The Remains of Hesiod the Ascræan, Including the Shield of Hercules / Translated into English rhyme and blank verse; with a dissertation on the life and æra, the poems and mythology of Hesiod, and copious notes.

by Hesiod

In woods, in waves, in wars she wonts to dwell,

And will be found with peril and with pain:

Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell

Unto her happy mansion attain.

Before her gate high God did sweat ordain,

And wakeful watches ever to abide:

But easy is the way and passage plain

To Pleasure’s palace: it may soon be spied,

And day and night her doors to all stand open wide.

This allegory of Hesiod seems the basis of the apologue of Hercules, Virtue and Vice, which Xenophon in his “Memorabilia,” 2, 21, quotes by memory from Prodicus’s “History of Hercules.”