[94] _And few shall pass thee then with honouring eye._] The Psalmist

alludes to a blessing given by the passers-by at harvest: while comparing

the wicked to grass withering on the house-top: “Wherewith the mower

filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom: neither

do they which go by say, “The blessing of the Lord be upon you.” PSALM

cxxix. 7, 8.

[95] _The brazier’s forge._] Θακος was properly a _seat_ or _bench_: and

λεσχη, _conversation_, _chit-chat_—but they came to be applied to the

places where loungers sat and talked: hence the former meant a shop, and

the latter a portico, piazza, or public exchange, whither idlers of all

kinds resorted. It should seem from Homer that beggars took up their

night’s lodging in such places: Odyssey xvii. Melantho, taking Ulysses

for a mendicant, says to him,

Thou wilt not seek for rest some brazier’s forge,

Or portico.

[96] _To gripe thy tumid foot._] Aristotle remarks that, in famished

persons, the upper parts of the body are dried up, and the lower

extremities become tumid. SCALIGER.

[97] _Make now your nests._] Grævius finds out that καλιαι may mean

_huts_ and _barns_, as well as _nests_: and in the true spirit of a

verbal commentator, explodes the old interpretation of “_facite nidos_”

and substitutes “_exstruite casas_:” in which he is followed, like the

leader of the flock, by all the modern editors. These _viri doctissimi_

are for ever stumbling on school-boy absurdities in their labour to be

critical and sagacious: “they strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”

Are the labourers to set about building huts and barns in the middle of

harvest? Who does not see that “make nests,” as old Chapman properly

renders it, is a mere proverbial figure? “Make hay while the sun shines.”

[98] _Those frosts._] Hesiod is said, in this description, to have

imitated Orpheus: as if two poets could not describe the appearances and

effects of winter, without copying from each other.

Many and frequent from the clouds of heaven

The frosts rush down, on beeches and all trees,

Mountains and rocks and men: and every face

Is touch’d with sadness. They sore-nipping smite

The beasts among the hills: nor any man

Can leave his dwelling: quell’d in every limb

By galling cold: in all his limbs congeal’d.

[99] _Yet from bland Venus’ mystic rites aloof._] Hesiod introduces the

privacy and retiredness of a virgin’s apartment in the house of her

mother, as conveying the idea of more complete shelter.

[100] _With shining ointment._] Ointment always accompanied the bath.

Thus Homer describes the bathing of Nausicaa and her maids in the sixth

book of the Odyssey:

And laving next and smoothing o’er with oil

Their limbs, all seated on the river bank

They took repast.

And afterwards of Ulysses:

At his side they spread

Mantle and vest; and next the limpid oil

Presenting to him in a golden cruse,

Exhorted him to bathe.

COWPER.

[101] _Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet._] Athenæus, book vii.

explodes the notion of the polypus gnawing its own feet, and states that

its feet are so injured by the congers or sea-eels. Pliny accounts for

the mutilation in rather a marvellous manner. “They are ravenously fond

of oysters: these, at the touch, close their shell, and cutting off the

claws of the polypus take their food from their plunderer. The polypi,

therefore, lie in wait for them when they are open; and placing a little

stone, so as not to touch the body of the oyster, and so as not to be

ejected by the muscular motion of the shell, assail them in security and

extract the flesh. The oyster contracts itself, but to no purpose, having

been thus wedged open.” Lib. ix. c. 30.

The same story has been told, with greater probability, of the monkey.

“The name of polypi has been peculiarly ascribed to these animals by the

ancients, because of the number of feelers or feet of which they are all

possessed, and with which they have a slow progressive motion: but the

moderns have given the name of polypus to a reptile that lives in fresh

water, by no means so large or observable. These are found at the bottom

of wet ditches, or attached to the under-surface of the broad-leaved

plants that grow and swim on the waters. The same difference holds

between these and the sea-water polypi, as between all the productions

of the land and the ocean. The marine vegetables and animals grow to a

monstrous size. The eel, the pike, or the bream of fresh waters is but

small: in the sea they grow to an enormous magnitude. It is so between

the polypi of both elements. Those of the sea are found from two feet

in length to three or four: and Pliny has even described one, the arms

of which were no less than thirty feet long. The polypus contracts

itself more or less in proportion as it is touched, or as the water is

agitated in which they are seen. Warmth animates them, and cold benumbs

them: but it requires a degree of cold approaching congelation, before

they are reduced to perfect inactivity. The arms, when the animal is

not disturbed, and the season is not unfavourable, are thrown about in

various directions in order to seize and entangle its prey. Sometimes

three or four of the arms are thus employed; while the rest are

contracted, like the horns of a snail, within the animal’s body. It seems

capable of giving what length it pleases to these arms: it contracts

and extends them at pleasure; and stretches them only in proportion to

the remoteness of the object it would seize. Some of these animals so

strongly resemble a flowering vegetable in their forms, that they have

been mistaken for such by many naturalists. Mr. Hughes, the author of the

Natural History of Barbadoes, has described a species of this animal, but

has mistaken its nature, and called it a sensitive flowering plant. He

observed it to take refuge in the holes of rocks, and, when undisturbed,

to spread forth a number of ramifications, each terminated by a flowery

petal, which shrunk at the approach of the hand, and withdrew into the

hole from which it had before been seen to issue. This plant, however,

was no other than an animal of the polypus kind: which is not only to be

found in Barbadoes, but also on many parts of the coast of Cornwall, and

along the shores of the Continent.” GOLDSMITH, ANIMATED NATURE, vol. vi.

The Polypus is mentioned by Homer, Odys. v.:

As when the polypus enforced forsakes

His rough recess, in his contracted claws

He gripes the pebbles still to which he clung:

So he within his lacerated grasp

The crumbled stone retain’d, when from his hold

The huge wave forced him, and he sank again.

COWPER.

[102] _Like aged men._] In the original, τριποδι βροτᾶ, a three-footed

mortal: that is, a man with a crutch: a metaphor suggested, probably, by

the ænigma of the Sphinx.

“What is that, which is two-footed, three-footed, and four-footed, yet

one and the same? Œdipus declared that the thing propounded to him was

man: for that a man, while an infant, went on four: when grown up, on

two; and when old, on three: as using a staff through feebleness.”

DIODORUS, Bibl. 4.

[103] _On a scant warp._] The nap is formed by the threads of the woof:

Hesiod therefore directs the woof to be thick and strong, that the nap

may the better exclude wet.

[104] _A strong-dying ox._] This expression is borrowed from Chapman.

Thus we find in Homer, “a thong from a slaughtered ox.” This is

illustrated by Plutarch in his Symposiacs, 2. by the fact that the skins

of slaughtered beasts are tougher, less flaccid, and less liable to be

broken than those of animals which have died of age or distemper. The

ancients, says Grævius, made their shoes of the raw hide.

Πιλοι, in Latin _udones_, were woollen socks; worn, when abroad, inside

the shoes; or as substitutes for shoes, in the manner of slippers, when

within doors and in the bed-chamber. LE CLERC.

[105] _And kid-skins ’gainst the rigid season sew._] This was a sort of

rough cloak of skins common to the country people of Greece.

Stripp’d of my garberdine of skins, at once

I will from high leap down into the waves.

THEOCRITUS, _Idyl._ iii. 25.

Grævius quotes Varro as authority for a similar covering being worn among

the Romans: by soldiers in camp, by mariners, and poor people.

[106] _A well-wrought-cap._] In very ancient times the cap answered no

other purpose for the head than the sock, which was worn inside the shoe,

did for the foot. The helmets were lined with it. Of this kind was that

of the helmet which Ulysses, Odys. x. received from Merion:

Without it was secured

With boar’s-teeth ivory-white, inserted thick

On all sides, and with woollen head-piece lined.

COWPER.

Eustathius tells us, that in after-times they gave the same term, πιλος,

to any covering for the head, and thus they ascribed to Ulysses a cap

such as they then used. Thus as the club is the badge of Hercules, so is

the cap of Ulysses: as appears from coins and other antiques. The ancient

Greeks did not use any covering for the head: and it was from them that

the Romans borrowed the custom of going bare-headed. They used caps only

on journeys; in excessive heat or cold; or in rainy weather. These caps

the Latins called _petasos_: they were a kind of broad-brimmed hat, like

that which is observed in the figures of Mercury. Otherwise, when in the

city, they merely wrapped their heads in the lappet of the gown. GRÆVIUS.

[107] _The wintry tropic._] The winter solstice, according to the table

of Petavius, happened in Hesiod’s time on the 30th of December. The

acronychal rising of Arcturus took place in the 14th degree of Pisces,

which corresponds in the calendar with the 5th of March. LE CLERC.

The acronychal rising of a star is when it rises at the beginning of

night: the acronychal setting is when it sets at the end of night. But

there are two acronychal risings and settings: the one when the star

rises exactly as the sun sets, and sets exactly as the sun rises. This is

the _true_ acronychal rising and setting, but it is invisible by reason

of the day-light. The other is the visible or _apparent_ acronychal

rising and setting; which is, when the star is actually seen in the

horizon.

[108] _The green artichoke._] Σκολυμος is not the thistle, as has been

commonly supposed. Pliny says of it, lib. xxii. c. 22, “The scolymos is

also received for food in the East. The stalk is never more than a cubit

in height, with scaly leaves, and a black root of a sweet taste.” It is,

therefore, the artichoke.

[109] _The loud cicada._] The interpreters translate ηχετα _canora_, and

λιγυρην _dulcem_; and hence an idea is prevalent that Hesiod speaks of

the cicada as having a sweet note; but of these epithets the first is

properly _vocal_ or _sonorous_, and the second _shrill_ or _stridulous_.

Anacreon calls the insect “wise in music,” but he seems to think the note

musical from its cheerful association with summer:

Mortals honour thee with praise,

Prophet sweet of summer days.

Virgil applies to it the characteristics of _hoarse_ and _querulous_. Ecl.

ii. Georgic. iii.

“Of this genus the most common European species is the _cicada plebeia_

of Linnæus. This is the insect so often commemorated by the ancient

poets; and generally confounded by the major part of translators with

the grasshopper. It is a native of the warmer parts of Europe, and

particularly of Italy and Greece: appearing in the latter months of

summer, and continuing its shrill chirping during the greatest part of

the day: generally sitting among the leaves of trees. Notwithstanding

the romantic attestations in honour of the cicada, it is certain that

modern ears are offended rather than pleased with its voice; which

is so very strong and stridulous, that it fatigues by its incessant

repetition; and a single cicada, hung up in a cage, has been found to

drown the voice of a whole company. The male cicada alone exerts this

powerful note, the female being entirely mute. That a sound so piercing

should proceed from so small a body may well excite our astonishment;

and the curious apparatus, by which it is produced, has justly claimed

the attention of the most celebrated investigators. Reaumur and Roësel,

in particular, have endeavoured to ascertain the nature of the mechanism

by which the noise is produced; and have found that it proceeds from a

pair of concave membranes, seated on each side of the first joints of the

abdomen: the large concavities of the abdomen, immediately under the two

broad _lamellæ_ in the male insect, are also faced by a thin, pellucid,

iridescent membrane, serving to increase and reverberate the sound; and

a strong muscular apparatus is exerted for the purpose of moving the

necessary organs.” SHAW, GENERAL ZOOLOGY, vol. vi.

The same naturalist specifies several large and elegant insects in

this division of the genus cicada. One with the body of a polished

black colour, marked with scarlet rings: another of a green hue, with

transparent wings, veined also with green; and a third of a fine black

varied beneath with yellow streaks, and the wings black towards the base.

[110] _Then the plump goat._] This is imitated by Virgil, Georg. i. 341:

For then the hills with pleasing shades are crown’d,

And sleeps are sweeter on the silken ground:

With milder beams the sun serenely shines,

Fat are the lambs and luscious are the wines.

DRYDEN.

[111] _But weak of man the heat-enfeebled reins._] Aristotle is of the

same opinion. The curious reader may consult the Dictionnaire de BAYLE,

iv. 222. Note A.

[112] _Byblian wine._] This was so called from a region of Thrace: it was

a thin wine, and not intoxicating. See Athenæus, i. 31. It is mentioned

by Theocritus, Idyl. xiv. 15:

I open’d them a flask of Byblian wine

Well-odour’d: with the flavour of four years.

[113] _Orion’s beamy strength._] In the table of Petavius the bright

star of the foot of Orion makes its heliacal rise in the 18th degree of

Cancer: that is, on the 12th of July. LE CLERC.

[114] _On gusty ground._] So Varro, de Re Rusticâ, lib. i. c. 51. “The

threshing-floor should be in a field, on higher ground, where the wind

might blow over it.” See also Columella, lib. xi. c. 20.

[115]

_Thy hireling swain_

_From forth thy house dismiss._]

Θητα αοικον ποιεισθαι is rendered by Grævius _comparare sibi servum

domo carentem_: and Schrevelius explains the passage to mean that “you

should seek out a servant who, having no house of his own to look after,

could direct his whole attention to your concerns.” So when the harvest

is over, and the corn laid up in the granaries, he is to look out for a

labourer! Was there ever a direction so unmeaning as this? I translate

the words, (_meo periculo_) “_servum operarium è domo dimitte_.”

[116] _Keep, too, a sharp-tooth’d dog._] Virgil has a more poetical

passage on the same subject, Georg. iii. 404:

Nor last forget thy faithful dogs: but feed

With fattening whey the mastiff’s generous breed

And Spartan race, who for the fold’s relief

Will prosecute with cries the nightly thief,

Repulse the prowling wolf, and hold at bay

The mountain robbers rushing to the prey.

DRYDEN.

[117]

_On Arcturus looks from high_

_The rosy-finger’d morn._]

By this is understood the heliacal rising of Arcturus, which happened in

the time of Hesiod about the 21st of September. LE CLERC.

[118]

_On morning’s brink_

_The Pleiads, Hyads, and Orion sink._]

This is the morning, or cosmical, setting of the Pleiads; which, according

to Petavius, happened some time in November. LE CLERC.

[119] _Then varying winds._] Virgil cautions the navigator against the

appearances of the sun, Georg. i. 455:

If dusky spots are varied on his brow

And streak’d with red a troubled colour show:

That sullen mixture shall at once declare

Winds, rain, and storms, and elemental war:

What desperate madman then would venture o’er

The frith, or haul his cables from the shore?

