_AGE OF EPIC POETRY._
HOMER AND HIS WORKS.
=Homer.=—The oldest literary productions of Greece extant are the
poems of Homer, the most ancient monuments of Aryan poetry west of the
Persian Gulf. About 1000 B.C., among the legion of ballad-writers,
the reciters of battle-songs, myths, and traditions (known as
Rhapsodists—_ode-stitchers_), there arose an Ionian poet who soon
towered head and shoulders above them all—a giant among the giants of
literature—HOMER, of unique genius and world-wide fame.
As to Homer’s life, we must ever remain in the dark. For the honor
of giving him birth, seven cities of antiquity disputed,[21] Smyrna
seeming to have the best claim. If we may believe tradition, he gave
early evidence of his divine powers. Chance took him on a sea-voyage,
during which he visited many countries, among them Ithaca, the home
of Ulysses, one of his heroes. On the island of Chi’os, his favorite
resort, he is thought to have written his epics the Il’iad and
Od’yssey, the first in early manhood, the second in old age.
Legend relates that Homer, twice warned by an oracle to _beware of the
young men’s riddle_, went ashore one day on I’os, an island of the
Cyc’lades, and there, noticing some boys who had been fishing, asked
them, “What luck?” “What we caught we left, what we could not catch we
carried with us,” was the reply. Unable to guess the riddle, the old
poet died of vexation. According to another account, disease carried
him off. He was buried on the sea-shore at Ios, where in after years
this epitaph marked his tomb:—
“Here Homer the Divine, in earthy bed,
Poet of heroes, rests his sacred head.”
=Homer’s Style.=—Homer’s Iliad was the first Greek poem in which
were combined ingenuity of plot, unity of subject, and a faithful
delineation of character throughout. He deals with heroes, but they
are men of like passions with ourselves. The Odyssey, if less sublime,
in its pathos and fine touches of nature shows the same rich gifts of
genius as the older poem of loftier flight. Both works are written in
hexameter verse, the true metre of the ancient epic.
The distinguishing features of Homer’s style are clearness, a vigor
which makes us feel we are in the presence of a master, and a childlike
simplicity that well accords with his sublime themes. His fidelity
to nature is matched only by Shakespeare’s; and imagery, profuse as
it is rich, life-like, and appropriate, lights up every page. Simile
is Homer’s own figure; and transporting pictures flash ever and anon
across the scene, called up by his magic wand. For example:—
“As when, high-fed with grain, a stall-bound steed
Snaps his strong cord, and flies, from bondage freed,
Strikes with resounding hoof the earth, and flies
Where the wide champaign spread before him lies,
Seeks the remembered haunts, on fire to lave
His glowing limbs, and dash amid the wave,
High rears his crest, and tossing with disdain
Wide o’er his shoulders spreads his stream of mane,
And fierce in beauty, graceful in his speed,
Snuffs his known fellows in the distant mead:
Thus Hector—”
“As a young olive, in some sylvan scene,
Crowned by fresh fountains with eternal green,
Lifts its gay head in snowy flowerets fair,
And plays and dances to the gentle air;
When lo! by blasts uprooted, whirled around,
Low lies the plant, extended on the ground:
Thus in his beauty young Euphorbus lay.”
Homer astonishes us with his universal knowledge. He names every part
of a vessel technically with all the accuracy of a veteran seaman; he
is as conversant with the details of a sacrifice as the officiating
priest; he describes a conflict between two warriors with the precision
of a master of fence; he sketches the forms and usages of palaces as
if born and bred in kings’ courts, and is equally familiar with the
manners of the meanest hind. Everywhere he is at home.
Other poets[22] may be stars in the firmament, but Homer, as Longi’nus
says, is the sun in the zenith. His poetry is all nature, life, action,
fire. It breathes an atmosphere of pure morality, and furnishes ideal
characters long held up as models to the Grecian youth, who learned
his verses by heart and in some cases could even repeat his entire
poems. Human genius has left on earth at intervals of centuries a few
imperishable monuments; none nobler among these than the marvellous
Greek epics.
=Plan of the Iliad.=—The Iliad, a poem of twenty-four books, is a
tale of the siege of Troy (Il’ium), a city on the coast of Asia Minor
(probable date of the siege, 1194-1184 B.C.). The cause of the war was
the perfidious conduct of Paris, son of Priam, the Trojan monarch.
