THE REMAINS OF HESIOD THE ASCRÆAN
THE REMAINS
OF
HESIOD THE ASCRÆAN
INCLUDING
The Shield of Hercules,
_TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYME AND BLANK VERSE_;
WITH
A DISSERTATION
ON THE
LIFE AND ÆRA, THE POEMS AND MYTHOLOGY,
OF
HESIOD,
_AND COPIOUS NOTES_.
THE SECOND EDITION,
_REVISED AND ENLARGED_
BY
CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON,
AUTHOR OF SPECIMENS OF THE CLASSIC POETS FROM HOMER TO TRYPHIODORUS.
Ὡ πρέσβυς καθαρῶν γευσάμενος λιβάδον.—ΑΛΚΑΙΟΣ.
_LONDON_:
PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY,
47 PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1815.
C. Baldwin, Printer,
New Bridge street, London.
PREFACE.
The remains of Hesiod are not alone interesting to the antiquary, as
tracing a picture of the rude arts and manners of the ancient Greeks.
His sublime philosophic allegories; his elevated views of a retributive
Providence; and the romantic elegance, or daring grandeur, with which he
has invested the legends of his mythology, offer more solid reasons than
the accident of coeval existence for the traditional association of his
name with that of Homer.
Hesiod has been translated in Latin hexameters by Nicolaus Valla, and
by Bernardo Zamagna. A French translation by Jacques le Gras bears date
1586. The earliest essay on his poems by our own countrymen appears in
the old racy version of “The Works and Days,” by George Chapman, the
translator of Homer, published in 1618. It is so scarce that Warton in
“The History of English Poetry” doubts its existence. Some specimens of a
work equally curious from its rareness, and interesting as an example of
our ancient poetry, are appended to this translation. Parnell has given
a sprightly imitation of the Pandora, under the title of “Hesiod, or the
Rise of Woman:” and Broome, the coadjutor of Pope in the Odyssey, has
paraphrased the battle of the Titans and the Tartarus.[1] The translation
by Thomas Cooke omits the splendid heroical fragment of “The Shield,”
which I have restored to its legitimate connexion. It was first published
in 1728; reprinted in 1740; and has been inserted in the collections of
Anderson and Chalmers.
This translator obtained from his contemporaries the name of “Hesiod
Cooke.” He was thought a good Grecian; and translated against Pope the
episode of Thersites, in the Iliad, with some success; which procured
him a place in the Dunciad:
Be thine, my stationer, this magic gift,
Cooke shall be Prior, and Concanen Swift:
and a passage in “The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” seems pointed more
directly at the affront of the Thersites:
From these the world shall judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.
Satire, however, is not evidence: and neither these distichs, nor the
sour notes of Pope’s obsequious commentator, are sufficient to prove,
that Cooke, any more than Theobald and many others, deserved, either as
an author or a man, to be ranked with dunces. A biographical account
of him, with extracts from his common-place books, was communicated
by Sir Joseph Mawby to the Gentleman’s Magazine: vol. 61, 62. His
edition of Andrew Marvell’s works procured him the patronage of the
Earl of Pembroke: he was also a writer in the Craftsman. Johnson has
told (Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides, p. 25.) that “Cooke lived twenty
years on a translation of Plautus: for which he was always taking
subscriptions.” The Amphitryon was, however, actually published.
With respect to Hesiod, either Cooke’s knowledge of Greek was in
reality superficial, or his indolence counteracted his abilities; for
his blunders are inexcusably frequent and unaccountably gross: not in
matters of mere verbal nicety, but in several important particulars: nor
are these instances, which tend so perpetually to mislead the reader,
compensated by the force or beauty of his style; which, notwithstanding
some few unaffected and emphatical lines, is, in its general effect, tame
and grovelling. These errors I had thought it necessary to point out in
the notes to my first edition; as a justification of my own attempt to
supply what I considered as still a desideratum in our literature. The
criticisms are now rescinded; as their object has been misconstrued into
a design of raising myself by depreciating my predecessor.
Some remarks of the different writers in the reviews appear to call for
reply.
