FOOTNOTES
[8] Robinson, Dissertatio de Hesiodo.
[9] “If we consider the chronology of Homer’s life to be sufficiently established, one would be tempted to believe that his rhapsodies, as they were called, have not only been arranged and digested in a subsequent period, as has been asserted on good authority, but have even undergone something similar to the refaccimento by Berni of Boyardo’s Orlando.” Essays annexed to Professor Millar’s History of the English Government.
[10] It is strange, however, that a critic like Gibbon should have allowed himself to talk of a definite time when “Homer wrote his Iliad;” in an age when alphabetic characters were not in use; when poets composed only rhapsodies, or such portions as could be recited at one time; which were preserved by oral tradition through the recitations of succeeding bards.
[11] The first specimen of a regular tablet of chronology is said to have been given by Demetrius Phalereus in his Αρχοντων Αναγραφη, about the middle of the fourth century B. C. The historian Timæus, who flourished in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, first arranged his narrative in the order of Olympiads; which began B. C. 776. His contemporary Sosibius, gave a work entitled Χρονων Αναγραφη: Apollodorus wrote the Συνταξις Χρονικη: and on such chronologers rests the credit of all later compilers, as well as of the Arundelian Marbles. Dr. Gillies.
We are informed by Dr. Clarke, in his “Travels,” that these marbles were not found in Paros, but in the Isle of Zia.
SECTION III.
ON THE POEMS OF HESIOD.[12]
Pausanias informs us that “the Bœotians, who dwell round Helicon, have a tradition among them that Hesiod wrote nothing besides the poem of ‘Works:’ and from this they take away the introduction, and say that the poem properly begins with The Strifes. They showed me a leaden tablet near the fountain, which was almost entirely eaten away with age, and on which were engraven the Works and Days of Hesiod.”
It is difficult to account for the manifest mutilation and corruption of this venerable poet’s compositions, since it appears that they were extant in a complete, or at least, a more perfect form, so late as the age of Vespasian. Pliny, book xiv. complaining of the agricultural ignorance of his age, observes that even the names of several trees enumerated by Hesiod had grown out of knowledge: and in book xv. he adverts to Hesiod’s opinion of the unprofitableness of the olive. From some verses in the Astronomicon of Manilius, an Augustan writer, it would seem that he had treated of ingrafting, and of the soils adapted to corn and vines.
He sings how corn in plains, how vines in hills
Delight, how both with vast increase the olive fills:
How foreign grafts th’ adulterous stock receives,
Bears stranger fruit and wonders at her leaves.
Creech.
and it is remarkable that the line in Virgil translated by Dryden,
And old Ascrean verse through Roman cities sing,
occurs in that book of the Georgics which is dedicated to planting, ingrafting, and the dressing of vines. In the “Works,” as they now appear, we find no mention of any trees but such as are fit for the fabrication of the plough: and it is plain that the countrymen of Pliny could be in no danger of forgetting the names of the oak, the elm, or the bay-tree. Of the olive, and of ingrafting, there is no mention whatever, and but a cursory notice on the vine: nor is there any comparison of the soils respectively adapted to the growth of vines and of corn.
The poem in some editions has been divided into two books; under the general title of “Works and Days,” but with a subdivision entitled Days only: by which arrangement it is made virtually to consist of three books. In Loesner’s edition the distinction of the second book is done away: but the subdivision of Days is retained. From either mode of disposition this incoherency results: that Works and Days no longer appear to be the general title, but applicable only to the former part of the poem, in which there is no mention of Days at all. The ancient copies, as Heinsius has shown, had no division into parts. If any minor distinction be deemed admissible for the more convenient arrangement of the subject, the disposition of Henry Stephens is obviously the most rational: whereby the poem is divided into two parts: the first entitled “Works” only, and the second “Days.”
Cooke explains the “Works” of Hesiod to mean the labours of agriculture, and the “Days” the proper seasons for the Works; but erroneously. The term Works is to be taken with greater latitude, as including not only labours, but actions; and as referring equally to the moral, as to the industrious œconomy of human life. It is evident also that the term “Days” does not respect the seasons of labour specified in the course of the poem, but the days of superstitious observance at the end of it: and of these many have no reference whatever to the works of husbandry.
