SECTION IV._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.

ON THE MYTHOLOGY OF HESIOD.

Diogenes Laertius mentions that Pythagoras feigned to have seen the

soul of Hesiod in the infernal regions, bound to a brazen pillar, and

howling in torture for his false representations of the Deities: and

that of Homer environed with serpents for the same reason. Plato, in a

similar feeling, excluded both these poets from his ideal republic. It

seems strange that the philosophers should have failed to perceive that

Hesiod and Homer repeated merely the popular legends of their age; as is

abundantly evident from the style and manner of narration and allusion

throughout their poems.

The following passage of Herodotus has been construed to mean that they

were the absolute inventors of the Grecian theology; “Whence each of

the Gods came; whether all have continually existed, or what figures

they severally had, was known but lately; or, if I may so speak, only

yesterday; for I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer were older than

myself by four hundred years, and not more; these are they who framed

a theogony for the Greeks, and gave titles to the gods; distinguishing

their honours and functions, and describing their forms.”

Against such an hypothesis several reasons obviously present themselves:

1st, A plurality of gods could scarcely be the production of a single

age, much less of one or two individuals: 2dly, It is not likely that

Greece, which was visited by Ægyptian and Phœnician colonists at an æra

long antecedent to the age of Homer, should have been destitute of a

religious system: 3dly, It is not credible that a whole nation, at the

suggestion of one or two bards, should have abandoned this received

system in order to adopt a whole hierarchy of divinities, of whom they

had never before heard.

But the doubt of Herodotus, “whether they have continually existed,”

shows that he merely considered Hesiod and Homer in the light of

collectors and illustrators of the ancient religion of their country; and

Wesseling accordingly interprets ποιησαντες as referring to arrangement

and description, not invention. This stupid inference could in fact

never have been drawn, had Herodotus been compared with himself: as in a

preceding passage he says, “Nearly all the names of the gods have come

into Greece from Ægypt; for I have ascertained it to be a fact that they

are of barbaric extraction.”

Herodotus, however, seems to have been in error, even as to this position

of Hesiod and Homer having first digested the mythology of Greece into a

system: and as he could not be ignorant that theogonies were ascribed to

poets reputed their elders, such as Musæus and Orpheus, he was reduced

to the alternative of making these poets their juniors. “Those poets,”

he observes, “who were said to be before them, were in my opinion after

them.”

But Cicero (in Bruto, cap. xviii.) sensibly argues, “nor can it be

doubted that there were poets before Homer; which may be inferred from

the songs described by him as sung in the banquets of the Phæacians and

the suitors.” Fabricius makes a comment, that “it cannot be proved from

this, that Greek poems, before Homer, were committed to writing, and so

handed down to posterity.” As if the poems of Homer himself had been

transmitted in any other manner than by oral tradition![18]

The pre-existence of religious rites seems, indeed, to involve that of

poetical cosmogonies and mythological hymns. Before the invention of

letters there was no other traditionary record, or vehicle of popular

instruction, or organ of religious homage and supplication, than verse:

the conclusion follows that there were both poets anterior to the age of

Homer,[19] and that these poets were also mythologists.

Pausanias mentions Olen of Lycia; who, he says, composed very ancient

hymns; and who in his hymn to Lucina, makes her the mother of Love: and

he names Pamphus and Orpheus, as succeeding Olen, and as also composing

hymns to the mythological Love.

The doubt entertained by Aristotle and Cicero of the personal existence

of Orpheus, neither affects the antiquity of the name, nor of that system

of theology which bears the title of Orphic. The relics now extant under

that name have, indeed, been suspected as the forgeries of Onomacritus,

the sooth-sayer, who produced the hymns to the people of Athens: but

Gesner is of opinion that he only altered the dialect of genuine Orphic

remains, on which he ingrafted his own additions. The fragments which

have come down to us appear certainly from internal evidence to contain

a theology more ancient than that of Hesiod and Homer; for the nearer it

approaches in any of its parts to the religious system of the Ægyptians,

the stronger is the presumptive testimony of its antiquity.

[20]The Ægyptians held that the world was produced from Chaos, or Water.

They worshipped the Sun, as Osiris, Hammon, and Horus; the Moon, as Isis;

the Cabiri or Planets, as symbols of invisible divinities. They had two

systems of worship; the one exoteric or popular, the other esoteric or

mystical. The adoration of the celestial bodies was literal with the

people, and emblematical with the priesthood. They supposed emanations

from divinity to be resident in the parts of nature; and thus that the

sun, moon, and stars, and the other bodies of the universe, were animated

with a divine spirit or virtue; or retained portions of a divine essence

from good demons or genii, who dwelt in them: these dæmons had been

inclosed in the bodies of virtuous men; and having left them, passed

into the stars and planets, which were consequently worshipped as gods.

Hence probably the legend of Hesiod, who supposes the spirits of men in

the golden age to become holy dæmons; though these dæmons are not sent to

the stars, but hover round the earth and keep watch over the actions of

humankind.

Jablonski, in his Pantheon Ægyptiorum, considers this stellar theology as

resolvable into an astronomical and Niliacal idolatry. The terrestrial

Osiris is the Nile: the celestial Osiris the Sun, in his zodiacal

progress through the signs that preside over the seasons. Amon, Jupiter,

designates the Sun in the constellation of Aries. In the vernal

equinox he is Hercules, in the summer solstice Horus or Apollo, in

the winter solstice Harpocrates. Serapis was the Nile in its period of

fertilization, or the autumnal Sun of the lower hemisphere. Isis was

the moon, the mother of multiform nature; the same also as Neitha or

Minerva, and the causer of the Nile’s inundations. Tithrambo, Brimo, or

Hecate, was Isis incensed, or the maleficent moon. Bubastis, Diana, or

Latona, was the titular symbol of the New Moon, and Buto or Latona of

the full. The Cabiri, or Seven Planets, were worshipped as appendants of

the greater gods; thus the planet Venus was the star of Isis, and the

planet Jupiter the star of Osiris. The dog-headed Anubis, or Mercury,

was the celestial horizon, the guard of the Sun’s gate, and the follower

of Isis or the Moon. The bull Apis was a living symbol of the Nile; but

was supposed to have been generated in a heifer by the transmission of

celestial fire from the Moon; and was sacred both to that planet and to

the Sun. A living goat was the symbol of Mendes or Pan; the generative

principle of all nature. These animal types were multiplied; thus a

lion figured the Sun; a cow, Isis and Venus; and a hawk, Osiris. Stones

were also made typical. An obelisk represented the Sun; and seven

columns, such as Pausanias saw in Laconia, the Planets. They worshipped

also Night, the supposed creative principle of all things, as Athor,

Venus,[21] or Juno; and Pthas, the Vulcan as well as Minerva of the

Grecians; the masculo-feminine cause and soul of the world; a pervading

infinite spirit, or subtile ethereal fire, superior to the solar and

planetary orbs; from which emanated terrestrial souls, and to which they

returned. This system may very well be reconciled with the received

theology; as it is not at all improbable that the subtile and scientific

Ægyptians should have refined upon their original emblems, by connecting

with them a secondary astronomical signification. In the explication of

certain terms, and the identity and nature of many of the deities, the

“Ægyptian Pantheon” agrees with the “New Analysis.”

Proclus (in Timæum, book i.) mentions a statue of Neitha or Minerva in

a temple at Sais, in Ægypt, inscribed on the base with hieroglyphical

characters to this effect: “I am whatever things are, whatever shall be,

and whatever have been. None have lifted up my veil. The fruit which I

have brought forth is the Sun.” Notwithstanding the mixed planetary

worship, the Sun was considered by the Ægyptians as the king and

architect of the universe: who under the name of Osiris comprehended in

himself the power and efficacy of all the other material gods. Consistent

with this is the Orphic fragment:

Hear me thou! for ever whirling round the rolling heavens on high

Thy far-travelling orb of splendour midst the whirlpools of the sky:

Hear, effulgent Jove and Bacchus! father both of earth and sea!

SUN all-various! golden-beaming! all things teeming out of thee!

In another passage Orpheus identifies with the sun the different deities.

ONE Jove and Pluto; Bacchus, and the SUN;

One God alike in all, and all are ONE.

The cosmogonists of Ægypt represented the Demiurgus or Universal Maker,

in a human form, sending forth from his mouth an egg; which egg was the

world. They called him Kneph; who was the same as Pthas, the essential

pervading energy. Chaos is described by Orpheus, in the manner of Ovid,

as an immense, self-existent, heterogeneous mass; neither luminous nor

tenebrous; which in the lapse of ages generated an egg; and from this egg

was produced a masculo-feminine principle, which disposed the elements,

and created the forms of nature. A primæval water or Chaos, and a mundane

egg, are found also in the mythology of India.

In the cosmogonic system of Ægypt the world was Deity, and its parts

other gods; a doctrine equivalent to the το πᾶν of the Stoics; the

inherent divinity of the universe; which Lucan seems to intend in the

sentiment of Cato:

Deus est quodcunque vides: quòcunque moveris.

Whate’er we see, where’er we move, is God.

This system is unfolded in the Orphic hymns:

Jove is the breath of all: the force of quenchless flame:

The root of ocean Jove: the sun and moon the same:

Jove is the king, the sire, whence generation sprang:

One strength, one Dæmon, great, on whom all beings hang:

His regal body grasps the vast material round:

There fire, earth, air, and wave, and day and night, are found.

The same physico-theology appears in the Orphean verses,

I swear by those, the generating powers,

Whence sprang the gods that have eternal being;

Fire, Water, Earth, and Heaven, the Moon and Sun,

Great Love effulgent, and the sable Night!

and in another fragment, preserved by Eusebius: (Præparat. Evang. iii. 9.)

Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day,

Metis, first sire, and all-delighting Love.

Metis is Minerva or Vulcan, the mind of the universe already noticed.

From a general view of the Ægyptian and Orphic theogonies, they would

appear to consist in an atheistic materialism; for although they

acknowledge a certain divine, or active, principle pervading and

animating passive matter, nothing can be inferred from this, superior

to a physical operative energy. Jablonski indeed contends that,

exclusive of the worship of the signs of the zodiac, and the solar and

lunar phenomena, the more ancient Ægyptians recognized an _intelligent_

power, or infinite Eternal Mind, on whose wisdom the operations of the

_sensible_ or visible divinities depended. But it may be doubted whether

this controlling intelligence were any thing different from the before

described emanation of the supposed ethereal spirit of holy dæmons, or

deified men.

Hesiod begins his poem on the generation of the gods with certain

cosmogonical principles. Chaos first exists; then Earth; and thirdly

Love. Erebus and Night spring from Chaos, and generate Ether and Day;

and Earth produces Heaven. But we search in vain through the rest of

the work for the subtile intelligence of the Orphic philosophy. It has

been attempted, indeed, to reduce the whole into a consistent scheme

of theogonic physiology, by allegorizing the supernatural battles into

volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and earthquakes; but much would still

remain incapable of being wrested to a physical sense. On certain crude

principles of cosmogonical tradition, and lineal generations of gods,

intermingled with the generation of the world, the theogonist has

ingrafted ancient legendary histories, and poetical and moral allegories.

The historical mythology is alone significant; for every thing respecting

the nature of the gods was in Hesiod’s time perverted and misunderstood.

The bard was no longer clothed in the robe of the hierophant.

Very different hypotheses have been framed to explain the Greek

polytheism. They have failed _because_ they were hypotheses. When the

Abbé Banier[22] detects the real characters of profane history in

the gods of the Pantheon; and when De Gebelin[23] sees in them only

emblematical shadows, personifying the successive inventions of the

sciences and arts, we are reminded of the observation of Dr. Reid;

(Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:) “that there never was an

hypothesis invented by an ingenious man, which although destitute of

direct evidence, did not serve to account for a variety of phenomena,

and had not therefore an indirect evidence in its favour.” Even the

Alchemists have laid claim to the heathen mythology; the pagan stories

have been analysed into chemical arcana: the golden fleece becomes a

recipe for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone inscribed on a

ram’s-skin, and Medea restores her father to life by means of the grand

elixir.[24]

But it were an unreasonable scepticism to argue from these visionary

theories, that the ancient fabulous philosophy is a mass of inscrutable

and unmeaning superstition. The affinity between the different systems of

paganism rests on irrefutable proof.[25] This affinity points to a common

origin. The light of history directs us to Ægypt. The astronomical genius

of that nation led them to symbolize their idols by the celestial signs.

These idols were the deified memories of men. As to their individuality,

we are assisted by certain resemblances in heathen theology to Mosaic

scripture. This parallel may have been urged too closely and too

fancifully; as by Huet, in his “Demonstratio Evangelica:” who affirms

that all the deities of the Ægyptians, Indians, Americans, Greeks, and

Italians, are only Moses in disguise; and by Theophilus Gale, in his

“Court of the Gentiles;” who draws a parallel between the god Pan, and

the Messias, Abel, and Israel; and who derives not only both the mythic

or fabulous, and the physical theology of the heathens, but all human

letters and sciences from the Hebrew language and scriptures, and the

philosophies of Joseph, Moses, and Solomon. Mistakes may have arisen

from trusting too much to a specious analogy; as where Tubal-cain,

the artificer of brass and iron, is identified with Vulcan.[26] The

conjectures of Hebraic etymologists, also, as of Bochart, in the Phaleg

and Canaan of his Geographia sacra, must be acknowledged to be often

vague and inconclusive. But so plain are the general traces of corrupted

scripture-history, that Celsus, in his books against the Christians,

attacks the biblical records as plagiarisms from the pagan mythology; and

asserts that Paradise is borrowed from the gardens of Alcinous, and the

flood of Noah from that of Deucalion; which Origen refutes by the greater

antiquity of the Jewish traditions.

