duty  to  the  dead ; 
Those  easy  tears,  the  customary  debt 
Of  kindly  recollection  and  regret. 
Besides,  the  saving  of  superfluous  cost 
Is  a  sure  profit,  never  wholly  lost ; 
Not  altogether  lost,  though  left  behind, 
Bequeathed  in  kindness  to  a  friendly  mind. 

And  for  the  present,  can  a  lot  be  found 
Fairer  and  happier  than  a  name  renowned, 
And  easy  competence,  with  honour  crowned  ; 
The  just  approval  of  the  good  and  wise, 
Public  applauses,  friendly  courtesies  ; 
Where  all  combine  a  single  name  to  grace 


IN   EXILE.  163 

With  honour  and  pre-eminence  of  place, 
Coevals,  elders,  and  the  rising  race  ? " — (F.) 

"With  these  laudable  ambitions  he  pursued  with  pro- 
fit his  calling  of  "  director  of  choral  entertainments," 
until,  it  would  seem,  upon  the  incidence  of  a  war 
between  Hippocrates,  the  tyrant  of  Gela,  and  the 
Syracusans,  he  was  induced  to  go  out  in  the  novel 
character  of  a  champion  of  freedom  to  the  battle  of 
Helorus.  When  Corinth  and  Corcyra  combined  to 
deliver  Syracuse  from  the  siege  which  followed  the 
loss  of  this  battle,  it  is  probable  that  the  Corinthian 
deputies  were  surprised  to  find  the  poet,  whom  they 
had  known  as  an  oligarchist  at  Megara,  transformed 
into  a  very  passable  democrat,  and  seeking  their  good 
offices,  with  regard  to  his  restoration  to  his  native  city. 
These,  however,  he  found  could  not  be  obtained  except 
through  a  bribe  ;  and  accordingly,  whilst  he  no  doubt 
complied  with  the  terms,  he  could  not  resist  giving 
vent  to  his  disgust  in  a  poem  wherein  the  Corinthian 
commander  is  likened  to  Sisyphus,  and  which  ends 
with  the  bitter  words — 

"  Fame  is  a  jest ;  favour  is  bought  and  sold ; 
No  power  on  earth  is  like  the  power  of  gold." — (F.) 

It  should  seem  that  the  bribe  did  pass,  and  that  while 
the  negotiations  consequent  upon  it  were  pending, 
Theognis  drew  so  near  his  home  as  friendly  Lacedae- 
mon,  where  he  composed  a  pretty  and  Epicurean  strain 
that  tells  its  own  story  : — 


164  TIIEOONIii 

"  Enjoy  your  time,  my  soul !  another  race 
Will  shortly  fill  the  world,  and  take  your  place, 
With  their  own  hopes  and  fears,  sorrow  and  mirth  : 
I  shall  be  dust  the  while  and  crumbled  earth. 
But  think  not  of  it  !     Drink  the  racy  wine 
Of  rich  Taygetus,  press'd  from  the  vine 
Which  Theotimus,  in  the  sunny  glen 
(Old  Theotimus  loved  by  gods  and  men), 
Planted  and  watered  from  a  plenteous  source, 
Teaching  the  wayward  stream  a  better  course  : 
Drink  it,  and  cheer  your  heart,  and  banish  care  : 
A  load  of  wine  will  lighten  your  despair." — (F.) 

When  in  the  concluding  fragments  (we  follow  Mr 
Hookham  Frere's  arrangement  here  as  in  most  in- 
stances) Theognis  is  found  reinstated  in  his  native 
country,  the  sting  of  politics  has  been  evidently 
extracted,  as  a  preliminary  ;  and  the  burden  of  his 
song  thenceforth  is  the  praise  of  wine  and  of  banquets. 
These  are  his  recipes,  we  learn  in  a  passage  which  con- 
tributes to  the  ascertainment  of  his  date,  for  driving 
far 

"  All  fears  of  Persia,  and  her  threatened  war," — 

an  impending  danger,  to  which  he  recurs  vaguely  in 
another  passage.  It  has  been  surmised  from  his 
speaking  of  age  and  death  as  remote,  and  of  convivial 
pleasures  as  the  best  antidote  to  the  fear  of  these,  that 
he  was  not  of  very  advanced  age  at  the  battle  of 
Marathon.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that,  when  restored  to 
home  after  his  long  exile,  his  wife  was  alive  to  receive 
him  with  warmer  welcome  than  his  children,  to  whom 


IN   EXILE.  165 

lie  alludes  as  ungrateful  and  undutiful.  Probably  they 
had  been  estranged  from  him  during  his  absence  by 
the  influence  of  the  party  in  power,  and  they  may  also 
have  been  ill  pleased  at  his  devotion  to  the  artistic 
pursuits  which  ministered  to  his  substance  in  exile 
and  loss  of  fortune.  To  the  end  of  his  days,  peace- 
ful it  should  seem  and  undisturbed  thenceforward, 
he  fulfilled  his  destiny  as  a  "  servant  of  the  Muses," 
recognising  it  as  a  duty  to  spread  the  fruit  of  his 
poetic  genius,  rather  than,  as  in  his  earlier  years,  to 
limit  it  to  his  inner  circle  of  friends  and  relatives  : — 

"  Not  to  reserve  his  talent  for  himself 
In  secret,  like  a  miser  with  his  pelf." — (F.) 

It  would  be  unhandsome  in  us  to  take  leave  of 
Theognis  without  a  word  of  felicitation  to  the  poet's 
shade  on  the  happy  rehabilitation  which  he  has  met 
with  at  the  hands  of  modern  scholars.  Time  was — a 
time  not  so  very  long  ago — when  the  comparatively 
few  who  were  acquainted  with  the  remains  of  Theognis 
saw  in  him  simply  a  stringer  together  of  maxims  in 
elegiac  verse,  such  as  Xenophon  had  accounted  him ; 
and  Isocrates  had  set  him  down  in  the  same  category 
with  Hesiod  and  Phocylides.  But,  thanks  to  the  Ger- 
mans, Welcker  and  Muller,  and  to  the  scholarly  English- 
man, John  Hookham  Erere,  the  elegiac  poet  of  Megara 
has  been  proved  to  be  something  more  than  a  compiler 
of  didactic  copy- slips — a  scholar,  poet,  and  politician  in 
one.  with  a  biography  belonging  to  him,  the  threads  of 


166  THEOGNIS   IN    EXILE 

which  are  not  hard  to  gather  up.  The  result  is,  not 
that  his  maxims  are  less  notable,  but  that  we  realise 
the  life  and  character  of  him  who  moulded  them  into 
verse — verse  which  is  often  elegant  in  expression,  and 
always  marked  by  a  genuine  and  forcible  subjectivity. 
The  task  of  tracing  this  life  in  his  works  has  been 
rendered  easier  to  the  author  of  the  foregoing  pages  by 
the  ingenious  and  skilful  labours  of  Mr  Frere. 


END   OF   HESIOD   AND    THEOGNIS. 


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