The Edinburgh Reviewer objects, as an instance of defective translation,
to my version of αιδως ουκ’ αγαυη: which he says is improperly rendered
“shame”: “whereas it rather means that diffidence and want of enterprise
which unfits men from improving their fortune. In this sense it is
opposed by Hesiod to θαρσος, an active and courageous spirit.”
But the Edinburgh Reviewer is certainly mistaken. If αιδως is to be taken
in this limited sense, what can be the meaning of the line
Αιδως η τ’ ανδρας μεγα σινεται ηδ’ ονινησι.
Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind?
the proper antithesis is the αιδως αγαθη, alluded to in a subsequent line,
Αιδω δε τ’ αναιδειη κατοπαζη.
And shamelessness expels the better shame.
The good shame, which deters men from mean actions, as the evil one
depresses them from honest enterprise.
In my dissertation I had ventured to call in question the judgment of
commentators in exalting their favourite author: and had doubted whether
the meek forgiving temper of Hesiod towards his brother, whom he seldom
honours with any better title than “fool,” was very happily chosen as a
theme for admiration. On this the _old_ Critical Reviewer exclaimed “as
if that, and various other gentle expressions, for example _blockhead_,
_goose-cap_, _dunderhead_, were not frequently terms of endearment:” and
he added his suspicion that “like poor old Lear, I did not know the
difference between a bitter fool and a sweet one.”
But, as the clown in Hamlet says, “’twill away from me to you.” The
critic is bound to prove, 1st, that νηπις is ever used in this playful
sense; which he has not attempted to do: 2dly, that it is so used with
the aggravating prefix of ΜΕΓΑ νηπιε: 3dly, that it is so used by Hesiod.
Hector’s babe on the nurse’s bosom is described as νηπιος; and Patroclus
weeping is compared by Achilles to κουρη νηπιη. These words may bear the
senses of “poor innocent;” and of “fond girl;” the former is tender, the
latter playful; but in both places the word is usually understood in its
primitive sense of “infant.” Homer says of Andromache preparing a bath
for Hector,
Νηπιη! ουδ’ ενοησεν ο μιν μαλα τηλε λοετων
Χερσιν Αχιλληος δαμασεν γλαυκωπις Αθηνη:
Il. xxii.
Fond one! she knew not that the blue-eyed maid
Had quell’d him, far from the refreshing bath,
Beneath Achilles’ hand.
But this is in commiseration: or would the critic apply to Andromache
the epithet of _goose-cap_? After all, who in his senses would dream
of singling out a word from an author’s context, and delving in other
authors for a meaning? The question is, not how it is used by other
authors, but how it is used by Hesiod. Till the Critic favours us with
some proofs of Hesiod’s namby-pamby tenderness towards the brother who
had cheated him of his patrimony, I beg to return both the quotation and
the _appellatives_ upon his hands.[2]
The London Reviewer censures my choice of blank-verse as a medium for
the ancient hexameter, on the ground that the closing adonic is more
fully represented by the rounding rhyme of the couplet: but it may be
urged, that the flowing pause and continuous period of the Homeric verse
are more consonant with our blank measure. In confining the latter to
dramatic poetry, as partaking of the character of the Greek Iambics, he
has overlooked the visible distinction of structure in our dramatic and
heroic blank verse. With respect to the particular poem, I am disposed
to concede that the general details of the Theogony might be improved
by rhyme: but the more interesting passages are not to be sacrificed to
those which cannot interest, be they versified how they may: and as the
critic seems to admit that a poem whose action passes
“Beyond the flaming bounds of time and space”
may be fitly clothed with blank numbers, by this admission he gives up
the argument as it affects the Theogony.
