Mosaics of Grecian History

by Marcius Willson; Robert Pierpont Wilson

I. THE POEMS OF HE'SIOD.

The rapid development of literature and the arts is one of the most pleasing and striking features of Grecian history. As one writer has well said, "There was an uninterrupted progress in the development of the Grecian mind from the earliest dawn of the history of the people to the downfall of their political independence; and each succeeding age saw the production of some of those master-works of genius which have been the models and the admiration of all subsequent time." The first period of Grecian literature, ending about 776 B.C., may be termed the period of epic poetry. Its chief monuments are the epics of Homer and of Hesiod. The former are essentially heroic, concerning the deeds of warriors and demi-gods; while the latter present to us the different phases of domestic life, and are more of an ethical and religious character. Homer represents the poetry, or school of poetry, belonging chiefly to Ionia, in Asia Minor. Of his poems we have already given some account, and, passing over the minor intervening poets, called Cyclic, of whose works we have scarcely any knowledge, we will here give a brief sketch of the poems ascribed to Hesiod.

Hesiod is the representative of a school of bards which first developed in Bœotia, and then spread over Phocis and Euboea. The works purporting to be his, that have come down to us, are three in number—the Works and Days, the Theogony, and the Shield of Hercules. The latter, however, is now generally considered the production of some other poet. From DR. FELTON we have the following general characterization of these poems: "Aside from their intrinsic merit as poetical compositions, these poems are of high value for the light they throw on the mythological conceptions of those early times, and for the vivid pictures presented, by the Works and Days, of the hardships and pleasures of daily life, the superstitious observances, the homely wisdom of common experience, and the proverbial philosophy into which that experience had been wrought. For the truthfulness of the delineation generally all antiquity vouched; and there is in the style of expression and tone of thought a racy freshness redolent of the native soil." Of the poet himself we learn, from his writings, that he was a native of As'cra, a village at the foot of Mount Hel'icon, in Bœotia. Of the time of his birth we have no account, but it is probable that he flourished from half a century to a century later than Homer. But few incidents of his life are related, and these he gives us in his works, from which we learn that be was engaged in pastoral pursuits, and that he was deprived of the greater part of his inheritance by the decision of judges whom his brother Per'ses had bribed. This brother subsequently became much reduced in circumstances, and applied to Hesiod for relief. The poet assisted him, and then addressed to him the Works and Days, in which he lays down certain rules for the regulation and conduct of his life.

The design of Hesiod, as a prominent writer observes, was "to communicate to his brother in emphatic language, and in the order, or it might be the disorder, which his excited feelings suggested, his opinions or counsels on a variety of matters of deep interest to both, and to the social circle in which they moved. The Works and Days may be more appropriately entitled 'A Letter of Remonstrance or Advice' to a brother; of remonstrance on the folly of his past conduct, of advice as to the future. Upon these two fundamental data every fact, doctrine, and illustration of the poem depends, as essentially as the plot of the Iliad on the anger of Achilles." [Footnote: Mure's "Language and Literature of Ancient Greece," vol. ii., p.384.] The whole work has been well characterized by another writer as "the most ancient specimen of didactic poetry, consisting of ethical, political, and minute economical precepts. It is in a homely and unimaginative style, but is impressed throughout with a lofty and solemn feeling, founded on the idea that the gods have ordained justice among men, have made labor the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered the year that every work has its appointed season, the sign of which may be discerned."

There are three remarkable episodes in the Works and Days. The first is the tale of Prome'theus, which is continued in the Theogony; and the second is that of the Four Ages of Man. Both of these are types of certain stages or vicissitudes of human destiny. The third episode is a description of Winter, a poem not so much in keeping with the spirit of the work, but "one in which there is much fine and vigorous painting." The following extract from it furnishes a specimen of the poet's descriptive powers:

Winter.

Beware the January month, beware
Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air
Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast
O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.
From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth
O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north,
And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods
Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.
Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells,
And strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells:
He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around;
The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound.
The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold,
And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold;
Thick is the hairy coat, the shaggy skin,
But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.
Not his rough hide can then the ox avail;
The long-hair'd goat, defenceless, feels the gale:
Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound
The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.
He bows the old man crook'd beneath the storm,
But spares the soft-skinn'd virgin's tender form.
Screened by her mother's roof on wintry nights,
And strange to golden Venus' mystic rites,
The suppling waters of the bath she swims,
With shiny ointment sleeks her dainty limbs;
Within her chamber laid on downy bed,
While winter howls in tempest o'er her head.

Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet,
Starved 'midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat;
For now no more the sun, with gleaming ray,
Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.
And now the hornéd and unhornéd kind,
Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind
Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly
Where oaks the mountain dells embranch on high:
They seek to conch in thickets of the glen,
Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den.
Like aged men, who, propp'd on crutches, tread
Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head,
So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low,
Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow.
—Trans. by ELTON.

The Theogony embraces subjects of a higher order than the Works and Days. "It ascends," says THIRLWALL, "to the birth of the gods and the origin of nature, and unfolds the whole order of the world in a series of genealogies, which personify the beings of every kind contained in it." A late writer of prominence says that "it was of greater value to the Greeks than the Works and Days, as it contained an authorized version of the genealogy of their gods and heroes—an inspired dictionary of mythology—from which to deviate was hazardous." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets," by John Addington Symonds.] This work, however, has not the poetical merit of the other, although there are some passages in it of fascinating power and beauty. "The famous passage describing the Styx," says PROFESSOR MAHAFFY, "shows the poet to have known and appreciated the wild scenery of the river Styx in Arcadia; and the description of Sleep and Death, which immediately precedes it, is likewise of great beauty. The conflict of the gods and Titans has a splendid crash and thunder about it, and is far superior in conception, though inferior in execution, to the battle of the gods in the Iliad." [Footnote: Mahaffy's "History of Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p. 111.] The poems of Hesiod early became popular with the country population of Greece; but in the cities, and especially in Sparta, where war was considered the only worthy pursuit, they were long cast aside for the more heroic lines of Homer.