Hospitably entertained at the court of Menela’us, king of Sparta, he
eloped with Helen, the wife of his host, the most beautiful of women,
and carried her off to Asia with the treasures of her husband. To
avenge this outrage, Menelaus, supported by Nestor the sage of Py’los,
called upon the Greek princes, collected an armament of a thousand
ships, the command of which was conferred upon his brother Agamemnon,
and set sail for Troy. A war of ten years followed, which ended in
the capture of the city by stratagem, the slaughter of Priam and his
family, and the enslavement of many of the Trojans.
The special subject of the Iliad is the wrath of the Thessalian
Achilles (_a-kil’leez_), the leading warrior of the Grecian host,
and the time of the action is near the close of the war. Agamemnon,
compelled to restore to her father, a priest of Apollo, the captive
maid Chryse’is who had fallen to his share, seizes upon Brise’is, a
virgin allotted to Achilles. A quarrel results, and Achilles withdraws
from the camp.
Emboldened by his absence, the Trojans redouble their efforts.
Misfortunes to the Greek cause follow; and though many heroes second
only to Achilles—the stalwart Ajax, the cunning Ulysses, king of
Ithaca, Menelaus, and Diomede—exert themselves to turn the tide of
battle, the Greek host is made keenly to feel the loss of its puissant
champion. Jupiter, king of heaven, sides with the Trojans; and Hector
“of the dancing helm-crest” drives the besiegers to their ships.
At length Achilles, still unwilling to join in the fray himself,
allows Patro’clus, his bosom-friend, to lead his Myrmidons to the
rescue. Arrayed in the armor of the Thessalian chief, Patroclus puts
to flight the deceived Trojans; but, pursuing them too far, receives
a death-wound from the hand of Hector. The news of his friend’s fall
fills Achilles with thirst for revenge. A reconciliation is effected
with Agamemnon; Achilles returns to the field; the enemy are thrown
into confusion; and Hector, pierced by his spear, is dragged in triumph
at Achilles’ chariot-wheels. The wrath of the Greek hero is finally
appeased by the sacrifice of twelve Trojan captives at the funeral of
Patroclus.
To redeem the body of his son, old Priam, alone and unarmed, enters the
Grecian camp, is well received by Achilles, who melts into pity at the
sight of the grief-stricken suppliant, accomplishes his purpose, and
returns to Troy with Hector’s corpse. This meeting between Achilles and
Priam is counted among the finest scenes.—The Iliad closes with the
obsequies of Hector. (_See Gladstone’s “Homer and the Homeric Age.”_)
Achilles, the central figure of the poem, over whose grave Alexander
wept jealous tears, was the impersonation of youthful beauty and
physical prowess. Brave, generous, passionate, devoted in his
friendship but awful in his implacable anger, in him we are brought
face to face with the ideal of Greek chivalry. Hector, the magnanimous
Trojan hero, was the type of moral courage and domestic virtue. He
appears as the affectionate husband, the loving father, kind even to
fallen Helen. Homer has painted with exquisite touch a parting scene
between Hector and his consort Androm’ache, possessed of every wifely
virtue. This passage, herewith presented, is pronounced the most
beautiful in the Iliad.
PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.
“Hector left in haste
The mansion, and retraced his way between
The rows of stately dwellings, traversing
The mighty city. When at length he reached
The Scæan gates, that issue on the field,
His spouse, the nobly dowered Andromache,
Came forth to meet him—daughter of the prince
Eëtion, who, among the woody slopes
Of Placos, in the Hypoplacian town
Of Thebè,[23] ruled Cilicia and her sons,
And gave his child to Hector great in arms.
She came attended by a maid, who bore
A tender child—a babe too young to speak—
Upon her bosom; Hector’s only son,
Beautiful as a star, whom Hector called
Scamandrius, but all else Astyanax,—
The city’s lord,—since Hector stood the sole
Defence of Troy. The father on his child
Looked with a silent smile. Andromache
Pressed to his side meanwhile, and all in tears
Clung to his hand, and, thus beginning, said:—
‘Too brave! thy valor yet will cause thy death.
