HESIOD AND HIS WORKS.

153 Its founder was Hesiod, who, like Homer, wrote in the Ionic dialect.

Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia, 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 Boeotian 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,

G

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.

HESIOD'S POETRY.

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.”

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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 Enoë, 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 Mem-
non, an Ethiopian chief, for its hero.
It treated of the part taken in the
Trojan War by the Amazons, who ar-
rived 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 Boeotian Muses.

Greek papyrus-factories on the Nile, 650 B.C. Writing first extensively used by priests and bards, particularly at the temple of Delphi.

EARLY LYRIC POETRY OF GREECE.

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CHAPTER III.

LYRIC POETRY.

Rise of Lyric Poetry.-For more than two hundred years after Homer and Hesiod, no one worthy of the name of poet appeared in Greece. Greek genius seemed to have exhausted itself. A few feeble imitators of the great master, and epic poetry was no more. The spirit of the Iliad and the Odyssey died with the monarchies whose chieftains they immortalized. When popular governments arose, the bard no longer celebrated the gods and demigods of the past, or traced the genealogies of kings, but sung the glories of his country, or poured forth without restraint the emotions of his soul. Thus lyric poetry was the child of liberty.

Varieties. At the beginning of the seventh century B.C., there was a new birth of poesy; Grecian song burst forth once more, from hearts throbbing with enthusiasm at the triumph of free institutions. Solemn dirges and stately hymns chanted by olive-crowned youth bearing offerings to the gods, were no longer paramount; ballads full of human feeling, lyrics appealing directly to the people-to the patriot, the artisan, the shepherd, the lover, the pleasure-seeker-struck chords that vibrated in many hearts. Feasts afforded frequent occasions for outbursts of national feeling, it being the custom of the guests to pass a branch of myrtle from hand to hand, each as he received it repeating an appropriate verse.

A favorite banquet-song of the fifth century B.C. was the following eulogy of Harmo'dius and Aristogi'ton, the Athenian. heroes who slew the tyrant Hipparchus :