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. The whole passage has the air of one of those introductions which the rhapsodists were accustomed to prefix to their recitations: it is conceived in a more florid taste than the usual composition of Hesiod, but expressed with considerable elegance of fancy.
These arguments are not affected by the individual opinions of Romans and Greeks, themselves modern with respect to Hesiod. Ovid in his “Art of Love” alludes to this proem:
The sister Muses did I ne’er behold,
While, Ascra! midst thy vales, I fed my fold.
Plutarch in the ninth book of his Symposiacs, quotes two of the verses in illustration of the propriety of epithets: Pausanias appeals to the presentation of the branch as evidence that Hesiod did not sing to the lyre; and Lucian in his dialogue “on the illiterate book-collector” observes, “how can you have known these things without having learnt them? how or whence? unless at any time you have received a branch from the Muses like that shepherd. They, indeed, did not disdain to appear to the shepherd, though a rough hairy man, with a sun-burnt complexion; but they would never have deigned to come near you:” and in the “Dialogue with Hesiod” he banters him as promising to sing of futurity; and affecting the Chalcas or Phineas, when there is nothing of prophecy in his whole poem. An indirect argument for the spuriousness of the verses.
It must have been an impression of this proem which led Gibbon in his “Notes on the editions of the Classics” (Miscellaneous Works, vol. v.) to observe, “in the Theogony I can discern a more recent hand:” for many details in the poem have all the internal evidence of antiquity. Perhaps the catalogue of names, which Robinson superfluously defends on the score of their metrical harmony, and compares with Homer’s catalogue of ships, of which the merit is geographical and historical, may furnish a strong presumptive argument of antiquity. They would appear to have been composed at a period when alphabetic writing was unknown, and the memory of names and things depended on the technical help of oral tradition.
Pausanias says, speaking of the Theogony, “There are some who consider Hesiod as the author of this poem.” That some theogony was composed by Hesiod is evidenced by the passage in Herodotus; who, speaking of Hesiod and Homer, affirms, “these are they who framed a Theogony for the Greeks:” and the fable of Pandora in the Theogony, that we now possess, bears characteristical marks of having come from the same hand as that in the Works and Days.
Of the Shield of Hercules it is asserted by Cooke, that “there is great reason to believe this poem was not in existence in the time of Augustus:” but he merely advances, in proof of this assertion, that “Manilius, who was an author of the Augustan age, takes notice of no other than the Theogony, and the Works and Days:” yet this, if indeed anything decisive could be concluded from the omission, would only prove that he did not believe the piece authentic. He further remarks that critics should not suppose it to have formed a part of another poem, unless they could show when, where, or by whom the title had been changed. This is surely to demand a very unreasonable as well as unnecessary kind of proof. The distinct title affords, in fact, no evidence for the completeness of the poem; as we learn from Ælian, that portions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were known by such separate titles as, “the Funeral Games of Patroclus,” the “Grot of Calypso;” and sung as detached pieces. The argument of Cooke that it cannot be an imitation of the Shield of Achilles, because the description of the mere Shield occupies but a small part of the piece, is equivalent to contending that Virgil could not have imitated the simile of Diana in the first book of the Æneid from the Odyssey, because the rest of the book bears no resemblance to any thing in Homer. A slight presumption of the Shield being from the hand of Hesiod may be founded on a quotation of Polybius, from one of Hesiod’s lost works: the historian speaks of the Macedonians as being “such as Hesiod describes the Æacidæ; rejoicing in war rather than in the banquet:” book v. ch. i. In the Shield, Iölaus says of himself and Hercules, that battles “are better to them than a feast.” The expression, however, may have been proverbial, and used by more poets than one.
The poem is ascribed to Hesiod by Athenæus: but Aristophanes the grammarian rejected it as spurious, and Longinus speaks doubtingly of Hesiod being the author. Tanaquil Faber confidently asserts “that they who think the Shield not of Hesiod, have but a very superficial acquaintance with Grecian poetry:” and on the other side Joseph Scaliger speaks of the author, whoever he may be, of the Shield; which the critical world by a preposterous judgment have attributed to the poet of Ascra. It is not by a reference to authorities that the question must be decided, but by an examination of the interior structure of the poem, and the evidence of style.
