James Davies

“ To heighten the turmoil, the winds and elements fight on the side of Zeus. The tide of battle turns. Jove's huge auxiliaries overwhelm the Titans with a succession of great missiles, send them sheer beneath the earth, and consign them to a durance "as far beneath, under earth, as heaven is from earth, for equal is the space from earth to murky Tartarus." ”

“ But, to complete our parallel with Hesiod, Tusser has his descriptions of the winds and planets; is alive to the wisdom of the "farm and fruit of old," as well as of the improved courses of husbandry in his own day: and if he now and then strikes out paths which have no parallel in Hesiod, even in such cases the homeliness and naïveté of his counsel savours of the ancient poet in whose footsteps he so distinctly treads. ”

“ Homer, behind the scenes, sets the battles of the Iliad in array, or carries the reader with his hero through the voyages and adventures of the Odyssey. Hesiod, with all the naïveté of reality, sets himself in the foreground, and lets us into confidences about his family matters his hopes and fears, his aims and discouragements, the earnests of his success and the obstacles to it. ”

“ Hesiod's 'Theogony' consists of three divisions: a cosmogony, or creation of the world, its powers, and its fabric; a theogony proper, recording the history of the dynasties of Cronus and Zeus; and a fragmentary generation of heroes, sprung from the intercourse of mortals with immortals. Hesiod and his contemporaries considered that in their day Jupiter or Zeus was the lord of Olympus; but it was necessary to chronicle the antecedents of his dynasty, and hence the account of the stages and revolutions which had led up to the established order under which Hesiod's generation found itself. ”

“ But, apart from such scenes and such entertainments in hospitable Thebes, our poet found time there for schemes of revenge and reprisals, and for the refugee's proverbial solace, the pleasures of hope. Whilst a portion of his day was spent in the congenial society of the cultivated noble—the contretemps at whose house does not seem to have interrupted their friendship—another portion was devoted to projects of return, which a fellow-feeling would prevent from appearing tedious to the ear of his partner in exile, Cyrnus. ”

“ As has been already said, when we have done with Virgil the resemblances of his successors and imitators to Hesiod are very faint and indistinct. To pass to our own poetry, it is natural to inquire, Have we aught of a kindred character and scope, that can claim to be accounted in any degree akin to Hesiod's 'Works and Days'? It need hardly be said that there is not a shadow of resemblance between him and Darwin or Bloomfield, though we have somewhere seen their names, as poets, set in juxtaposition. He is their master as a poet; he is their superior in simplicity. He is essentially ancient ”

“ With the life of Hesiod politics have little or no connection; in that of Theognis we find them playing an essential inseparable part. And it is curious that the very feature which both poets have in common, their subjectivity, is that which introduces us to this point of contrast and token of the ancient world's advancement—namely, that whereas Hesiod's political status is so unimportant as to be overlooked even by himself, with Theognis it occupies more space in his elegies than his social relations or his religious opinions. ”

“ Not often, however, despite his sententiousness, which has been the cause of his metamorphose by posterity into a coiner of maxims for the use of schools and the instruction of life and morals, does Theognis muse in such a strain of seriousness. Oftener far his vein is bright and gay, as when he makes ready for a feast, which, if we are not mistaken, was destined to take most of the remainder of his "solid day." ”

“ The "fictions seeming true"—in other words, the heroic poetry so popular in the land of his father's birth—Hesiod considers himself enjoined to forsake for a graver strain—"the things of truth"—which the Muses declare have been hitherto regarded by mortals as not included in their gift of inspiration. He takes their commission to be prophet and poet of this phase of minstrelsy, embracing, it appears, the past and future, and including his theogonic and ethical poetry. ”

“ Hercules, so far victorious, awaits the onset of the bereaved war-god with a devout needfulness of his assessor's injunctions. She from her seat at his side interposes to apprise Ares that any attempt at revenge or reprisals must involve a conflict with herself. But the god, sore at his bereavement, heeds not her word, and with violent effort hurls his brazen spear at the huge shield of his antagonist. ”

“ Each poet takes for his theme the same "glorification of labour" which Dean Merivale discerns as the chief aim of the Georgics, the difference consisting in the homeliness of the manner of the Greek poet and the high polish of that of the Roman. Each also recognises the time of man's innocency, when this labour was not yet the law of his being; and the treatment by each of the myth of a golden or Saturnian age is not an inappropriate ground on which to trace their likeness and unlikeness. ”

“ According to Hesiod, Cronus or Saturn was alive to the faults of his sire's policy of self-protection, and conceived an improvement in the means of checking revolutionary development on the part of his offspring, by imprisoning them in his own bowels rather than their mother's. Mindful of the destiny that "to his own child he should bow down his strength," he proceeded to swallow up his progeny with such regularity, that the maternal feelings of his consort, Rhea, roused her to a spirit of opposition. ”

“ A life afield conduced to mould him into the poet of the 'Works and Days,'—a sort of Bœotian 'Shepherd's Calendar,' interwoven with episodes of fable, allegory, and personal history. The nearness of his native hills, as well as the traditions of elder bards, conspired to impel him to the task of shaping a theogony. And both aims are so congenial and compatible, that prima facie likelihood will always support the theory of one and the same authorship for both poems against the separatists, [3] who can no more brook an individual Hesiod than an individual Homer. ”

“ Such, according to Hesiod, are the surroundings of the infernal prison-house which received the vanquished Titans when Jove's victory was assured. Not yet, however, could he rest from his toil: he had yet to scotch the half-serpent, half-human Typhœus, the offspring of a new union betwixt Earth and Tartarus,—a monster so terror-inspiring by means of its hundred heads and voices to match, that Olympus might well dread another and less welcome master should this pest attain full development. ”