DRYDEN.

[120] _Black ocean._] Οινοπι ποντω, wine-coloured. This evidently means

black: as the Greek poets apply the epithet black to wine. Hesiod has

αιθοπα οινοι, black coloured wine. The sense of this latter epithet is

deduced from the blackness caused by burning: as αιθω is _to burn_.

[121] _In summer irksome._] This inconvenience arose from the site of

the place: as the scholiasts Proclus and Tzetzes relate: for by the

neighbourhood of so high a mountain as Helicon, the breezes, which might

have alleviated the summer heat, were intercepted: and in winter, the

rays of the sun were excluded from the village; which was also exposed to

torrents from the melting of the snow. ROBINSON.

[122] _Decline a slender bark._] Αινειν, _commend_. This passage is

quoted by Plutarch in illustration of words used in a different sense

from what they seem to import. _Praise_ means _refuse_. The same idiom

occurs in Virgil’s second Georgic:

Commend the large excess

Of spacious vineyards: cultivate the less.

DRYDEN.

[123] _O’er the sea’s broad way._] From the following extracts it will

not appear extraordinary that this prodigious voyage of Hesiod should

have afforded him but little opportunity of acquiring a practical

knowledge of navigation. On an inspection of the map we must, however,

concede that the passage from Aulis direct to Chalcis is somewhat wider

than the part of the strait crossed by a draw-bridge.

“Elle (Chalcis) est située dans un endroit où à la faveur de deux

promontoires qui s’avançent de part et d’autre, les côtes de l’île

touchent presque à celles de Bèotie.

“Ce leger intervalle, qu’on appelle Euripe, est en partie comblé par

une digue. A chacune de ses extrémités est une tour pour le défendre,

et un pont-lever pour laisser passer un vaisseau.” BARTHELEMY, VOYAGES

D’ANACHARSIS, tom. ii. p. 82.

[124] _Where first their tuneful inspiration flow’d._] That is, on mount

Helicon. Both Le Clerc and Robinson unaccountably refer the term ενθα,

where, to Chalcis: and regard this passage as contradictory to that in

the proem to the Theogony: whereas the one confirms the other.

[125]

_When from the summer-tropic fifty days_

_Have roll’d._]

If no verses be wanting here, Hesiod truly needs not boast of his

skill in nautical affairs. For what can be more absurd than to confine

all navigation within fifty days, and those beginning from the

summer-solstice; especially as the summer solstice fell on the 3d of

July? I should suppose that there was a deficiency of two verses to this

effect:

Before the summer-tropic fifty days

Thy keel may safely plough the azure ways.

The similarity of the lines may have caused the copyist’s omission of

the two former. I am aware that the art of navigation was in that

age imperfect: but if sea-faring men had learnt from experience that

navigation was safe fifty days _after_ the summer solstice, they could

have learnt from the same teacher that it was equally safe fifty days

_before_ it: namely, in the months of May and June. LE CLERC.

[126] _Men, too, may sail in spring._] What the poet says here of a

spring voyage, I understand of that which may be made in the month of

April: which is not much less liable to gales and storms than even the

winter months. Certainly it was in April that the fig-tree began to be in

leaf. LE CLERC.

[127] _And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom._] She begins to bloom in

her twelfth year. Let her wed in the fifth year of her puberty; that is,

in her sixteenth. GUIETUS.

Robinson, not considering the difference of climate, supposes that the

fourteenth year is the first of her puberty, and that she is directed to

wed in her nineteenth.

[128] _Shall send a fire thy vigorous bones within._] A virtuous woman is

a crown to her husband, but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in

his bones. PROVERBS, xii. 4.

[129] _Nor lie with idle tongue._] Devise not a lie against thy brother,

neither do the like to thy friend. ECCLESIASTICUS, vii. 12.

[130] _Chastise his sin._] Far more liberal is the counsel of the son of

Sirach:

Admonish a friend: it may be, he hath not done it; and if he have done

it, that he may do it no more.

Admonish thy friend: it may be he hath not said it; and if he have, that

he speak it not again.

Admonish a friend, for many times it is a slander; and believe not every

tale.

There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his heart: and who

is he, that hath not offended with his tongue?

ECCLESIASTICUS, xix.

Cicero says elegantly, “Care is to be taken lest friendships convert

themselves even into grievous enmities: whence arise bickerings,

backbitings, contumelies: these are yet to be borne, if they be

bearable: and this compliment should be paid to the ancient friendship,

that the person in fault should be he that inflicts the injury, not he

that suffers it.” DE AMICITIA, c. 21.

The author of the Pythagorean “golden verses” has a line which deserves

indeed to be written in letters of gold:

Hate not thy tried friend for a slender fault.

This is probably one of the maxims of Hesiod which induced La Harpe to

observe, “Cette morale n’est pas toujours la meilleure du monde.” LYCÉE,

tom. i. Hésiode.

[131] _Rebuke not want._] Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker.

PROVERBS, xvii. 5.

[132] _Lo! the best treasure is a frugal tongue._] In the multitude of

words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise. The

tongue of the just is as choice silver. PROVERBS, x. 19, 20.

[133] _When many guests combine._] There were two sorts of

entertainments among the ancient Grecians: the first was provided at

the expense of one man, the second was at the common charge of all

present: at the latter some of the guests occasionally contributed more

than their exact proportion. These were generally most frequented, and

are recommended by the wise men of those times as most apt to promote

friendship and good neighbourhood. They were for the most part managed

with more order and decency, because the guests who ate of their own

collation were usually more sparing than when they were feasted at

another man’s expense; as we are informed by Eustathius. So different was

their behaviour at the public feasts from that at private entertainments,

that Minerva, in Homer, having seen the intemperance and unseemly actions

of Penelope’s courtiers, concludes their entertainment was not provided

at the common charge.

Behold I here

A banquet, or a nuptial feast? for these

Meet not by contribution to regale;

With such brutality and din they hold

Their riotous banquet.

COWPER, _Odyss._ l.

POTTER, _Archæologia Græca_.

[134] _The feast of gods._] A sacrifice was followed by a general

banquet, and the tables were spread in the temple itself. The gods were

supposed invisibly to be present. Thus we are to explain their visit to

the Æthiopians in Homer, Il. i:

For to the banks of the Oceanus

Where Æthiopia holds a feast to Jove

He journied yesterday; with whom the gods

Went also.

COWPER.

[135] _Ne’er to thy five-branch’d hand apply the blade._] This precept is

somewhat obscurely expressed, like the symbols of Pythagoras: that things

of no value might appear to involve a mysterious importance. Hesiod seems

to intimate that we should not choose the precise time of the feast for

washing the hands and paring the nails, but sit down to table with hands

ready washed. No person, indeed, even at a private entertainment, would

have thought of cutting his nails at table, if he did not wish the

parings to fly into the dishes, which I conceive could not have been more

agreeable to the Greeks than to ourselves. LE CLERC.

[136] _Upon the goblet’s edge._] Robinson supposes a sentiment of

hospitality; that the flaggon is not to stand still. Others suppose

οινοχοη to be a bowl used only in libation, and which it was indecent

to prostitute to common use. But for this there seems not the least

authority.

“All the allegorical glosses invented by the latter Greeks to varnish

over the doting superstitions of their ancestors are utterly destitute of

verisimilitude. Even in our day traces of the old superstitions remain in

many places. There are people, for instance, who think it a bad omen if

the loaf be inverted, so that the flat part is uppermost; if the knives

be laid across, or the salt spilt on the table. It would be just as easy

to find a mystical sense in these, as in the idle fancies of Hesiod.” LE

CLERC.

[137] _Unhallow’d vessels._] There is here an allusion to the ancient

custom of purifying new vessels and consecrating them to a happy use; or,

as we say, blessing them. GUIETUS.

Le Clerc imagines a prohibition against seizing the flesh from the

tripods before a sacrifice, which he illustrates by the offence of the

sons of Eli, 1 Sam. ii. 13; but what has the bathing to do with this?

[138] _On moveless stones._] By ακινητα, immoveable things, he appears

to mean the ground or stones, which are cold and hard; or by sitting on

immoveable things we may understand habits of sloth. GUIETUS.

Proclus interprets the word to mean sepulchres, which it was unlawful

to move: but on the same grounds it may be interpreted land-marks. One

should rather understand by it any sort of stones; Hesiod preferring that

a boy should be placed on wooden slabs that might be moved about. But the

being placed on a stone could not be more hurtful to him on the twelfth

day or month than at any other period of his childhood. This was a mere

superstition; and we may as well seek to interpret the dreams of a man

who is light-headed. LE CLERC.

[139] _The thirtieth of the moon._] That is, the last day of each month;

for the most ancient Greeks, as well as the Orientals, employed lunar

months of thirty days. LE CLERC.

The Greek month was divided into τρια δεκημερα, three decades of days.

The first was called μηνος αρχομενου or ισταμενου; the second, μηνος

μησουντος; and the third, μηνος φθινοντος, παυομενου, or ληγοντος: the

beginning month, the middle month, the declining or ending month. The

words were put in the genitive case because some day was placed before

them. Thus the middle-first or first of the second decade was the

eleventh of the whole month; and the first of the end, or of the last

decade, was the twenty-first: the twenty-ninth was called εικας μεγαλη,

the great twentieth. The French Republican calendar was formed on the

Greek model.

[140] _What time the people to the courts repair._] The forenoon was

distinguished by the time of the court of judicature sitting, as in this

passage of Hesiod; the afternoon by the time of its breaking up, as in

the following of Homer:

At what hour the judge,

After decision made of numerous strifes

Between young candidates for honour, leaves

The forum, for refreshment’s sake at home.

COWPER, _Odyss._ xii.

[141] _Beware the fifth._] Virgil copies this, as well as some other of

these superstitions, Georg. i. 275:

For various works behold the moon declare

Some days more fortunate: the fifth beware:

Pale Orcus and the Furies then sprang forth—

...

Next to the tenth the seventh to luck inclines

For taming oxen and for planting vines:

Then best her woof the prudent housewife weaves:

Better for flight the ninth; averse to thieves.

WARTON.

The Theogony.

THE THEOGONY.

The Argument.

The proem is a rhapsody in honour of the Muses. It opens with a

description of their solemn dances on mount Helicon, and of the hymns

which they sing during their nightly visitation of earth. The poet then

relates their appearance to himself, and his consequent inspiration;

describes their employments in heaven; their birth and dignity; their

influence on kings or magistrates, minstrels and bards; and finishes

with invoking their assistance and proposing his subject. The COSMOGONY,

or origin of nature, then commences, and blends into the THEOGONY, or

generation of gods, which is continued through the whole poem, and

concludes with the race of demi-gods, or those born from the loves of

goddesses and mortals. The following legendary traditions are interwoven

episodically with the main subject. I. The imprisonment of his children

by URANUS or HEAVEN in a subterranean cave; and the consequent conspiracy

of EARTH and CRONUS, or SATURN. II. The concealment of the infant

JUPITER. III. The impiety and punishment of Prometheus. IV. The creation

of PANDORA, or WOMAN. V. The war of the GODS and TITANS. VI. The combat

of JUPITER with the giant TYPHÆUS.

THE THEOGONY.

Begin we from the Muses oh my song!

Muses of Helicon: their dwelling-place

The mountain vast and holy: where around

The altar of high Jove and fountain dark

From azure depth, [142]they lightly leap in dance

With delicate feet; and having duly bathed

Their tender bodies in Permessian streams,

[143]In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof,

Or blest Olmius’ waters, many a time

Upon the topmost ridge of Helicon

Their elegant and amorous dances thread,

And smite the earth with strong-rebounding feet.

Thence breaking forth tumultuous, and enwrapt

With the deep mist of air, they onward pass

Nightly, and utter, as they sweep on high,

A voice in stilly darkness beautiful.

They hymn the praise of Ægis-wielding Jove,

And Juno, named of Argos, who august

In golden sandals walks: and her, whose eyes

Glitter with azure light, Minerva born

From Jove: Apollo, [144]sire of prophecy,

And Dian gladden’d by the twanging bow:

Earth-grasping Neptune, shaker of earth’s shores:

Majestic Themis and Dione fair:

[145]And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids:

Hebe, her brows with golden fillet bound:

Morn, the vast Sun, and the resplendent Moon:

Latona and Japetus: and him

Of crooked wisdom, Saturn: and the Earth:

And the huge Ocean, and the sable Night

And all the sacred race of deities

Existing ever. They to HESIOD erst

Have taught their stately song: the whilst he fed

His lambs beneath the holy Helicon.

And thus the goddesses, th’ Olympian maids

Whose sire is Jove, first hail’d me in their speech;

“Shepherds! that tend in fields the fold; ye shames!

[146]Ye fleshly appetites! the Muses hear:

’Tis we can utter fictions veil’d like truths,

Or, if we list, speak truths without a veil.”

So said the daughters of the mighty Jove,

Sooth-speaking maids: and gave unto my hand

A rod of marvellous growth, [147]a laurel-bough

Of blooming verdure; and within me breathed

A heavenly voice, that I might utter forth

All past and future things: and bade me praise

The blessed race of ever-living gods:

And ever first and last the Muses sing.

Away then—why [148]this tale of oaks and rocks?

Begin we from the Muses oh my song!

They the great spirit of their father Jove

Delight in heaven: their tongues symphonious breathe

All past, all present, and all future things:

Sweet, inexhaustible, from every mouth

That voice flows on: the Thunderer’s palace laughs

With scatter’d melody of honied sounds

From the breathed voice of goddesses, and all

The snow-topp’d summits of Olympus ring,

The mansions of immortals. They send forth

Their undecaying voice, and in their songs

Proclaim before all themes the race of gods

From the beginning: the majestic race,

Whom earth and awful heaven endow’d with life:

And all the deities who sprang from these,

Givers of blessings. Then again they change

The strain to Jove, the sire of gods and men:

Him praise the choral goddesses: him first

And last: with rising and with ending song:

How excellent he is above all gods,

And in his power most mighty. Once again

They sing the race of men, and giants strong;

And soothe the soul of Jupiter in heaven.