In disapproving of my illustration of Hesiod by the Bryantian scheme of
mythology, the London Reviewer refers me for a refutation of this system
to Professor Richardson’s preface to his Arabic Dictionary; where certain
etymological combinations and derivations are contested, which Mr. Bryant
produces as authorities in support of the adoration of the Sun or of
Fire. Mr. Richardson, however, premises by acknowledging “the penetration
and judgement of the author of the Analytic System in the refutation of
vulgar errors, with the new and informing light in which he has placed
a variety of ancient facts:” and however formidable the professor’s
criticisms may be in this his peculiar province, it must be remarked
that a great part of “The New System” rests on grounds independent of
etymology; and is supported by a mass of curious evidence collected from
the history, the rites, and monuments of ancient nations: nor can I
look upon the judgment of that critic as infallible, who conceives the
suspicious silence of the Persic historians sufficient to set aside the
venerable testimony of Herodotus, and the proud memorials and patriotic
traditions of the free people of Greece: and who resolves the invasion of
Xerxes into the petty piratical inroad of a Persian Satrap. I conceive,
also, with respect to the point in dispute, that the professor’s
confutation of certain etymological positions is completely weakened in
its intended general effect, by his scepticism as to the universality of
a diluvian tradition. If we admit that the periodical overflowings of the
Nile might have given rise to superstitious observances and processions
in Ægypt; and even that the sudden inundations of the Euphrates and
the Tigris might have caused the institution of similar memorials in
Babylonia, how are we to account for Greece, and India, and America,
each visited by a destructive inundation, and each perpetuating its
remembrance by poetical legends or emblematical sculptures? Surely a most
incredible supposition. Nor is this all; for we find an agreement not
merely of a flood, but of persons preserved from a flood; and preserved
in a remarkable manner; by inclosure in a vessel, or the hollow trunk
of a tree. How is it possible to solve coincidences of so minute and
specific a nature[3] by casual inundations, with Mr. Richardson, or, with
Dr. Gillies, by the natural proneness of the human mind to the weaknesses
and terrors of superstition?
As to my choice of the Analytic System for the purpose of illustrating
Hesiod, I am not convinced by the argument either of the London or the
Edinburgh Reviewer, that it is a system too extensive to serve for the
illustration of a single author, or that my task was necessarily confined
to literal explanation of the received mythology. In this single author
are concentrated the several heathen legends and heroical fables, and
the whole of that popular theology which the author of the New System
professed to analyse. Tzetzes, in his scholia upon Hesiod, interpreted
the theogonic traditions by the phenomena of nature and the operations of
the elements: Le Clerc by the hidden sense which he traced from Phœnician
primitives: and to these Cooke, in his notes, added the moral apologues
of Lord Bacon. In departing, therefore, from the beaten track of the
school-boy’s Pantheon, I have only exercised the same freedom which other
commentators and translators have assumed before me.
_Clifton, October, 1815._
FOOTNOTES
[1] A blank-verse translation of the Battle of the Titans may be found in
Bryant’s “Analysis:” and one of the descriptive part of “The Shield” in
the “Exeter Essays.” Isaac Ritson translated the Theogony; but the work
has remained in MS.
[2] The untimely death of the writer unfortunately precludes me from
offering my particular acknowledgments to the translator of Aristotle’s
Poetics, for the large and liberal praise which he has bestowed upon my
work in the second number of The London Review: a journal established on
the plan of a more manly system of criticism by the respectable essayist,
whose translations from the Greek comedy first drew the public attention
to the unjustly vilified Aristophanes.
[3] “Paintings representing the deluge of Tezpi are found among the
different nations that inhabit Mexico. He saved himself conjointly
with his wife, children, and several animals, on a raft. The painting
represents him in the midst of the water lying in a bark. The mountain,
the summit of which, crowned by a tree, rises above the waters, is the
peak of Colhuacan, the Ararat of the Mexicans. The men born after the
deluge were dumb: a dove, from the top of the tree distributes among them
tongues. When the great Spirit ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi
sent out a vulture. This bird did not return on account of the number of
carcases, with which the earth, newly dried up, was strewn. He sent out
other birds; one of which, the humming-bird, alone returned, holding in
its beak a branch covered with leaves.—Ought we not to acknowledge the
traces of a common origin, wherever cosmogonical ideas, and the first
traditions of nations, offer striking analogies, even in the minutest
circumstances? Does not the humming-bird of Tezpi remind us of Noah’s
dove; that of Deucalion, and the birds, which, according to Berosus,
Xisuthrus sent out from his ark, to see whether the waters were run off,
and whether he might erect altars to the tutelary deities of Chaldæa?”