It is not to be supposed that they, who trace these parallels of

mythology with scripture, mean that scripture was its immediate source:

as the French Encyclopædists seem to think, when they ridicule the idea

of the Grecian poets having deduced their fables from the Mosaic books,

of which they knew nothing. The religious separation of the Jews renders

it improbable, that even the intellectual philosophy of the Greek sages,

as Thales and Pythagoras, should have been indebted for the idea of pure

incorporeal deity to the sacred oracles: though Dr. Anderson conceives

it probable that “the Mosaic scriptures, and other prophetical writings

under the Jewish dispensation, could not be unknown to the priests of

Ægypt, Chaldæa, and other adjacent countries.” History of Philosophy, p.

88.

But the improbability is greatly increased with respect to the

mythological philosophy; nor is it credible that the circumstances of

pagan story, on the supposition of their representing the same events

as those recorded in the book of Genesis, should have been transferred

immediately from the volume of Moses by poets or philosophers into the

popular religion. Nations do not borrow vast systems of theology from

poets or even from priests. Gale does not suppose that priests or bards

imported the Hebrew accounts from the sacred writings; but that they

were learnt, through international communication with the Jews, by the

Phœnicians; who, in their various nautical enterprizes, carried them to

distant countries.

But the temple of heathen mythology rests its pillars in the two

hemispheres, and overshadows climes unvisited by the navigators of

Phœnicia. Its basis must, apparently, be sought without the circle of

Jewish report and scripture, in ancient gentile tradition. Stillingfleet

convincingly argues, that, assuming the descent of mankind from the

posterity of Noah, the obliteration and extinction of all remnants of

oral history concerning the ancient world is utterly inconceivable. He

proceeds to show that such fragments were, in fact, so preserved in

many nations after the dispersion; that they were appropriated by the

Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians, and others to their respective countries;

and that portions of Noah’s memory, in particular, were retained in many

fables under Saturn, Janus, Prometheus, and Bacchus.

Similar to this is the outline of the Analytic System; in which, however,

the dæmon-worship of the patriarchs of mankind is connected with the

arkite and ophite idolatry under the types of the sun and moon. The

affinities in the pagan sister-mythologies are explained by the general

dissemination of these idolatrous mysteries, and the traditions which

they were designed to commemorate, through the dispersion of a peculiar

people in the early ages; migrating from a central point, and spreading

through the extremest regions of the east and west.

“This wonderful people were the descendants of Chus; and called Cuthites

and Cuseans. They stood their ground at the general migration of

families, but were at last scattered over the face of the earth. They

were the first apostates from the truth, yet great in worldly wisdom.

They introduced, wherever they came, many useful arts, and were

looked up to as a superior order of beings. They were joined in their

expeditions by other nations; especially by the collateral branches of

their family; the Mizraim, Caphtorim, and the sons of Canaän. These were

all of the line of Ham, who was held by his posterity in the highest

veneration. They called him Amon; and having in process of time raised

him to a divinity, they worshipped him as the Sun; and from this worship

they were called Amonians. Under this denomination are included all

of this family; whether they were Ægyptians or Syrians, of Phœnicia

or of Canaän. They were a people who carefully preserved memorials of

their ancestors, and of those great events which had preceded their

dispersion. These were described in hieroglyphics on pillars and obelisks.

“The deity whom they originally worshipped was the Sun; but they soon

conferred his titles upon some other of their ancestors; whence arose a

mixed worship. Chus was one of these; and the idolatry began among his

sons. The same was practised by the Ægyptians; but this nation made many

subtile distinctions; and supposing that there were certain emanations

of divinity, they affected to particularize each by some title, and to

worship the deity by his attributes. This gave rise to a multiplicity of

gods. The Grecians, who received their religion from Ægypt and the East,

misapplied the terms which they had received, and made a god out of every

title.” _Preface to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology._

FOOTNOTES

[18] We know from Homer (Il. vi.) that when Prætus sent Bellerophon to

the king of Lycia he gave him, not a written letter, but σηματα λυγρα,

_mournful signs_; (probably like the picture-writing of the Mexicans:)

writing could not be common till many centuries afterwards, since the

first written laws were given in Greece only six centuries B. C. (Herod.

lib. ii. Strab. lib. vi.) DR. GILLIES.

[19] “The Trœzenian histories,” observes Ælian, book xi. ch. 2, “relate

that the poems of Oræbantius, a native of Trœzene, were in existence

before Homer; and I know they affirm that Dares the Phrygian, whose

Iliad is even now extant, lived before Homer’s time. Melisander, the

Milesian, likewise, composed the battle of the Lapithæ and the Centaurs.”

[20] Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, tom. i. Homer represents

father Oceanus as the generator of all things: and the Chaos of Hesiod is

merely the watery element.

[21] So Orpheus:

NIGHT, source of all things, whom we VENUS name.

Night and Chaos, or the aqueous mass, seem reciprocally considered as the

source of nature.

[22] La Mythologie, ou la Fable expliquée par l’Histoire.

[23] Monde Primitif.

[24] Wotton’s Reflections on ancient and modern Learning.

[25] See Sir William Jones’s Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy,

and India.

[26] The working of metals was not among the ancient attributes of

Vulcan: but a diversity of character or attributes is not always an

objection. Each god had not only a twofold nature, celestial, and human

or heroical, but his history and qualities changed with change of place.

Thus Hercules was the Sun; he was also a vagabond hero; but he may have

been one person in Greece, and another in Phœnicia. Gerard Vossius,

in his treatise “de Origine et Progressu Idolatriæ,” may therefore be

right in his conjecture, that among the Phœnicians both Joshua and

Samson were commemorated in the Tyrian Hercules. Bacchus was the Sun,

and an Indian conqueror. His history also assimilates with that of Noah.

He was likewise in all probability Caphtor, the grandson of Ham; the

great Ægyptian warrior who dispossessed the Avim of that part of the

land of Canaan, afterwards called Philistia. (See Priestley’s Lectures

on History, i. 5.) But it is natural that the Phœnicians, who visited

Greece when the memory of Moses was still vivid among the Canaanites,

should have brought with them miraculous reports of the Jewish lawgiver,

which were added to the history of Bacchus. Bacchus is called by Orpheus,

Μισης; and by Plutarch (de Iside et Osiride) Palæstinus. Bacchus was

exposed in an ark upon a river: a double coincidence with Noah and

Moses, which is exactly in the spirit of the old mythologists. Nonnus,

in his Dionysiacs, mentions the flight of Bacchus to the red sea, and

his battles with the Princes of Arabia; and relates that he touched

the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes with his thyrsus, and that the rivers

dried up, and he passed through dry-shod. The Indians are in darkness,

while the Bacchic army are in light. The ivy-rod of Bacchus is thrown

on the ground, and creeps to and fro like a live serpent. Snakes twist

themselves about the hair and limbs of Bacchus; which may be a shadow

of the fiery serpents in the wilderness. The host of Bacchus, like the

multitude led by Moses, is accompanied by women. One of the Bacchæ

touches a rock, and water gushes out; at another time wine and honey; and

the rivers run with milk. These circumstances are very remarkable. See

Stillingfleet, Origines Sacræ, ch. v. Nonnus, Dionysiacs.

The Works and Days.

THE WORKS AND DAYS.

The Argument.

The poem comprehends the general œconomy of industry and morals. In the

first division of the subject, the state of the world, past and present,

is described; for the purpose of exemplifying the condition of human

nature: which entails on man the necessity of exertion to preserve the

goods of life; and leaves him no alternative but honest industry or

unjust violence; of which the good and evil consequences are respectively

illustrated. TWO STRIFES are said to have been sent into the world, the

one promoting dissension, the other emulation. Perses is exhorted to

abjure the former and embrace the latter; and an apposite allusion is

made to the circumstance of his litigiously disputing the patrimonial

estate, of which, through the corruption of the judges, he obtained

the larger proportion. The judges are rebuked, and cheap contentment

is apostrophized as the true secret of happiness. Such is stated to

have been the original sense of mankind before the necessity of labour

existed. The origin of labour is deduced from the resentment of Jupiter

against Prometheus; which resentment led to the formation of PANDORA:

or WOMAN: who is described with her attributes, and is represented as

bringing with her into the world a casket of diseases. The degeneracy

of man is then traced through successive ages. The three first ages are

severally distinguished as the golden, the silver, and the brazen. The

fourth has no metallic distinction, but is described as the heroic age,

and as embracing the æra of the Trojan war. The fifth is styled the iron

age, and, according to the Poet, is that in which he lives. The general

corruption of mankind in this age is detailed, and Modesty and Justice

are represented taking their flight to heaven. A pointed allusion to

the corrupt administration of the laws, in his own particular instance,

is introduced in a fable, typical of oppression. Justice is described

as invisibly following those who violate her decrees with avenging

power, and as lamenting in their streets the wickedness of a corrupted

people. The temporal blessings of an upright nation are contrasted with

the temporal evils which a wicked nation draws down from an angry

Providence. Holy Dæmons are represented as hovering about the earth,

and keeping watch over the actions of men. Justice is again introduced,

carrying her complaints to the feet of Jupiter, and obtaining that the

crimes of rulers be visited on their people. A pathetic appeal is then

made to these rulers in their judicial capacity, urging them to renounce

injustice. After some further exhortations to virtue and industry, and

a number of unconnected precepts, the Poet enters on the GEORGICAL

part of his subject: which contains the prognostics of the seasons of

agricultural labour, and rules appertaining to wood-felling, carpentry,

ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, vine-dressing, and the vintage.

This division of the subject includes a description of winter and of

a repast in summer. He then treats of navigation: and concludes with

some desultory precepts of religion, moral decorum, and superstition:

and lastly, with a specification of DAYS: which are divided into holy,

auspicious, and inauspicious: mixed and intermediary: or such as are

entitled to no remarkable observance.

WORKS.

Come, Muses! ye, that from Pieria raise

The song of glory, sing your father’s praise.

By Jove’s high will th’ unknown and known of fame

Exist, the nameless and the fair of name.

’Tis He with ease [27]the bowed feeble rears,

And casts the mighty from their highest spheres:

With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray:

With ease on abject darkness pours the day:

Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;

Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.

Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:

Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:

While I to Perses’ heart would fain convey

The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.

Two STRIFES on earth of soul divided rove:

The wise will this condemn and that approve:

Accursed the one spreads misery from afar,

And stirs up discord and pernicious war:

Men love not this: yet heaven-enforced maintain

The strife abhorr’d, but still abhorr’d in vain.

[28]The other elder rose from darksome night:

The God high-throned, who dwells in ether’s light,

Fix’d deep in earth, and centred midst mankind

This better strife, which fires the slothful mind.

The needy idler sees the rich, and hastes

Himself to guide the plough, and plant the wastes:

Ordering his household: thus the neighbour’s eyes

Mark emulous the wealthy neighbour rise:

Beneficent this strife’s incensing zeal:

The potters angry turn the forming wheel:

Smiths beat their anvils; [29]almsmen zealous throng,

And minstrels kindle with the minstrel’s song.

Oh Perses! thou within thy secret breast

Repose the maxims by my care imprest;

Nor ever let that evil-joying strife

Have power to wean thee from the toils of life;

The whilst thy prying eyes the forum draws,

Thine ears the process, and the din of laws.

Small care be his of wrangling and debate

For whose ungather’d food the garners wait;

Who wants within the summer’s plenty stored,

Earth’s kindly fruits, and Ceres’ yearly hoard.

With these replenish’d, at the brawling bar

For others’ wealth go instigate the war.

But this thou mays’t no more: let justice guide,

Best boon of heaven, and future strife decide.

Not so we shared [30]the patrimonial land

When greedy pillage fill’d thy grasping hand:

The bribe-devouring Judges lull’d by thee

The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree:

Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul

How far the half is better than the whole:

[31]The good which asphodel and mallows yield,

The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field!

[32]The food of man in deep concealment lies:

The angry gods have hid it from our eyes.

Else had one day bestow’d sufficient cheer,

And, though inactive, fed thee through the year.

Then might thy hand [33]have laid the rudder by,

In blackening smoke for ever hung on high;

Then had the labouring ox foregone the soil,

And patient mules had found reprieve from toil.

But Jove conceal’d our food: incensed at heart,

Since [34]mock’d by wise Prometheus’ wily art.

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;

Cheering to man; and mock’d the god, whose gaze

Serene rejoices in the lightning’s blaze.

“Oh son of Japhet!” with indignant heart,

Spake the Cloud-gatherer: “oh, unmatch’d in art!

Exultest thou in this the flame retrieved,

And dost thou triumph in the god deceived?

But thou, with the posterity of man,

Shalt rue the fraud whence mightier ills began:

I will send evil for thy stealthy fire,

[35]An ill which all shall love, and all desire.

The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole

Had said, and laughter fill’d his secret soul:

He bade famed Vulcan with the speed of thought

Mould plastic clay with tempering waters wrought:

Inform with voice of man the murmuring tongue;

The limbs with man’s elastic vigour strung;

The aspect fair as goddesses above,

A virgin’s likeness with the brows of love.

