Hesiod

“ The modern Greek women retain the custom. “Of the few that I have seen with an open veil or without one, the faces were remarkable for symmetry and brilliant complexion: with the nose straight and small: the eyes vivacious: either black or dark-blue: having the eyebrows, partly from nature, and as much from art, very full, and joining over the nose. They have a custom, too, of drawing a black line with a mixture of powder of antimony and oil above and under the eye-lashes in order to give the eye more fire.” ”

“ Robinson gives the preference to the author of The Shield of Hercules; alleging that his description is decorated with the utmost beauty of imagery; while that of The Shield of Achilles is naked of embellishment. To the unornamented style of the passage in Homer I appeal, as demonstrating the superiority of his judgment, and as thereby establishing beyond dispute the fact of his originality.
In one condensed verse he pours around the verge of the buckler “the great strength of the ocean stream.” An image of roundness and completeness is here at once presented to the eye, and fills the mind. ”

“ Amidst much quaintness of style and ruggedness of numbers, we meet with gleams of a rich expression and with a grasp of language, which, however extravagantly bold, bears the stamp of a genuine poet. Cooke had probably not seen this translation, or he must have avoided many of the errors into which he fell. ”

“ The purport of the above history I take to have been this. It was for a long time the custom to offer children at the altar of Saturn: but in process of time they removed it, and in its form erected a stone pillar, before which they made their vows, and offered sacrifices of another nature. Bryant.
[201] Props the broad heaven.] “This Atlas,” says Maximus Tyrius, “is a mountain, with a cavity of a tolerable height, which the natives esteem both as a temple and a deity: and it is the great object by which they swear, and to which they pay their devotions.” ”

“ Where two poems are found so nearly resembling each other as to convey at once the impression of plagiarism, the scale of originality must doubtless preponderate in favour of that which is the more simple in style and invention. Where a poem abounds with florid figures and irregular flights of imagination, it is inconceivable that a copy of that poem should exhibit a chaste simplicity of fancy: but it is highly natural that an imitator should think to transcend his original by the aid of meretricious ornament; that he should mistake bombast for sublimity, and attempt to dazzle and astonish. ”

“ Nations do not borrow vast systems of theology from poets or even from priests. Gale does not suppose that priests or bards imported the Hebrew accounts from the sacred writings; but that they were learnt, through international communication with the Jews, by the Phœnicians; who, in their various nautical enterprizes, carried them to distant countries.
But the temple of heathen mythology rests its pillars in the two hemispheres, and overshadows climes unvisited by the navigators of Phœnicia. ”

“ As colonies of the same denomination went to parts of the world widely distant, their ideal chieftain, whether Cadmus, or Bacchus, or Hercules, was supposed to have traversed the same ground.
Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, who has been esteemed a mere woman, seems to have been an emblem of nature, and the fostering nurse of all things. In some of the Orphic verses she is represented not only as a deity, but as the light of the world. She was supposed to have been a personage from whom all knowledge was derived. ”

“ It would appear extraordinary that the crime of Prometheus, who was a god, should be visited on man. This injustice betrays the real character of Prometheus; that he was a deified mortal. If Prometheus, the maker of man according to Ovid, and his divine benefactor according to Hesiod, be in reality Noah, as many circumstances concur to prove, the concealment of fire by Jupiter might be a type of the darkness and dreariness of nature during the interval of the deluge; and the recovery of the flame might signify the renovation of light and fertility and the restitution of the arts of life. ”

“ This passage resembles one in the nineteenth book of the Odyssey: but not so closely as to justify the charge of plagiarism which Dr. Clarke prefers against Hesiod, and which might be retorted upon Homer. These were sentiments common to the popular religion.
Like the praise of some great king
Who o’er a numerous people and renown’d,
Presiding like a deity, maintains
Justice and truth. Their harvests overswell
The sower’s hopes: their trees o’erladen scarce
Their fruit sustain: no sickness thins the folds:
The finny swarms of ocean crowd the shores,
And all are rich and happy for his sake. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ancients had a notion that the earth was a widely extended plain, which terminated abruptly in a vast clift of immeasurable descent. At the bottom was a chaotic pool, which so far sunk beneath the confines of the world, that, to express the depth and distance, they imagined an anvil of iron, tossed from the top, could not reach it in ten days. ”