HUMBOLDT’S RESEARCHES, concerning the Institutions and Monuments of
ancient America: translated by HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.
DISSERTATION ON THE LIFE AND ÆRA OF HESIOD, HIS POEMS, AND MYTHOLOGY.
SECTION I.
ON THE LIFE OF HESIOD.
It is remarked by Velleius Paterculus (Hist. lib. i.) that “Hesiod
had avoided the negligence into which Homer fell, by attesting both
his country and his parents: but that of his country he had made most
reproachful mention; on account of the fine which she had imposed on
him.” There are sufficient coincidences in the poems of Hesiod, now
extant, to explain the grounds of this assertion of Paterculus; but the
statement is loose and incorrect.
As to the mention of his country, if by country we are to suppose the
place of his birth, it can only be understood by implication, and that
not with certainty. Hesiod indeed relates that his father migrated from
Cuma in Æolia, to Ascra, a Bœotian village at the foot of mount Helicon;
but we are left to conjecture whether he himself was born at Cuma or at
Ascra. His affirmation that he had never embarked in a ship but once,
when he sailed across the Euripus to the Isle of Eubœa on occasion of a
poetical contest, has been thought decisive of his having been born at
Ascra; but the poet is speaking of his nautical experience: and even if
he had originally come from Cuma, he would scarcely mention a voyage made
in infancy. The observation respecting his parents tends to countenance
the reading of Διου γενος; race of Dius; instead of διον γενος, race
divine; but the name of one parent only is found. The reproachful mention
of his country plainly alludes to his charge of corruption against the
petty kings or nobles, who exercised the magistracy of Bœotia: and by the
fine is meant the judicial award of the larger share of the patrimony to
his brother.
There seems a great probability that Virgil, in his fourth eclogue, had
Hesiod’s golden and heroic ages in view; and that he alludes to the
passage of Justice leaving the earth, where he says
The virgin now returns: Saturnian times
Roll round again:
and to Hesiod himself in the verse,
The last age dawns, in verse Cumæan sung:[4]
and not, as is commonly thought, to the Sibyl of Campanian Cuma.
Professor Heyne objects, that Hesiod makes no mention of the revolution
of a better age: yet such an allusion is significantly conveyed in the
following passage:
Oh would that Nature had denied me birth
Midst this fifth race, this iron age of earth;
That long before within the grave I lay,
Or long hereafter could behold the day!
That Virgil elsewhere calls Hesiod’s verse Ascræan is no argument against
his supposing him of Cuma: there seems no reason why either epithet
should not be used: for the poet was at least of Cumæan extraction. That
Ascræus was Hesiod’s received surname among the ancients proves nothing
as to his birth-place, nor is any thing proved as to Virgil’s opinion by
his adoption of the title in compliance with common usage. Apollonius was
surnamed Rhodius from his residence at Rhodes, yet his birth-place was
Ægypt. After all, nothing is established, even if it could be certified
that Virgil thought him of Cuma, beyond the single weight of Virgil’s
individual opinion. Plutarch relates, from a more ancient and therefore
a more competent authority, that of Ephorus, the Cumæan historian, that
Dius was the youngest of three brothers, and emigrated through distress
of debt to Ascra; where he married Pycimede, the mother of Hesiod.
If we allow the authenticity of the proem to the Theogony, Hesiod tended
sheep in the vallies of Helicon; for it is not in the spirit of ancient
poetry to feign this sort of circumstance; and no education could be
conceived more natural for a bard who sang of husbandry. From the fiction
of the Muses presenting him with a laurel-bough, we may infer also that
he was not a minstrel or harper, but a rhapsodist; and sang or recited
to the branch instead of the lyre. La Harpe, in his Lycée, _ou Cours
de Littérature_, asserts that Hesiod was a priest of the temple of the
Muses. I find the same account in Gale’s Court of the Gentiles; book
iii. p. 7. vol. i. who quotes Carion’s Chronicle of Memorable Events.