He bade Minerva teach the skill, that sheds

A thousand colours in the gliding threads:

Bade lovely Venus breathe around her face

The charm of air, the witchery of grace:

Infuse corroding pangs of keen desire,

And cares that trick the form with prank’d attire:

Bade Hermes last implant the craft refined

Of thievish manners and a shameless mind.

He gives command; th’ inferior powers obey:

The crippled artist moulds the temper’d clay:

By Jove’s design a maid’s coy image rose:

[36]The zone, the dress, Minerva’s hands dispose:

Adored Persuasion, and the Graces young,

[37]With chains of gold her shapely person hung:

Round her smooth brow [38]the beauteous-tressed Hours

A garland twined of spring’s purpureal flowers:

The whole, Minerva with adjusting art

Forms to her shape and fits to every part.

Last by the counsels of deep-thundering Jove,

The Argicide, [39]his herald from above,

Adds thievish manners, adds insidious lies,

And prattled speech of sprightly railleries:

Then by the wise interpreter of heaven

The name Pandora to the maid was given:

Since all in heaven conferr’d their gifts to charm,

For man’s inventive race, this beauteous harm.

When now the Sire had form’d this mischief fair,

He bade heaven’s messenger convey through air

To Epimetheus’ hands th’ inextricable snare:

Nor he recall’d within his heedless thought

The warning lesson by Prometheus taught:

That he disclaim each present from the skies,

And straight restore, lest ill to man arise:

But he received; and conscious knew too late

Th’ insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.

On earth of yore the sons of men abode,

From evil free and labour’s galling load:

Free from diseases that with racking rage

Precipitate the pale decline of age.

Now swift the days of manhood haste away,

And misery’s pressure turns the temples gray.

The woman’s hands an ample casket bear;

She lifts the lid; she scatters ills in air.

Within [40]th’ unbroken vase Hope sole remained,

Beneath the vessel’s rim from flight detained:

The maid, by counsels of cloud-gathering Jove,

The coffer seal’d and dropp’d the lid above.

Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl’d,

And woes innumerous roam’d the breathing world:

With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,

Diseases haunt our frail humanity:

Through noon, through night [41]on casual wing they glide,

Silent, a voice the Power all-wise denied.

Thus mayst thou not elude th’ omniscient mind:

Now if thy thoughts be to my speech inclin’d,

I in brief phrase would other lore impart

Wisely and well: thou, grave it on thy heart.

When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,

A golden race th’ immortals form’d on earth

Of many-languaged men: they lived of old

When Saturn reign’d 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 decrepid age mishaped their frame,

The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same.

Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow’d by:

[42]Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:

Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem’d 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 gatherings of their hands.

When earth’s dark womb had closed this race around,

[43]High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground.

Earth-wandering spirits they their charge began,

The ministers of good, and guards of man.

Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,

And compass earth, and pass on every side:

And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes

Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:

[44]Their kingly state; and, delegate from heaven,

By their vicarious hands [45]the wealth of fields is given.

The gods then form’d a second race of man,

Degenerate far; and silver years began.

Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:

Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.

Yet still [46]a hundred years beheld the boy

Beneath the mother’s roof, her infant joy;

All tender and unform’d: but when the flower

Of manhood bloom’d, it wither’d in an hour.

Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:

Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:

Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise

That in just cities shed their holy blaze.

Them angry Jove ingulf’d; who dared refuse

The gods their glory and their sacred dues:

Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,

And second honours grace their memory.

The Sire of heaven and earth created then

A race, the third of many-languaged men.

Unlike the silver they: of brazen mould:

With ashen war-spears terrible and bold:

Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,

The deeds of battle and the dying groan.

Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food 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 freezing darkness plunged, the house of hell:

Fierce though they were, their mortal course was run;

Death gloomy seized, and snatch’d them from the sun.

Them when th’ abyss had cover’d from the skies,

Lo! the fourth age on nurturing earth arise:

Jove form’d the race a better, juster line;

A race of heroes and of stamp divine:

Lights of the age that rose before our own;

As demi-gods o’er earth’s wide regions known.

Yet these dread battle hurried to their end:

Some where the seven-fold gates of Thebes ascend:

The Cadmian realm: where they with fatal might

Strove for the flocks of Œdipus in fight.

Some war in navies led [47]to Troy’s far shore;

O’er the great space of sea their course they bore;

For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair:

And death for Helen’ sake o’erwhelm’d them there.

Them on earth’s utmost verge the god assign’d

A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:

Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,

[48]In those blest isles where Saturn 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 crown’d

Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground.

Oh would that Nature had denied me birth

Midst this fifth race; [49]this iron age of earth:

That long before within the grave I lay,

Or long hereafter could behold the day!

Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs opprest,

Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest.

Still do the gods a weight of care bestow,

Though still some good is mingled with the woe.

Jove on this race of many-languaged man,

Speeds the swift ruin which but slow began:

[50]For scarcely spring they to the light of day

Ere age untimely strews their temples gray.

No fathers in the sons their features trace:

The sons reflect no more the father’s face:

The host with kindness greets his guest no more,

And friends and brethren love not as of yore.

Reckless of heaven’s revenge, the sons behold

The hoary parents wax too swiftly old:

And impious point the keen dishonouring tongue

With hard reproofs and bitter mockeries hung:

Nor grateful in declining age repay

The nurturing fondness of their better day.

[51]Now man’s right hand is law: for spoil they wait,

And lay their mutual cities desolate:

Unhonour’d he, by whom his oath is fear’d,

Nor are the good beloved, the just revered.

With favour graced the evil-doer stands,

Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands:

With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man,

And stamps with perjury what hate began.

Lo! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing’d with lies,

Scattering calumnious rumours as she flies,

The steps of miserable men pursue

With haggard aspect, blasting to the view.

Till those fair forms in snowy raiment bright

[52]Leave the broad earth and heaven-ward soar from sight:

Justice and Modesty from mortals driven,

Rise to th’ immortal family of heaven:

Dread sorrows to forsaken man remain;

No cure of ills: no remedy of pain.

[53]Now unto kings I frame the fabling song,

However wisdom unto kings belong.

A stooping hawk, crook-talon’d, from the vale

Bore in his pounce [54]a neck-streak’d nightingale,

And snatch’d among the clouds: beneath the stroke

This piteous shriek’d, and that imperious spoke:

“Wretch! why these screams? 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.”

The swift hawk spake, with wings spread wide in air;

But thou to justice cleave, and wrong forbear.

Wrong, if he yield to its abhorr’d controul,

Shall pierce like iron in the poor man’s soul:

Wrong weighs the rich man’s conscience to the dust,

When his foot stumbles on the way unjust:

Far diff’rent is the path; a path of light,

That guides the feet to equitable right.

The end of righteousness, enduring long,

Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.

[55]The fool by suffering his experience buys;

The penalty of folly makes him wise.

With crooked judgments, lo! the oath’s dread God

Avenging runs, and tracks them where they trod:

Rough are the ways of Justice as the sea;

Dragg’d to and fro by men’s corrupt decree:

Bribe-pamper’d men! whose hands perverting draw

The right aside, and warp the wrested law.

Though, while corruption on their sentence waits,

They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates;

Invisible their steps the virgin treads,

And musters evils o’er their sinful heads.

She with the dark of air her form arrays

And [56]walks in awful grief the city-ways:

Her wail is heard, her tear upbraiding falls

[57]O’er their stain’d manners, their devoted walls.

But they who never from the right have stray’d,

Who as the citizen the stranger aid;

[58]They and their cities flourish: genial Peace

Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase:

Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,

Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war.

Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey;

Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day:

Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost trees

With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees.

Burthen’d with fleece their panting flocks: the race

Of woman soft [59]reflects the father’s face:

Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;

The fruits of earth are pour’d from every plain.

But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong

The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong,

Saturnian Jove of wide-beholding eyes

Bids the dark signs of retribution rise:

And oft the crimes of one destructive fall:

The crimes of one are visited on all.

The god sends down his angry plagues from high,

Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die.

He smites with barrenness the marriage-bed,

And generations moulder with the dead:

Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls

On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls:

Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,

And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.

Ponder, oh judges! in your inmost thought

The retribution by his vengeance wrought.

Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,

Pass through the midst, and bend th’ all-seeing eye:

The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right,

Awless of heaven’s revenge, stand naked to their sight.

For thrice ten thousand [60]holy demons rove

This breathing world, the delegates of Jove.

Guardians of man, [61]their glance alike surveys

The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways.

A virgin pure is Justice: and her birth,

August, from him who rules the heavens and earth:

A creature glorious to the gods on high,

Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.

Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat

In lowly grief at Jove’s eternal feet.

There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend:

[62]So rue the nations when their kings offend:

When uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill,

They bend the laws and wrest them to their will.

Oh gorged with gold! ye kingly judges hear!

Make straight your paths: your crooked judgments fear:

That the foul record may no more be seen,

Erased, forgotten, as it ne’er had been!

He wounds himself that aims another’s wound:

His evil counsels on himself rebound.

Jove at his awful pleasure looks from high

With all-discerning and all-knowing eye;

Nor hidden from its ken what injured right

Within the city-walls eludes the light.

Or oh! if evil wait the righteous deed,

If thus the wicked gain the righteous meed,

Then may not I, nor yet my son remain

In this our generation just in vain!

But sure my hope, not this doth Heaven approve,

Not this the work of thunder-darting Jove.

Deep let my words, oh Perses! graven be:

Hear Justice, and renounce th’ oppressor’s plea:

This law the wisdom of the god assign’d

To human race and to the bestial kind:

To birds of air and fishes of the wave,

And beasts of earth, devouring instinct gave

In them no justice lives: he bade be known

This better sense to reasoning man alone.

Who from the seat of judgment shall impart

The truths of knowledge utter’d from his heart;

On him the god of all-discerning eye

[63]Pours down the treasures of felicity.

Who sins against the right, his wilful tongue

With perjuries of lying witness hung;

Lo! he is hurt beyond the hope of cure:

Dark is his race, nor shall his name endure.

Who fears his oath shall leave a name to shine

With brightening lustre through his latest line.

Most foolish Perses! let the truths I tell,

Which spring from knowledge, in thy bosom dwell:

Lo! wickednesses rife in troops appear;

[64]Smooth is the track of vice, the mansion near:

On virtue’s path delays and perils grow:

The gods have placed before [65]the sweat that bathes the brow:

And ere the foot can reach her high abode,

Long, rugged, steep th’ ascent, and rough the road.

The ridge once gain’d, the path so rude of late

Runs easy on, and level to the gate.

Far best is he whom conscious wisdom guides;

Who first and last the right and fit decides:

He too is good, that [66]to the wiser friend

His docile reason can submissive bend:

But worthless he that reason’s voice defies,

Nor wise himself, nor duteous to the wise.

But thou, oh Perses! what my words impart

Let mem’ry bind for ever on thy heart.

[67]Oh son of Dios! labour evermore,

That hunger turn abhorrent from thy door;

That Ceres blest, with spiky garland crown’d,

Greet thee with love and bid thy barns abound.

[68]Still on the sluggard hungry want attends,

The scorn of man, the hate of heaven impends:

While he, averse from labour, drags his days,

Yet greedy on the gain of others preys:

Even as the stingless drones devouring seize

With glutted sloth the harvest of the bees.

Love ev’ry seemly toil, that so the store

Of foodful seasons heap thy garner’s floor.

From labour men returns of wealth behold;

Flocks in their fields and in their coffers gold:

From labour shalt thou with the love be blest

Of men and gods; the slothful they detest.

Not toil, but sloth shall ignominious be;

Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee;

Shall view thy growing wealth with alter’d sense,

For glory, virtue walk with opulence.

Thou, like a god, since labour still is found

The better part, shalt live belov’d, renown’d;

If, as I counsel, thou thy witless mind,

Though weak and empty as the veering wind,

From others’ coveted possessions turn’d,

To thrift compel, and food by labour earn’d.

[69]Shame, which our aid or injury we find,

Shame to the needy clings of evil kind;

Shame to low indigence declining tends:

Bold zeal to wealth’s proud pinnacle ascends.

[70]But shun extorted riches; oh far best

The heaven-sent wealth without reproach possest.

Whoe’er shall mines of hoarded gold command,

By fraudful tongue or by rapacious hand;

As oft betides when lucre lights the flame,

And shamelessness expels the better shame;

Him shall the god cast down, in darkness hurl’d,

His name, his offspring wasted from the world:

The goods for which he pawn’d his soul decay,

The breath and shining bubble of a day.

Alike the man of sin is he confest,

[71]Who spurns the suppliant and who wrongs the guest;

Who climbs, by lure of stolen embraces led,

With ill-timed act, a brother’s marriage bed;

Who dares by crafty wickedness abuse

His trust, and robs the orphans of their dues;

Who, on the threshold of afflictive age,

His hoary parent stings with taunting rage:

On him shall Jove in anger look from high,

And deep requite the dark iniquity:

But wholly thou from these refrain thy mind,

Weak as it is, and wavering as the wind.

With thy best means perform the ritual part,

Outwardly pure and spotless at the heart,

And on thy altar let unblemish’d thighs

In fragrant savour to th’ immortals rise.