“ Isis was the moon, the mother of multiform nature; the same also as Neitha or Minerva, and the causer of the Nile’s inundations. Tithrambo, Brimo, or Hecate, was Isis incensed, or the maleficent moon. Bubastis, Diana, or Latona, was the titular symbol of the New Moon, and Buto or Latona of the full. The Cabiri, or Seven Planets, were worshipped as appendants of the greater gods; thus the planet Venus was the star of Isis, and the planet Jupiter the star of Osiris. The dog-headed Anubis, or Mercury, was the celestial horizon, the guard of the Sun’s gate, and the follower of Isis or the Moon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fifth is styled the iron age, and, according to the Poet, is that in which he lives. The general corruption of mankind in this age is detailed, and Modesty and Justice are represented taking their flight to heaven. A pointed allusion to the corrupt administration of the laws, in his own particular instance, is introduced in a fable, typical of oppression. Justice is described as invisibly following those who violate her decrees with avenging power, and as lamenting in their streets the wickedness of a corrupted people. ”

“ The 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Hesiod be older than Homer, as is computed by the chronicler of the Parian Marbles, it is self-evident that the Trojan war is not of Homeric invention: and if they were contemporary, or even if Hesiod, according to the vulgar chronology, were really junior by a century, it is not at all probable that he should have copied the fiction of another bard, while tracing the primitive history of mankind. He manifestly used the ancient traditions of his nation, of which the war of Troy was one. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ By this cry they are kept together; are directed to descend upon the corn-fields, the favourite scene of their depredations, and to betake themselves again to flight in case of alarm. Though they soar above the reach of sight they can, themselves, clearly distinguish every thing upon the earth beneath them. ”

“ In the mental or moral sublime I consider Hesiod as superior to Homer. The personification of Prayers in the latter is almost the only allegory that can be compared with the awful prosopopeia of Justice, weeping her wrongs at the feet of the Eternal: while Justice and Modesty, described as virgins in white raiment, ascending out of the sight of men into heaven, and the Holy Dæmons, after having animated the bodies of just men, hovering round the earth, and keeping watch over human actions, are equalled by no conceptions in the Iliad or Odyssey. ”

“ Hesiod asserts in plain terms, that Pandora is the mother of woman; he tells us she brought with her a casket of diseases; and that through her the state of man became a state of labour, and his longevity was abridged. It is an ancient Asiatic legend; and Pandora is plainly the Eve of Mosaic history. How this primitive tradition came to be connected with that of the deluge is easily explained. “Time with the ancients,” observes Mr. Bryant, “commenced at the deluge; all their traditions and genealogies terminated here. The birth of mankind went with them no higher than this epocha.” ”

“ It is evident even in the times that have passed since the gospel light was shed abroad among the nations, that a perverted system of theology may perfectly consist with a pure practical religion: that scholastic subtleties, unscriptural traditions, and uncharitable dogmas, may constitute the creed, while the religion of primitive Christianity influences the heart. So, in estimating the character of Hesiod, we must separate those superstitions which belong to a traditionary mythology, from that system of opinions which respected the guidance of human life ”

“ In another passage Orpheus identifies with the sun the different deities.
One Jove and Pluto; Bacchus, and the Sun;
One God alike in all, and all are one.
The cosmogonists of Ægypt represented the Demiurgus or Universal Maker, in a human form, sending forth from his mouth an egg; which egg was the world. They called him Kneph; who was the same as Pthas, the essential pervading energy. Chaos is described by Orpheus, in the manner of Ovid, as an immense, self-existent, heterogeneous mass; neither luminous nor tenebrous; which in the lapse of ages generated an egg ”

“ It is not credible that a composition of this nature, consisting of enigmas with their solutions, and of lines of imperfect sense which are completed by the alternate verses of the answerer, should have been preserved by the oral tradition of ages like complete poems: and the foolish genealogies, whereby Homer and Hesiod are traced to Gods, Muses, and Rivers, and are made cousins, according to the favourite zeal of the Greeks for finding out a consanguinity in poets, diminish all the credit of the writer as a sober historian. ”

“ Εκατη was a title of Diana, as εκατος of Apollo: from εκας far off: alluding to the distance to which the sun and moon dart their rays. This goddess is represented in ancient sculptures as three females joined in one, with various attributes in their hands: this triple figure was combined of the three characters sustained by the moon: who was Selene or Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in the subterranean regions. Luna is said by Cicero to be the same as Lucina, the goddess of child-bearing: a title given also to Diana and Juno. ”

“ Such is stated to have been the original sense of mankind before the necessity of labour existed. The origin of labour is deduced from the resentment of Jupiter against Prometheus; which resentment led to the formation of Pandora: or Woman: who is described with her attributes, and is represented as bringing with her into the world a casket of diseases. The degeneracy of man is then traced through successive ages. ”

“ The keys may allude to the shutting up the productions of the earth, and again opening them. The ship is the ark. The story of Saturn and the infant Jupiter involves similar allusions. The old god devouring his children significantly points to the destruction of the human race. Saturn and Jupiter seem only separate personifications of the double visage of Janus: and the infant Jupiter personifies the second infancy of Saturn. The new order of things which took place on the renovation of nature is typified in the dethronement of the aged monarch by his youthful son. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Midst this fifth race, this iron age of earth;
That long before within the grave I lay,
Or long hereafter could behold the day! That Virgil elsewhere calls Hesiod’s verse Ascræan is no argument against his supposing him of Cuma: there seems no reason why either epithet should not be used: for the poet was at least of Cumæan extraction. That Ascræus was Hesiod’s received surname among the ancients proves nothing as to his birth-place, nor is any thing proved as to Virgil’s opinion by his adoption of the title in compliance with common usage. ”