For this, however, I can find no ancient authority. On referring to
Pausanias, he mentions, indeed, that the statue of Hesiod was placed
in the temple of the Muses on Mount Helicon: and in the Works and Days
Hesiod mentions having dedicated to the Muses of Helicon the tripod which
he won in the Eubœan contest; and observes
Th’ inspiring Muses to my lips have giv’n
The love of song, and strains that breathe of heaven.
From the conjunction of this passage with the account of Pausanias, has
probably arisen a confused supposition that Hesiod was actually a priest
of the Heliconian temple. The circumstance, although destitute of express
evidence, is however probable, from his acquaintance with theogonical
traditions and his tone of religious instruction.
Guietus rejects the whole passage as supposititious, which respects
the voyage to Eubœa, and the contest in poetry at the funeral games of
Amphidamas. Proclus supposes Plutarch to have also rejected it: because
he speaks of the contest as τα εωλα πραγματα: which some interpret trite
or threadbare tales: others old wives’ stories. But if the latter sense
be the correct one, Plutarch may have meant to intimate his disbelief
only of Hesiod and Homer having contended; not altogether of a contest
in which Hesiod took part. In fact it seems reasonable to infer the
authenticity of the passage from this very tradition of Homer and Hesiod
having disputed a prize in poetry.
In the pseudo-history entitled “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” is an
inscription purporting to be that on the tripod which Hesiod won from
Homer in Eubœa:
This Hesiod vow’d to Helicon’s blest nine,
Victor in Chalcis crown’d o’er Homer, bard divine.
Now that the passage in “The Works” was extant long before this piece
was in existence, is susceptible of easy proof: but if we conceive with
the credulity of Barnes, that the piece is a collection of scattered
traditionary matter of genuine antiquity, that the passage was not
constructed on the narration may be inferred from the former wanting
the name of Homer. The nullity of purpose in such a forgery seems to
have struck those, who in the indulgence of the same fanciful whim have
substituted, as Proclus states, for the usual reading in the text of
Hesiod,
Υμνω νικησαντα φερειν τριποδ’ ωτωεντα,
I bore a tripod ear’d, my prize, away:
Υμνω νικησαντ’ εν χαλκιδι θειον Ομηρον,
Victor in Chalcis crown’d o’er Homer, bard divine:
the identical verse in the pretended inscription. It is incredible that
any person should take the trouble of foisting lines into Hesiod’s poem,
for the barren object of inducing a belief that he had won a poetical
prize from some unknown and nameless bard: unless we were to presume
that the forger omitted the name through a refinement of artifice, that
no suspicion may be excited by its too minute coincidence with the
traditionary story: but it is a perfectly natural circumstance that the
passage in Hesiod, describing a contest with some unknown bard, should
have furnished the basis of a meeting between Hesiod and Homer: and the
tradition is at once explained by the coincidence of this passage in “The
Works,” and an invocation in the “Hymn to Venus;” where Homer exclaims on
the eve of one of these bardic festivals,
Oh in this contest let me bear away
The palm of song: do thou prepare my lay!
The piece entitled “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod,” is entitled to
no authority. It is not credible that a composition of this nature,
consisting of enigmas with their solutions, and of lines of imperfect
sense which are completed by the alternate verses of the answerer, should
have been preserved by the oral tradition of ages like complete poems:
and the foolish genealogies, whereby Homer and Hesiod are traced to Gods,
Muses, and Rivers, and are made cousins, according to the favourite zeal
of the Greeks for finding out a consanguinity in poets, diminish all the
credit of the writer as a sober historian.
