Through the flesh that wastes away
Beneath the parching sun, their whitening bones
Start forth, and moulder in the sable dust:
being instantly followed by a passage from the Achillean Shield: Εν δε προιωξις, &c.
Pursuit was there, and fiercely rallying Flight.
I suppose, therefore, the description of the putrefying corses of the foes of Hercules to have joined the 320th verse; where he is made to grasp the shield and ascend the chariot. Several of the subsequent passages, as, in particular, the description of the Cicada, appear to me genuine; but they are visibly patched with Homeric similes, which are in general mere plagiarisms; and are not at all in unison with the style of the rest of the poem; nor with the characteristic manner of Hesiod. This mixture of authenticity and imposture will explain the contradictory decisions of learned men; who, in examining this curious question, have looked only at one side.
It does not appear that Hesiod was the most ancient author either of a theogony or a rural poem; although Herodotus speaks of him as the first who framed a theogonic system for the Greeks, and Pliny cites him as the earliest didactic poet on agriculture. But tradition has preserved the fame of theogonies by Orpheus and Musæus: and Tzetzes mentions two poems of Orpheus, the one entitled Works, the other Diaries; the archetypes, probably, of The Works and Days.
Quintilian observes that “Hesiod rarely rises, and a great part of him is occupied in names; yet he is distinguished by useful sentences conveying precepts, and a commendable sweetness of words and construction; and the palm is given him in that middle kind of writing.”
This is niggardly praise; and is somewhat similar to that which the same critic awards to Apollonius Rhodius;[15] whose picturesque style and impassioned sentiment are honoured with the diluted commendation of “an equable mediocrity.” Who that read the above character would suppose that Hesiod was at all superior to the gnomic or sententious poets; such as Theognis or Phocylides? that he had ever composed his Combat of Giants, or his Ages of Gold and of Iron?
If the battle of the Titans be Hesiod’s genuine composition, and if the Shield, as there is reason to believe, contain authentic extracts from his Heroical Genealogies, we shall decide that Hesiod, as compared with Homer, is less rapid; less fervent in action; less teeming with allusions and comparisons; but grand, energetic, occasionally vehement and daring; but more commonly proceeding with a slow and stately march. In the mental or moral sublime I consider Hesiod as superior to Homer. The personification of Prayers in the latter is almost the only allegory that can be compared with the awful prosopopeia of Justice, weeping her wrongs at the feet of the Eternal: while Justice and Modesty, described as virgins in white raiment, ascending out of the sight of men into heaven, and the Holy Dæmons, after having animated the bodies of just men, hovering round the earth, and keeping watch over human actions, are equalled by no conceptions in the Iliad or Odyssey.