They, daughters of high Jove: Olympian maids:

Whom erst Mnemosyne, protecting queen

Of rich Eleuther’s fallows, in embrace

With Jove their sire amidst [149]Pieria’s groves

Conceived: of ills forgetfulness; to cares

Rest: thrice three nights did counsel-shaping Jove

Melt in her arms, apart from eyes profane

Of all immortals to the sacred couch

Ascending: and when now the year was full,

When moons had wax’d and waned, and reasons roll’d,

And days were number’d, she, some space remote

From where Olympus highest towers in snow,

[150]Bare the nine maids, with souls together knit

In harmony: whose thought is only song:

Within whose bosoms dwells th’ unsorrowing mind.

There on the mount they shine in troops of dance,

And dwell in beautified abodes: and nigh

The Graces also dwell, and Love himself,

And hold the feast. But they through parted lips

Send forth a lovely voice; they sing the laws

Of universal heaven; the manners pure

Of deathless gods, and lovely is their voice.

Anon they bend their footsteps tow’rds the mount,

Rejoicing in their beauteous voice and song

Unperishing: far round the dusky earth

Rings with their hymning voices, and beneath

Their many-rustling feet a pleasant sound

Ariseth, as tumultuous pass they on

To greet their heavenly sire. He reigns in heaven,

The bolt and glowing lightning in his grasp,

Since by the strong ascendant of his arm

Saturn his father fell: he to the gods

Appoints the laws, and he their honours names.

So sing the Muses; dwellers on the mount

Of heaven: nine daughters of the mighty Jove:

Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato,

Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia,

Urania, Clio, and Calliope:

The chiefest she: who walks upon the steps

Of kingly judges in their majesty:

And whomsoe’er of heavenly-nurtured kings

Jove’s daughters will to honour, looking down

With smiling aspect on his cradled head

They pour a gentle dew upon his tongue:

And words, as honey sweet, drop from his lips.

To him the people look: on him all eyes

Wait awful, who in righteousness discerns

The ways of judgment: in a single breath,

Utter’d with knowledge, ends the mightiest strife,

And all is peace. The wisdom this of kings:

That in their judgment-hall they from the oppress’d

Turn back the tide of ills, retrieving wrongs

With mild accost of [151]soothing eloquence.

On him, the judge and king, when passing forth

Among the city-ways, all reverent look

With a mild worship, as he were a god:

And in [152]the great assembly first is he.

Such is the Muses’ goodly gift to man.

The Muses, and Apollo darting far

The arrows of his splendour, raise on earth

[153]Harpers and men of song: but kings arise

From Jove himself. Oh blessed is the man

Whome’er the Muses love! sweet is the voice

That from his lips flows ever. [154]Is there one

Who hides some fresh grief in his wounded mind

And mourns with aching heart? but he, the bard,

[155]The servant of the Muse, awakes the song

To deeds of men of old, and blessed gods

That dwell on mount Olympus. Straight he feels

His sorrow stealing in forgetfulness:

Nor of his griefs remembers aught: so soon

The Muse’s gift has turn’d his woes away.

Daughters of Jove! all hail! but oh inspire

The lovely song! record the heavenly race

Of gods existing ever: those who sprang

From earth and starry heaven and murky night,

And whom the salt deep quicken’d. Say how first

The gods and earth became: how rivers flow’d:

Th’ unbounded sea raged high in foamy swell,

The stars shone forth, and overhead the sky

Spread its broad arch: and say from these what gods,

Givers of blessings, sprang: and how they shared

Heaven’s splendid attributes and parted out

Distinct their honours: and how first they fix’d

Their dwelling midst Olympus’ winding vales:

Tell, oh ye Muses! ye who also dwell

In mansions of Olympus: tell me all

From the beginning: say who first arose.

[156]First of all beings Chaos was: and next

Wide-bosom’d Earth, the seat for ever firm

Of all th’ immortals, whose abode is placed

Among the mount Olympus’ snow-top’d heads,

[157]Or in the dark abysses of the ground:

Then Love most beauteous of immortals rose:

He of each god and mortal man at once

Unnerves the limbs, dissolves the wiser breast

By reason steel’d, and quells the very soul.

From Chaos, Erebus and sable Night:

From Night arose the Sunshine and the Day:

Offspring of Night from Erebus’ embrace.

Earth first conceived with Heaven: whose starry cope,

Like to herself immense, might compass her

On every side: and be to blessed gods

A resting-place immoveable for ever.

She teem’d with the high Hills, the pleasant haunts

Of goddess nymphs, who dwell within the glens

Of mountains. With no aid of tender love

She gave to birth the sterile Sea, high-swol’n

In raging foam: and, Heaven-embraced, anon

She teem’d with Ocean, rolling in deep whirls

His vast abyss of waters. Crœus, then,

Cæus, Hyperion, and Iäpetus,

Themis, and Thea rose; Mnemosyne,

And Rhea; Phœbe diadem’d with gold,

And love-inspiring Tethys: and of these,

Youngest in birth, the wily Saturn came,

The sternest of her sons; for he abhorr’d

The sire who gave him life. Then brought she forth

[158]The Cyclops brethren, arrogant of heart,

Undaunted Arges, Brontes, Steropes:

Who forged the lightning shaft, and gave to Jove

His thunder: they were like unto the gods:

Save that a single ball of sight was fix’d

In their mid-forehead. Cyclops was their name,

From that round eye-ball in their brow infix’d:

And strength and force and manual craft were theirs.

Others again were born from Earth and Heaven:

Three giant sons: strong, dreadful but to name,

Children of glorying valour: Briareus,

Cottus and Gyges: from whose shoulders burst

A hundred arms that mock’d approach, and o’er

Their limbs hard-sinew’d fifty heads upsprang:

Mighty th’ immeasurable strength display’d

In each gigantic stature: and of all

The children born to earth and heaven these sons

Were dreadfullest: and they, e’en from the first,

Drew down their father’s hate: as each was born

He seized them all, and hid them in th’ abyss

Of Earth: nor e’er released them to the light.

Heaven in his evil deed rejoiced: vast Earth

Groan’d inly, sore aggrieved: but soon devised

A stratagem of mischief and of fraud.

Sudden creating for herself a kind

Of whiter iron, she with labour framed

A scythe enormous: and address’d her sons:

She spoke emboldening words, though grieved at heart.

“My sons! alas! ye children of a sire

Most impious, now obey a mother’s voice:

So shall we well avenge the fell despite

Of him your father, who the first devised

Deeds of injustice.” While she said, on all

Fear fell: nor utterance found they, till with soul

Embolden’d, wily Saturn huge address’d

His awful mother. “Mother! be the deed

My own: thus pledged I will most sure achieve

This feat: nor heed I him, our sire, of name

Detested: for that he the first devised

Deeds of injustice.” Thus he said, and Earth

Was gladden’d at her heart. She planted him

In ambush dark and secret: in his grasp

She placed the sharp-tooth’d scythe, and tutor’d him

In every wile. Vast Heaven came down from high,

And with him brought the gloominess of Night

On all beneath: with ardour of embrace

Hovering o’er Earth, in his immensity

He lay diffused around. The son stretch’d forth

His weaker hand from ambush: in his right

[159]He took the sickle huge and long and rough

With sharpen’d teeth: and hastily he reap’d

The genial organs of his sire, at once

Cut sheer: then cast behind him far away.

They not in vain escaped his hold: for Earth

Received the blood-drops, and as years roll’d round

Teem’d with strong furies and with giants huge,

Shining in mail, and grasping in their hands

Protended spears: and wood-nymphs, named of men

Dryads, o’er all th’ immeasurable earth.

So severing, as was said, with edge of steel

The genial spoils, he from the continent

Amidst the many surges of the sea

Hurl’d them. Full long they drifted o’er the deeps:

Till now swift-circling a white foam arose

From that immortal substance, and a nymph

Was quicken’d in the midst. The wafting waves

First bore her to Cythera’s heavenly coast:

Then reach’d she Cyprus, girt with flowing seas,

And forth emerged a goddess, in the charms

Of awful beauty. Where her delicate feet

Had press’d the sands, green herbage flowering sprang.

Her Aphrodite gods and mortals name,

[160]The foam-born goddess: and her name is known,

As Cytherea with the blooming wreath,

For that she touch’d Cythera’s flowery coast:

And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian shore

She rose, amidst the multitude of waves:

And Philomedia, from the source of life.

[161]Love track’d her steps; and beautiful Desire

Pursued, while soon as born she bent her way

Towards heaven’s assembled gods: her honours these

From the beginning: whether gods or men

Her presence bless, to her the portion fell

Of [162]virgin whisperings and alluring smiles,

And smooth deceits, and gentle ecstasy,

And dalliance, and the blandishments of love.

But the great Heaven, rebuking those his sons

That issued from his loins, new-named them now

Titans: and said that they avenging dared

A crime; but retribution was behind.

Abhorred Fate and dark Necessity

And Death were born from Night: by none embraced

These gloomy Night brought self-conceiving forth:

And Sleep and all the hovering host of dreams.

[163]Then bare she Momus; Care, still brooding sad

On many griefs; and next [164]th’ Hesperian maids,

Whose charge o’er-sees the fruits of blooming gold

Beyond the sounding ocean, the fair trees

Of golden fruitage. Then the Destinies

Arose, and Fates in vengeance pitiless:

Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos:

Who at the birth of men dispense the lot

Of good and evil. They of men and gods

The crimes pursue, nor ever pause from wrath

Tremendous, till destructive on the head

Of him that sins the retribution fall.

Then teem’d pernicious Night with Nemesis,

The scourge of mortal men: again she bare

Fraud and lascivious Love: slow-wasting Age,

And still-persisting Strife. From hateful Strife

Came sore Affliction and Oblivion drear:

Famine and weeping Sorrows: Combats, Wars,

And Slaughters, and all Homicides: and Brawls,

And Bickerings, and deluding Lies: with them

Perverted Law and galling Injury,

Inseparable mates: and the dread Oath;

A mighty bane to him of earth-born men

Who wilful swears, and perjured is forsworn.

The Sea with Earth embracing, Nereus rose,

[165]Eldest of all his race: unerring seer,

And true: with filial veneration named

Ancient of Years: for mild and blameless he:

Remembering still the right; still merciful

As just in counsels. [166]Then rose Thaumas vast,

[167]Phorcys the mighty, Ceto fair of cheek,

And stern Eurybia, of an iron soul.

From Nereus and the fair-hair’d Doris, nymph

Of ocean’s perfect stream, the lovely race

Of goddess Nereids rose to light, whose haunt

Is midst the waters of the sterile main:

Eucrate, Proto, Thetis, Amphitrite,

Love-breathing Thália, Sao, and Eudora,

And Spio, skimming with light feet the wave:

Galene, Glauce, and Cymothöe:

Agave, and the graceful Melita:

[168]Rose-arm’d Eunice, and Eulimene:

Pasithea, Doto, Erato, Pherusa,

Nesæa, Cranto, and Dynamene:

Protomedía, Doris, and Actæa:

And Panope, and Galatæa fair:

Rose-arm’d Hipponöe: soft Hippothöe:

Cymodoce who calms, at once, the waves

Of the dark sea, and blasts of heaven-breathed winds:

With whom Cymatolége, and the nymph

Of beauteous ankles Amphitrite glide:

Cymo, Eïone, Liagore,

And Halimede, with her sea-green wreath:

Pontoporïa, and Polynome;

Evagore, and blithe Glauconome:

Laomedía, and Evarne blest

With gracious nature and with faultless form:

Lysianassa, and Autonome,

And Psamathe, with shape of comeliness:

Divine Menippe, Neso, and Themistho:

And Pronöe, and Eupompe, and Nemertes:

Full of her deathless sire’s prophetic soul.

These sprang from blameless Nereus: [169]Nereid nymphs:

Who midst the waters ply their blameless tasks.

Electra, nymph of the deep-flowing ocean,

Embraced with Thaumas: rapid Iris thence

Rose, and Aëllo and Ocypetes,

[170]The sister-harpies, fair with streaming locks:

Who track the breezy winds and flights of birds,

On wings of swiftness hovering nigh the heaven.

Then Ceto, fair of cheek, to Phorcys bore

[171]The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray: and hence

Their name with gods, and men that walk the earth:

Long-robed Pephredo, saffron-veil’d Enýo:

And Gorgons dwelling on the brink of night

Beyond the sounding main: where silver-voiced

Th’ Hesperian maidens in their watches sing:

Stheno, Euryale, Medusa these:

The last ill-fated, since of mortal date:

The two immortal, and unchanged by years.

Yet her alone the blue-hair’d god of waves

Enfolded, on the tender meadow grass,

And bedded flowers of spring: [172]when Perseus smote

Her neck, and snatch’d the sever’d bleeding head,

[173]The great Chrysaor then leap’d into life:

[174]And Pegasus the steed; who born beside

[175]Old Nilus’ fountains thence derived a name.

Chrysaor, grasping in his hands a sword

Of gold, flew upward on the winged horse:

And left beneath him earth, mother of flocks,

And soar’d to heaven’s immortals: and there dwells

In palaces of Jove, and to the god

Deep-counsell’d bears the bolt and arrowy flame.

Chrysaor with Callirhöe, blending love,

Nymph of sonorous ocean, [176]Geryon rose,

Three headed form: him the strong Hercules

Despoil’d of life among his hoof-cloven herds

On Erythia, girdled by the wave:

What time those oxen ample-brow’d he drove

To sacred Tyrinth, the broad ocean frith

Once past: and Orthrus, the grim herd-dog, stretch’d

Lifeless; and in their murky den beyond

The billows of the long-resounding deep,

The keeper of those herds, Eurytion, slain.