It appears probable that the whole piece was suggested by the hint of
the contest in Plutarch: who quotes it in his “Banquet of Sages,” as an
example of the ancient contests in poetry. He says Homer proposed this
enigma:
Rehearse, O Muse! the things that ne’er have been,
Nor e’er shall in the future time be seen:
which Hesiod answered in a manner no less enigmatical:
When round Jove’s tomb the clashing cars shall roll
The trampling coursers straining for the goal
The same verses, with a few changes, are given in “The Contest;” only
the question is assigned to Hesiod, and the answer to Homer; as Robinson
conjectures, with perhaps too much refinement, for the secret purpose of
depressing Hesiod under the mask of exalting him, by appointing Homer to
the more arduous task of solving the questions proposed. With respect
also to the award of Panœdes, the judge, which is thought to betray the
same design by an imbecile or partial preference of the verses of Hesiod
to those of Homer, the reason stated by Panœdes, that “it was just to
bestow the prize on him who exhorted men to agriculture and peace, in
preference to him who described only war and carnage” is equally noble
and philosophical; and by no means merits to have given rise to the
proverbial parody quoted by Barnes: Πανιδος ψηφος “the judgment of Pan:”
instead of Πανοιδου ψηφος, “the judgment of Panœdes.”
The piece seems to be a mere exercise of ingenuity, without any
particular design of raising one poet at the expence of the other: and
as it contains internal evidence of having been composed after the time
of Adrian, who is mentioned by name as “that most divine Emperor,” and
Plutarch flourished under Trajan, there is reason to suppose that the
narrative of Periander in the “Banquet of Wise Men,” afforded the first
hint of the whole contest.
To the same zeal for making Hesiod and Homer competitors we owe another
inscription, quoted by Eustathius, ad Il. A. p. 5.
In Delos first did I with Homer raise
The rhapsody of bards; and new the lays:
Phœbus Apollo did our numbers sing;
Latona’s son, the golden-sworded king.
But if the passage in “The Works” be authentic, the spuriousness of this
inscriptive record detects itself; as Hesiod there confines his voyages
to the crossing the Euripus.
Pausanias mentions the institution of a contest at the temple in Delphos,
where a hymn was to be sung in honour of Apollo: and says that Hesiod
was excluded from the number of the candidates because he had not learnt
to sing to the harp. He adds, that Homer came thither also; and was
incapacitated from trying his skill by the same deficiency: and, what is
very strange, he gives as a reason why he could not have taken a part in
the contest, even were he a harper, that he was blind.
From Plutarch, Pausanias, and the author of “The Contest,” we are enabled
to cull some gossiping traditions of the latter life of Hesiod, which are
scarcely worth the gleaning, except that, like the romancing Lives of
Homer, they are proofs of the poet’s celebrity.
Hesiod, we are told, set out on a pilgrimage to the Delphic Oracle, for
the purpose of hearing his fortune: and the old bard could scarcely get
in at the gates of the temple, when the prophetess could refrain no
longer: “_afflata est numine quando jam propriore Dei_:”
Blest is the man who treads this hallow’d ground,
With honours by th’ immortal Muses crown’d:
The bard whose glory beams divinely bright
Far as the morning sheds her ambient light:
But shun the shades of fam’d Nemean Jove;
Thy mortal end awaits thee in the grove.
But after all her sweet words, the priestess was but a jilting gypsey;
and meant only to shuffle with the ambiguity of her trade. The old
gentleman carefully turning aside from the Peloponnesian Nemea, fell into
the trap of a temple of the Nemean Jupiter at Ænoe, a town of Locris.
He was here entertained by one Ganyctor; together with a Milesian, his
fellow-traveller, and a youth called Troilus. During the night this
Milesian violated the daughter of their host, by name Ctemene: and the
grey hairs of Hesiod, who we are told was an old man twice over,[5] and
whose name grew into a proverb for longevity, could not save him from
being suspected of the deed by the young lady’s brothers, Ctemenus
and Antiphus: they without much ceremony murdered him in the fields,
and “to leave no botches in the work,” killed the poor boy into the
bargain. The Milesian, we are to suppose, escaped under the cloud of his
miraculous security, free from gashes and from question. The body of
Hesiod was thrown into the sea; and a dolphin,[6] or a whole shoal of
them, according to another account, conveyed it to a part of the coast,
where the festival of Neptune was celebrating: and the murderers, having
confessed, were drowned in the waves. Plutarch (_de solertiâ animalium_)
states that the corpse of Hesiod was discovered through the sagacity of
his dog.