“ Enough, however, has been set down of Hesiod's proverbial philosophy, to show that herein consists one of his titles to a principal place among didactic poets. A plain blunt man, and a poet of the people, he knew how and when to appeal with cogency to that "wisdom of many and wit of one," which has been styled by our own proverb-collector, James Howell, "the people's voice." ”

“ It has been imputed as blame to the poem that it hangs loosely together, that its connection is obscure and vague,—in short, that its constituent parts, larger and smaller, are seldom fitly jointed and compacted. But some allowance is surely to be made for occasional tokens of inartistic workmanship in so early a poet, engaged upon a task where he had neither pattern nor master to refer to; and besides this, a closer study of the whole will prove that the want of connectedness in the work is more seeming than real. ”

“ Whilst Theognis turns the laugh against an ungenerous rival, and this in the spirit of a true gentleman, he finds a sly means of paying a delicate compliment to the taste of the public, upon whose appreciation of music he had to depend for support. ”

“ And so we come to see the fitness of such bards as Homer and Hesiod garnishing their poems with these gems of antique proverbial wisdom, each drawing from a store that was probably hereditary, and pointing a moral or establishing a truth by neat and timely introduction of saws that possessed a weight not unlike that of texts of Scripture to enforce a preacher's drift. It is, furthermore, a minor argument for the common date of these famous poets, that both Homer and Hesiod constantly recur to the use of adages. ”

“ When we turn to the other class of adages—those which syllable the teaching of common-sense—we are struck more by the poet's shrewdness than his morality. The end of all his precepts is, "Brother, get rich;" or, "Brother, avoid poverty and famine." Even the worship and offerings of the gods are inculcated with an eye to being able "to buy up the land of others, and not others thine" (341) . ”

“ The italicised lines may recall the noble image in the 'Paradise Lost;' [7] a passage which Milton's editor, Todd, pronounces grander in conception than Hesiod's. But, as Elton fairly answers, it is only in Milton's reservation that he is superior. "The mere rising of Zeus causing mountains to rock beneath his everlasting feet, is sublimer than the firmament shaking from the rolling of wheels."
After quelling this monster, Zeus is represented bethinking himself of a suitable consort, and espousing Metis or Wisdom, so as to effect a union of absolute wisdom with absolute power. ”

“ The same economical spirit which actuates the poet of the 'Works' is visible also in the 'Theogony,' where the head and front of Pandora's offending is, that the "beauteous evil," woman, is a drone in the hive, and consumes the fruits of man's labour without adding to them. ”

“ That later and more finished didactic poems have only partially and exceptionally borrowed Hesiod's manner or matter does not really detract from the interest of a poem which, as far as we know, is the first in classical literature to afford internal evidence of the writer's mind and thoughts,—the first to teach that subjectivity, in which to many readers lies the charm and attraction of poetry. ”

“ It will never do to be always borrowing, and so waiting till others can lend, and the season has glided away. Delay is always bad policy:—
"The work-deferrer never
Sees full his barn, nor he that leaves work ever,
And still is gadding out. Care-flying ease
Gives labour ever competent increase:
He that with doubts his needful business crosses
Is always wrestling with uncertain losses."
—C. 48-53.
Accordingly, on the principle of having all proper implements of one's own, the poet proceeds to give instructions for the most approved make of a wain, a plough, a mortar, a pestle, and so forth. ”

“ After a description following next of the material wealth of Olympus, which has been suspected of spuriousness, as savouring of post-Homeric style and ideas, occurs a curious presentment of a harbour and surging sea, wrought of tin, in which silver dolphins are chasing the lesser fish, and amusing themselves with gorging these, and spouting up water, whale fashion. ”

“ The poet's fatherland, the Grecian, not Sicilian, Megara, after asserting its independence of Corinth, of which it had been a colony, fell under the sway of a Doric nobility, which ruled it in right of descent and of landed estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes, the father-in-law of Gelon, had become tyrant or despot of Megara, like Cypselus and Periander at Corinth, by feigned adoption of the popular cause. ”

“ When the Pleiads, Hyads, and Orion set, it is time to plough again. But not to go on a voyage! Though, as we have before stated, and as Hesiod seems particularly anxious to have it known, he was no sailor, our poet gives now directions how to keep boats and tackle safe and sound in the wintry season, by means of a rude breakwater of stones, and by taking the plug out of the keel to prevent its rotting. The best season for voyaging is between midsummer and autumn, he says; only it requires haste, to avoid the winter rains. ”

“ The verses of Theognis which refer to the second period of his life begin with a caution to Cyrnus to keep his strains as much a secret as the fame of his poetry will allow, and evince the same sensitiveness to public opinion as so many other of his remains. He cannot gain and keep, he regrets to own, the goodwill of his fellow-citizens, any more than Zeus can please all parties, whilst—
"Some call for rainy weather, some for dry." ”

“ It might be shown by other quotations that Tusser, like Hesiod, attaches due importance to the performance of religious ceremonies, and inculcates in fitting language seasonable offerings of thankfulness to a bounteous Providence; that he upholds well-timed hospitality, and commends a principle of liberality towards man or beast, if they deserve it. Of course, too, even in his shrewd homeliness, he does not so entirely as Hesiod calculate his hospitalities and liberalities with a sole eye to getting a quid pro quo. ”

“ From the indistinctness of our knowledge as to the sequence of events in Megara, it is impossible to fix the point of time when Theognis began to be a political plotter; but as, during the whole of his mature life, his party was in opposition, it will be enough to trace the adverse influence of the dominant democracy upon his career till it terminated in exile. ”