neighbors with matter of animadversion. He admits, indeed, though somewhat dryly, that there is nothing better than a good wife.

All this is in the tone of the Boeotian farmer: how far we have traveled from the world of the Homeric Arêtè and Nausicaa! The poet of the Works and Days has a hard head and a not very generous heart; his cold and cautious prudence is often sordid. Even the duty of propitiating the gods by worship is referred to a mercenary motive," that thou mayest buy another man's land, instead of his buying thine." Yet along with so much that is hard or ignoble there is at least one element of nobleness, — a real feeling for the dignity of work. "Work is no reproach; the reproach is to be idle." And there is the feeling, too, that work makes for righteousness; work belongs to the divine scheme for men, and it is the idle man who becomes unjust. Thus the lower side of the poet's teaching is qualified by such sentiments as this: "It is easy to find wickedness abundantly; the path is smooth and short. But the immortals have decreed that only toil shall reach Virtue. Long and steep is the way to her, and rough at the first; but when the higher ground is reached, difficult though the path be, it is less difficult thenceforth."

From the Works and Days we pass to the second poem by which Hesiod is chiefly represented, the Theogony. Here we are told how Earth arose out of chaos; how the

The Theogony.

HESIOD'S THEOGONY

89

eldest dynasty of gods, the first-born of the ele mental powers, was overthrown by the younger dynasty of Zeus; and how each person of the Olympian hierarchy came into being. What is there in common, it might be asked, between such a theme and a body of practical rules, like that contained in the Works and Days, for the conduct of daily life? How are we to conceive the basis, the fundamental idea, of the Hesiodic school, if these two poems are alike characteristic of it? The Theogony itself supplies the answer. It is not, in the Homeric sense, a work of art. Such unity as it possesses is derived from the thread of divine genealogy. It is a compilation of current lore concerning the parentage and relationships of the deities; the object being to give this lore in a continuous form. The work has been skilfully done; and the essential dryness of the subject has been occasionally relieved by short episodes. One of these, the battle of the gods and Titans, imitates the style of the Iliad; though it may be doubted whether this passage belonged to the earliest form of the composition. The poem remained a standard authority. Herodotus couples Hesiod with Homer as a creator of the Greek theogony. The Homeric poetry prevailed by its own charm; the Hesiodic poem, which is little more than an Olympian peerage, could prevail only by authority. What was that authority? It is only a conjecture, though a plausible one, that the Theogony had the sanction of Delphi. Its materials

must have been largely derived from temple-legends, often inconsistent with each other; and the compiler's endeavor to harmonize them could not easily have succeeded if the priesthood of Apollo had withheld the seal of their approval. In this connection it is interesting to note a few points of contact between the language of Delphi and the language of Hesiod. The μέγα νήπιε Πέρση of the Works and Days has an echo in the μéya výπie Kpoîre of the Delphic oracle (Her. 1. 85). That oracle often used enigmatic substitutes for common words, as when rivers were called by it "drainers of the hills" (opeμórα). This trait is strongly marked in Hesiod, as when he calls the snail the "house-carrier" (peрéolкos). And a verse from the Works and Days (285) actually occurs in a response given at Delphi (Her. 6. 86).

We see, then, that the basis common to the two chief Hesiodic poems, the Works and Days and the Theogony, is the practical tendency: in the one case, to direct the farmer's daily life; in the other, to produce an orthodox history of the gods which should be useful as a standard work of reference. In neither case is the play of imagination altogether excluded, but the practical purpose predominates; the poet's first object is to instruct; whereas in poetry such as the Homeric, of which the aim is ideal, the first object is delight.

The Shield of

The third poem which bears the name Heracles. of Hesiod is certainly much later than the age to which the two others must be re

THE HESIODIC AIM AND STYLE 91

ferred, the short epic called the Shield of Heracles. Other miniature epics of the same general class were also ascribed to Hesiod. What, it may be asked, is the distinctively Hesiodic feature in such compositions? Is not the Shield, in subject and in form, rather Homeric than Hesiodic? Our materials for an answer are scanty. But it may be suggested that the work of the Hesiodic school in this kind set out, originally at ieast, from the same point of view as the Theogony, namely, from the desire to preserve the facts of local legend. The purpose was less poetical than historical. Gradually, it may be, the Hesiodic poetry became, in this province, a direct imitation of the Homeric; and that is certainly the phase which the Shield of Heracles seems to represent.

pared with

The broad differences between the style of Hesiod and that of Homer correspond Style of Hewith the inner difference of spirit. Ho- siod-commer's directness of thought and sim- the Homeric. plicity of language are always joined to nobleness. In the Works and Days Hesiod's thoughts are generally plain, and his language also; but his style is not always noble; it is often too homely for that; and, with or without homeliness, it is often quaint. One form of such quaintness is the device already mentioned as oracular, of riddling synonyms for plain words. Thus the hand is called "the five-branched" (TÉVTOŠOS); a thief is "one who sleeps by day" (EρÓKOLTOS). Homer speaks of "swift ships, which are the horses of

the sea for men; Hesiod would not have scrupled to use the phrase "horses of the sea" as a substitute for the word "ships," leaving his meaning to be guessed. Again, Hesiod is rapid only in so far as the natural lightness of the Greek hexameter profits all who use it. He is not rapid in the further and higher sense in which Homer is so, by virtue of the impetuous thought which is always darting onwards. Hesiod does not sweep us along on a swift flow of verse. He is usually concise, pointed, emphatic. Each fact or precept is stated tersely, in the manner which he thinks fitted to fix it in the mind; and then he goes on to his next fact. He hardly cares to provide smooth transitions, or to give his series of facts a fluent continuity. His small groups of verses are rather like so many separate beads on a string. If such verses were recited, they would not hold listeners as the Homeric poetry does. They are meant rather to sink into the mind of the individual who shall ponder them as he toils in the fields or wends his way to the temple.

Hesiod as a

Lastly, the Hesiodic poet is utterly unlike the Homeric in this, that he does not supteacher. press himself. The artist merges his personality in his work. A teacher such as Hesiod cannot do so. He comes forward as an expounder of lore, religious, moral, or technical: the force of the message depends not a little on the personal earnestness of the prophet. The verses prefixed to the Theogony, in which Hesiod de