Another monster Ceto bare anon

[177]In the deep-hollow’d cavern of a rock:

Stupendous nor in shape resembling aught

Of human or of heavenly; the divine

Echidna, the untameable of soul:

Above, a nymph with beauty-blooming cheeks,

And eyes of jetty lustre; but below,

A speckled serpent horrible and huge,

Gorged with blood-banquets, monstrous, hid in caves

Of sacred earth. There in the uttermost depth

Her cavern is, within a vaulted rock:

Alike from mortals and immortals deep

Remote: the gods have there decreed her place

In mansions known to fame. So pent beneath

The rocks of Arima Echidna dwelt

Hideous: a nymph immortal, and in youth

Unchanged for evermore. But legends tell,

That with the jet-eyed nymph Typhaon mix’d

His fierce embrace: [178]a whirlwind rude and wild:

She, fill’d with love, conceived a progeny

Of strain undaunted. Geryon’s dog of herds,

Orthrus, the first arose: the second birth,

Unutterable, was the dog of hell:

Blood-fed and brazen-voiced, and bold and strong,

[179]The fifty-headed Cerberus; and third

Upsprang the Hydra, pest of Lerna’s lake:

Whom Juno, white-arm’d goddess, fostering rear’d

With deep resentment fill’d, insatiable,

’Gainst Hercules: but he, the son of Jove,

Named of Amphytrion, in the dragon’s gore

Bathed his unpitying steel: by warlike aid

Of Iolaus, and the counsels high

Of Pallas the Despoiler. Last came forth

[180]Chimæra, breathing fire unquenchable:

A monster grim and huge, and swift and strong:

Her’s were three heads: a glaring lion’s one:

One of a goat: a mighty snake’s the third:

In front the lion threatened, and behind

The serpent, and the goat was in the midst,

Exhaling fierce the strength of burning flame.

But the wing’d Pegasus his rider bore,

The brave Bellerophon, and laid her dead.

She, grasp’d by forced embrace of Orthrus, gave

[181]Depopulating Sphinx, the mortal plague

Of Cadmian nations: and the lion bare

Named of Nemæa. Him Jove’s glorious spouse

To fierceness rear’d: and placed his secret lair

Among Nemæa’s hills, the pest of men.

There lurking in his haunts he long ensnared

The roving tribes of man, and held stern sway

O’er cavern’d Tretum: o’er the mountain heights

Of Apesantus, and Nemæa’s wilds:

Till strong Alcides quell’d his gasping strength.

Now Ceto, in embrace with Phorcys, bare

Her youngest born: the dreadful snake, that couch’d

In the dark earth’s abyss, his wide domain,

Holds o’er the golden apples wakeful guard.

[182]Tethys to Ocean brought the rivers forth,

In whirlpool waters roll’d: Eridanus

Deep-eddied, and Alpheus, and the Nile:

Fair-flowing Ister, Strymon, and Meander,

Phasis and Rhesus: Achelous bright

With silver-circled tides: Heptaporus,

And Nessus: Haliacmon and Rhodíus:

Granícus and the heavenly Simois:

Æsapus, Hermus, and Sangarius vast:

Penéus, and Caicus smoothly flowing:

And Ladon, and Parthenius, and Evenus:

Ardescus, and Scamander the divine.

Then bore she a blest race of Naiad nymphs,

Who with the rivers and the king of day

O’er the wide earth [183]claim the shorn locks of youth:

Their portion this and privilege from Jove.

Admete, Pitho, Doris and Ianthe:

Urania heavenly-fair: and Clymene:

Prymno, Electra, and Calliröe:

Rhodía, Hippo, and Pasithöe:

Plexaure, Clytie, and Melobosis:

Idya, Thöe, Xeuxo, Galaxaure:

And amiable Dione, and Circeis

Of nature soft, and Polydora fair;

[184]And Ploto, with the bright dilated eyes:

Perseis, Ianira, and Acaste:

Xanthe, the sweet Petræa, saffron-robed

Telestho, Metis, and Eurynome:

And Crisie, and Menestho, and Europa:

Lovely Calypso, Amphiro, Eudora:

Asia, and Tyche, and Ocyröe:

And Styx, the chief of oceanic streams.

The daughters these of Tethys and of Ocean,

The eldest-born: for more untold remain:

Three-thousand graceful Oceanides

[185]Long-stepping tread the earth: or far and wide

Dispersed, they haunt [186]the glassy depth of lakes,

A glorious sisterhood of goddess birth.

As many rivers also, yet untold,

Rushing with hollow-dashing echoes, rose

From awful Tethys: but their every name

Is not for mortal man to memorate,

Arduous; yet known to all the borderers round.

Now Thia, yielding to Hyperion’s arms,

Bare the great Sun and the refulgent Moon:

And Morn, that scatters wide the rosy light

To men that walk the earth, and deathless gods

Whose mansion is yon ample firmament.

Eurybia, noble goddess, blending love

With Crius, gave the great Astræus birth,

Pallas the god, and Perses, wise in lore.

The Morning to Astræus bare the Winds

Of spirit untamed: [187]East, West, and South, and North

Cleaving his rapid course: a goddess thus

Embracing with a god. Last, Lucifer

Sprang radiant from the dawn-appearing Morn:

And all the glittering stars that gird the heaven.

Styx, ocean-nymph, with Pallas mingling love,

Bare Victory, whose feet are beautiful

In palaces: and Zeal, and Strength, and Force,

Illustrious children. [188]Not apart from Jove

Their mansion is: nor is there seat, or way,

But he before them in his glory sits

Or passes forth: and where the Thunderer is,

Their place is found for ever. So devised

The nymph of Ocean, the eternal Styx:

What time the Lightning-sender call’d from heaven,

And summon’d all th’ immortal deities

To broad Olympus’ top: then thus he spake:

“Hear all ye gods! That god who wars with me

Against the Titans, shall retain the gifts

Which Saturn gave, and honours heretofore

His portion midst th’ immortals: and whoe’er

Unhonour’d and ungifted has repined

Under Saturnian sway, the same shall rise,

“As just it is, to honours and rewards.”

Then first of every power eternal Styx,

Sway’d by the careful counsels of her sire,

Stood on Olympus, and her sons beside:

Her Jove received with honour, and endow’d

With goodly gifts: ordain’d her the great oath

Of deities: her sons for evermore

Indwellers with himself. Alike to all,

Even as he pledged that sacred word, the god

Perform’d; so reigns he, strong in power and might.

Now Phœbe sought the love-delighting couch

Of Cœus: so within a god’s embrace

Conceived the goddess. Then arose to life

The azure-robed Latona: ever mild:

Gracious to man and to immortal gods:

Mild from the first beginning of the world:

Gentlest of all within th’ Olympian courts.

Anon she bare [189]Asteria, blest in fame:

Whom Perses to his spacious palace led,

That he might call her spouse: and [190]she conceived

With Hecaté. Her o’er all others Jove

Hath honour’d, and endow’d with splendid gifts:

With power on earth and o’er the untill’d sea:

Nor less her glory from the starry heaven,

Chief honour’d by immortals: and if one

Of earthly men performing the due rite

Of victim divination, would appease

The gods above, he calls on Hecaté:

To him, whose prayer the goddess gracious hears,

High honour comes spontaneous, and to him

She yields all affluence; for the power is hers.

Whatever gods, the sons of heaven and earth,

Shared honour at the hands of Jove, o’er all

[191]Her wide allotment stands: nor whatsoe’er

Of rank she held, midst the old Titan gods,

Has Saturn’s son invaded or deprived;

As was the ancient heritage of power

So hers remains: e’en from the first of things.

Nor is [192]her solitary birth reproach:

Nor less, though singly born, her rank and power

In heaven and earth and main, but higher meed

Of glory, since her honour is from Jove.

She, in the greatness of her power, is nigh

With aid to whom she lists: whoe’er she wills

O’er the great council of the people shines:

And when the mailed men arise to wage

Destroying battle, she to whom she lists

Is present, yielding victory and fame;

And on the judgment-seat with awful kings

She sits; and when in the gymnastic strife

Men struggle, the propitious goddess comes

Present with aid: then easily the man,

Conqueror in hardiment and strength, obtains

The graceful wreath, and glad-triumphing sheds

[193]A gleam of glory o’er his parents’ days.

She, as she lists, is nigh to charioteers

Who strive with steeds: and voyagers who cleave

Through the blue watery vast th’ untractable way.

They call upon the name of Hecaté

With vows: and his, loud-sounding god of waves,

Earth-shaker Neptune. Easily at will

The glorious goddess yields the woodland prey

Abundant: easily, while scarce they start

On the mock’d vision, snatches them in flight.

She too with Hermes is propitious found

To herd and fold: and bids increase the droves

Innumerable of goats and woolly flocks,

And swells their numbers or their numbers thins.

And thus, although her mother’s lonely child,

She midst th’ immortals shares all attributes.

Her Jove appointed nursing-mother bland

Of babes, who after her to morn’s broad light

Should lift the tender lid: so from the first

The foster-nurse of babes: her honours these.

Embraced by Saturn, Rhea gave to light

Illustrious children. [194]Golden-sandal’d Juno,

[195]Ceres, and Vesta: [196]Pluto strong, who dwells

In mansions under earth: of ruthless heart;

[197]Earth-shaker Neptune, loud with dashing waves:

And [198]Jupiter th’ all-wise: the sire of gods

And men; beneath whose crashing thunder-peal

The wide earth rocks in elemental war.

But them, as issuing from the sacred womb

They touch’d the mother’s knees, did Saturn huge

Devour: revolving in his troubled thought

Lest other one of beings heavenly-born

Usurp the kingly honours. For from earth

And starry heaven the rumour met his ear,

That it was doom’d by Fate, strong though he were,

[199]To his own son he should bow down his strength.

Jove’s wisdom this fulfill’d. No blind design

He therefore cherish’d, and in crooked craft

Devour’d his children. But on Rhea prey’d

Never-forgotten anguish. When the time

Was full, and Jove, the sire of gods and men,

Came to the birth, her parents she besought,

Earth and starr’d Heaven, that they should counsel yield

How secretly the babe may spring to life:

And how the father’s furies ’gainst his race

In subtlety devour’d may meet revenge:

They to their daughter listen’d and complied:

Unfolding what the Fates had sure decreed

Of kingly Saturn and his dauntless son:

And her they sent to Lyctus: to the clime

Of fallow’d Crete. Now when her time was come,

The birth of Jove her youngest-born, vast Earth

Took to herself the mighty babe, to rear

With nurturing softness in the spacious isle

Of Crete. So came she then, transporting him

With the swift shades of night, to Lyctus first:

And thence, upbearing in her arms, conceal’d

Beneath the sacred ground, in sunless cave,

Where shagg’d with thickening woods th’ Egæan mount

Impends. Then swathing an enormous stone

She placed it in the hands of Heaven’s huge son,

The ancient king of gods: that stone he snatch’d;

And in his ravening breast convey’d away:

Wretch! nor bethought him that the stone supplied

His own son’s place; survivor in its room,

Unconquer’d and unharm’d: the same, who soon

Subduing him with mightiness of arm,

Should drive him from his state, and reign himself

King of immortals. Swiftly grew the strength

And hardy limbs of that same kingly babe:

And when the great year had fulfill’d its round,

Gigantic Saturn, wily as he was,

Yet foil’d by Earth’s considerate craft, and quell’d

By his son’s arts and strength, released his race:

The stone he first disgorged, the last devour’d:

This Jove on earth’s broad surface firmly fix’d

At Pythos the divine, in the deep cleft

Of high Parnassus: [200]to succeeding times

A monument, and miracle to man.

The brethren of his father too he loosed,

Whom Heaven, their sire, had in his frenzy bound:

They the good deed in grateful memory bore:

And gave the thunder, and the burning bolt,

And lightning, which vast Earth had heretofore

Hid in her central caves. In these confides

The god, and reigns o’er deities and men.

Iäpetus ascends the bed of love

With Clýmene, fair-ankled ocean-nymph:

She brought forth Atlas: her undaunted son:

Glorying Menœtius and Prometheus vers’d

In changeful turns and shifting subtleties:

And Epimetheus of unwary mind:

Who from old time became an evil curse

To man’s inventive race; for he received

The clay-form’d virgin-woman sent from Jove.

All-seeing Jove struck with his smouldering flash

Haughty Menœtius, and cast down to hell;

Shameless in crime and arrogant in strength.

Atlas, enforced by stern necessity,

[201]Props the broad heaven: on earth’s far borders, where

Full opposite th’ Hesperian virgins sing

With shrill sweet voice, he rears his head and hands

Aye unfatiguable: Heaven’s counsellor

So doom’d his lot. But with enduring chains

[202]He bound Prometheus, train’d in shifting wiles,

With galling shackles fixing him aloft

Midway a column. Down he sent from high

His eagle hovering on expanded wings:

She gorged his liver: still beneath her beak

Immortal; for it sprang with life, and grew

In the night-season, and repair’d the waste

Of what the wide-wing’d bird devour’d by day.

But her the fair Alcmena’s hardy son

Slew; from Prometheus drove the cruel plague,

And freed him from his pangs. Olympian Jove,

Who reigns on high, consented to the deed;

That thence yet higher glory might arise,

O’er peopled earth, to Hercules of Thebes:

And in his honour, Jove now made to cease

The wrath he felt before; ’gainst him who strove

In wisdom e’en with Saturn’s mighty son.

Of yore when strife arose for sacrifice,

Twixt gods and men, within Mecona’s walls,

Prometheus wilful [203]parted a huge ox

And set before the god: so tempting him

With purpose to deceive: for here he laid

The unctuous substance, entrails, and the flesh

Close cover’d with the belly of the hide:

There the white bones he craftily disposed;

And with the marrowy substance wrapt them round.

Then spake the father of the gods and men:

“Son of Iäpetus!” thou famous god!

How partial, friend! are thy divided shares!”

So in rebuke spoke Jupiter: whose thoughts

Of wisdom perish not. Then answer’d him

Wily Prometheus, with a laugh suppress’d,

And well remembering his insidious fraud:

“Hail glorious Jove! thou mightiest of the gods

Who shall endure for ever: choose the one

Which now the spirit in thy breast persuades.”

He spoke, revolving treachery. Jove, whose thoughts

Of wisdom perish never, knew the guile,

Not unforewarn’d: and straight his soul devised

Evil to mortals, that should surely be:

He raised the snowy portion with his hands,

And felt his spirit wroth: yea, anger seiz’d

His spirit, when he saw the whitening bones

O’erlaid with cunning artifice: and thence,

E’en from that hour, the dwellers upon earth

Consume the whitening bones, when climbs the smoke

Wreath’d from their flaming altars. Then again

Cloud-gatherer Jove with indignation spake:

“Son of Iäpetus! of all most wise!