Or thou in other sort may’st well dispense

Wine-offerings and the smoke of frankincense,

Ere on the nightly couch thy limbs be laid;

Or when the stars from sacred sun-rise fade.

So shall thy piety accepted move

Their heavenly natures to propitious love:

Ne’er shall thy heritage divided be,

But others part their heritage to thee.

Let friends oft bidden to thy feast repair;

Let not a foe the social moment share.

Chief to thy open board the neighbour call:

When, unforeseen, domestic troubles fall,

The neighbour runs ungirded; kinsmen wait,

And, lingering for their raiment, hasten late.

As the good neighbour is our prop and stay,

So is the bad a pit-fall in our way.

Thus blest or curs’d, we this or that obtain,

The first a blessing and the last a bane.

How should thine ox by chance untimely die?

The evil neighbour looks and passes by.

[72]If aught thou borrowest, well the measure weigh;

The same good measure to thy friend repay,

Or more, if more thou canst, unask’d concede,

So shall he prompt supply thy future need.

Usurious gains avoid; usurious gain,

Equivalent to loss, will prove thy bane.

[73]Who loves thee, love; him woo that friendly wooes:

Give to the giver, but to him refuse

That giveth not; their gifts the generous earn;

But none bestows where never is return.

Munificence is blest: by heaven accurst

Extortion, of death-dealing plagues the worst.

Who bounteous gives though large his bounty flow,

Shall feel his heart with inward rapture glow:

Th’ extortioner of bold unblushing sin,

Though small the plunder, feels a thorn within.

If with a little thou a little blend

Continual, mighty shall the heap ascend.

Who bids his gather’d substance gradual grow

Shall see not livid hunger’s face of woe.

No bosom-pang attends the home-laid store,

But rife with loss the food without thy door:

’Tis good to take from hoards, and pain to need

What is far from thee: give the precept heed.

When broach’d or at the lees, no care be thine

To save the cask, but [74]spare the middle wine.

To him the friend that serves thee glad dispense

With bounteous hand the meed of recompense.

Not on a brother’s plighted word rely,

But, [75]as in laughter, set a witness by;

Mistrust destroys us and credulity.

Let no fair woman tempt thy sliding mind

[76]With garment gather’d in a knot behind;

She [77]prattling with gay speech inquires thy home;

But trust a woman, and a thief is come.

One only son his father’s house may tend,

And e’en with one domestic hoards ascend:

Then mayst thou leave a second son behind:

For many sons from heaven shall wealth obtain;

The care is greater, greater is the gain.

Do thus: if riches be thy soul’s desire,

By toils on toils to this thy hope aspire.

II.

When, Atlas-born, the Pleiad stars [78]arise

Before the sun above the dawning skies,

’Tis time to reap; and when they sink below

The morn-illumined west, [79]’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 sharpen’d is the sickle, re-appear.

Law of the fields, and known to every swain

Who turns the fallow soil beside the main;

Or who, remote from billowy ocean’s gales,

Tills the rich glebe of inland-winding vales.

[80]Plough naked still, and naked sow the soil,

And naked reap; if kindly to thy toil

Thou hope to gather all that Ceres yields,

And view thy crops in season crown the fields;

Lest thou to strangers’ gates penurious rove,

And every needy effort fruitless prove:

E’en as to me thou cam’st; but hope no more

That I shall give or lend thee of my store.

Oh foolish Perses! be the labours thine

Which the good gods to earthly man assign;

Lest with thy spouse, thy babes, thou vagrant ply,

And sorrowing crave those alms which all deny.

Twice may thy plaints benignant favour gain,

And haply thrice may not be pour’d in vain;

If still persisting plead thy wearying prayer,

Thy words are nought, thy eloquence is air.

Did exhortation move, the thought should be,

From debt releasement, days from hunger free.

A house, a woman, and a steer provide,

Thy slave to tend the cows, but not thy bride.

Within let all fit implements abound,

Lest with refused entreaty wandering round,

Thy wants still press, the season glide away,

And thou with scanted labour mourn the day.

Thy task defer not till the morn arise,

Or the third sun th’ unfinish’d work surprise.

[81]The idler never shall his garners fill,

Nor he that still defers and lingers still.

Lo! diligence can prosper every toil;

The loiterer strives with loss and execrates the soil.

When rests the keen strength of th’ o’erpowering sun

From heat that made the pores in rivers run;

When rushes in fresh rains autumnal Jove,

And man’s unburthen’d limbs now lightlier move;

For now the star of day with transient light

Rolls o’er our heads and joys in longer night;

When from the worm the forest boles are sound,

[82]Trees bud no more, but earthward cast around

Their withering foliage, then remember well

The timely labour, and thy timber fell.

Hew from the wood [83]a mortar of three feet;

Three cubits may the pestle’s length complete:

Seven feet the fittest axle-tree extends;

If eight the log, the eighth a mallet lends.

Cleave many curved blocks thy wheel to round,

And let three spans its outmost orbit bound;

Whereon slow-rolling thy suspended wain,

Ten spans in breadth, may traverse firm the plain.

If hill or field supply a holm-oak bough

[84]Of bending figure like the downward plough,

Bear it away: this durable remains

While the strong steers in ridges cleave the plains:

If with firm nails [85]thy artist join the whole,

Affix the share-beam, and adapt the pole.

Two ploughs provide, on household works intent,

This art-compacted, that of native bent:

A prudent fore-thought: one may crashing fail,

The other, instant yoked, shall prompt avail.

Of elm or bay the draught-pole firm endures,

The plough-tail holm, the share-beam oak secures.

Two males procure: be nine their sum of years:

Then hale and strong for toil the sturdy steers:

Nor shall they headstrong-struggling spurn the soil,

And snap the plough and mar th’ unfinish’d toil.

In forty’s prime thy ploughman: one [86]with bread

Of four-squared loaf in double portions fed.

He steadily shall cut the furrow true,

Nor towards 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.

Mark yearly when among the clouds on high

Thou hear’st [87]the shrill crane’s migratory cry,

[88]Of ploughing-time the sign and wintry rains:

Care gnaws his heart who destitute remains

Of the fit yoke: for then the season falls

To feed thy horned steers within their stalls.

Easy to speak the word, “beseech thee friend!

Thy waggon and thy yoke of oxen lend:”

Easy the prompt refusal; “nay, but I

Have need of oxen, and their work is nigh.”

[89]Rich in his own conceit, he then too late

May think to rear the waggon’s timber’d weight:

Fool! nor yet knows the complicated frame

A hundred season’d blocks may fitly claim:

[90]These let thy timely care provide before,

And pile beneath thy roof the ready store.

Improve the season: to the plough apply

Both thou and thine; and toil in wet and dry:

Haste to the field with break of glimmering morn,

That so thy grounds may wave with thickening corn.

In spring upturn the glebe: and break again

With summer tilth the iterated plain,

It shall not mock thy hopes: be last thy toil,

Raised in light ridge, to sow the fallow’d soil:

The fallow’d soil bids execration fly,

And brightens with content the infant’s eye.

[91]Jove subterrene, chaste Ceres claim thy vow,

When grasping first the handle of the plough,

O’er thy broad oxen’s backs thy quickening hand

With lifted stroke lets fall the goading wand;

Whilst yoked and harness’d by the fastening thong,

They slowly drag the draught-pole’s length along.

So shall the sacred gifts of earth appear,

And ripe luxuriance clothe the plenteous ear.

A boy should tread thy steps: with rake o’erlay

The buried seed, [92]and scare the birds away:

(Good is the apt œconomy of things

While evil management its mischief brings:)

Thus, if aërial Jove thy cares befriend,

And crown thy tillage with a prosperous end,

Shall the rich ear in fulness of its grain

Nod on the stalk and bend it to the plain.

So shalt thou sweep the spider’s films away,

That round thy hollow bins lie hid from day:

I ween, rejoicing in the foodful stores

Obtain’d at length, and laid within thy doors:

For plenteousness shall glad thee through the year

Till the white blossoms of the spring appear:

[93]Nor thou on others’ heaps a gazer be,

But others owe their borrow’d store to thee.

If, ill-advised, thou turn the genial plains

His wintry tropic when the sun attains;

Thou, then, may’st reap, and idle sit between:

Mocking thy gripe the meagre stalks are seen:

Whilst, little joyful, gather’st thou in bands

The corn whose chaffy dust bestrews thy hands.

In one scant basket shall thy harvest lie,

[94]And few shall pass thee, then, with honouring eye.

Now thus, now otherwise is Jove’s design;

To men inscrutable the ways divine:

But if thou late upturn the furrow’d field,

One happy chance a remedy may yield.

O’er the wide earth when men the cuckoo hear

From spreading oak-leaves first delight their ear,

Three days and nights let heaven in ceaseless rains

Deep as thy ox’s hoof o’erflow the plains;

So shall an equal crop thy time repair

With his who earlier launch’d the shining share.

Lay all to heart: nor let the blossom’d hours

Of spring escape thee; nor the timely showers.

Pass by [95]the brazier’s forge where loiterers meet,

Nor saunter in the portico’s throng’d heat;

When in the wintry season rigid cold

Invades the limbs and binds them in its hold.

Lo! then th’ industrious man with thriving store

Improves his household management the more:

And this do thou: lest intricate distress

Of winter seize, and needy cares oppress:

Lest, famine-smitten, thou, at length, be seen

[96]To gripe thy tumid foot with hand from hunger lean.

Pampering his empty hopes, yet needing food,

On ill designs behold the idler brood:

Sit in the crowded portico and feed

On that ill hope, while starving with his need.

Thou in mid-summer to thy labourers cry,

[97]“Make now your nests,” for summer hours will fly.

Beware the January month: beware

Those hurtful days, that keenly piercing air

Which flays the herds; [98]those frosts that bitter sheathe

The nipping air and glaze the ground beneath.

From Thracia, nurse of steeds, comes rushing forth,

O’er the broad sea, the whirlwind of the north,

And moves it with his breath: then howl the shores

Of earth, and long and loud the forest roars.

He lays the oaks of lofty foliage low,

Tears the thick pine-trees from the mountains brow

And strews the vallies with their overthrow.

He stoops to earth; shrill swells the storm around,

And all the vast wood rolls a deeper roar of sound.

The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,

And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold.

Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,

But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.

Not his rough hide can then the ox avail:

The long-hair’d goat defenceless feels the gale:

Yet vain the north-wind’s rushing strength to wound

The flock, with thickening fleeces fenced around.

He bows the old man, crook’d beneath the storm;

But spares the smooth-skin’d virgin’s tender form.

[99]Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof,

She safe abides beneath her mother’s roof:

The suppling waters of the bath she swims,

[100]With shining ointment sleeks her dainty limbs:

In her soft chamber pillow’d to repose,

While through the wintry nights the tempest blows.

[101]Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet;

Starved midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat:

For now no more the sun with gleaming ray

Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.

O’er the swarth Æthiop rolls his bright career,

And slowly gilds the Grecian hemisphere.

And now the horned and unhorned kind

Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famish’d grind

Their sounding jaws, and froz’n and quaking fly

Where oaks the mountain dells imbranch on high:

They seek to couch in thickets of the glen,

Or lurk deep-shelter’d in the rocky den.

[102]Like aged men who, prop’d 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.

I warn thee, now, around thy body cast,

A thick defence, and covering from the blast:

Let the soft cloak its woolly warmth bestow:

The under-tunic to thy ankle flow:

[103]On a scant warp a woof abundant weave;

Thus warmly wov’n the mantling cloak receive:

Nor shall thy limbs beneath its ample fold

With bristling hairs start shivering to the cold.

Shoes from the hide of [104]a strong-dying ox

Bind round thy feet; lined thick with woollen socks:

[105]And kid-skins ’gainst the rigid season sew

With sinew of the bull, and sheltering throw

Athwart thy shoulders when the rains impend;

And let [106]a well-wrought cap thy head defend,

And screen thine ears, while drenching showers descend.

Bleak is the morn, when blows the north from high;

Oft when the dawnlight paints the starry sky,

A misty cloud suspended hovers o’er

Heaven’s blessed earth with fertilizing store

Drain’d from the living streams: aloft in air

The whirling winds the buoyant vapour bear,

Resolved at eve in rain or gusty cold,

As by the north the troubled rack is roll’d.

Preventing this, the labour of the day

Accomplish’d, homeward bend thy hastening way:

Lest the dark cloud, with whelming rush deprest,

Drench thy cold limbs and soak thy dripping vest.

This winter-month with prudent caution fear:

Severe to flocks, nor less to men severe:

Feed thy keen husbandman with larger bread:

With half their provender thy steers be fed:

Them rest assists: the night’s protracted length

Recruits 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 equalize the year.

When from [107]the wintry tropic of the sun

Full sixty days their finish’d round have run,

Lo! then the sacred deep Arcturus leave,

First whole-apparent on the verge of eve.

Through the grey dawn the swallow lifts her wing,

Morn-plaining bird, the harbinger of spring.

Anticipate the time: the care be thine

An earlier day to prune the shooting vine.

When the house-bearing snail is slowly found

To shun the Pleiad heats that scorch the ground,

And climb the plant’s tall stem, insist no more

To dress the vine, but give the vineyard o’er.

Whet the keen sickle, hasten every swain,

From shady booths, from morning sleep refrain;

Now, in the fervour of the harvest-day,

When the strong sun dissolves the frame away:

Now haste a-field: now bind thy sheafy corn,

And earn thy food by rising with the morn.

