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.