Still, friend! rememberest thou thy arts of guile?”

So spake, incensed, the god, whose wisdom yields

To no decay: and from that very hour,

Remembering still the treachery, he denied

The strength of indefatigable fire

To all the dwellers upon earth. But him

Benevolent Prometheus did beguile:

For in a hollow reed he stole from high

The far-seen splendour of unwearied flame.

Then deep resentment stung the Thunderer’s soul;

And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw

The fire far-gleaming in the midst of men.

And for the flame restored, he straight devised

A mischief to mankind. At Jove’s behest

Famed Vulcan fashion’d from the yielding clay

A bashful virgin’s likeness: and the maid

Of azure eyes, Minerva, round her waist

Clasp’d the broad zone, and dress’d her limbs in robe

Of flowing whiteness; placed upon her head

A wondrous veil of variegated threads;

Entwined amidst her hair delicious wreaths

Of verdant herbage and fresh-blooming flowers;

And set a golden mitre on her brow;

Which Vulcan framed, and with adorning hands

Wrought, at the pleasure of his father Jove.

Rich-labour’d figures, marvellous to sight,

Enchased the border: forms of beasts that range

The earth, and fishes of the rolling deep:

Of these innumerable he there had graven;

And exquisite the beauty of his art

Shone in these wonders, like to animals

Moving in breath, with vocal sounds of life.

Now when his plastic hand instead of good

Had framed this beauteous bane, he led her forth

Where were the other gods and mingled men.

She went exulting in her graced array,

Which Pallas, daughter of a mighty sire,

Known by her eyes of azure, had bestow’d.

On gods and men in that same moment seiz’d

The ravishment of wonder, when they saw

The deep deceit, th’ inextricable snare.

From her the sex of tender woman springs:

[204]Pernicious is the race: the woman tribe

Dwell upon earth, a mighty bane to men:

No mates for wasting want, but luxury:

And as within the close-roof’d hive, the drones,

Helpers of sloth, are pamper’d by the bees;

These all the day, till sinks the ruddy sun,

Haste on the wing, “their murmuring labours ply,”

And still cement the white and waxen comb:

Those lurk within the cover’d hive, and reap

With glutted maw the fruits of others’ toil;

Such evil did the Thunderer send to man

In woman’s form, and so he gave the sex,

Ill helpmates of intolerable toils.

Yet more of ill instead of good he gave:

The man who shunning wedlock thinks to shun

The vexing cares that haunt the woman-state,

And lonely waxes old, shall feel the want

Of one to foster his declining years:

Though not his life be needy, yet his death

Shall scatter his possessions to strange heirs,

And aliens from his blood. Or if his lot

Be marriage, and his spouse of modest fame,

Congenial to his heart, e’en then shall ill

For ever struggle with the partial good,

And cling to his condition. But the man,

Who gains the woman of injurious kind,

Lives bearing in his secret soul and heart

Inevitable sorrow: ills so deep

As all the balms of medicine cannot cure.

Therefore it is not lawful to elude

The eye of Heaven, nor mock th’ Omniscient Mind.

For not Prometheus, the benevolent,

Could shun Heaven’s heavy wrath: and vain were all

His arts of various wisdom: vain to ’scape

Necessity, or loose the mighty chain.

When Heaven their sire ’gainst Cottus, Briareus,

And Gyges, felt his moody anger chafe

Within him, sore amazed with that their strength

Immeasurable, their aspect fierce, and bulk

Gigantic, with a chain of iron force

He bound them down; and fix’d their dwelling-place

Beneath the spacious ground: beneath the ground

They dwelt in pain and durance: in th’ abyss

There sitting, where earth’s utmost bound’ries end.

Full long oppress’d with mighty grief of heart

They brooded o’er their woes: but them did Jove

Saturnian, and those other deathless gods

Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bare to Saturn’s love,

By policy of Earth, lead forth again

To light. For she successive all things told:

How with the giant brethren they should win

Conquest and splendid glory. Long they fought

With toil soul-harrowing: they the deities

Titanic and Saturnian: each to each

Opposed, in valour of promiscuous war.

From Othrys’ lofty summit warr’d [205]the host

Of glorious Titans: from Olympus they,

The band of gift-dispensing deities

Whom fair-hair’d Rhea bore to Saturn’s love.

So waged they war soul-harrowing: each with each

Ten years and more the furious battle join’d,

Unintermitted: nor to either host

Was issue of stern strife or end: alike

Did either stretch the limit of the war.

But now when Jove had set before his powers

All things befitting; the repast of gods;

The nectar and ambrosia, in each breast

Th’ heroic spirit kindled: and now all

With nectar and with sweet ambrosia fill’d,

Thus spake the father of the gods and men:

“Hear me! illustrious race of Earth and Heaven!

That what the spirit in my bosom prompts

I now may utter. Long, and day by day,

Confronting each the other, we have fought

For conquest and dominion: Titan gods,

And we the seed of Saturn. Still do ye,

Fronting the Titans in funereal war,

Show mighty strength: invulnerable hands:

Remembering that mild friendship, and those pangs

Remembering, when ye trod the upward way

Back to the light: and by our counsels broke

“The burthening chain, and left the murky gloom.”

He spake: and Cottus brave of soul replied:

“Oh Jove august! not darkly hast thou said:

Nor know we not how excellent thou art

In counsel and in knowledge: thou hast been

Deliverer of immortals from a curse

Of horror: by thy wisdom have we risen,

Oh kingly son of Saturn! from dark gloom

And bitter bonds, unhoping of relief.

Then with persisting spirit and device

Of prudent warfare, shall we still assert

Thy empire midst the fearful fray, and still

In hardy conflict brave the Titan foe.”

He said: the gods, the givers of all good,

Heard with acclaim: nor ever till that hour

So burn’d each breast with ardour to destroy.

All on that day stirr’d up the mighty strife,

Female and male: Titanic gods, and sons

And daughters of old Saturn; and that band

Of giant brethren, whom, from forth th’ abyss

Of darkness under earth, deliverer Jove

Sent up to light: grim forms and strong, with force

Gigantic: arms of hundred-handed gripe

Burst from their shoulders: fifty heads up-sprang,

Cresting their muscular limbs. They thus opposed

In dreadful conflict ’gainst the Titans stood,

In all their sinewy hands [206]wielding aloft

Precipitous rocks. On th’ other side, alert

The Titan phalanx closed: then hands of strength

Join’d prowess, and show’d forth the works of war.

Th’ immeasurable sea tremendous dash’d

With roaring; earth re-echoed; the broad heaven

Groan’d shattering: vast Olympus reel’d throughout

Down to its rooted base beneath the rush

Of those immortals: the [207]dark chasm of hell

Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp

Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,

And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.

So they against each other through the air

Hurl’d intermix’d their weapons, scattering groans

Where’er they fell. The voice of armies rose

With rallying shout through the starr’d firmament,

And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts

Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove

Curb down his force; but sudden in his soul

There grew dilated strength, and it was fill’d

With his omnipotence: [208]his whole of might

Broke from him, and the godhead rush’d abroad.

The vaulted sky, the mount Olympus, flash’d

With his continual presence; for he pass’d

Incessant forth, and lighten’d where he trod.

Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew

Reiterated swift; the whirling flash

Cast sacred splendour, and the thunderbolt

Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth

Roar’d in the burning flame, and far and near

The trackless depth of forests crash’d with fire.

Yea—the broad earth burn’d red, the floods of Nile

Glow’d, and the desert waters of the sea.

Round and around the Titans’ earthy forms

Roll’d the hot vapour, and on fiery surge

Stream’d upward, swathing in one boundless blaze

The purer air of heaven. Keen rush’d the light

In quivering splendour from the writhen flash:

Strong though they were, intolerable smote

Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare

Scorch’d up their blasted vision. [209]Through the void

Of Erebus, the preternatural flame

Spread, mingling fire with darkness. But to see

With human eye and hear with ear of man

Had been, as on a time [210]the heaven and earth

Met hurtling in mid-air: as nether earth

Crash’d from the centre, and the wreck of heaven

Fell ruining from high. Not less, when gods

Grappled with gods, the shout and clang of arms

Commingled, and the tumult roar’d from heaven.

Shrill rush’d the hollow winds, and roused throughout

A shaking and a gathering dark of dust;

Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,

Hot thunderbolts and flames, the fiery darts

Of Jove: and in the midst of either host

They bore upon their blast the cry confused

Of battle, and the shouting. For the din

Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife

Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof

Wreak’d there its deeds, till weary sank the fight.

But first, array’d in battle, front to front,

Full long they stood, and bore the brunt of war.

Amid the foremost, towering in the van,

[211]The war-unsated Gyges, Briareus,

And Cottus, bitterest conflict waged: for they

Successive thrice a hundred rocks in air

Hurl’d from their sinewy grasp: with missile storm

[212]The Titan host o’ershadowing, them they drove,

Vain-glorious as they were, with hands of strength

O’ercoming them, beneath th’ expanse of earth

And bound with galling chains: [213]so far beneath

This earth, as earth is distant from the sky:

So deep the space to darksome Tartarus.

A brazen anvil rushing from the sky

Through thrice three days would toss in airy whirl,

Nor touch this earth, till the tenth sun arose:

Or down earth’s chasm precipitate revolve,

Nor till the tenth sun rose attain [214]the verge

Of Tartarus. A fence of massive brass

Is forged around: around the pass is roll’d

A night of triple darkness; and above

Impend the roots of earth and barren sea.

There the Titanic gods in murkiest gloom

Lie hidden: such the cloud-assembler’s will:

There in a place of darkness, where vast earth

Has end: from thence no egress open lies:

Neptune’s huge hand has closed with brazen gates

The mouth: a wall environs every side.

There Gyges, Cottus, high-souled Briareus,

Dwell vigilant: the faithful sentinels

Of Ægis-bearer Jove. Successive there

The dusky Earth, and darksome Tartarus,

The sterile Ocean, and the starry Heaven,

[215]Arise and end, their source and boundary.

[216]A drear and ghastly wilderness, abhorr’d

E’en by the gods; a vast vacuity:

Might none the space of one slow-circling year

Touch the firm soil, that portal enter’d once,

[217]But him the whirls of vexing hurricanes

Toss to and fro. E’en by immortals loathed

This prodigy of horror. There too stand

The mansions drear of gloomy Night, o’erspread

With blackening vapours: and before the doors

Atlas upholding heaven his forehead rears,

And indefatigable hands. There Night

And Day, near passing, mutual greeting still

Exchange, [218]alternate as they glide athwart

The brazen threshold vast. This enters, that

Forth issues; nor the two can one abode

At once constrain. This passes forth and roams

The round of earth; that in the mansion waits,

Till the due season of her travel come.

Lo! from the one the far-discerning light

Beams upon earthly dwellers; but a cloud

Of pitchy blackness veils the other round:

Pernicious Night: aye-leading in her hand

[219]Sleep, Death’s half-brother: sons of gloomy Night

There hold they habitation, Death and Sleep;

Dread deities: [220]nor them the shining Sun

E’er with his beam contemplates, when he climbs

The cope of heaven, or when from heaven descends.

Of these the one glides gentle o’er the space

Of earth and broad expanse of ocean waves,

Placid to man. The other has a heart

Of iron; yea, the heart within his breast

Is brass, unpitying: whom of men he grasps

Stern he retains: e’en [221]to immortal gods

A foe. The hollow-sounding palaces

Of Pluto strong the subterranean god,

[222]And stern Prosérpina, there full in front

Ascend: a grisly dog, implacable,

Holds watch before the gates: a stratagem

Is his, malicious: them who enter there,

With tail and bended ears he fawning soothes:

But suffers not that they with backward step

Repass: whoe’er would issue from the gates

Of Pluto strong and stern Prosérpina,

For them with marking eye he lurks; on them

Springs from his couch, and pitiless devours.

There, odious to immortals, dreadful Styx

Inhabits: refluent Ocean’s eldest-born:

She from the gods apart for ever dwells

In far-re-echoing mansions, [223]with arch’d roofs

Of loftiest rock o’erhung: and all around

The silver columns lean upon the skies.

Swift-footed Iris, nymph of Thaumas born,

Takes with no frequent embassy her way

O’er the broad main’s expanse, when haply strife

Be risen, and midst the gods dissension sown:

And if there be among th’ Olympian race

Who falsehood utters, [224]Jove sends Iris down

To bring the great oath in a golden ewer:

The far-famed water, from steep, sky-capt rock

Distilling in cold stream. Beneath wide Earth

Abundant from [225]the sacred river-head,

Through shades of blackest night, the Stygian horn

Of ocean flows: a tenth of all the streams

To the dread oath allotted. In nine streams

Circling the round of earth and the broad seas,

With silver whirlpools twined in many a maze,

It falls into the deep: one stream alone

Flows from the rock; a mighty bane to gods.

Who of immortals, that inhabit still

Olympus top’d with snow, [226]libation pours

And is forsworn, he one whole year entire

Lies reft of breath: nor yet approaches once

The nectar’d and ambrosial sweet repast:

But still reclines on the spread festive couch

Mute, breathless; and a mortal lethargy

O’erwhelms him: but, his malady absolved

With the great round of the revolving year,

More ills on ills afflictive seize: nine years

From ever-living deities remote

His lot is cast: in council nor in feast

Once joins he, till nine years entire are full:

The tenth again he mingles with the blest

Societies, who fill th’ Olympian courts.

So great an oath the deities of heaven

Decreed the water of eternal Styx,

The ancient stream; that sweeps with wandering waves

A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,

And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,

And starry Heaven, the source and boundary

Successive rise and end: a dreary wild

And ghastly: e’en by deities abhorr’d.

There gates resplendent rise; the threshold brass;

Immoveable; on deep foundations fix’d;

Self-framed. Before them the Titanic gods

Abide, without th’ assembly of the Blest,

Beyond the gulf of darkness. There beneath

The ocean-roots, th’ auxiliaries renown’d

Of Jove who rolls the hollow-pealing thunder,

Cottus and Gyges in near mansions dwell:

But He that shakes the shores with dashing surge

Hailing him son, gave Briareus as bride

Cymopolía; prize of brave desert.