Lo! the third portion of thy labour’s cares

The early morn anticipating shares:

In early morn the labour swiftly wastes:

In early morn the speeded journey hastes;

The time when many a traveller tracks the plain,

And the yoked oxen bend them to the wain.

When [108]the green artichoke ascending flowers,

When, in the sultry season’s toilsome hours,

Perch’d on a branch, beneath his veiling wings

[109]The loud cicada shrill and frequent sings:

[110]Then the plump goat a savoury food bestows,

The poignant wine in mellowest flavour flows:

Wanton the blood then bounds in woman’s veins,

[111]But weak of man the heat-enfeebled reins:

Full on his brain descends the solar flame

Unnerves the languid knees, and all the frame

Exhaustive dries away: oh then be thine

To sit in shade of rocks; with [112]Byblian wine,

And goat’s milk, stinted from the kid, to slake

Thy thirst, and eat the shepherd’s creamy cake;

The flesh of new-dropt kids and youngling cows,

That, never teeming, cropp’d the forest browse.

With dainty food so saturate thy soul,

And drink the wine dark-mantling in the bowl:

While in the cool and breezy gloom reclined

Thy face is turn’d to catch the breathing wind;

And feel the freshening brook, whose living stream

Glides at thy foot with clear and sparkling gleam:

Three parts its waters in thy cup should flow,

The fourth with brimming wine may mingled glow.

When first [113]Orion’s beamy strength is born,

Let then thy labourers thresh the sacred corn:

Smooth be the level floor, [114]on gusty ground,

Where winnowing gales may sweep in eddies round.

Hoard in thy ample bins the meted grain:

And now, as I advise, [115]thy hireling swain

From forth thy house dismiss, when all the store

Of kindly food is laid within thy door:

And to thy service let a female come;

But childless, for a child were burthensome.

[116]Keep, too, a sharp-tooth’d dog, nor thrifty spare

To feed his fierceness high with generous fare:

Lest the day-slumbering thief thy nightly door

Wakeful besiege, and pilfer from thy store.

For ox and mule the yearly fodder lay

Within thy loft; the heapy straw and hay:

This care dispatch’d, refresh the bending knees

Of thy tired hinds, and give thy unyoked oxen ease.

When Sirius and Orion the mid-sky

Ascend, and [117]on Arcturus looks from high

The rosy-finger’d morn, the vintage calls:

Then bear the gather’d grapes within thy walls.

Ten days and nights exposed the clusters lay

Bask’d in the lustre of each mellowing day:

Let five their circling round successive run,

Whilst lie thy frails o’ershaded from the sun:

The sixth in vats the gifts of Bacchus press;

Of Bacchus gladdening earth with store of pleasantness.

But when beneath the skies [118]on morning’s brink

The Pleiads, Hyads, and Orion sink;

Know then the ploughing and the seed-time near:

Thus well-disposed shall glide thy rustic year.

But if thy breast with nautical desire

The perilous deep’s uncertain gains inspire,

When chased by strong Orion down the heaven

Sink the seven stars in gloomy ocean driven;

[119]Then varying winds in gustful eddies roar:

Then to [120]black ocean trust thy ships no more:

But heedful care to this my caution yield,

And, as I bid thee, labour safe the field.

Hale on firm land the ship: with stones made fast

Against the staggering force of humid-blowing blast:

Draw from its keel the peg, lest rotting rain

Suck’d in the hollow of the hold remain:

Within thy house the tackling order’d be.

And furl thy vessel’s wings that skimm’d the sea:

The well-framed rudder in the smoke suspend,

And calm and navigable seas attend.

Then launch the rapid bark: fit cargo load,

And freighted rich repass the liquid road.

Oh witness Perses! thus for honest gain,

Thus did our mutual father plough the main.

Erst, from Æolian Cuma’s distant shore,

Hither in sable ship his course he bore;

Through the wide seas his venturous way he took;

No rich revenues; prosperous ease forsook:

His wandering course from poverty began,

The visitation sent from heaven to man:

Ascra’s sad hamlet he his dwelling chose

Where nigh impending Helicon arose:

[121]In summer irksome and in winter drear,

Nor ever genial through the joyless year.

Each labour, Perses! let the seasons guide:

But o’er thy navigation chief preside:

[122]Decline a slender bark: intrust thy freight

To the strong vessel of a larger rate:

The larger cargo doubles every gain,

Let but the winds their adverse blasts restrain.

If thy rash thoughts on merchandise be placed,

Lest debts ensnare or joyless hunger waste,

Learn now the courses of the roaring sea,

Though ships and voyages are strange to me.

Ne’er [123]o’er the sea’s broad way my course I bore

Save once from Aulis to th’ Eubœan shore:

From Aulis, where the Greeks in days of yore,

The winds awaiting, kept the harbouring shore:

From sacred Greece a mighty army there

Lay bound for Troy, wide famed for women fair.

I pass’d to Chalcis, where around the grave

Of king Amphidamus, in combat brave,

His valiant sons had solemn games decreed,

And heralds loud proclaim’d full many a meed:

There, let me boast, that victor in the lay

I bore a tripod ear’d, my prize, away:

This to the maids of Helicon I vow’d

[124]Where first their tuneful inspiration flow’d.

Thus far in ships does my experience rise;

Yet bold I speak the wisdom of the skies;

Th’ inspiring Muses to my lips have given

The lore of song, and strains that breathe of heaven.

[125]When from the summer-tropic fifty days

Have roll’d, when summer’s time of toil decays:

Then is the season fair to spread the sail:

Nor then thy ship shall founder in the gale

And seas o’erwhelm the crew: unless the Power,

Who shakes the shores with waves, have will’d their mortal hour:

Or he th’ immortals’ king require their breath,

Whose hands the issues hold of life and death

For good and evil men: but now the seas

Are dangerless, and clear the calmy breeze.

Then trust the winds, and let thy vessel sweep

With all her freight the level of the deep.

But rapidly retrace thy homeward way

Nor till the season of new wine delay:

Late autumn’s torrent showers: bleak winter’s sweep:

The south-blast ruffling strong the tossing deep:

When air comes rushing in autumnal rain,

And curls with many a ridge the troubled main.

[126]Men, too, may sail in spring: when first the crow

Imprinting with light steps the sands below,

As many thinly-scatter’d leaves are seen

To clothe the fig-tree’s top with tender green.

This vernal voyage practicable seems,

And pervious are the boundless ocean-streams:

I praise it not: for thou with anxious mind

Must hasty snatch th’ occasion of the wind.

The drear event may baffle all thy care;

Yet thus, even thus, will human folly dare.

Of wretched mortals lo! the soul is gain:

But death is dreadful midst the whelming main.

These counsels lay to heart; and, warn’d by me,

Trust not thy whole precarious wealth to sea,

Tost in the hollow keel: a portion send;

Thy larger substance let the shore defend.

Wretched the losses of the ocean fall,

When on a fragile plank embark’d thy all:

And wretched when thy sheaves o’erload the wain,

And the crash’d axle spoils the scatter’d grain.

The golden mean of conduct should confine

Our every aim; be moderation thine.

Take to thy house a woman for thy bride

When in the ripeness of thy manhood’s pride:

Thrice ten thy sum of years; the nuptial prime;

Nor fall far short, nor far exceed the time.

Four years the ripening virgin should consume,

[127]And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom.

A virgin choose: and mould her manners chaste:

Chief be some neighbouring maid by thee embraced:

Look circumspect and long: lest thou be found

The merry mock of all the dwellers round.

No better lot has Providence assign’d

Than a fair woman with a virtuous mind:

Nor can a worse befall, then when thy fate

Allots a worthless, feast-contriving mate:

She, with no torch of mere material flame,

Shall burn to tinder thy care-wasted frame:

[128]Shall send a fire thy vigorous bones within,

And age unripe in bloom of years begin.

Th’ unsleeping vengeance heed of heaven on high.—

None as a friend should with a brother vie:

But if like him thou hold another dear,

Let no offences on thy side appear:

[129]Nor lie with idle tongue: if he begin

Offence of word and deed, [130]chastise his sin

Once for each act and word; but if he grieve,

And make atonement, straight his love receive:

Wretched! his friends who changes to and fro!

Let not thy face thy mind’s deep secrets show.

Be not the host of many nor of none:

The good revile not, and the wicked shun.

[131]Rebuke not want, that wastes the spirit dry;

It is the gift of blessed gods on high.

[132]Lo! the best treasure is a frugal tongue:

The lips of moderate speech with grace are hung:

The evil-speaker shall perpetual fear

Return of evil ringing in his ear.

[133]When many guests combine in common fare

Be not morose nor grudge thy liberal share:

When all contributing the feast unite,

Great is the pleasure and the cost is light.

When the libation of the morn demands

The sable wine, forbear with unwash’d hands

To lift the cup: with ear averted Jove

Shall spurn thy prayer, and every god above.

Forbear to let your water flow away

Turn’d upright tow’rds the sun’s all-seeing ray:

E’en when his splendour sets, till morn has glow’d

Take heed; nor sprinkle, as you walk, the road,

Nor the road-side; nor bare affront the sight;

For there are gods who watch and guard the night.

The holy man discreet sits decently,

And to some sheep-fold’s fenced wall draws nigh.

From rites of love unclean the hearth forbear,

Nor sit beside ungirt, for household gods are there.

Leave not the funeral feast to sow thy race;

From the gods’ banquet seek thy bride’s embrace.

Whene’er thy feet the river-ford essay,

Whose flowing current winds its limpid way,

Thy hands amidst the pleasant waters lave,

And lowly gazing on the beauteous wave

Appease the river-god: if thou perverse

Pass with unsprinkled hands, a heavy curse

Shall rest upon thee from th’ observant skies,

And after-woes retributive arise.

When in the fane [134]the feast of gods is laid,

[135]Ne’er to thy five-branch’d hand apply the blade

Of sable iron; from the fresh forbear

The dry excrescence at the board to pare.

Ne’er let thy hand the wine-filled flaggon rest

[136]Upon the goblet’s edge; th’ unwary guest

May from thy fault his own disaster drink,

For evil omens lurk around the brink.

Ne’er in the midst th’ unfinished house forego,

Lest there perch’d lonely croak the garrulous crow.

Ne’er from [137]unhallow’d vessels hasty feed,

Nor lave therein; for thou mayst rue the deed.

Set not a twelve-day or a twelve-month boy

[138]On moveless stones; they shall his strength destroy.

Ne’er in the female baths thy limbs immerse;

In its own time the guilt shall bring the curse.

Ne’er let the mystic sacrifices move

Deriding scorn; but dread indignant Jove.

Ne’er with unseemly deeds the fountains stain,

Or limpid rivers flowing to the main.

Do thus: and still with all thy dint of mind

Avoid that evil rumour of mankind;

Easy the burthen at the first to bear,

And light when lifted as impassive air;

But scarce can human strength the load convey,

Or shake th’ intolerable weight away.

Swift rumour hastes nor ever wholly dies,

But borne on nations’ tongues a very goddess flies.

_DAYS._

Thy household teach a decent heed to pay,

And well observe each Jove-appointed day.

[139]The thirtieth of the moon inspect with care

Thy servants’ tasks and all their rations share;

[140]What time the people to the courts repair.

These days obey the all-wise Jove’s behest:

The first new moon, the fourth, the seventh is blest:

Phœbus, on this, from mild Latona born,

The golden-sworded god, beheld the morn.

The eighth, nor less the ninth, with favouring skies,

Speeds of th’ increasing month each rustic enterprise;

And on th’ eleventh let thy flocks be shorn,

And on the twelfth be reap’d thy laughing corn:

Both days are good: yet is the twelfth confest

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 gather’d grain.

On this let careful woman’s nimble hand

Throw first the shuttle and the web expand.

On the thirteenth forbear to sow the grain;

But then the plant shall not be set in vain.

The sixteenth profitless to plants is deem’d

Auspicious to the birth of men esteem’d;

But to the virgin shall unprosperous prove,

Then born to light or join’d in wedded love.

So to the birth of girls with adverse ray

The sixth appears, an unpropitious day:

But then the swain may fence his wattled fold,

And cut his kids and rams; male births shall then be bold.

This day is fond of biting gibes and lies,

And jocund tales and whisper’d sorceries.

Cut on the eighth the goat and lowing steer

And hardy mule; and when the noon shines clear,

Seek on the twenty-ninth to sow thy race,

For wise shall be the fruit of thy embrace.

The tenth propitious lends its natal ray

To men, to gentle maids the fourteenth day:

Tame too thy sheep on this auspicious morn,

And steers of flexile hoof and wreathed horn,

And labour-patient mules; and mild command

Thy sharp-tooth’d dog with smoothly flattering hand.

The fourth and twenty-fourth no grief should prey

Within thy breast, for holy either day.

Fourth of the moon lead home thy blooming bride,

And be the fittest auguries descried.

[141]Beware the fifth, with horror fraught and wo:

’Tis said the furies walk their round below

Avenging the dread oath; whose awful birth

From discord rose, to scourge the perjured earth.

On the smooth threshing-floor, the seventeenth morn,

Observant throw the sheaves of sacred corn:

For chamber furniture the timber hew,

And blocks for ships with shaping axe subdue.

The fourth upon the stocks thy vessel lay,

Soon with light keel to skim the watery way.