The objections to a great part of the poem consist in its unlikeness to the style of Hesiod, and its resemblance to that of Homer.
Robinson insists in reply that it is very usual for the same author to show a diversity of style; which is at least an admission that Hesiod is here different from himself. But to his question “whether we demand the same fervour and force in the Georgics of Virgil as in the Æneid?” it may be asked in return whether a certain similarity of style be not clearly distinguishable in these poems, however distinct their nature? there is, indeed, a difference, but not absolutely a discordance.
The whole laboured argument which he has bestowed on the necessary dissimilarity of didactic and heroical composition is plainly foreign to the question. Who would dream of urging as an objection to its authenticity, that the style of “The Shield” is unlike the georgical style of Hesiod? the objection is, that it is unlike his epic style: and Robinson has brought the question to a fair issue by his remark that the Battle of the Gods abounds no less than the Shield with the ornaments of poetry.
It is not sufficient that these passages respectively display ornament; we must examine whether they display a similar style of ornament. Now the descriptive part of the Shield is in a gorgeous taste; unlike the bold and simple majesty of the Theogony. There is a visible effort to surprise by something marvellous and uncommon; which often verges on conceit and extravagance. For sublime images we are presented with gigantic and distorted figures, and with hideous conceptions of disgusting horror. There is indeed a considerable degree of genius even in these faulty passages: but whoever perceives a resemblance in the imagery of the Shield to that of the Titanic War, may equally trace an affinity between Virgil and Ariosto.
These reasonings affect that part of the poem chiefly, which is occupied with the mere description of the Shield; but a single circumstance will show that the passages which represent the action of the poem are both foreign to Hesiod’s manner, and are in the manner of Homer. I allude to the employment of similes and to the character of those similes.
Homer is fond of comparisons; and of such, particularly, as are drawn from animated nature. The Shield of Hercules also abounds with similes, and they are precisely of this sort. But the frequent use of similitudes is so far from being characteristic of Hesiod, that in the whole Battle of the Giants but one occurs; and only one in the Combat of Jupiter and Typhæus; and in both we look in vain for any comparison drawn from lions, or boars, or vultures.
Robinson appears, indeed, conscious of a more crowded and diversified imagery in the Shield than we usually meet with in Hesiod’s poetry; for he is driven to the miserable alternative of supposing that Hesiod may have produced the Shield in his youth, and his other works in his old age. Longinus in the same manner accounts for the comparative quiet simplicity of the Odyssey. The supposition in either case is founded on the erroneous principle, that a poem is beautiful in proportion to the noise and fury of its action, or the accumulation of its ornament. The notion of the genius necessarily declining with the decline of youthful vigour is completely unphilosophical; and is contradicted by repeated experience of the human faculties. It was in his old age that Dryden wrote his “Fables.”
As to that portion of the poem which is properly the Shield, and from which the whole piece takes its title, it is self-evident that this must have been borrowed from the description in the Iliad, or the description in the Iliad from this. I do not allude merely to a whole series of verses being literally the same in each; but to long passages of description, bearing so close a resemblance as to preclude the idea of accidental coincidence; such as the bridal procession, the siege, the harvest, and the vintage.
Robinson admits the imitation; but thinks the partisans of Homer cannot easily show that Homer was not the copyist. It were, however, easy to decide from internal evidence which is the copy.
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. Of this sort of elaborate refinement a single instance will serve in illustration.
Both poets encircle their bucklers with the ocean. 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. But the author of the Shield of Hercules, evidently striving to excel Homer, says that “high-soaring swans there clamoured aloud, and many floated on the surface of the billows, and near them fishes were leaping tumultuously.” Who does not perceive that the full image of the rounding ocean is broken and rendered indistinct by this multiplicity of images? The description is, indeed, picturesque; at nunc non erat his locus.
Yet that Hesiod was the plagiarist will scarcely be contended, until the assertion already advanced respecting the epic simplicity of his style shall have been set aside.
But the former part of the piece has all the internal marks of having been composed by an author of totally dissimilar genius. It has the stamp of the ancient simplicity upon it. A few passages are magnificent; but still in a noble and pure taste. Here then I discern the hand of Hesiod. But the presumption rests on surer grounds than characteristics of style.