Thou hast no pity on thy tender child,
Nor me, unhappy one, who soon must be
Thy widow. All the Greeks will rush on thee
To take thy life. A happier lot were mine,
If I must lose thee, to go down to earth,
For I shall have no hope when thou art gone,—
Nothing but sorrow. Father have I none,
And no dear mother. Great Achilles slew
My father, when he sacked the populous town
Of the Cilicians,—Thebè with high gates.
‘Twas there he smote Eëtion, yet forbore
To make his arms a spoil; he dared not that,
But burned the dead with his bright armor on,
And raised a mound above him. Mountain nymphs,
Daughters of ægis-bearing[24] Jupiter,
Came to the spot and planted it with elms.
Seven brothers had I in my father’s house,
And all went down to Hades in one day;
Achilles the swift-footed slew them all
Among their slow-paced bullocks and white sheep.
My mother, princess on the woody slopes
Of Placos, with his spoils he bore away,
And only for large ransom gave her back.
But her Diana, archer-queen, struck down
Within her father’s palace. Hector, thou
Art father and dear mother now to me,
And brother and my youthful spouse besides.
In pity keep within the fortress here,
Nor make thy child an orphan nor thy wife
A widow.’
Then answered Hector, great in war: ‘All this
I bear in mind, dear wife; but I should stand
Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames
Of Troy, were I to keep aloof and shun
The conflict, coward-like. Not thus my heart
Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare
And strike among the foremost sons of Troy,
Upholding my great father’s fame and mine;
Yet well in my undoubting mind I know
The day shall come in which our sacred Troy,
And Priam, and the people over whom
Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.
But not the sorrows of the Trojan race,
Nor those of Hecuba[25] herself, nor those
Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait
My brothers many and brave,—who all at last,
Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust,—
Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek
Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee
Thy day of freedom. Thou in Argos then
Shalt, at another’s bidding, ply the loom,
And from the fountain of Messeis draw
Water, or from the Hypereian spring,
Constrained, unwilling try thy cruel lot.
And then shall some one say who sees thee weep,
“This was the wife of Hector, most renowned
Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought
Around their city.” So shall some one say,
And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him
Who haply might, have kept afar the day
Of thy captivity. Oh! let the earth
Be heaped above my head in death, before
I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!’
So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms
To take the boy; the boy shrank crying back
To his fair nurse’s bosom, scared to see
His father helmeted in glittering brass,
And eying with affright the horse-hair plume
That grimly nodded from the lofty crest.
At this both parents in their fondness laughed,
And hastily the mighty Hector took
The helmet from his brow, and laid it down
Gleaming upon the ground; and, having kissed
His darling son and tossed him up in play,
Prayed thus to Jove, and all the gods of heaven:—
‘O Jupiter and all ye deities,
Vouchsafe that this my son may yet become
Among the Trojans eminent like me,
And nobly rule in Ilium. May they say,
“This man is greater than his father was!”
When they behold him from the battle-field
Bring back the bloody spoil of the slain foe,—
That so his mother may be glad at heart.’
So speaking, to the arms of his dear spouse
He gave the boy; she on her fragrant breast
Received him, weeping as she smiled. The chief
Beheld, and, moved with tender pity, smoothed
Her forehead gently with his hand and said:—
‘Sorrow not thus, beloved one, for me.
No living man can send me to the shades
Before my time; no man of woman born,
Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
But go thou home, and tend thy labors there,—
The web, the distaff,—and command thy maids
To speed the work. The cares of war pertain
To all men born in Troy, and most to me.’
Thus speaking, mighty Hector took again
His helmet, shadowed with the horse-hair plume,
While homeward his beloved consort went,
Oft looking back and shedding many tears.
Soon was she in the spacious palace-halls
Of the man-queller Hector. There she found
A troop of maidens,—with them all she shared
Her grief; and all in his own house bewailed
The living Hector whom they thought no more
To see returning from the battle-field,
Safe from the rage and weapons of the Greeks.”
BRYANT.
The ancients implicitly believed the story of the Iliad, but modern
scepticism has doubted its truth and questioned the authenticity of the
poem itself. The German critic Wolf and others have even gone so far as
to deny that any such person as Homer ever existed, contending that the
name means simply a _fitter together or compiler_, and that the great
epic is a mosaic of romantic legends by different rhapsodists, for
years kept from perishing merely by oral repetition.
Such, however, is the continuity of the narrative, the identity of
style, the consistency in carrying out the several characters, that
this theory, ingeniously as it has been urged, lacks credibility.