The body of a murdered poet, however, was not to rest quiet without
effecting some further extraordinary prodigies. The inhabitants of
Orchomenos, in Bœotia, having consulted the oracle on occasion of a
pestilence, were answered that, as their only remedy, they must seek
the bones of Hesiod; and that a crow would direct them. The messengers
accordingly found a crow sitting on a rock; in the cavity of which they
discovered the poet’s remains; transported them to their own country, and
erected a tomb with this epitaph:
The fallow vales of Ascra gave him birth:
His bones are cover’d by the Mingan earth:
Supreme in Hellas Hesiod’s glories rise,
Whom men discern by wisdom’s touchstone wise.
Among the Greek Inscriptions is an epitaph on Hesiod with the name of
Alcæus, which has the air of being a genuine ancient production, from its
breathing the beautiful classic simplicity of the old Grecian school:
Nymphs in their founts midst Locris’ woodland gloom
Laved Hesiod’s corse and piled his grassy tomb:
The shepherds there the yellow honey shed,
And milk of goats was sprinkled o’er his head:
With voice so sweetly breathed that sage would sing,
Who sip’d pure drops from every Muse’s spring.
Some mention Ctemene, or Clymene, on whose account Hesiod is said to have
been murdered, as the name of his wife: others call her Archiepe; and he
is supposed to have had by her a son named Stesichorus. In “The Works” is
this passage:
Then may not I, nor yet my son remain
In this our generation just in vain:
which, unless it be only a figure of speech, confirms the fact of his
having a son.
Pausanias describes a brazen statue of Hesiod in the forum of the
city Thespia, in Bœotia; another in the temple of Jupiter Olympicus,
at Olympia in Elis; and a third in the temple of the Muses, on Mount
Helicon, in a sitting posture, with a harp resting on his knees; a
circumstance which he rather formally criticises, on the ground that
Hesiod recited with the laurel-branch.
A brazen statue of Hesiod stood also in the baths of Zeuxippus, which
formed a part of old Byzantium, and retained the same title, an epithet
of Jupiter, under the Christian Emperors of Constantinople. (See Gibbon’s
Roman Empire, ii. 17; Dallaway’s Constantinople, p. 110.) Constantine
adorned the baths with statues, and for these Christodorus wrote
inscriptions. That on the statue of Hesiod is quoted by Fulvius Ursinus,
from the Greek Epigrams:
Midst mountain nymphs in brass th’ Ascræan stood,
Uttering the heaven-breathed song in his infuriate mood.
The collections of antiquities by Fulvius Ursinus, Gronovius, and
Bellorius exhibit a gem, a busto and a basso-relievo, together with
a truncated _herma_; which the ingenious artist who designed the
frontispiece to this edition has united with one of the heads. The
bust in the Pembroke collection differs from all these. In fact the
sculptures, whether of Hesiod or Homer, are only interesting as
antiquities of art; for the likenesses assigned to eminent poets by the
Grecian artists were mostly imaginary:[7] and must evidently have been so
in such ancient instances as these.
Greece, at an early period, seems to have possessed a spirit of just
legislation, which formed in the very bosom of polytheism a certain
code of practical religion: and from the semi-barbarous age of Orpheus,
down to the times of a Solon, a Plato, and a Pindar, Providence
continued to raise up moral instructors of mankind, in the persons of
bards, or legislators, or philosophers, who by their conceptions of
a righteous governor of the universe, and their maxims of social duty
and natural piety, counteracted the degrading influence of superstition
on the manners of the people: and sowed the germs of that domestic and
public virtue which so long upheld in power and prosperity the sister
communities of Greece. The same spirit pervades the writings of Hesiod.
It is evident even in the times that have passed since the gospel light
was shed abroad among the nations, that a perverted system of theology
may perfectly consist with a pure practical religion: that scholastic
subtleties, unscriptural traditions, and uncharitable dogmas, may
constitute the creed, while the religion of primitive Christianity
influences the heart. So, in estimating the character of Hesiod, we must
separate those superstitions which belong to a traditionary mythology,
from that system of opinions which respected the guidance of human life;
the accountableness of nations and individuals to a heavenly judge; and
the principles of public equity and popular justice which he derived
from the national institutions. If we examine his poems in this view of
their tendency and spirit, we shall find abundant cause for admiration
and respect of a man, who, born and nurtured upon the lap of heathen
superstition, could shadow out the maxims of truth in such beautiful
allegories, and recommend the practice of virtue in such powerful and
affecting appeals to the conscience and the reason.