In the concluding verses of the Theogony, the poet invokes the Muses to sing the praises of women; and among the lost works of Hesiod, whose titles are dispersed in ancient authors, are enumerated the four Catalogues of Women or Heroines; and the Herogony, or Generation of Heroes descended from them; which are thought to have been five connected parts of the same poem. That this was the work of Hesiod we have the testimony of Pausanias; who alludes to the tale of Aurora and Cephalus, and that of Iphigenia, as treated by Hesiod in his Catalogue of Women. The fourth Catalogue had acquired a secondary title of Ηοιαι μεγαλαι; the great Eoiæ: fantastically framed out of the words η οιη, or such as, which introduced the stories of the successive heroines. From the use of this title a strange idea got abroad that Eoa was the name of a young woman of Ascra, the mistress of Hesiod.
Bœotian Hesiod, vers’d in various lore,
Forsook the mansion where he dwelt before:
The Heliconian village sought, and woo’d
The maid of Ascra in her scornful mood:
There did the suffering bard his lays proclaim,
The strain beginning with Eoa’s name.
Hermisianax of Colophon, in Athenæus, book xiii.[14]
Among the minor fragments of Hesiod are preserved three passages, each beginning with the words η οιη, introductory of a female description. They are naturally considered as remnants of the Fourth Catalogue. Now the piece entitled “The Shield of Hercules” also opens with these identical words, introductory of the story of Alcmena.
Fabricius decides that these introductory words will not permit us to doubt that “The Shield of Hercules” formed part of the Fourth Catalogue; but the inference does not necessarily extend beyond the first portion of the piece. Robinson justly argues on the incongruity of the poet’s digressing from the tale of Alcmena, to tell a story of Hercules; and he therefore conjectures that this piece is a fragment of the Heroical Genealogies; but aware that the concurrence of the exordium with the above-mentioned fragments, points the attention to the Fourth Catalogue, he cuts the Gordian knot by changing η οιη, or such as, into η οιη, she alone.
Guietus suggests the reading of ηοιη, rising with the dawn; for the purpose of rendering the piece complete in itself: but the very basis of the argument in favour of the authenticity of the poem as a work of Hesiod, is the striking coincidence of the introductory lines with the fragments of the Fourth Catalogue. This may be set aside by the ingenious expedient of altering the text; but if the text be suffered to remain, the presumption, so far as it extends, is irresistible. I do conceive that Robinson, when his judgment consented to this alteration of the reading, yielded a very important advantage to those who dispute the genuineness of the poem, as the production of Hesiod; that by the abandonment of these remarkably coincident words the difficulty of proving the poem to be a fragment is increased two-fold; and that with the fact of its being a fragment is closely linked the fact of its authenticity.
From what has been said, it will perhaps be thought extraordinary that the idea of a cento of dispersed fragments, pieced together and interpolated with Homeric imitations, never suggested itself to those critics who have bestowed such elaborate scrutiny on the composition of the poem.
In the scholium of the Aldine edition of Hesiod, it is stated, “The beginning of the Shield as far as the 250th verse is said to form a part of the Fourth Catalogue.” Here is at once an admission of the patchwork texture of the piece; and we may be allowed to conjecture that the scholiast may possibly be mistaken as to the exact number of lines. This portion, in fact, comprehends the meeting of Hercules with Cygnus, and his arming for battle; which follows, with a strange and startling abruptness, immediately on his birth; and seems to have little connexion with the praises of a heroine, in a poem devoted exclusively to celebrated women.
I should, therefore, be inclined to consider the first fifty-six lines only as belonging to the Fourth Catalogue. This introductory part, ending with the birth of Hercules, is awkwardly coupled with his warlike adventure in the grove of Apollo by the line
Who also slew Cygnus, the magnanimous son of Mars.
This line is perceptibly the link of connexion between the two fragments, and betrays the hand of the interpolator. The succeeding passage, as far as verse 153, I conjecture to have formed a part of the Herogony. It seems probable that Hesiod’s description of the sculpture on the Shield of Hercules was limited to the dragon in the centre, and the figure of Discord hovering above it; and was meant to end with the effects produced by the sight of this shield on the hero’s enemies. This short description appears to have suggested the experiment of ingrafting upon it a florid parody of the Shield of Achilles; and that here precisely we may fix the commencement of the spurious additions is probable from the verses
Οστεα δε σφι, περι ρινοῖο σαπεισης,
Σειριου αζαλεοιο, κελαινῇ πυθεται αιῃ.