We see no reason to doubt that, despite a few minor discrepancies,
one great intellect gave birth in the main to both these epics; that
whatever foundations for them may have been laid in previous ballads,
the glorious superstructures were reared by one master-builder. It is
easier to believe that there was one transcendent genius, than that
there were half a dozen of uniform poetic power, competent to have had
a hand in works so glorious—works displaying perfect unity of design,
and taste so faultless that from them, as standards, have been deduced
the very principles of criticism and laws of epic poetry.
Besides the internal evidence of its authenticity, the historical facts
woven into the Iliad have received unexpected confirmation in the
discoveries of Doctor Schliemann, a German explorer who claims to have
unearthed the Ilium of Homer, and to have found among its ruins gold
and amber ornaments once worn by King Priam.
=Plan of the Odyssey.=—In the Odyssey, divided like the Iliad
into twenty-four books, Homer has immortalized the story of the
return-voyage of Ulysses (_Odysseus_ in Greek) from Troy to Ithaca.
After a series of remarkable adventures and hair-breadth escapes,
the hero is cast on the lovely island of the sea-nymph Calypso, who,
becoming enamored of him, detains him for seven years. During this
time, a number of insolent suitors force themselves upon Ulysses’
faithful wife Penelope, take up their residence at her court, and there
lead a riotous life, hoping that the queen will bestow her hand on one
of them and thus make him lord of Ithaca. They even plan the murder of
her son Telem’achus.
Admonished by Jupiter, Calypso reluctantly allows Ulysses to depart,
and he finally reaches Ithaca in safety. Disguised as a beggar, he
enters his palace after an absence of twenty years, to endure the
insults of the suitors, but to concert with his son for their overthrow.
On the following day, a great festival is held, and Penelope agrees to
give her hand to him who shall send an arrow from Ulysses’ bow through
a row of twelve rings. The suitors try in turn without success; but
the beggar, obtaining possession of the bow, draws the shaft to its
head and accomplishes the feat. Then turning on the trembling suitors,
he showers his arrows among them, and none escape. The true-hearted
Penelope is restored to him whom she had wept as lost, and husband and
wife sit down together to talk over the sorrows of the past.
“She told him of the scorn and wrong
She long had suffered in her house,
From the detested suitor throng,
Each wooing her to be his spouse;
How, for their feasts, her sheep and kine
Were slaughtered, while they quaffed her wine
In plentiful carouse.
And he, the noble wanderer, spoke
Of many a deed of peril sore,
Of men who fell beneath his stroke,
Of all the sorrowing tasks he bore.
She listened with delighted ear;
Sleep never came her eyelids near,
Till all the tale was o’er.”
Ulysses next discovers himself to his father; and they two, with their
friends, succeed in putting down the adherents of the suitors and
restoring peace to the kingdom.
Among the most beautiful passages of the Odyssey is that in which
the poet introduces us to the happy household of Alcinoüs, king of
an island on which Ulysses was thrown. Charming is the simple sketch
he gives of the unaffected princess of this isle, just before her
marriage, driving her maidens to the river in her father’s chariot, to
wash the robes of state, lunch, and disport upon the bank while the
clothes are drying. The royal mother superintends the weaving, the
royal daughter the washing. We quote Homer’s description of the
PALACE AND GARDEN OF ALCINOÜS.
“Ulysses, then, toward the palace moved
Of King Alcinoüs, but immersed in thought
Stood first and paused, ere with his foot he pressed
The brazen threshold; for a light he saw,
As of the sun or moon, illuming clear
The palace of Phæacia’s mighty king.
Walls plated bright with brass on either side
Stretched from the portal to the interior house,
With azure cornice crowned; the doors were gold,
Which shut the palace fast; silver the posts
Reared on a brazen threshold, and above,
The lintels, silver architraved with gold.
Mastiffs, in gold and silver, lined the approach
On either side, by art celestial framed
Of Vulcan, guardians of Alcinoüs’ gate
Forever, unobnoxious to decay.
Sheer from the threshold to the inner house
Fixed thrones the walls, through all their length, adorned,
With mantles overspread of subtlest warp
Transparent, work of many a female hand.
