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,