But now when Jupiter from all the heaven

Had cast the Titans forth, huge Earth embraced

By Tartarus, through balmy Venus’ aid,

[227]Her youngest-born Typhœus bore; whose hands

Of strength are fitted to stupendous deeds:

And indefatigable are the feet

Of the strong god: and from his shoulders rise

A hundred snaky heads of dragon growth,

Horrible, quivering with their blackening tongues:

In each amazing head, from eyes that roll’d

Within their sockets, fire shone sparkling: fire

Blazed from each head, the whilst he roll’d his glance

Glaring around him. In those fearful heads

Were voices of all sound, miraculous:

Now utter’d they distinguishable tones

Meet for the ear of gods: now the deep cry

Of a wild-bellowing bull untamed in strength:

And now the roaring of a lion, fierce

In spirit: and anon the yell of whelps

Strange to the ear: and now the monster hiss’d,

That the high mountains echoed back the sound.

Then had a dread event that fatal day

Inevitable fall’n, and he had ruled

O’er mortals and immortals; but the Sire

Of gods and men the peril instant knew

Intuitive; and vehement and strong

He thunder’d: instantaneous all around

Earth reel’d with horrible crash: the firmament

Of high heaven roar’d: the streams of Nile, the sea,

And uttermost caverns. While the king in wrath

Uprose, [228]beneath his everlasting feet

The great Olympus trembled, and earth groan’d.

From either god a burning radiance caught

The darkly azured ocean: from the flash

Of lightnings, and that monster’s darted flame,

Hot thunderbolts, and blasts of fiery winds.

Earth, air, sea, glow’d: the billows, heaved on high,

Foam’d round the shores, and dash’d on every side

Beneath the rush of gods. Concussion wild

And unappeasable uprose: aghast

The gloomy monarch of th’ infernal dead

Shudder’d: the sub-tartarean Titans heard

E’en where they stood, with Saturn in the midst:

They heard appall’d the unextinguish’d rage

Of tumult, and the din of dreadful war.

But now when Jove had gather’d all his strength,

And grasp’d his weapons, bolts, and bickering flames,

He from the mount Olympus’ topmost ridge

Leap’d at a bound, and smote him: hiss’d at once

The horrible monster’s heads enormous, scorch’d

In one conflagrant blaze. When thus the god

Had quell’d him, thunder-smitten, mangled, prone,

He fell: earth groan’d and shook beneath his weight.

Flame from [229]the lightning-stricken deity

Flash’d, midst the mountain-hollows, rugged, dark,

Where he fell smitten. Broad earth glow’d intense

From that unbounded vapour, and dissolv’d:

As fusile tin by art of youths above

The wide-brimm’d vase up-bubbling foams with heat;

Or iron, hardest of the mine, subdued

By burning flame amidst [230]the woody dales

Melts in the sacred caves beneath the hands

Of Vulcan, so earth melted in the glare

Of blazing fire. He down wide Hell’s abyss

His victim hurl’d in bitterness of soul.

[231]Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds

Moist-blowing: save the South, North, East, and West:

[232]These born from gods, a blessing great to man:

Those, unavailing gusts, o’er the waste sea

Breathe barren: with sore peril fraught to man:

In whirlpool rage fall black upon the deep:

Now here, now there, they rush with stormy gale,

Scatter the rolling barks, and whelm in death

The mariner: an evil succourless

To men, who midst the ocean-ways their blast

Encounter. They again o’er all th’ expanse

Of flowery earth the pleasant works of man

Despoil, and fill the blacken’d air with cloud

Of eddying dust and hollow rustlings drear.

Now had the blessed Powers of Heaven fulfill’d

Their toils, for meed of glory ’gainst the gods

Titanic striving in their strength: and now,

Earth-counsell’d, they exhort Olympian Jove,

Of wide beholding eyes, to regal sway

And empire o’er immortals: he to them

Due honours portion’d with an equal hand.

First as a bride the Monarch of the gods

[233]Led Metis: her o’er deities and men

Vers’d in all knowledge. But when now the time

Was full, that she should bear [234]the blue-eyed maid

Minerva, he with treacheries of smooth speech

Beguiled her thought, and hid his spouse away

In his own breast: so Earth and starry Heaven

Had counsell’d: him they both advising warn’d

Lest, in the place of Jove, another seize

The kingly honour o’er immortal gods.

For so the Fates had destined, that from her

An offspring should be born, of wisest strain.

First the Tritonian virgin azure-eyed:

Of equal might and prudence with her sire:

And then a son, king over gods and men,

Had she brought forth, invincible of soul,

But Jove in his own breast before that hour

Deposited the goddess: evermore

So warning him of evil and of good.

Next led he shining Themis: and she bare

Order, and Justice, and the blooming Peace,

The Hours by name: who perfect all the works

Of human kind: and Destinies, whom Jove

All-wise array’d with honour: Lachesis,

Clotho, and Atropos: who deal to men

The dole of good or ill. To him anon

Old Ocean’s daughter, amiablest of mien,

Eurynome, [235]brought the three Graces forth

Beauteous of cheek: Euphrosyne, Aglaia,

And Thália blithe: their eye-lids, as they gaze,

Drop love, unnerving: and beneath the shade

Of their arch’d brows they steal the sidelong glance

Of sweetness. To the couch anon he came

Of many-nurturing Ceres: Proserpine

The snowy-arm’d she bare: her gloomy Dis

Snatch’d from her mother, and all-prudent Jove

Consign’d the prize. Next loved he the fair-hair’d

Mnemosyne: from her the Muses nine

Are born: their brows with golden fillets wreath’d;

Whom feasts delight, and rapture sweet of song.

In mingled joy with ægis-wielding Jove

Latona bore [236]the arrow-shooting Dian,

And Phœbus, loveliest of the heavenly tribe.

He last the blooming Juno led as bride:

And she, embracing with the king of gods

And men, bore Mars, and [237]Hebe, and Lucina.

He from his head disclosed himself to birth

The blue-eyed maid, Tritonian [238]Pallas; fierce,

Rousing the war-field’s tumult; unsubdued;

Leader of armies; awful: whom delight

The shout of battle and the shock of war.

Without th’ embrace of love did Juno bear

[239]Illustrious Vulcan, o’er celestials graced

With arts: and strove contending with her spouse

Emulous. From the god of sounding waves,

Shaker of earth, and Amphitrite, sprang

[240]Sea-potent Triton huge: beneath the deep

He dwells in golden edifice, a god

Of awful might. Now [241]Venus gave to Mars,

Breaker of shields, a dreadful offspring: Fear,

And Consternation: they confound, in rout

Of horrid war, the phalanx dense of men,

With city-spoiler Mars. [242]Harmonia last

She bare, whom generous Cadmus clasp’d as bride.

Daughter of Atlas, Maia bore to Jove

[243]The glorious Hermes, herald of the gods;

The sacred couch ascending. [244]Semele,

Daughter of Cadmus, melting in embrace

With Jove, gave jocund Bacchus to the light:

A mortal an immortal: now alike

Immortal deities. Alcmena bare

Strong Hercules: dissolving in embrace

With the cloud-gatherer Jove. The crippled god,

In arts illustrious, Vulcan, as his bride

The gay Aglaia led, the youngest Grace.

[245]Bacchus of golden hair, his blooming spouse

Daughter of Minos, Ariadne clasp’d

With yellow tresses. Her Saturnian Jove

Immortal made, and fearless of decay.

Fair-limb’d [246]Alcmena’s valiant son, achieved

His agonizing labours, Hebe led

A bashful bride, the daughter of great Jove

And Juno golden-sandal’d, on the mount

Olympus top’d with snow. Thrice blest who thus,

A mighty task accomplish’d, midst the gods

Uninjur’d dwells, and free from withering age

For evermore. Perseis, ocean-nymph

Illustrious, to th’ unwearied Sun produced

Circe and king Æetes. By the will

Of Heaven, Æetes, boasting for his sire

The world-enlightning Sun, Idya led

Cheek-blooming, nymph of ocean’s perfect stream:

And she, to love by balmy Venus’ aid

Subdued, [247]Medea beauteous-ankled bare.

And now farewell, ye heavenly habitants!

Ye islands, and ye continents of earth!

And thou, oh main! of briny wave profound!

Oh sweet of speech, Olympian Muses! born

From ægis-wielding Jove! sing now the tribe

Of goddesses; whoe’er, by mortals clasp’d

In love, have borne a race resembling gods.

Ceres, divinest goddess, in soft joy

Blends with Iäsius brave, in the rich tract

Of Crete, whose fallow’d glebe thrice-till’d abounds;

And [248]Plutus bare, all-bountiful, who roams

Earth, and th’ expanded surface of the sea:

And him that meets him on his way, whose hands

He grasps, him gifts he with abundant gold,

And large felicity. Harmonia, born

Of lovely Venus, gave to Cadmus’ love

Ino and Semele: and fair of cheek

Agave, and Autonöe, the bride

Of Aristæus with the clustering locks;

And Polydorus, born in towery Thebes.

Aurora to Tithonus Memnon bare,

The brazen-helm’d, the Æthiopian king,

And king Emathion: and to Cephalus

Bare she a son illustrious, Phäethon,

Gallantly brave, a mortal like to gods:

Whom, while a youth, e’en in the tender flower

Of glorious prime, a boy, and vers’d alone

In what a boy may know, love’s amorous queen

Snatch’d with swift rape away: in her blest fane

Appointing him her nightly-serving priest;

The heavenly dæmon of her sanctuary.

[249]Jason Æsonides, by heaven’s high will,

Bore from Æetes, foster-son of Jove,

His daughter: those afflictive toils achieved,

Which Pelias, mighty monarch, bold in wrong,

Unrighteous, violent of deed, imposed:

And much-enduring reach’d th’ Iolchian coast,

Wafting in winged bark the jet-eyed maid,

His blooming spouse. She yielding thus in love

To Jason, shepherd of his people, bare

Medeus, whom the son of Philyra,

[250]Sage Chiron, midst the mountain-solitudes

Train’d up to man: thus were high Jove’s designs

Fulfill’d. Now Psamathe, the goddess famed,

Who sprang from ancient Nereus of the sea,

Bare Phocus; through the lovely Venus’ aid

By Æacus embraced. To Peleus’ arms

Resign’d, the silver-footed Thetis bare

Achilles lion-hearted: cleaving fierce

The ranks of men. Wreath’d Cytherea bare

Æneas: blending in ecstatic love

With brave Anchises on the verdant top

Of Ida, wood-embosom’d, many-valed.

Now [251]Circe, from the Sun Hyperion-born

Descended, with the much-enduring man

Ulysses blending love, Latinus bare,

And Agrius, brave and blameless: far they left

Their native seats in Circe’s hallow’d isles,

And o’er the wide-famed Tyrrhene tribes held sway.

Calypso, noble midst the goddess race,

Clasp’d wise Ulysses: and from rapturous love

Nausithous and Nausinous gave to day.

Lo! these were they, who yielding to embrace

Of mortal men, themselves immortal, gave

A race resembling gods. Oh now the tribe

Of gentle women sing! Olympian maids!

Ye Muses, born from ægis-bearer Jove!

FOOTNOTES

[142] _They lightly leap in dance._] This representation of the Muses is

taken from the ancient custom of dancing round the altar during sacrifice.

[143] _In springs that gush’d fresh from the courser’s hoof._] Hippos was

an Ægyptian title of the sun. This ancient term became obsolete, and was

misapplied by the Greeks, who uniformly applied it to horses. Hippocrene

was a sacred fountain denominated from the god of light, who was the

patron of verse and science. But by the Greeks it was referred to an

animal, and supposed to have been produced by the hoof of a horse. Other

nations, says Athanasius, reverenced rivers and fountains: but above all

people in the world the Ægyptians held them in the highest honour, and

esteemed them as divine. From hence the custom passed westward to Greece,

Italy, and the extremities of Europe. One reason for holding waters

so sacred arose from a notion that they were gifted with supernatural

powers. BRYANT.

[144] _Sire of prophecy._] Phœbus is thought to be derived from Φαος

βιου, light of life: but the Greeks always associated with the name the

_prophetic_ attribute of Apollo: hence they formed from it the word

φοιβαζω, to _prophecy_: as βακχευν, to celebrate orgies or madden, is

formed from βακχος: like the _debacchor_ of the Latins. Lycophron, v. 6:

Δαφιηφαγων φοιβαζεν εκ λαιμων οπα.

From foaming mouth with laurel fed

She pour’d the voice of prophecy.

[145] _And Venus twinkling bland her tremulous lids._] Ελικοβλεφαρος

is explained by Guietus _arcuatis superciliis_: so Creech, in his

translation of a chapter of Plutarch’s Morals, where the verse is quoted;

And Venus beauteous with her bending brows.

But the Greek for an eyebrow is οφρυς. Robinson more properly interprets

it _orbiculatis palpebris_, with semicircular eye-lids: after the old

scholiast; who conceives it a metaphor drawn from ελιξ: the bending

tendril of ivy or the vine. Le Clerc explains it _volubilibus palpebris_:

and is supported by Grævius, who quotes Petronius in illustration of the

peculiar propriety of the epithet as applied to Venus:

Blandos oculos et inquietos,

Et quadam propriâ notâ loquaces.

Soft and ever restless eyes,

Still talkative, with language all their own.

Ελισσω is _circumvolvo_, to roll about.

[146] _Ye fleshly appetites._] This degrading address seems to betray a

modern hand. If the proem be genuine, the shepherd’s occupation must have

degenerated in the time of Hesiod from its ancient honourable character.

But it is not likely that an agricultural poet should speak of husbandmen

in these debasing terms. Le Clerc’s apology, that revilings such as

these belong to the manners of primeval simplicity, does not appear very

satisfactory. The poet, whoever he was, meant the address, probably, as

an exhortation to higher pursuits.