“ But it was very different at an earlier æra of society. “Women in the Homeric age,” remarks Mr. Mitford, “enjoyed more freedom, and communicated more in business and amusement among men, than in after-ages has been usual in those eastern countries; far more than at Athens, in the flourishing times of the commonwealth. Equally, indeed, Homer’s elegant eulogies and Hesiod’s severe sarcasm prove women to have been in their days important members of society.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ They, however, who can feel the infinite superiority of Christianity over every system of philosophic morals, will naturally expect that the morality of Hesiod should come short of that point of purity, which he, who reads our nature, proposed through the revealer of his will as a standard for the emulation of his creatures. But in the zeal of commenting upon an adopted author, we find that every thing equivocal has been strained to some unobjectionable sense; we are presented with Christian graces for heathen virtues; and Hesiod is not permitted to be absurd even in his superstitions ”

“ The Theogony has all the appearance of being a patchwork of fragments; consisting of some genuine Hesiodéan passages; [13] pieced together with verses of other poets, and probably of a different age. The mythology is occasionally inconsistent with itself: thus the god Chrysaor is re-introduced among the demi-gods; and the Fates are born over again from different parents: an incongruity which Robinson attempts to obviate by an ingenious, but over-refined construction.
The proem bears the internal marks of comparatively modern refinement. It has not the simple outline of Hesiod. ”

“ But the strong though simple sketches of the old Ascræan bard are often more striking than the finished paintings of the Mantuan. Critics admire the pastoral board of Virgil’s Corycian husbandman; but there is a far greater charm in the summer-repast of Hesiod: so picturesque in its scenery; so patriarchal in its manners. The winter tempest is a bolder copy of nature than any thing in the Latin Georgics; more fresh in colouring ”

“ They supposed emanations from divinity to be resident in the parts of nature; and thus that the sun, moon, and stars, and the other bodies of the universe, were animated with a divine spirit or virtue; or retained portions of a divine essence from good demons or genii, who dwelt in them: these dæmons had been inclosed in the bodies of virtuous men; and having left them, passed into the stars and planets, which were consequently worshipped as gods. Hence probably the legend of Hesiod, who supposes the spirits of men in the golden age to become holy dæmons ”

“ The inhabitants of Orchomenos, in Bœotia, having consulted the oracle on occasion of a pestilence, were answered that, as their only remedy, they must seek the bones of Hesiod; and that a crow would direct them. The messengers accordingly found a crow sitting on a rock; in the cavity of which they discovered the poet’s remains; transported them to their own country, and erected a tomb with this epitaph:
[xxvi]
The fallow vales of Ascra gave him birth:
His bones are cover’d by the Mingan earth:
Supreme in Hellas Hesiod’s glories rise,
Whom men discern by wisdom’s touchstone wise. ”

“ Their cry is the loudest among birds; and although they soar to such a height as to be invisible, it is distinctly heard. It is often a prognostic of rain: as from the immense altitude of their ascent they are peculiarly susceptible of the motions and changes of the atmosphere: but Tzetzes is mistaken in supposing that the migratory cry of the crane denotes only its sensibility of cold. These migrations are performed in the night-time, and in numerous bodies; and the clangous scream, alluded to by Hesiod, is of use to govern their course. ”

“ In the hot climates of Greece and Italy, it was probably the custom for active husbandmen to bare the upper part of their bodies. Virgil does not say “Plough in fine weather and not in winter;” but “Plough with your best diligence, for winter will soon be here:” equivalent to Hesiod’s “Summer will not last for ever.”
[81] The idler never shall his garners fill.] He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough. ”

“ From Plutarch, Pausanias, and the author of “The Contest,” we are enabled to cull some gossiping traditions of the latter life of Hesiod, which are scarcely worth the gleaning, except that, like the romancing Lives of Homer, they are proofs of the poet’s celebrity. ”

“ Typhon and Typhœus were the same personage; and the poet represents him of a mixed form; being partly a man, and partly a monstrous dragon, whose head consisted of an assemblage of smaller serpents: and as there was a perpetual fire kept up in the upper story, he describes it as shining through the apertures of the building. The tower of Babel was undoubtedly a Tuph-on, or altar of the Sun; though generally represented as a temple. Hesiod certainly alludes to some ancient history concerning the demolition of Babel, when he describes Typhon or Typhœus as overthrown by Jove. ”