The nineteenth mark among the better days

When past the fervour of the noon-tide blaze.

Harmless the ninth: ’tis good to plant the earth,

And fortunate each male and female birth.

Few know the twenty-ninth, nor heed the rules

To broach their casks, and yoke their steers and mules,

And fleet-hoof’d steeds; and on dark ocean’s way

Launch the oar’d galley; few will trust the day.

Pierce on the fourth thy cask; the fourteenth prize

As holy; and when morning paints the skies

The twenty-fourth is best; (few this have known;)

But worst of days when noon has fainter grown.

These are the days of which the careful heed

Each human enterprise will favouring speed:

Others there are, which intermediate fall,

Mark’d with no auspice and unomen’d all:

And these will some, and those will others praise,

But few are versed in mysteries of days.

In this a step-mother’s stern hate we prove,

In that the mildness of a mother’s love.

Oh fortunate the man! oh blest is he,

Who skill’d in these fulfils his ministry:

He to whose note the auguries are given,

No rite transgress’d, and void of blame to heav’n.

FOOTNOTES

[27] _The bowed feeble rears._] This proem was wanting in the

leaden-sheeted copy, seen by Pausanias in Bœotia. The affinity with

scriptural language is remarkable. “The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich:

he bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,

and lifteth up the beggar from the dung-hill to set him among princes.”

Samuel v. 1, ch. 2. “God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth

up another. The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up them that

be bowed down. The Lord lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down

to the ground.” Psalms 75, 145, 147. I was originally led to suspect

that this introduction had been ingrafted on the poem by one of the

Alexandrian Jews; who were addicted to this kind of imposture; but it

is probably more ancient than the establishment of the Jewish colony

at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies. There is nothing conclusive to be

drawn from coincidences of this sort between ancient writings. The first

principles of morality, implanted in the human heart by its author, have

in all ages been the same: and Socrates and Confucius might be found

to agree, surely without any suspicion of imitation. Many passages of

Hesiod may be paralleled with verses in the Psalms and Proverbs: and in

the proem under consideration, there seem no grounds for the conjecture

of plagiarism from views of the vicissitudes of human condition, and the

ordinations of a ruling providence which are continually passing before

our eyes, and which must have struck the reasoning and serious part of

mankind in all ages. Horace has a similar passage: b. i. od. 34.

The God by sudden turns of fate

Can change the lowest with the loftiest state:

Eclipse of glory the diminish’d ray,

And lift obscurity to day.

Le Clerc conjectures this exordium to be the addition of one of the

rhapsodists: of whom Pindar says, Nem. Od. 2.

Th’ Homeric bards, who wont to frame

A motley-woven verse,

Ere they the song rehearse,

Begin from Jove, and prelude with his name.

[28] _The other elder rose._] Night is meant to be the mother of both the

Strifes. Guietus remarks that ευφρονη is a term for night: from ευφρονεω,

to be wise. She was the mother of wise designs, because favourable to

meditation: the mother of good, therefore, as well as of evil. The good

Strife is made the elder, because the evil one arose in the later and

degenerate ages of mankind.

[29] _Almsmen zealous throng._] The proximity of the beggar to the bard

might in a modern writer convey a satirical innuendo, of which Hesiod

cannot be suspected. The bard, as is evident from Homer’s Odyssey,

enjoyed a sort of conventional hospitality, bestowed with reverence and

affection. It should seem, however, from this passage that the asker of

alms was not regarded in the light of a common mendicant with us. It was

a popular superstition that the gods often assumed similar characters

for the purpose of trying the benevolence of men. A noble incentive to

charity, which indicates the hospitable character of a semi-barbarous age.

[30] _The patrimonial land._] The manner of inheritance in ancient Greece

was that of gavelkind: the sons dividing the patrimony in equal portions.

When there were children by a concubine, they also received a certain

proportion. This is illustrated by a passage in the 14th book of the

Odyssey:

An humbler mate,

His purchased concubine, gave birth to me:

... His illustrious sons among themselves

Portion’d his goods by lot: to me indeed

They gave a dwelling, and but little more.

COWPER.

[31] _The good which asphodel and mallows yield._] A similar sentiment

occurs in the Proverbs: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than

a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Ch. 15. v. 17.

Plutarch in the “Banquet of the Seven Sages,” observes, that “the

herb mallows is good for food, as is the sweet stalk of the asphodel

or daffodil.” These plants were often used by metonymy for a frugal

table. Homer (Odyssey 24.) places the shades of the blessed in meadows

of asphodel, because they were supposed to be restored to the state

of primitive innocence, when men were contented with the simple and

spontaneous aliment of the ground. Perhaps the Greeks had this allusion

in their custom of planting the asphodel in the cemeteries, and also

burying it with the bodies of the dead. It appears from Pliny, b. xxii.

c. 22. that Hesiod had treated of the asphodel in some other work: as he

is said to have spoken of it as a native of the woods.

[32] _The food of man in deep concealment lies._] The meaning of this

passage resembles that of the passage in Virgil’s first Georgic:

The sire of gods and men with hard decrees

Forbade our plenty to be bought with ease.

DRYDEN.

[33] _Have laid the rudder by._] It seems the vice of commentators to

refine with needless subtleties on plain passages. Le Clerc explains

this to mean that “in one day’s fishing you might have caught such an

abundance of fish, as to allow of the rudder being laid by for a long

interval.” The common sense of the passage, however, is that, were the

former state of existence renewed, the rudder, which it was customary

after a voyage to hang up in the smoke, might remain there for ever. You

needed not have crossed the sea for merchandise. The custom of suspending

the helms of ships in chimneys, to preserve them from decay, is adverted

to again among the nautical precepts.

The well-framed rudder in the smoke suspend.

Virgil recommends the same process with respect to the timber hewn for

the plough: Georg. 1.

Hung where the chimney’s curling fumes arise,

The searching smoke the harden’d timber dries.

[34] _Mock’d by wise Prometheus._] The original deception which provoked

the wrath of Jupiter was the sacrifice of bones mentioned in the Theogony.

It would appear extraordinary that the crime of Prometheus, who was a

god, should be visited on man. This injustice betrays the real character

of Prometheus; that he was a deified mortal. If Prometheus, the maker of

man according to Ovid, and his divine benefactor according to Hesiod, be

in reality Noah, as many circumstances concur to prove, the concealment

of fire by Jupiter might be a type of the darkness and dreariness of

nature during the interval of the deluge; and the recovery of the flame

might signify the renovation of light and fertility and the restitution

of the arts of life.

[35] _An ill which all shall love._] In the scholia of Olympiodorus on

Plato, Pandora is allegorized into the irrational soul or sensuality:

as opposed to intellect. By Heinsius she is supposed to be Fortune.

But there never was less occasion for straining after philosophical

mysteries. Hesiod asserts in plain terms, that Pandora is the mother of

woman; he tells us she brought with her a casket of diseases; and that

through her the state of man became a state of labour, and his longevity

was abridged. It is an ancient Asiatic legend; and Pandora is plainly the

Eve of Mosaic history. How this primitive tradition came to be connected

with that of the deluge is easily explained. “Time with the ancients,”

observes Mr. Bryant, “commenced at the deluge; all their traditions and

genealogies terminated here. The birth of mankind went with them no

higher than this epocha.” We see here a confusion of events, of periods,

and of characters. The fall of man to a condition of labour, disease, and

death is made subsequent to the flood; because the great father of the

post-diluvian world was regarded as the original father of mankind.

[36] _The zone, the dress._] This office is probably assigned to Pallas,

as the inventress and patroness of weaving and embroidery, and works in

wool.

[37] _With chains of gold._] Ορμους, rendered by the interpreter

_monilia_, are not merely necklaces, but chains for any part of the

person: as the arms and ankles. Ornaments of gold, and particularly

chains, belong to the costume of very high antiquity.

“Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul: who clothed you in scarlet with

other delights: who put on _ornaments of gold_ upon your apparel. Samuel

b. ii. ch. 1. v. 24.

“And she took sandals upon her feet, and put about her her bracelets,

_and her chains_, and her rings, and her ear-rings, and all her

ornaments, and decked herself bravely, to allure the eyes of all men that

should see her.” Judith ch. x. v. 4.

[38] _The beauteous-tressed Hours._] The Hours, according to Homer, made

the toilette of Venus:

The smooth strong gust of Zephyr wafted her

Through billows of the many-waving sea

In the soft foam: the Hours, whose locks are bound

With gold, received her blithely, and enrobed

With heavenly vestments: her immortal head

They wreathed with golden fillet, beautiful,

And aptly framed: her perforated ears

They hung with jewels of the mountain-brass

And precious gold: her tender neck, and breast

Of dazzling white, they deck’d with chains of gold,

Such as the Hours wear braided with their locks.

HYMN TO VENUS.

[39] _His herald from above._] The first edition had “winged herald;” but

the wings of Mercury are the additions of later mythologists. Homer, in

the Odyssey, speaks only of

The sandals fair,

Golden, and undecay’d, that waft him o’er

The sea, and o’er th’ immeasurable earth

With the swift-breathing wind:

there is no mention of the sandals being winged. They seem to have

possessed a supernatural power of velocity, like the seven-leagued boots,

or the shoes of swiftness, in the Tales of the Giants.

[40] _Th’ unbroken vase._] αρρηκτοισι δομοισι. Seleucus, an ancient

critic, quoted by Proclus, proposed πιυοισι: as if the casket in which

Hope dwelt, might not literally be called her house. Heinsius supposes an

allusion to the chamber of a virgin. After this, who would expect that

δομοισι means nothing more than a chest?

Ελουσα κεδρινῳν δομῶν

Εσθῆτα, κοσμον τ’.

EURIPIDES. ALCESTIS. 158.

taking from her cedar coffers

Vestures and jewels.

[41] _On casual wing they glide._] Perhaps Milton had Hesiod in his eye,

in the speech of Satan to Sin: Par. Lost, b. ii. line 840.

Thou and Death

Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen

Wing silently the buxom air.

[42] _Wealthy in flocks._] Grævius has misled all the editors by arguing

that μῆλα are, in this place, fruits of any trees; as arbutes, figs,

nuts; and not flocks: but his arguments respecting the food of primitive

mankind are drawn from the conceptions of modern poets; such as Lucretius

and Ovid. The traditionary age described by Hesiod was a shepherd

age. Flocks are the most ancient symbol of prosperity, and are often

synonymous with riches and dominion.

[43] _High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground._] In the account

of this age we have a just history of the rise of idolatry; when deified

men had first divine honours paid to them; and we may be assured of the

family in which it began; as what was termed Crusean, the _golden_ race,

should have been expressed Cusean; for it relates to the age of Chus,

and the denomination of his sons. This substitution was the cause of the

other divisions being introduced; that each age might be distinguished

in succession by one of baser metal. Had there been no mistake about a

golden age, we should never have been treated with one of silver; much

less with the subsequent of brass and iron. The original history relates

to the patriarchic age, when the time of man’s life was not yet abridged

to its present standard, and when the love of rule and acts of violence

first displayed themselves on the earth. The Amonians, wherever they

settled, carried these traditions along with them, which were thus added

to the history of the country; so that the scene of action was changed.

A colony who styled themselves Saturnians came to Italy, and greatly

benefited the natives. But the ancients, who generally speak collectively

in the singular, and instead of Herculeans introduce Hercules; instead

of Cadmians, Cadmus; suppose a single person, Saturn, to have betaken

himself to this country. Virgil mentions the story in this light, and

speaks of Saturn’s settling there; and of the rude state of the nation

upon his arrival; where he introduced an age of gold. Æn. viii. 314. The

account is confused; yet we may discern in it a true history of the first

ages, as may be observed likewise in Hesiod. Both the poets, however the

scene may be varied, allude to the happy times immediately after the

deluge; when the great patriarch had full power over his descendants, and

equity prevailed without written law. BRYANT.

[44] _Their kingly state._] The administration of forensic justice is

implied in the words γερας βασιληιον, regal office.

[45] _The wealth of fields._] Heinsius quotes Hesychius to show that

πλοῦτος does not always mean riches, properly so called; but the riches

of the soil: and says that it is here applied to the good dæmons as

presiding over the productions of the seasons. Bacchus, in the Lenæan

rites, was invoked by the epithet πλουτοδοτης, wealth-bestower; in

allusion to the vineyard. It seems intimated here, that the Spirits

reward the deeds of the just by abundant harvests; the common belief of

the Greeks, as appears both from Hesiod and Homer.

[46] _A hundred years._] Heinsius explains this passage to mean, that

“although this age was indeed deteriorated from the former, this much of

good remained; that the boys were not early exposed to the contagion of

vice, but long participated the chaste and retired education of their

sisters in the seclusion of the female apartments.” Grævius, on the

contrary, insists that Hesiod notes it as a mark of depravation, that the

youth were educated in sloth and effeminacy, and grew up, as it were, on

the lap of their mothers. These two opinions are about equally to the

purpose. [“The poet manifestly alludes to the longevity of persons in the

patriarchic age: for they did not, it seems, die at three-score and ten,

but took more time even in advancing towards puberty. He speaks, however,

of their being cut off in their prime; and whatever portion of life

nature might have allotted to them, they were abridged of it by their own

folly and injustice.”] BRYANT.