[147] _A laurel-bough._] Salmasius observes that they who aspired to

skill in divination, chewed the leaf of the laurel. Its poisonous

quality produced a preternatural action on the nerves, and a convulsion

and frothing at the mouth, favourable to the idea of being possessed

or inspired. As poets feigned a kind of divination, and a knowledge

of supernatural things, the laurel was equally a symbol of poesy and

prophecy: and held sacred to Phœbus, the god of verse and divination. We

find from Pausanias that those poets who did not play on the lyre held a

laurel-bough in their hand, during their public recitations, as the badge

of their profession. Hence probably the term “rhapsodist:” επι ραβδω

αδειν, “_to sing to the branch_.” and a rhapsody seems to have designated

such a portion of verses as the bard would recite at one time. Salmasius

seems therefore mistaken in deriving the word from ραπτειν τας ωδας,

_stitching together songs_: in allusion to the centos which the Homeric

rhapsodists were accustomed to recite from the works of Homer: although

the derivation appears countenanced by Pindar’s expression of ραπτων

επεων αοιδοι, _singers of tissued verses_.

[148] _This tale of oaks._] This seems to have been a proverbial

expression to signify any idle tale or preamble. The Scholiasts

illustrate it from Odyssey xvii. 163, where Penelope asks Ulysses, whom

she does not yet recognise, “whence he is?” and observes,

Thou comest not from some ancient oak or rock:

in allusion to the fable of men born from trees: originating, possibly,

in children being found exposed in hollow trees and cavities of rocks.

But there is another passage in Homer more to the purpose, Il. xx. 126:

It is no time from oak or hollow rock

With him to parley, as a nymph and swain,

A nymph and swain soft parley mutual hold.

COWPER.

Mr. Bryant explains this passage in Homer by the traditionary reverence

paid to caverns: which in the first ages were deemed oracular temples:

whence persons entered into compacts under rocks and oaks as places of

security. But surely there is no need to go back to the first ages, or to

dive into traditional superstitions for the solution of a circumstance so

extremely obvious, as that of two lovers conversing in the shade. Harmer

in his “Illustrations of the Classics,” vol. iii. of his “Observations

on Scripture,” renders απο δρυος, _on account of_ an oak: instead of

_from an oak_: “when people meet each other on account of some rock or

some tree which they happen upon in travelling.” But the alteration is

quite unnecessary: the word _from_ perhaps indicates that one is resting

under the tree, while the other is passing by. The adage in Hesiod is

expressed “_around_ an oak:” which implies a _number_ of persons. The

rock associated with the oak marks the peculiar climate of Greece and

the East. The shade cast by a rock is described by Eastern travellers as

singularly cool.

[149] _Pieria’s groves._] The Pierians were celebrated for their skill in

music and poetry. Hence Pieria came to be regarded as the birth place of

the Muses. BRYANT.

[150] _Bare the nine maids._] The origin of verse itself, which is to

be sought in the necessity of some mechanical help for the memory at an

æra when letters were not invented, and every thing depended on oral

tradition, obviously accounts for the fiction of memory being the mother

of the Muses. But there is a farther reason. The ancient temples were the

depositaries of all traditionary knowledge. We are told by Homer that

the voice of the Syrens was enchanting, but their knowledge of the past

equally so. The Syrens appear to have been merely priestesses of one of

this description of temples, which stood in Sicily, and was erected on

the sea-shore, answering also the purpose of a lighthouse. The rites

of the temple consisted partly of hymns chanted by young and beautiful

women to the sound of harps and flutes: and it was their office to

entangle by their allurements such strangers as touched upon the coast:

who were instantly seized by the priests and sacrificed to the solar

god. The Syrens are described as the daughters of Calliope, Melpomene,

and Terpsichore; three of the Muses: they were in fact the same with the

Muses. These temples were sacred colleges: sciences were taught there: in

particular music and astronomy. The transition was easy from the young

priestesses of these temples, to blooming goddesses who presided over

history, poetry, &c. See the “Analysis of Ancient Mythology.”

[151] _Soothing eloquence._] This passage is exactly similar to one in

the Odyssey, b. viii.:

Jove

Crowns him with eloquence: his hearers charm’d

Behold him, while with unassuming tone

He bears the prize of fluent speech from all;

And when he walks the city, as they pass,

All turn and gaze, as they had pass’d a god.

COWPER.

[152] _The great assembly._] The ancient Grecian princes, as Dionysius

of Halicarnassus remarks, were not absolute like the Asiatic monarchs:

their power being limited by laws and established customs:” and this is

perfectly consonant to the higher authority of Homer. The poet himself

appears a warm friend to monarchical rule, and takes every opportunity

zealously to inculcate loyalty. “The government of many is bad: let

there be one chief, one king.” It is, however, sufficiently evident

that the poet means here to speak of executive government only: “Let

there be one chief, one king,” he says: but he adds, “to whom Jupiter

has intrusted the sceptre and the laws, _that by them he may govern_.”

Accordingly in every Grecian government which he has occasion to enlarge

upon, he plainly discovers to us strong principles of republican rule.

Not only the council of principal men, but the assembly of the people

also is familiar to him. The name _agora_ signifying a place of meeting,

and the verb formed from it to express haranguing in assemblies of the

people, were already in common use; and to be a good public speaker

was esteemed among the highest qualifications a man could possess. In

the government of Phæacia, as described in the Odyssey, the mixture of

monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy is not less clearly marked than in

the British constitution. One chief, twelve peers (all honoured, like

the chief, with the title which we translate _king_), and the assembly

of the people, shared the supreme authority. The universal and undoubted

prerogatives of kings were religious supremacy and military command.

They often also exercised judicial power. But in all civil concerns

their authority appears very limited. Every thing, indeed, that remains

concerning government in the oldest Grecian poets and historians, tends

to demonstrate that the general spirit of it among the early Greeks was

nearly the same as among our Teutonic ancestors. The ordinary business

of the community was directed by the chiefs. Concerning extraordinary

matters and more essential interests, the multitude claimed a right to be

consulted. MITFORD, History of Greece, i. 3.

[153] _Harpers and men of song._] Singer was a common name among the

Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient people, for poet and musician;

employments which were then inseparable: as no poetry was written but

to be sung; and little or no music composed, but as an accompaniment to

poetry. BURNEY, History of Music, 312.

[154]

_Is there one_

_Who hides some fresh grief._]

This whole passage is found among the fragments attributed to Homer.

This sentiment of the power of poesy and the subjects chosen by the bard

is entirely in the spirit of antiquity, when mythology and heroism were

the favourite themes. Achilles is described by Homer as diverting the

uneasiness of his mind by warlike odes which he accompanied on the lyre,

Il. ix. 189:

Arriving soon

Among the Myrmidons, their chief they found

Soothing his sorrows with the silver-framed

Harmonious lyre, spoil taken when he took

Æetion’s city: with that lyre his cares

He soothed, and glorious heroes were his theme.

COWPER.

[155] _The servant of the Muse._] Laws were always promulgated in verse,

and often publicly sung; a practice which remained in many places long

after letters were become common: morality was taught: history was

delivered in verse. Lawgivers, philosophers, historians, all who would

apply their experience or their genius to the instruction and amusement

of others, were necessarily poets. The character of poet was therefore

a character of dignity: an opinion even of sacredness became attached

to it: a poetical genius was esteemed an effect of divine inspiration

and a mark of divine favour: and the poet, who moreover carried with

him instruction and entertainment, not to be obtained without him, was

a privileged person, enjoying by a kind of prescription the rights of

universal hospitality. MITFORD.

Yet in the vulgar tradition, Homer is represented as a mere

ballad-singing mendicant! and whoever attempts to refute, by the light of

historic evidence and of reason, this or similar absurdities of modern

ignorance, when sanctioned by popular prejudice, must expect to be set

down as a dealer in paradoxes.

[156] _First of all beings Chaos was._] The ancients were in general

materialists, and thought the world eternal. But the mundane system, or

at least the history of the world, they supposed to commence from the

deluge. The confusion which prevailed at the deluge is often represented

as the chaotic state of nature: for the earth was hid, and the heavens

obscured, and all the elements in disorder. BRYANT.

[157] _Or in the dark abysses of the ground._] Tartarus is considered by

Brucker in his epitome of the Theogony (Historia Critica Philosophiæ,

tom. 1.) as the third birth. Tartarus is, indeed, after introduced as a

person, but in the singular number: the word is here used in the plural,

and I conceive it to mean simply the cavities of the earth, and to be

connected with the preceding sentence.

[158] _The Cyclops brethren._] Thucydides acquaints us concerning the

Cyclopes, that they were the most ancient inhabitants of Sicily, but

that he could not find out their race. Strabo places them near Ætna and

Icontina, and supposes that they once ruled over that part of the island;

and it is certain that a people called Cyclopians did possess that

province. It is generally agreed by writers upon the subject, that they

were of a size superior to the common race of mankind. Among the many

tribes of the Amonians who went abroad, were to be found people who were

styled Anakim; and were descended from the sons of Anak: so that this

history, though carried to a great excess, was probably founded in truth.

They were particularly famous for architecture; and in all parts whither

they came, they erected noble structures, which were remarkable for their

height and beauty: and were often dedicated to the chief deity, the sun,

under the name of Elorus and P’Elorus. People were so struck with their

grandeur, that they called every thing great or stupendous Pelorian

(πελωρος, huge): and when they described the Cyclopians as a lofty

towering race, they came at last to borrow their ideas of this people

from the towers to which they alluded. They supposed them in height to

reach the clouds, and in bulk equal to the promontories on which these

edifices were founded. As these buildings were often-times light-houses,

and had in their upper story one round casement, “like an Argolick

buckler or the moon,” by which they afforded light in the night-season,

the Greeks made this a characteristic of the people. They supposed this

aperture to have been an eye, which was fiery and glaring, and placed

in the middle of their foreheads. What confirmed the mistake was the

representation of an eye, which was often engraved over the entrance of

these temples: the chief deity of Ægypt being elegantly represented by

the symbol of an eye, which was intended to signify the superintendency

of Providence. The notion of the Cyclopes framing the thunder and

lightning for Jupiter, arose chiefly from the Cyclopians engraving

hieroglyphics of this sort upon the temples of the deity. The poets

considered them merely in the capacity of blacksmiths, and condemned them

to the anvil. BRYANT.

The proximity of Ætna doubtless had its share in this delusion, Virg. Æn.

viii. 417:

Deep below

In hollow caves the fires of Ætna glow.

The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal:

Loud strokes and hissings of tormented steel

Are heard around: the boiling waters roar,

And smoky flames through fuming tunnels soar.

Hither the father of the fire by night,

Through the brown air precipitates his flight:

On their eternal anvils here he found

The brethren beating, and the blows go round.

DRYDEN.

[159] _He took the sickle._] In a fragment of Sanchoniatho, the Phœnician

philosopher, translated by Philo the Jew, is recorded this very history

of Uranus and Cronus, or Saturn. De Gebelin, in his “Monde Primitif,”

resolves it, according to his system, into the invention of reaping,

which he supposes Saturn to personify. But Saturn is often represented

with a ship, as well as a sickle; which has no reference to agriculture.

The explanation may, however, be correct, if we consider Saturn not as

a mere figurative prosopopœia of reaping, but as the real person who

restored the labours of harvest; in the same manner as his Greek name

Cronus, which some have thought to intimate a personification of Time,

points out very significantly the person who began the new æra of time:

the great father of the post-diluvian world. The type of the ship on

the ancient coins of Saturn is an apposite emblem of the ark: and the

concealment of the children of Heaven in a cavern seems an obscure

remnant of the same tradition.

[160] _The foam-born goddess._] The name of the Dove among the ancient

Amonians was Iön and Iönah. This term is often found compounded, and

expressed Ad-Iönah, queen dove: from which title another deity, Adiona,

was constituted. This mode of idolatry must have been very ancient, as

it is mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and is one species of

false worship, which Moses forbade by name. According to our method of

rendering the Hebrew term it is called Idione. This Idione or Adione

was the Dione of the Greeks: the deity who was sometimes looked upon as

the mother of Venus: at other times as Venus herself: and styled Venus

Dionæa. Venus was no other than the ancient Iönah: and we shall find in

her history numberless circumstances relating to the Noachic dove, and

to the deluge. We are told, when the waters covered the earth, that the

dove came back to Noah, having roamed over a vast uninterrupted ocean,

and found no rest for the sole of her foot. But upon being sent forth a

second time by the patriarch, in order to form a judgment of the state

of the earth, she returned to the ark in the evening, and “Lo! in her

mouth was an olive leaf plucked off.” From hence Noah conceived his first

hopes of the waters being assuaged, and the elements reduced to order.

He likewise began to foresee the change that was to happen in the earth:

that seed-time and harvest would be renewed, and the ground restored to

its pristine fecundity. In the hieroglyphical sculptures and paintings

where this history was represented, the dove was depicted hovering over

the face of the deep. Hence it is that Dione, or Venus, is said to have

risen from the sea. Hence it is, also, that she is said to preside over

waters, to appease the troubled ocean, and to cause by her presence a

universal calm: that to her were owing the fruits of the earth, and

the flowers of the field were renewed by her influence. The address of

Lucretius to this goddess is founded on traditions, which manifestly

allude to the history above mentioned. BRYANT.

[161] _Love track’d her steps._] What the Greeks called Iris, was

expressed Eiras by the Ægyptians. The Greeks out of Eiras formed Eros,

a god of love, whom they annexed to Venus, and made her son: and

finding that the bow was his symbol, instead of the iris they gave him

a material bow, with the addition of a quiver and arrows. The bows of

Apollo and Diana were formed from the same original. After the descent

from the ark the first wonderful occurrence was the bow in the clouds,

and the covenant of which it was made an emblem. At this season another

æra began. The earth was supposed to be renewed, and Time to return to

a second infancy. They therefore formed an emblem of a child with the

rainbow, to denote this renovation in the world, and called him Eros,

or Divine Love. But however like a child he might be expressed, the

more early mythologists esteemed him the most ancient of the gods; and

Lucian, with great humour, makes Jupiter very much puzzled to account

for the appearance of this infant deity. “Why thou urchin,” says the

father of the gods, “how came you with that little childish face, when I

know you to be as old as Iapetus?” The Greek and Roman poets reduced the

character of this deity to that of a wanton, mischievous pigmy: but he

was otherwise esteemed of old. He is styled by Plato a mighty god; and

it is said that Eros was the cause of the greatest blessings to mankind.

BRYANT.