On these the princes of Phæacia sat,
Holding perpetual feasts, while golden youths
On all the sumptuous altars stood, their hands
With burning torches charged, which, night by night,
Shed radiance over all the festive throng.
Full fifty female menials served the king
In household offices; the rapid mills
These turning, pulverize the mellowed grain;
Those, seated orderly, the purple fleece
Wind off, or ply the loom, restless as leaves
Of lofty poplars fluttering in the breeze;
Bright as with oil the new-wrought texture shone.
Without the court, and to the gates adjoined,
A spacious garden lay, fenced all around
Secure, four acres measuring complete.
There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree,
Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright,
The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth.
Those fruits nor winter’s cold nor summer’s heat
Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang
Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes
Gently on all, enlarging these, and those
Maturing genial; in an endless course
Pears after pears to full dimensions swell,
Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again
Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped)
The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.
There too, well-rooted, and of fruit profuse,
His vineyard grows; part, wide-extended, basks
In the sun’s beams; the arid level glows;
In part they gather, and in part they tread
The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes
Here put their blossom forth, there gather fast
Their blackness. On the garden’s verge extreme
Flowers of all hues smile all the year, arranged
With neatest art judicious, and amid
The lovely scene two fountains welling forth,
One visits, into every part diffused,
The garden ground, the other soft beneath
The threshold steals into the palace court,
Whence every citizen his vase supplies.
Such were the ample blessings on the house
Of King Alcinoüs by the gods bestowed.”—COWPER.
=Minor Poems of Homer.=—The Iliad and the Odyssey are the only
authentic productions of Homer. To their author, however, have been
attributed about thirty hymns and several minor poems, which have
little claim to so distinguished an origin. Of these, “the Margites,”
a satire on a blockhead who knew much “but everything knew ill,” was
probably the work of some clever Athenian in an age when epic poetry
was a thing of the past; the poem is no longer extant.
“The Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” a mock heroic of comparatively
modern birth, is still preserved and appreciated. It is a witty
burlesque on the Iliad (perhaps the earliest burlesque extant),
written in a bold and flowing style. The plot is brief. A mouse,
Crumb-snatcher, son of the Mice-king, flying from an enemy, reaches
a pool over which a courteous frog, Puff-cheek, undertakes to carry
him. But during the passage a water-snake appears; the frightened frog
dives to escape his foe, and thoughtlessly leaves his newly-made friend
to drown. The mice gather to avenge the loss of their prince; a great
battle ensues, and but for the interference of Jupiter the frogs would
have been annihilated.
The so-called HOMERIC HYMNS, which the ancients believed to be the
work of Homer, if somewhat inferior in age to the Iliad and Odyssey,
are undoubtedly older than the pieces named above. Those addressed
to Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Ceres, the finest in the collection,
are regular poems of some length; the others are simple eulogies or
brief preludes to longer pieces. The Hymn to Venus has a tenderness
and warmth not unworthy of Homer. The one in honor of Ceres relates
the abduction of her daughter Pros’erpine by Pluto, king of the
lower world, the mother’s search for the stolen maiden, her anger on
discovering the ravisher, and the final arrangement that the goddess
shall enjoy the society of her daughter during two-thirds of the year.
As a favorable specimen of its style, we cite the lines that follow:—
THE ABDUCTION OF PROSERPINE.
“In Nysia’s vale, with nymphs a lovely train,
Sprung from the hoary father of the main,
Fair Proserpine consumed the fleeting hours
In pleasing sports, and plucked the gaudy flowers.
Around them wide the flamy crocus glows,
Through leaves of verdure blooms the opening rose;
The hyacinth declines his fragrant head,
And purple violets deck th’ enamelled mead.
The fair Narcissus far above the rest,
By magic formed, in beauty rose confessed.
So Jove, t’ ensnare the virgin’s thoughtless mind,
And please the ruler of the shades, designed.
He caused it from the opening earth to rise,
Sweet to the scent, alluring to the eyes.
Never did mortal or celestial power
Behold such vivid tints adorn a flower.
From the deep root a hundred branches sprung,
And to the winds ambrosial odors flung;
Which, lightly wafted on the wings of air,
The gladdened earth and heaven’s wide circuit share.
The joy-dispensing fragrance spreads around,
And ocean’s briny swell with smiles is crowned.
Pleased at the sight, nor deeming danger nigh,
The fair beheld it with desiring eye:
Her eager hand she stretched to seize the flower,
(Beauteous illusion of the ethereal power!)