[47] _To Troy’s far shore._] Dr. Clarke in his travels in Greece, Egypt,

and the Holy-land, has noticed that the existence of Troy, and the facts

relative to the Trojan war, are supported by a variety of evidence

independent of Homer: as has been abundantly shown in the course of the

controversy between Mr. Bryant and his able antagonist, Mr. Morritt. This

passage of Hesiod seems to me decisive testimony. If Hesiod be older than

Homer, as is computed by the chronicler of the Parian Marbles, it is

self-evident that the Trojan war is not of Homeric invention: and if they

were contemporary, or even if Hesiod, according to the vulgar chronology,

were really junior by a century, it is not at all probable that he should

have copied the fiction of another bard, while tracing the primitive

history of mankind. He manifestly used the ancient traditions of his

nation, of which the war of Troy was one.

[48] _In those blest isles._] Pindar also alludes to these in his second

Olympic Ode:

They take the way which Jove did long ordain

To Saturn’s ancient tower beside the deep:

Where gales, that softly breathe,

Fresh-springing from the bosom of the main

Through the islands of the blessed blow.

As the life of these beatified heroes was a renewal of that in the

golden age, it is figured by the reign of Saturn or Cronus: the father

of post-diluvian time. The era in which, after the waste of the deluge,

the vine was planted and corn again sown, was represented by tradition

as a time of wonderful abundance and fruitfulness. Hence apparently the

fable of the Elysian fields: which some have supposed to originate from

the reports of voyagers, who had visited distant fertile regions. Saturn

is usually placed in Tartarus: but Tartarus meant the west: from the

association of darkness with sunset: and the Blessed Islands were the

Fortunate Isles on the Western Coast of Afric.

“These heroes, whose equity is so much spoken of, upon a nearer inquiry

are found to be continually engaged in wars and murders; and like the

specimens exhibited of the former ages, are finally cut off by each

other’s hands in acts of robbery and violence: some for stealing sheep,

others for carrying away the wives of their friends and neighbours. Such

was the end of these laudable banditti: of whom Jupiter, we are told,

had so high an opinion, that after they had plundered and butchered one

another, he sent them to the island of the Blest to partake of perpetual

felicity.” BRYANT.

[49] _This iron age of earth._] Les écrivains de tous les tems ont

regardé leur siècle comme le pire de tous: il n’y a que Voltaire qui ait

dit du sien,

O le bon tems que ce siècle de fer!

Encore était-ce dans un accès de gaieté: car ailleurs il appelle le

dixhuitième siècle, l’égout des siècles. C’est un de ces sujets sur

lesquels on dit ce qu’on veut: selon qu’il plait d’envisager tel ou tel

côté des objêts. LA HARPE, LYCÉE, tome premier.

[50]

_For scarcely spring they to the light of day,_

_Ere age untimely strews their temples gray._]

Dr. Martyn, in a note on Virgil’s 4th Eclogue, has fallen into the

error of the old interpreters; when he quotes Hesiod as describing the

iron age “which was to end when the men of that time _grew old and

gray_.” Postquam _facti_ circa tempora cani _fuerint_: but the proper

interpretation is, quum vix _nati_ canescant: as Grævius has corrected

it. The same critic is unquestionably right in his opinion, that the

future tenses of this passage in the original are to be understood as

indefinite present: μεμψονται, incusabunt: _i. e._ incusare solent: _use_

to revile.

Mark, iii. 27. και τοτε την οικιᾶν αυτου διαρπασει: “and then he will

spoil his house:” that is, he is accustomed to spoil. The imperfect time

has also frequently the same acceptation: as in the same evangelist: ch.

xiv. 12. το πασχα εθυον, they _killed_ the passover: they are used to

kill it.

[51] _Now man’s right hand is law._] Imitated by Milton in the vision of

Adam:

So violence

Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law

Through all the plain.

[52] _Leave the broad earth._] Virgil alludes to this passage, Georg. ii.

473.

From hence Astræa took her flight, and here

The prints of her departing steps appear.

DRYDEN.

As also Juvenal: Sat. vi. line 19.

I well believe in Saturn’s ancient reign

This Chastity might long on earth remain:—

By slow degrees her steps Astræa sped

To heaven above, and both the sisters fled.

[53] _Now unto kings._] Βασιλευς, which we render _king_, was properly,

in the early times of Greece, a magistrate. The kings against whom Hesiod

inveighs, are therefore simply a kind of nobles, who exercised the

judicial office in Bœotia; like the twelve of Phœacia mentioned in the

Odyssey. See Mitford’s History of Greece, vol. i. ch. 3.

[54] _A neck-streak’d nightingale._] Ποικιλοδειρον, with variegated

throat. This has not been thought appropriate to the nightingale. Tzetzes

and Moschopolus interpreted the term by ποικιλοφωνον, with varied voice;

a very forced construction; yet it is adopted by Loesner, who renders

it by _canoram_. Ruhnken proposes the emendation of ποικιλογηρυν, which

is synonymous. Others have doubted whether αηδων, which is literally

_singer_, might not apply to some other bird, as the thrush, which is

defined by Linnæus, “back brown, neck spotted with white.” But the name

_singer_ might have been applied to the nightingale by way of eminence.

In fact I see no difficulty. Linnæus, indeed, describes the nightingale,

“bill brown, head and back pale mouse-colour, with olive spots,” and

says nothing of the throat. Simonides, however, speaks of χλοραυχενες

αειδονες, _green-necked_ nightingales, which might justify Hesiod’s

epithet. Bewick in the “British Birds” thus describes the _luscinia_:

“the whole upper part of the body of a rusty brown tinged with olive;

under parts pale ash-colour; _almost white at the throat_.” A more

ancient ornithologist has a description still more nearly approximating

to the term of Hesiod; and it seems evident that there is more than one

species of nightingale.

“Luscinia, philomela, αηδων.

“The nightingale is about the bigness of a goldfinch. The colour on the

upper part, _i. e_. the head and back, is a pale fulvous (lion, or deep

gold colour) with a certain mixture of green, like that of a red-wing.

Its tail is of a deeper fulvous or red, like a red-start’s. From its

red colour it took the name of _rossignuolo_, in Italian: (_rossignol_,

French). The belly is white. The parts under the wings, breast,

and _throat_, are of a darker colour, with _a tincture of green_.”

WILLOUGHBY’S ORNITHOLOGY, fol. 1678.

[55] _The fool by suffering his experience buys._] Παυων δε τε νηπιος

εγνω. This seems to have been a national proverb. Homer has a similar

apophthegm: Il. 17. 33.

μηδ’ αντιος ισταθ’ εμειο

Πριν τι κακον παθεειν· ρεχθεν δε τε νηπιος εγνω.

Confront me not, lest some sore evil rise:

The fool must rue the act that makes him wise.

Plato uses the same proverbial sentiment:

Ευλαβηθῆναι και μη, κατα την παροιμιαν, ωσπερ νηπιον παθονται γνωναι.

Beware lest, after the proverb, you get knowledge like the fool, by

suffering.

[56] _Walks in awful grief the city-ways._] Something similar is the

prosopopœia of Wisdom in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. viii. She standeth

on the top of high places, by the way, and the places of the paths.

She crieth at the gates: at the entry of the city: at the coming in of

the doors.

[57] _O’er their stain’d manners._] Grævius observes that the

interpreters render ηθεα λαῶν, “most foolishly” by _the manners_ of the

people: because ηθεα signifies also _habitations_. But as it is not

pretended that ηθεα does not equally signify _manners_, “the extreme

folly” of the interpreters has, I confess, escaped my penetration. Is it

so very forced an image that Justice should weep over the manners of a

depraved people?

[58] _They and their cities flourish._] This passage resembles one in

the nineteenth book of the Odyssey: but not so closely as to justify the

charge of plagiarism which Dr. Clarke prefers against Hesiod, and which

might be retorted upon Homer. These were sentiments common to the popular

religion.

Like the praise of some great king

Who o’er a numerous people and renown’d,

Presiding like a deity, maintains

Justice and truth. Their harvests overswell

The sower’s hopes: their trees o’erladen scarce

Their fruit sustain: no sickness thins the folds:

The finny swarms of ocean crowd the shores,

And all are rich and happy for his sake.

COWPER.

[59] _Reflects the father’s face._] Montesquieu remarks: “The people

mentioned by Pomponius Mela (the Garamantes) had no other way of

discovering the father but by resemblance. Pater est quem nuptiæ

demonstrant.” But this uncertain criterion was considered as infallible

generally by the ancients.

She whom no conjugal affections bind,

Still on a stranger bends her fickle mind:

But easy to discern the spurious race,

None in the child the father’s features trace.

THEOCRITUS—_Encomium of Ptolemy._

Oh may a young Torquatus bending

From his mother’s breast to thee,

His tiny infant hands extending,

Laugh with half-open’d lips in childish ecstasy:

May he reflect the father in his face:

Known for a Mallius to the glancing eye

Of strangers unaware, who trace

In the boy’s forehead of paternal grace

A mother’s shining chastity.

CATULLUS—_Epithalamium on Julia and Mallius._

[60]

_Holy demons rove_

_This breathing world._]

Milton is thought to have copied Hesiod in this passage:

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.

But the coincidence seems merely incidental, as the parallel wants

completeness. There is nothing of angelic guardianship or judicial

inspection in the spirits of Milton: he says only,

All these with ceaseless praise his works behold

Both day and night. How often from the steep

Of echoing hill, or thicket, have we heard

Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive to each other’s note,

Singing their great Creator?

PAR. LOST, iv.

[61]

_Their glance alike surveys_

_The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways._]

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.

PROVERBS, xv. 3.

[62] _So rue the nations when their kings offend._] Theobald, in a note

on Cooke’s translation, proposes to change δημος, _the people_, into

τημος, _then_: and renders αποτιση in the sense of _punish_, instead of

_rue_: thus the meaning would be, “that he might then, at that instant,

punish the sins of the judges.” Never was an interference with the text

so little called for. The meaning which Theobald is so scrupulous to

admit is exactly conformable with that of a preceding passage:

And oft the crimes of one destructive fall;

The crimes of one are visited on all.

It is idle to inquire where is the justice of this kind of retribution?

since it is evident from all the history of mankind that such is the

course of nature.

By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown

by the mouth of the wicked. PROVERBS, xi. 11.

The king by judgment establisheth the land; but he that receiveth gifts

overthroweth it. Ch. xxix. 4.

In Simpson’s notes on Beaumont and Fletcher, this passage is compared

with the following in Philaster:

In whose name

We’ll waken all the Gods, and conjure up

The rods of vengeance, the abused people:

and it is proposed to understand it in the sense of Fletcher, “that the

people might be raised up to _punish_ the crimes of their prince.” There

is taste and spirit in this interpretation, which cannot be said for the

amendment of Theobald: but the common acceptation seems to me the right

one, for the reasons already stated.

[63] _Pours down the treasures of felicity._] In the house of the

righteous is much treasure: but in the revenues of the wicked there is

trouble. PROVERBS, xv. 6.

The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he

casteth away the substance of the wicked. Ch. x. 3.

The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.

Ch. x. 7.

A false witness shall not be unpunished: and he that speaketh lies shall

perish. Ch. xix. 9.

The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit

the earth. Ch. x. 30.

The inheritance of sinners’ children shall perish: and their posterity

shall have a perpetual reproach. WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH, xli.

Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among

the children of men. PSALMS, xxi. 10.

[64] _Smooth is the track of vice._] The way of sinners is made plain

with stones: but at the end thereof is the pit of hell. WISDOM OF JESUS

THE SON OF SIRACH, xxi. 10.

Both Plato and Xenophon who quote this line of Hesiod, read λειη, smooth,

instead of ολιγη, short. Krebsius prefers the reading, as a _short_ road

and _dwells near_ make a vapid tautology: and _smooth_ forms a good

antithesis to _rough_.

[65] _The sweat that bathes the brow._] Spenser has imitated this parable

in his description of Honour:

In woods, in waves, in wars she wonts to dwell,

And will be found with peril and with pain:

Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell

Unto her happy mansion attain.

Before her gate high God did sweat ordain,

And wakeful watches ever to abide:

But easy is the way and passage plain

To Pleasure’s palace: it may soon be spied,

And day and night her doors to all stand open wide.

This allegory of Hesiod seems the basis of the apologue of Hercules,

Virtue and Vice, which Xenophon in his “Memorabilia,” 2, 21, quotes by

memory from Prodicus’s “History of Hercules.”

[66] _To the wiser friend._] The way of a fool is right in his own eyes:

but he that hearkeneth to counsel is wise. PROVERBS, xii. 15.

A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him: neither will he go unto the

wise. Ch. xv. 12.

[67] _Oh son of Dios._] Διον γενος: Tzetzes had written in the margin

Διου γενος, and this is in all probability the true reading; not that

there is any thing extraordinary in the application of the term _divine_,

as the Greeks used it in a wide latitude, and on frequent occasions.

Homer applies it to the swineherd of Ulysses. It was a term of courtesy

or respect; and Hesiod may have intended to compliment, not Perses, but

their father. We have, however, the testimony of Ephorus, as recorded

by Plutarch, that Dius was the father of Hesiod; and a copyist might

easily have mistaken a υ for a ν. The author of the “Contest of Homer

and Hesiod” seems to have read Διου γενος, as he makes Homer address his

competitor,

Ησιοδ’ εκγονη Διου—

Oh Hesiod! Dius’ son!

