The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Promêtheus, etc.: moreover in the portion which respects Hekatê, it has both a mystic character and a distinct bearing upon present life and customs, which we may also trace in the allusions to Krête and Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B. C., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem is evidently conceived upon one scheme, yet the parts are so disorderly and incoherent, that it is difficult to say how much is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected the exordium; see the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poetæ Minor. p. 63).
K. O. Müller tells us (ut sup. p. 90), “The Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions of order and regularity are united to form a whole. The Cyclôpes denote the transient disturbances of this order of nature by storms, and the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed Giants, signify the fearful power of the greater revolutions of nature.” The poem affords little presumption that any such ideas were present to the mind of its author, as, I think, will be seen if we read 140-155, 630-745.
The Titans, the Cyclôpes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more be construed into physical phænomena than Chrysaor, Pegasus, Echidna, the Grææ, or the Gorgons. Zeus, like Hêraklês, or Jasôn, or Perseus, if his adventures are to be described, must have enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the same imposing canvas: the dwarfish proportions of man will not satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the grandeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow analogies from the striking accidents of physical nature, and when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat these approximations to physical phænomena as forming the main scheme of the poet,—to look for them everywhere, and to presume them where there is little or no indication.
[31] The strongest evidences of this feeling are exhibited in Herodotus, iii. 48; viii. 105. See an example of this mutilation inflicted upon a youth named Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys, in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and the tale about the Corinthian Periander, Herod. iii. 48.
It is an instance of the habit, so frequent among the Attic tragedians, of ascribing Asiatic or Phrygian manners to the Trojans, when Sophoclês in his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul. Poll. x. 165) introduced one of the characters of his drama as having been castrated by order of Hecuba, Σκαλμῇ γὰρ ὄρχεις βασιλὶς ἐκτέμνουσ᾽ ἐμούς,—probably the Παιδαγωγὸς, or guardian and companion of the youthful Troilus. See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. vol. i. p. 125.
[32] Herodot. viii. 105, εὐνοῦχοι. Lucian, De Deâ Syriâ, c. 50. Strabo, xiv. pp. 640-641.
[33] Diodôr. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 460. Hoeckh, in his learned work Krêta (vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the information attainable respecting the early influences of Phrygia and Asia Minor upon Krête: nothing seems ascertainable except the general fact; all the particular evidences are lamentably vague.
The worship of the Diktæan Zeus seemed to have originally belonged to the Eteokrêtes, who were not Hellens, and were more akin to the Asiatic population than to the Hellenic. Strabo, x. p. 478. Hoeckh, Krêta, vol. i. p. 139.
[34] Hesiod, Theogon. 161,
Αἶψα δὲ ποιήσασα γένος πολιοῦ ἀδάμαντος,