[162] _Virgin whisperings._] These attributes of Venus suggest a

comparison with the properties of her cestus as described by Homer:

It was an ambush of sweet snares: replete

With love, desire, soft intercourse of hearts,

And music of resistless whisper’d sounds,

Which from the wisest steal their best resolves.

COWPER.

[163] _Then bare she Momus._] Hesiod has truly painted the nature

of detraction (Momus) in describing it as born from Night. The same

origin is given to Care: because all anxieties are increased in the

night-season: whence Night is styled by Ovid, “the mighty nurse of

Cares.” LE CLERC.

[164] _Th’ Hesperian maids._] The ancient temples in which the sun was

adored often stood within enclosures of large extent. Some of them were

beautifully planted, and ornamented with pavilions and fountains. Places

of this nature are alluded to under the description of the gardens of

the Hesperides and Alcinous. They were also regal edifices: and termed

Tor-chom and Tar-chon; which signified a regal tower, and was of old

a high place or temple of Cham. By a corruption it was in later times

rendered Trachon. The term was still further sophisticated by the

Greeks, and expressed Drachon. The situation of these buildings on a

high eminence, and the reverence in which they were held, made them be

looked upon as places of great security. On these accounts they were

the repositories of much treasure. When the Greeks understood that in

these temples the people worshipped a serpent-deity, they concluded that

Trachon was a serpent: hence the name Draco came to be appropriated to

that imaginary animal. Hence also arose the notion of treasures being

guarded by dragons, and of the gardens of the Hesperides being under the

protection of a serpent. BRYANT.

Perhaps also in these gardens was kept up the ancient Paradisiacal

tradition: as the golden apples and the dragon present an analogy with

the hieroglyphic account given by Moses of the forbidden fruit and the

serpent. This is the more probable, as it is evident this tradition

had mixed itself in the dispersed legends of pagan mythology from the

remarkable coincidence of the “serpent-woman,” considered by the Mexicans

as the mother of the human race, and ranked next to “the god of the

celestial paradise.” The Mexican temples, also, where “the great spirit,”

or sun personified, was worshipped, are described by Humboldt in his

“American Researches,” as raised in the midst of a square and walled

enclosure, which contained gardens and fountains. This mixed worship of

the Paradisiacal serpent may account for a serpent, twisted into the form

of a fillet, being made an emblem of the sun’s disk: and for snaky hair

being typical of divine wisdom: while the tresses were, at the same time,

so disposed as to figure the sun’s rays, and the human visage represented

his orb.

The Hesperian virgins seem the same with the Muses and Syrens, the

priestesses of the temple: and their singing sweetly on their watch, as

described afterwards by Hesiod, alludes to the hymns which they chanted

at the altar. They are made the daughters of Night, because the gardens

were in Afric: which, equally with Italy and Spain, was denominated

_Hesperia_ by the Greeks: and the region of the west was considered as

synonymous with Night.

[165] _Eldest of all his race._] The history of the patriarch was

recorded by the ancients through their whole theology. All the principal

deities of the sea, however diversified, have a manifest relation to him.

Noah was figured under the history of Nereus: and his character of an

unerring prophet, as well as of a just, righteous, and benevolent man, is

plainly described by Hesiod. BRYANT.

[166] _Then rose Thaumas vast._] That beautiful phenomenon in the

heavens, which we call the rainbow, was by the Ægyptians styled Thamuz,

and signified “the wonder.” The Greeks expressed it Thaumas: and hence

was derived θαυμαζω, to wonder. This Thaumas they did not immediately

appropriate to the bow: but supposed them to be two personages, and

Thaumas the parent. BRYANT.

[167] _Phorcys the mighty._] Homer calls him “the old man of the sea:”

and gives precisely the same appellation to Proteus. The character of the

latter varies only from that of Nereus in the quality of transforming

himself into sundry shapes. This may have a reference to the great

diluvian changes, varying the face of nature. The connexion of Phorcys

and Ceto favours the supposition that these three deities are one and the

same personage.

“The ark in which mankind were preserved was figured under the semblance

of a large fish. It was called Cetos.” BRYANT.

_Cetos_ is the Greek term for a whale.

[168] _Rose-arm’d Eunice._] ροδοπῃχυς, _rosy-elbow’d_: this epithet,

together with that of ροδοδακτυλος, _rosy-fingered_, was derived from

the artificial custom of staining the elbow and tops of the fingers with

rose-colour. In Dallaway’s Constantinople it is remarked of the modern

Greek girls “that the nails both of the fingers and the feet are always

stained of a rose-colour:” a curious vestige of Grecian antiquity.

[169] _Nereid nymphs._] Spenser, in his “Spousals of the Thames and

Medway,” b. 4. cant. ii. of the “Faery Queen,” has imposed on himself

a task, from which a translator would fain escape: and has transposed

into his stanzas the whole fifty Nereids of Hesiod, together with his

catalogue of Rivers.

[170] _The sister-harpies._] The harpies were priests of the sun: they

were denominated from their seat of residence, which was an oracular

temple called Harpi. The representation of them as winged animals was

only the insigne of the people, as the eagle and vulture were of the

Ægyptians. They seem to have been a set of rapacious persons, who for

their repeated acts of violence and cruelty were driven out of Bithynia,

their country. BRYANT.

[171] _The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray._] The circumstance of their

being gray seems to be explained by a passage of Æschylus, who describes

them as half-women, half-swans:

The Gorgonian plains

Of Cisthine, where dwell the Phorcydes

Swan-form’d, three ancient nymphs, one common eye

Their portion.

_Prometheus Chained._

“This history relates to an Amonian temple founded in the extreme parts

of Africa, in which there were three priestesses of Canaänitish race, who

on that account are said to be in the shape of swans: the swan being the

insigne under which their country was denoted. The notion of their having

but one eye among them took its rise from a hieroglyphic very common

in Ægypt and Canaän: this was the representation of an eye, which was

engraved on the pediment of their temples.” BRYANT.

The Gorgons were probably similar personages: they are described by

Æschylus with wings and serpentine locks: attributes apparently borrowed

from the emblematical devices in the temples of Ægypt. Gorgon was a title

of Minerva at Cyrene in Lybia.

[172]

_When Perseus smote_

_Her neck._]

The island of Seriphus is represented as having once abounded with

serpents; and it is styled by Virgil in his Ciris _serpentifera_: it had

this epithet, not on account of any real serpents, but according to the

Greeks, from Medusa’s head, which was brought thither by Perseus. By this

is meant the serpent-deity, whose worship was here introduced by a people

called Peresians. It was usual with the Ægyptians to describe upon the

architrave of their temples some emblem of the deity who there presided:

among others the serpent was esteemed a most salutary emblem, and they

made use of it to signify superior skill and knowledge. A beautiful

female countenance surrounded with an assemblage of serpents was made

to denote divine wisdom. Many ancient temples were ornamented with this

curious hieroglyphic. These devices upon temples were often esteemed as

talismans, and supposed to have a hidden influence by which the building

was preserved. In the temple of Minerva, at Tigea, was some sculpture of

Medusa, which the goddess was said to have given to preserve the city

from ever being taken in war. It was probably from this opinion that

the Athenians had the head of Medusa represented on the walls of their

Acropolis; and it was the insigne of many cities, as we find from ancient

coins. Perseus was one of the most ancient heroes in the mythology of

Greece: the merit of whose supposed achievements the Helladians took to

themselves, and gave out that he was a native of Argos. Herodotus more

truly represents him as an Assyrian; by which is meant a Babylonian. Yet

he resided in Ægypt, and is said to have reigned at Memphis. To say the

truth, he was _worshipped_ at that place: for Perseus was a title of the

deity, and was no other than the Sun, the chief god of the gentile world.

His true name was Perez; rendered Peresis, Perses, and Perseus: and in

the account given of this personage we have the history of the Peresians

in their several peregrinations; who were no other than the Heliadæ and

Osirians. It is a mixed history in which their forefathers are alluded

to: particularly their great progenitor, the father of mankind. He was

supposed to have had a renewal of life: they therefore described Perseus

as enclosed in an ark and exposed in a state of childhood on the waters,

after having been conceived in a shower of gold. BRYANT.

[173] _The great Chrysaor._] Chus by the Ægyptians and Canaanites was

styled Or-chus, and Chus-or: the latter of which was expressed by the

Greeks by a word more familiar to their ear Chrusor; as if it had a

reference to gold. This name was sometimes changed into Chrusaor: and

occurs in many places where the Cuthites were known to have settled. They

were a long time in Ægypt: and we read of a Chrusaor in those parts, who

is said to have sprung from the blood of Medusa. We meet with the same

Chrusaor in the regions of Asia Minor, especially among the Carians: in

those parts he was particularly worshipped, and said to have been the

first deified mortal. The Grecians borrowed this term, and applied it

to Apollo: and from this epithet, Chrusaor, he was denominated the god

of the golden sword. This weapon was at no time ascribed to him, nor is

he ever represented with one either on a gem or marble. He is described

by Homer in the hymn to Apollo, as wishing for a harp and a bow. There

is never any mention made of a sword, nor was the term Chrusaor of

Grecian etymology. Since, then, we may be assured that Chus was the

person alluded to, we need not wonder that so many cities, where Apollo

was particularly worshipped, should be called Chruse, and Chrusopolis.

Nor is this observable in cities only, but in rivers. It was usual in

the first ages to consecrate rivers to deities, and to call them after

their names. Hence many were denominated from Chrusorus: which by the

Greeks was changed to χρυσορροας, _flowing with gold_: and from this

mistake, the Nile was called _Chrusorrhoas_, which had no pretensions to

gold. In all the places where the sons of Chus spread themselves, the

Greeks introduced some legend about gold. Hence we read of a _golden_

fleece at Colchis: _golden_ apples at the Hesperides: at Tartessus a

_golden_ cup: and at Cuma in Campania a _golden_ branch. But although

this repeated mistake arose in great measure from the term Chusus being

easily convertible into Chrusus, there was another obvious reason for

the change. Chus was by many of the Eastern nations expressed Cuth; and

his posterity, the Cuthim. This term, in the ancient Chaldaic and other

Amonian languages, signified _gold_: and hence many cities and countries

where the Cuthites settled were described as golden. BRYANT.

[174] _And Pegasus the steed._] Pegasus received its name from a

well-known emblem, the horse of Poseidon: by which we are to understand

an ark or ship. “By horses,” says Artemidorus, “the poets mean ships:”

and hence it is that Poseidon is called Hippius; for there is a strict

analogy between the poetical or winged horse on land, and a real ship in

the sea. Hence it came that Pegasus was esteemed the horse of Poseidon

(Neptune), and often named _scuphius_; a name which relates to a ship,

and shows the purport of the emblem. The ark, we know, was preserved by

divine providence from the sea, which would have overwhelmed it: and as

it was often represented under this symbol of a horse, it gave rise to

the fable of the two chief deities, Jupiter and Neptune, disputing about

horses. BRYANT.

To this we may add the still more remarkable fable of the dispute between

Neptune and Pallas: when the former produces a horse, and the latter

an olive-tree. “These notions,” observes the author of the Analysis,

“arose from emblematical descriptions of the deluge, which the Grecians

had received by tradition: but what was general they limited, and

appropriated to particular places.”

[175] _Old Nilus’ fountains._] Ωκεανου περι πηγας. Le Clerc remarks that

“this derivation is absurd: as we do not talk of the fountains of the

sea, but of rivers.” He adds, however, that “Hesiod more than once calls

the ocean the river:” and this should have led him to perceive that it is

in fact a river of which Hesiod speaks. The oceanic river was the Nile,

which in very ancient times was called the Oceanus.

[176] _Geryon rose._] One of the principal and most ancient settlements

of the Amonians upon the ocean was at Gades; where a prince was supposed

to have reigned, named Geryon. The harbour at Gades was a very fine one,

and had several tor, or towers, to direct shipping: and as it was usual

to imagine the deity to whom the temple was erected to have been the

builder, this temple was said to have been built by Hercules. All this

the Grecians took to themselves. They attributed the whole to Hercules

of Thebes: and as he was supposed to conquer wherever he came, they made

him subdue Geryon: and changing the tor or towers into so many head of

cattle, they describe him as leading them off in triumph. Tor-keren

signified a regal tower; and this being interpreted τρικαρηνος, this

personage was in consequence described with three heads. BRYANT.

Erythia, according to Pliny, is another name for Gades.

[177] _In the deep-hollow’d cavern of a rock._] It is probable that at

Arima in Cilicia there was an Ophite temple; which, like all the most

ancient temples, was a vast cavern. Some emblematical sculpture of the

serpent-deity may have given rise to the creation of this mythological

prodigy. The Hydra had, probably, a similar origin.

[178] _A whirlwind, rude and wild._] There were two distinct Typhons or

Typhaons, although they are sometimes confounded together. The one is the

same as the gigantic Typhæus, subsequently described by Hesiod: the other

the whirlwind here mentioned.

“By this Typhon was signified a mighty whirlwind, or inundation. It had

a relation to the deluge. In hieroglyphical descriptions, the dove was

represented as hovering over the mundane egg which was exposed to the

fury of Typhon: for an egg, containing in it the proper elements of life,

was thought no improper emblem of the ark, in which were preserved the

rudiments of the future world.” BRYANT.

Robinson is therefore manifestly wrong in proposing to substitute ανομον,

_lawless_, for ανεμον, _a wind_: though the reading be countenanced by

the Bodleian copy and the Florentine edition of Junta.

[179] _The fifty-headed Cerberus._] Cerberus was the name of a place,

though esteemed the dog of hell. We are told by Eusebius from Plutarch,

that Cerberus was the Sun: but the term properly signified the temple,

or place, of the Sun. The great luminary was styled by the Amonians both

Or and Abor; that is, light, and the parent of light: and Cerberus is

properly Kir-abor, the place of that deity. The same temple had different

names from the diversity of the god’s titles, who was there worshipped.

It was called Tor-caph-el; which was changed to τρικεφαλος: and Cerberus

was from hence supposed to have had three heads. BRYANT.

The poets increased the number of heads, as they seem to have thought a

multitude of heads or arras sublimely terrific. Pindar out-does Hesiod

by a whole fifty, and speaks of the _hundred-headed_ Cerberus. Εκατον τα

κεφαλον.