The reading is recommended by the Abbé Sevin in the “Histoire de

l’Académie des Inscriptions,” and by Villoison; and is adopted by Brunck

in his “Gnomici Poetæ Græci.” The herma of Hesiod exhibited by Bellorio

in his “Veterûm Poetarûm Imagines” has the inscription, Ησιοδου Διου

Ασκραιος, Ascræan Hesiod the son of Dios.

[68] _Still on the sluggard hungry want attends._] He that gathereth

in summer is a wise son; but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that

causeth shame. PROVERBS, x. 5.

He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that

followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough. Ch. xxviii. 19.

Hate not laborious work; neither husbandry: which the Most High has

ordained. WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH, vii. 15.

He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the

diligent maketh rich. PROVERBS, x. 4.

The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour:

he coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and

spareth not. Ch. xxi. 25.

[69] _Shame, which our aid or injury we find._] The verse

No shame is his,

Shame, of mankind the injury or aid,

occurs in the Iliad, 24; and in the Odyssey, 17, we meet with

An evil shame the needy beggar holds:

but Le Clerc should have known better than to follow Plutarch in the

supposition of the lines being inserted from Homer by some other hand. It

is one of the proverbial and traditionary sayings which frequently occur

in their writings, and which belong rather to the language than to the

poet.

The admirable Jewish scribe, in that ancient book of the Apocrypha

entitled Ecclesiasticus, uses the same proverb:

Observe the opportunity and beware of evil; and be not ashamed when it

concerneth thy soul.

For there is a shame that bringeth sin; and there is a shame which is

glory and grace. WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH, iv. 20, 21.

[70] _But shun extorted riches._] He that hasteth to be rich, hath an

evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him. PROVERBS,

xxviii. 22.

He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall

gather it for him that will pity the poor. Ch. xxviii. 8.

[71] _Who spurns the suppliant._] The ninth book of the Odyssey exhibits

a beautiful passage illustrative of the high reverence in which the

Grecians held the duties of hospitality.

Illustrious lord! respect the gods, and us

Thy suitors: suppliants are the care of Jove

The hospitable: he their wrongs resents,

And where the stranger sojourns there is he.

COWPER.

[72] _If aught thou borrowest._] Lend to thy neighbour in time of his

need, and pay thou thy neighbour again in due season.

Keep thy word and deal faithfully with him, and thou shalt always find

the thing that is necessary for thee. WISDOM OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH.

[73] _Who loves thee, love._] Far different is the spirit of the Gospel.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour

and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them

that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which

despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of

your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the

evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

MATTHEW, v. 43.

If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also

love those that love them. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to

receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive

as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping

for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the

children of the Highest; for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the

evil. LUKE, vi. 32.

[74] _Spare the middle wine._] Hesiod says that we should use the middle

of the cask more sparingly, that we might enjoy the best wine the longer.

It was the ancient opinion that wine was best in the middle, oil at the

top, and honey at the bottom. GRÆVIUS.

This opinion of Hesiod is discussed by Plutarch in his Symposiacs, iii.

7, and by Macrobius in his Saturnalia, vii. 12.

[75] _As in laughter._] Και τε κασιγνητω γελασας επι μαρτυρα θεσθαι. The

interpreters say,

Etiam cum fratre ludens, testem adhibeto.

But I should place the comma after _fratre_, and join _ludens_ with

_testem adhibeto_. “Even in a compact with your brother, have a witness:

you may do it laughingly, or as if in jest.”

[76] _With garment gather’d in a knot behind._] πυγοστολος, adorning the

hinder parts, seems to refer to some meretricious distinction of dress.

Solon compelled women of loose character to appear in public in flowered

robes. Solomon in that beautiful chapter of the Proverbs has a similar

allusion. “There met him a woman _with the attire of a harlot_, and

subtle of heart.” Ch. vii. 10.

[77] _Prattling with gay speech._] With her much fair speech she caused

him to yield: with the flattering of her lips she forced him. PROVERBS,

vii. 21.

[78]

_Arise_

_Before the sun._]

In the words of Hesiod there is made mention of one rising of the

Pleiads, which is heliacal, and of a double setting: the time of the

rising may be referred to the 11th of May. The first setting, which

indicated ploughing-time, was _cosmical_; when, as the sun rises, the

Pleiads sink below the opposite horizon, which, in the time of Hesiod,

happened about the beginning of November. The second setting is somewhat

obscurely designated in the line

They in his lustre forty days lie hid;

and is the _heliacal_ setting, which happened the third of April, and

after which the Pleiads were immerged in the sun’s splendour forty days.

Hesiod, however, speaks as if he confounded the two settings, for no one

would suppose but that the first-mentioned setting was that after which

the Pleiads are said to be hidden previous to the harvest. But his words

are to be explained with more indulgence, since he could not be ignorant

of the time that intervened between the season of ploughing and that of

harvest. LE CLERC.

[79] _’Tis time to sow._] In the original, begin _ploughing_; by which

is meant the last ploughing, when they turned up the soil to receive the

seed. Thus Virgil, Georg. 1:

First let the morning Pleiades go down:

From the sun’s rays emerge the Gnossian crown,

Ere to th’ unwilling earth thou trust the seed.

WARTON.

Heyne observes, “they sink below the region of the West, at the same time

that the sun emerges from the East;” the _cosmical_ setting described by

Hesiod. The receding of the bright star of the crown of Ariadne, which

Virgil mentions, is its receding from the sun; that is, its heliacal

rising.

The heliacal rising is a star’s emersion out of the sun’s rays; that is,

a star rises heliacally when, having been in conjunction with the sun,

the sun passes it and recedes from it. The star then emerges out of the

sun’s rays so far that it becomes again visible, after having been for

some time lost in the superiority of day-light. The time of day in which

the star rises heliacally is at the dawn of day; it is then seen for a

few minutes near the horizon, just out of the reach of the morning light;

and it rises in a double sense from the horizon and from the sun’s rays.

Afterwards, as the sun’s distance increases, it is seen more and more

every morning.

The heliacal rising and setting is then, properly, an apparition and

occultation. With respect to the Pleiads, it appears that different

authors vary in fixing the duration of their occultation from about

thirty-one days to above forty.

In a note by Holdsworth on Warton’s Georgics, it is observed that

the _heliacal_ setting of these stars is pointed out by the word

_abscondantur_. But this is a contradiction; for _Eoæ absconduntur_ is

the same as _occidunt matutinæ_, set in the morning; but the time of day

in which a star sets heliacally is in the evening, just after sun-set,

when it is seen only for a few minutes in the west near the horizon, on

the edge of the sun’s splendour, into which in a few days more it sinks.

[80] _Plough naked still._] Virgil copies this direction, Georg. i:

Plough naked swain! and naked sow the land,

For lazy winter numbs the labouring hand.

DRYDEN.

Servius explains the meaning to be, that he should plough and sow “in

fair weather, when it was so hot as to make clothing superfluous.” This

seems to be very idle advice, and fixes on Virgil the imputation of

a truism. An equally superfluous counsel is ascribed by Robinson and

Grævius to Hesiod. We are correctly told that both γυμνος and _nudus_

applied to men who had laid aside their upper garment, whether the

_pallia_ or _toga_, the Grecian cloak or the Roman gown; and thus is

explained the passage in Matthew, xxiv. 18: “Neither let him which is in

the field return back to take his clothes:” but as no husbandman, whether

Greek or Italian, unless insane, would dream of following the plough

in a trailing cloak, Hesiod may safely be acquitted of so unnecessary

a piece of advice. In the hot climates of Greece and Italy, it was

probably the custom for active husbandmen to bare the upper part of their

bodies. Virgil does not say “Plough in fine weather and not in winter;”

but “Plough with your best diligence, for winter will soon be here:”

equivalent to Hesiod’s “Summer will not last for ever.”

[81] _The idler never shall his garners fill._] He that tilleth his land

shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons

shall have poverty enough. PROVERBS, xxviii. 19.

[82] _Trees bud no more._] The sap of the trees, which causes them to

germinate, is then at rest. Trees when moist with sap are subject to

worms, and the timber in consequence would be liable to putrefaction.

Vitruvius also recommends that timber be felled in the autumn.

[83] _A mortar of three feet._] The purposes to which ancient marbles are

applied by the Turks may serve to explain the use of the mortar, which

Hesiod mentions as part of the apparatus of the husbandman. “Capitals,

when of large dimensions, are turned upside down, and being hollowed out

are placed in the middle of the street, and used publicly for bruising

wheat and rice, as in a mortar.” DALLAWAY’S CONSTANTINOPLE.

[84] _Of bending figure._] So also Virgil, Georg. i. 169:

Young elms, with early force, in copses bow,

Fit for the figure of the crooked plough.

DRYDEN.

Dr. Martyn, in his comparison of Virgil’s plough with that of Hesiod,

has fallen into the mistake of the old interpreters who render γοην

_dentale_, the share-beam: whereas γυην is _burim_, the plough-tail, to

which the share-beam joins.

[85] _Thy artist join the whole._] In the original “the servant of

Minerva,” that is, the carpenter. Minerva presided over all crafts, and

was the patroness of works in iron and wood.

[86]

_with bread_

_Of four-squared loaf._]

The loaf here mentioned is similar to the _quadra_ of the Romans: so

denominated from its being marked four-square by incisions at equal

distances. See Athenæus, iii. 29.

By “a quadruple loaf containing eight portions,” Hesiod, perhaps, means

a loaf double the usual size; similar, probably, to that mentioned by

Theocritus, Idyl. xxiv. 135:

A huge Doric loaf:

Which he that digs the ground and sets the plant

Might eat and well be fill’d.

[87] _The shrill crane’s migratory cry._] The cranes generally leave

Europe for a more southern climate about the latter end of autumn;

and return in the beginning of summer. Their cry is the loudest among

birds; and although they soar to such a height as to be invisible, it is

distinctly heard. It is often a prognostic of rain: as from the immense

altitude of their ascent they are peculiarly susceptible of the motions

and changes of the atmosphere: but Tzetzes is mistaken in supposing that

the migratory cry of the crane denotes only its sensibility of cold.

These migrations are performed in the night-time, and in numerous bodies;

and the clangous scream, alluded to by Hesiod, is of use to govern their

course. By this cry they are kept together; are directed to descend upon

the corn-fields, the favourite scene of their depredations, and to betake

themselves again to flight in case of alarm. Though they soar above the

reach of sight they can, themselves, clearly distinguish every thing upon

the earth beneath them. See “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” Virgil notices

the crane’s instinct as to rain, Georg. i. 375:

The wary crane foresees it first, and sails

Above the storm, and leaves the lowly vales.

DRYDEN.

[88] _Of ploughing-time the sign._] Of the first ploughing Hesiod says,

ειαρι πολειν: turn the soil in spring; of the second, θερεος νεωμενη,

ploughed again in summer; the summer tilth: of the third αροτον: by which

he invariably means the seed-ploughing, when they both ploughed up and

sowed the ground. SALMASIUS _in Solinum_, 509.

Robinson quotes a passage of Aristophanes: Birds, 711:

“Sow when the screaming crane migrates to Afric.”

The ploughing first mentioned by Hesiod is, then, actually the last.

It appears that he recommends ground to be twi-fallowed: or prepared

twice by ploughing before the seed-ploughing. Virgil directs it to be

tri-fallowed, Georg. i. 47:

Deep in the furrows press the shining share:

Those lands at last repay the peasant’s care,

Which twice the sun and twice the frosts sustain,

And burst his barns surcharged with ponderous grain.

WARTON.

Fallowing, or ploughing the soil while at rest from yielding a crop,

prepares it for the growth of seed by pulverizing it, exposing it to

the influences of the atmosphere, and destroying the weeds: and is of

essential use in recovering land that had been impoverished and exhausted

by a succession of the same crops. The practice of fallows seems,

however, to be now in a great degree superseded by that of an interchange

of other crops in rotation; and the succession of green or leguminous

plants alternately with the white crops or grain: the frequent hoeings,

in this mode of tillage, cleaning the soil no less effectually than

fallowings.

[89] _Rich in his own conceit._] The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit

than seven men who can render a reason. PROVERBS, xxvi. 16.

[90] _These let thy timely care provide before._] See Virgil, Georg. i.

167:

The sharpen’d share and heavy-timber’d plough:

And Ceres’ ponderous waggon rolling slow:

And Celeus’ harrows, hurdles, sleds to trail

O’er the press’d grain, and Bacchus’ flying sail:

These long before provide.

WARTON.

[91] _Jove subterrene._] Guietus supposes that the husband of Proserpine

is invoked from the consanguinity between Pluto, Proserpine, and Ceres.

But this is not the only reason. Grævius properly remarks, that the

earth, and all under the earth, were subject to Pluto, as the air was

to Jupiter: Pluto, therefore, was supposed the giver of those treasures

which the earth produces: whether of metals or grain. He was in fact the

same with Plutus: and both names are formed from the Greek word πλουτος,

_wealth_.

[92] _And scare the birds away._] So Virgil, Georg. i. 156:

_Et sonitu terrebis aves._

Scare with a shout the birds.

[93] _Nor thou on others’ heaps a gazer be._] Virgil, Georg. i. 158:

On others’ crops you may with envy look,

And shake for food the long-abandon’d oak.

DRYDEN.

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. · 第 4 / 6 章