How did the continental school of epic poetry arise? There is little
definite material for an answer to this question, but the probability
is that there were at least three contributory causes. First, it is
likely that before the rise of the Ionian epos there existed in Boeotia
a purely popular and indigenous poetry of a crude form: it comprised,
we may suppose, versified proverbs and precepts relating to life in
general, agricultural maxims, weather-lore, and the like. In this sense
the Boeotian poetry may be taken to have its germ in maxims similar to
our English
“Till May be out, ne’er cast a clout,”
or
“A rainbow in the morning
Is the Shepherd’s warning.”
Secondly and thirdly we may ascribe the rise of the new epic to the
nature of the Boeotian people and, as already remarked, to a spirit of
revolt against the old epic. The Boeotians, people of the class of
which Hesiod represents himself to be the type, were essentially
unromantic; their daily needs marked the general limit of their ideals,
and, as a class, they cared little for works of fancy, for pathos, or
for fine thought as such. To a people of this nature the Homeric epos
would be inacceptable, and the post-Homeric epic, with its conventional
atmosphere, its trite and hackneyed diction, and its insincere
sentiment, would be anathema. We can imagine, therefore, that among
such folk a settler, of Aeolic origin like Hesiod, who clearly was well
acquainted with the Ionian epos, would naturally see that the only
outlet for his gifts lay in applying epic poetry to new themes
acceptable to his hearers.
Though the poems of the Boeotian school 1102 were unanimously assigned
to Hesiod down to the age of Alexandrian criticism, they were clearly
neither the work of one man nor even of one period: some, doubtless,
were fraudulently fathered on him in order to gain currency; but it is
probable that most came to be regarded as his partly because of their
general character, and partly because the names of their real authors
were lost. One fact in this attribution is remarkable—the veneration
paid to Hesiod.