They, however, who can feel the infinite superiority of Christianity
over every system of philosophic morals, will naturally expect that the
morality of Hesiod should come short of that point of purity, which
he, who reads our nature, proposed through the revealer of his will
as a standard for the emulation of his creatures. But in the zeal of
commenting upon an adopted author, we find that every thing equivocal
has been strained to some unobjectionable sense; we are presented with
Christian graces for heathen virtues; and Hesiod is not permitted to
be absurd even in his superstitions; which are thought to involve
some refined emblematical meaning; some lesson of ethical wisdom or of
economical prudence.
The similitude of patriarch and prophet, with whom he is compared by
Robinson, is not a very exaggerated comparison, in so far as respects the
simplicity of an ancient husbandman, laying down rules for the general
œconomy of life; or the graver functions of a philosopher, denouncing the
visitations of divine justice on nations and their legislators, greedy
of the gains of corruption. But the learned editor is unfortunate in
selecting for his praise the meek and placable disposition of Hesiod as
completing the patriarchal character. The indignation which Hesiod felt
at the injuries done him by a brother, and the venality of his judges,
might reasonably excuse the bitterness of rebuke: but he should not be
held up as a model of equanimity and forbearance. To this graceless
brother he seldom ever addresses himself in any gentler terms than μεγα
νηπιε, _greatly foolish_: and I question whether Perses, if he could rise
from the dead, would confess himself very grateful for the tenderness of
this reprehension.
The adverse decision in the law-suit with his brother must be confessed
to be the hinge on which the alleged corruptness of his times perpetually
turns: yet as he does not conceal the personal interest which he has
in the question, his frankness wins our confidence; and simplicity and
candour are so plainly marked in his grave and artless style, that we are
insensibly led to form an exception in his favour as to the judgment of
the character from the writer; to believe his praises of frugality and
temperance sincere; and to coincide with Paterculus, in the opinion that
he was a man of a contented and philosophical mind, “fond of the leisure
and tranquillity” of rustic life.
His countrymen, as Addison expresses it, must have regarded him “as the
oracle of the neighbourhood.” Plutarch adverts to his medical knowledge,
in the person of Cleodemus the physician; and when we consider that he
possessed sufficient astronomy for the purposes of agriculture, and that
he carried his zeal for science even into nautical details, of which,
notwithstanding, he confesses his inexperience, we shall acknowledge him
to have been a man of extraordinary attainments for the times in which he
lived.
FOOTNOTES
[4] It has been a favourite theory of learned men, that Virgil had access
to Sibylline prophecies, which foretold the birth of a Saviour. How came
the Sibyls, any more than the Pythonesses of Delphos, to be ranked on a
sudden with the really inspired prophets? or is it credible that they
should have had either the curiosity, or the power, to inspect the Jewish
Scriptures? The “Sibylline Verses” were confessedly interpolated, if not
fabricated, by the pious fraud of Monks. The imitations from Isaiah seem
no less chimerical. Every description of a golden age among the poets may
be wrested into a similar parallel. Nor is it to be conceived that Virgil
would have produced so dry a copy of so luxuriant an original. This
argument does not affect the extraordinary coincidence of the time of the
appearance of this eclogue, with the epoch of the Messiah’s birth; which
is exceedingly curious.
[5] See the epigram; which, for want of an owner, is ascribed by Tzetzes
to Pindar:
Hail Hesiod! wisest man! who twice the bloom
Of youth hast prov’d, and twice approach’d the tomb.
[6] The Greeks were extremely fanciful about dolphins. Several stories of
persons preserved from drowning by dolphins, and romantic tales of their
fondness for children, and their love of music, are related by Plutarch
in his “Banquet of Diocles.”
[7] See “Specimens of ancient Sculpture,” by the society of Dilettanti.