When, dreadful to behold, the rocking ground
Disparted—widely yawned a gulf profound!
Forth rushing from the black abyss, arose
The gloomy monarch of the realm of woes,
Pluto, from Saturn sprung. The trembling maid
He seized, and to his golden car conveyed.
Borne by immortal steeds the chariot flies:
And thus she pours her supplicating cries:—
‘Assist, protect me, thou who reign’st above,
Supreme and best of gods, paternal Jove!’
But ah! in vain the hapless virgin rears
Her wild complaint: nor god nor mortal hears!
Not to the white-armed nymphs with beauty crowned,
Her loved companions, reached the mournful sound.”
HOLE.
There are also various fragments styled Homeric, supposed to have been
dropped from the poet’s genuine or spurious works. Among these is the
beautiful couplet quoted by Plato:—
“Asked and unasked, thy blessings give, O Lord!
The evil, though we ask it, from us ward.”
=Cyclic Poets.=—After the death of Homer, a host of imitators sprung up
in Greece and Asia Minor. Rhapsodists by profession, as they wandered
among the Grecian cities reciting the Homeric poems, their attention
was naturally directed to epic composition, and they sought to supply
in verse like Homer’s what the Iliad and Odyssey had left untold.
Confining themselves to the Cycle (_circle_) of the Trojan War, they
were called _Cyc’lic_ poets.
One bard sung of the preparations made by the Grecian chiefs and the
events of the war prior to Achilles’ withdrawal; two others took up
the narrative where the Iliad left it, and described the sack of Troy;
a fourth celebrated the return voyages of the Greek heroes; a fifth
supplemented the Odyssey with the later history of Ulysses. Fragments
only of these Cyclic epics survive.
HESIOD AND HIS WORKS.
=Hesiod.=—Homer was an Ionian of Asia Minor. Shortly after his time,
or, as some think, contemporaneously with him, a new school of epic
poetry appeared in the mother-country. Its founder was Hesiod, who,
like Homer, wrote in the Ionic dialect.
Hesiod was born at Ascra in Bœotia, and brought up in the midst of
rural life at the base of Mount Helicon. Here first he held free
converse with the Muses. On his father’s death, he was defrauded of
his portion of the estate by his younger brother Perses, who bribed
the judges charged with making the division. Hesiod felt the wrong
keenly, yet seems to have regarded his unnatural brother with fraternal
interest; for one object of his poem entitled “Works and Days,” was to
reclaim Perses from dissolute improvidence and incite him to a life of
industry.
The first portion of this work is devoted to moral lessons; some in
a proverbial form, and others illustrated by narratives and fables.
The latter part contains practical directions for the husbandman,
and also treats of the art of navigation, important to the Bœotian
farmer because much of his produce was shipped to other countries. The
whole abounds in excellent precepts for every-day life, and forms the
earliest specimen of didactic poetry among the Greeks. For ages its
lines were committed to memory and recited as part of the course of
ethics in their schools.
FROM HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS.
RIGHT AND WRONG.
“Wrong, if he yield to its abhorred control,
Shall pierce like iron to the poor man’s soul:
Wrong weighs the rich man’s conscience to the dust,
When his foot stumbles on the way unjust.
Far different, is the path, a path of light,
That guides the feet to equitable right:
The end of righteousness, enduring long,
Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.
The fool by suffering his experience buys;
The penalty of folly makes him wise.
But they who never from the right have strayed,
Who as the citizen the stranger aid,
They and their cities flourish: genial Peace
Dwells in their borders; and their youth increase:
Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,
Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war.
Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey;
Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day:
Rich are their mountain oaks; the topmost trees
With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees.
Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;
The fruits of earth are poured from every plain.
But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove, of wide beholding eyes,
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise.
The god sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die.
Again, in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,
And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.”
ELTON.
SOME OF HESIOD’S PROVERBS.
‘Than wife that’s good man finds no greater gain,
But feast-frequenting mates are simply bane.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh.
Senseless is he who dares with power contend.
Know then this awful truth: it is not given
To elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven.
Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee.
The more children, the more cares.
Sometimes a day is a step-mother, sometimes a mother.
Whoever forgeth for another ill,
With it himself is overtaken still.
The procrastinator has ever to contend with loss.