Through the flesh that wastes away
Beneath the parching sun, their whitening bones
Start forth, and moulder in the sable dust:
being instantly followed by a passage from the Achillean Shield: Εν δε προιωξις, &c.
Pursuit was there, and fiercely rallying Flight.
I suppose, therefore, the description of the putrefying corses of the foes of Hercules to have joined the 320th verse; where he is made to grasp the shield and ascend the chariot. Several of the subsequent passages, as, in particular, the description of the Cicada, appear to me genuine; but they are visibly patched with Homeric similes, which are in general mere plagiarisms; and are not at all in unison with the style of the rest of the poem; nor with the characteristic manner of Hesiod. This mixture of authenticity and imposture will explain the contradictory decisions of learned men; who, in examining this curious question, have looked only at one side.
It does not appear that Hesiod was the most ancient author either of a theogony or a rural poem; although Herodotus speaks of him as the first who framed a theogonic system for the Greeks, and Pliny cites him as the earliest didactic poet on agriculture. But tradition has preserved the fame of theogonies by Orpheus and Musæus: and Tzetzes mentions two poems of Orpheus, the one entitled Works, the other Diaries; the archetypes, probably, of The Works and Days.
Quintilian observes that “Hesiod rarely rises, and a great part of him is occupied in names; yet he is distinguished by useful sentences conveying precepts, and a commendable sweetness of words and construction; and the palm is given him in that middle kind of writing.”
This is niggardly praise; and is somewhat similar to that which the same critic awards to Apollonius Rhodius;[15] whose picturesque style and impassioned sentiment are honoured with the diluted commendation of “an equable mediocrity.” Who that read the above character would suppose that Hesiod was at all superior to the gnomic or sententious poets; such as Theognis or Phocylides? that he had ever composed his Combat of Giants, or his Ages of Gold and of Iron?
If the battle of the Titans be Hesiod’s genuine composition, and if the Shield, as there is reason to believe, contain authentic extracts from his Heroical Genealogies, we shall decide that Hesiod, as compared with Homer, is less rapid; less fervent in action; less teeming with allusions and comparisons; but grand, energetic, occasionally vehement and daring; but more commonly proceeding with a slow and stately march. 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.
Addison, with that squeamish artificial taste which distinguishes the age of Anne, as compared with that of Elizabeth, underrates, as might have been expected, the vigorous simplicity 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; more circumstantiated in detail. The rising of the north-wind, moving the ocean, rooting the pines and oaks from the tops of the mountains, and strewing them along the valleys, and after a pause, suddenly roaring in its strength through the depths of the forests; the exquisite circumstances of life intermingled with the effects of the storm on inanimate nature; the beasts quaking and grinding their teeth with cold and famine; shuddering at the snowflakes, and shrinking into dens and thickets; the old man bent double with the blast;[16] the delicate contrast of the young virgin, sheltered in a soft chamber under her mother’s roof, and bathing previously to her nightly rest, compose a picture wild, romantic, and interesting in an uncommon degree.
As a legendary mythologist the elegant tale of Pandora, and the Island of the Blessed Spirits, are far beyond any thing of Ovid, and can only be compared with Homer: and as a poetical moralist, the strongest proof of his merit is, that innumerable sentences of Hesiod, as is well remarked by Voltaire in his “Dictionnaire Philosophique” have grown into proverbial axioms. Cicero observes in one of his Epistles; “Let our dear Lepta learn Hesiod, and have by heart ‘the gods have placed before virtue the sweat of the brow.’” His plain and downright rules of decency,[17] his superstitious saws, and his lumber of names, belong to the manners of a semi-barbarous village and the learning of a dark age: his genius and his wisdom are his own. From that which remains, mutilated as it obviously is, we may form a judgment of what he would appear to us, if the whole of his numerous works, complete and unadulterated by foreign mixture, were submitted to our observation. Ex pede Herculem.