The idler never shall his garners fill.
The lips of moderate speech with grace are hung.
When on your home falls unforeseen distress,
Half-clothed come neighbors; kinsmen stay to dress.
Justice is a virgin pure.
The road to vice is broad and easy; that of virtue, difficult, long,
and steep
Fools! not to know how better for the soul,
An honest half than an ill-gotten whole.
Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges hear!
Make straight your paths; your crooked judgments fear.
How richer he who dines on herbs with health
Of heart, than knaves with all their wines and wealth.
He who nor knows himself, nor will take rule
From those who do, is either knave or fool.”
Next in importance to the “Works and Days” is “the Theogony,” devoted
to the genealogy and history of the Grecian gods, thirty thousand in
number. Whatever interest this poem may have possessed for the believer
in the Greek mythology, to the reader of the present day it is for the
most part tedious, though relieved by occasional grand descriptions of
battles between the celestial personages. “The Shield of Hercules” also
bears the name of Hesiod; and of works ascribed to him, but not now
extant, there are about a dozen.
Hesiod mentions a poetical contest between himself and another, which
took place at the funeral of Amphid’amas, king of Eubœa, and in which
he obtained a tripod as a prize. Tradition mentions Homer as his
competitor on that occasion, and even gives the inscription placed on
the tripod by the victor:—
“This Hesiod vows to th’ Heliconian Nine,
In Chalcis won, from Homer the divine.”
But this part of the story rests on insufficient evidence.
Hesiod is said to have been slain, during a visit to the Locrian town
of Œnoë, by two brothers, in revenge for an insult offered to their
sister by Hesiod’s companion, which caused her to destroy herself. The
poet’s body, thrown into the sea, was brought to shore by his dog,
or as some say by dolphins. Thereupon the indignant people put the
murderers to death and razed their dwellings to the ground—an incident
which shows the sacredness attached to the vocation of the bard in
those early times.
Though Hesiod ranks far below Homer, and indeed is often commonplace,
yet at times his style exhibits enthusiasm and even rises to sublimity.
We must respect him for the pure morality of his teachings.
POETS OF THE EPIC CYCLE.
ARCTI’NUS OF MILE’TUS.
His poem of 9,100 verses had Memnon, an Ethiopian chief, for its
hero. It treated of the part taken in the Trojan War by the Amazons,
who arrived after Hector’s funeral; the death of their queen,
Penthesile’a, at the hand of Achilles; the fall of Achilles himself;
and the sack of Troy.
LES’CHES OF MYTILE’NE.
Author of the _Little Iliad_, a supplement to the greater work of that
name; it took up the narrative where Homer leaves off, and carried it
to the fall of Troy.
STASI’NUS OF CYPRUS.
Wrote the _Cypria_, in eleven books, narrating the events that
preceded the Trojan War, and the incidents of the first nine years of
the siege.
A’GIAS THE TRŒZENIAN.
His epic in five books, called _Nostoi_ (the Returns), was descriptive
of the home-voyages of the Greek heroes.
EU’GAMON OF CYRE’NE.
The _Telegonia_, a continuation of the Odyssey to the death of
Ulysses, who falls by the hand of Teleg’onus, his son by Cir’ce.
NOTES ON GREEK WRITING, ETC.
The language of epic poetry perhaps once the common tongue of the
people, and merely elaborated by the bards. The art of writing, old in
Greece; while there is no positive evidence of its being known before
800 B.C., the historian Herodotus (450 B.C.) speaks as if it had been
familiar to his countrymen for hundreds of years. Homer’s epics,
though by some thought to have been handed down by oral repetition,
probably written on metallic or wooden tablets by their author.
Hesiod’s works originally committed to leaden tables and deposited in
the temple of the Bœotian Muses.
Greek papyrus-factories on the Nile, 650 B.C. Writing first
extensively used by priests and bards, particularly at the temple of
Delphi.
* * * * *
(The student is further recommended to read _Cox’s “Mythology of
the Aryan Nations,” vol. ii._, _Harrison’s “Myths of the Odyssey,”_
_Coleridge’s “Minor Poems of Homer,”_ _Tyler’s “Theology of the Greek
Poetry,”_ and _Mahaffy’s “History of Classical Greek Literature” vol.
i._, and “_Social Life in Greece_.”)