The Difference between the Homeric and the Hesiodic Spirit.—The Personality of Hesiod more Distinct than that of Homer.—What we Know about his Life.—Perses.—The Hesiodic Rhapsodes.—Theogony and Works and Days.—Didactic Poetry.—The Story of Prometheus.—Greek and Hebrew Myths of the Fall.—The Allegorical Element in the Promethean Legend.—The Titans.—The Canto of the Four Ages.—Hesiodic Ethics.—The Golden Age.—Flaxman's Illustrations.—Justice and Virtue.—Labor.—Bourgeois Tone of Hesiod.—Marriage and Women.—The Gnomic Importance of Hesiod for the Early Greeks.
Hesiod, though he belongs to the first age of Greek literature, and ranks among the earliest of Hellenic poets, marks the transition from the heroic period to that of the despots, when ethical inquiry began in Greece. Like Homer, Hesiod is inspired by the Muses: alone, upon Mount Helicon, he received from them the gift of inspiration. But the message which he communicates to men does not concern the deeds of demigods and warriors. It offers no material for tragedies upon the theme of
Thebes or Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine.
On the contrary, Hesiod introduces us to the domestic life of shepherds, husbandmen, and merchants. Homely precepts for the conduct of affairs and proverbs on the utility of virtue replace the glittering pictures of human passions and heroic strife which the Homeric poems present. A new element is introduced into literature, the element of man reflecting on himself, questioning the divine laws under which he is obliged to live, and determining the balance of good and evil which the days of youth and age bring with them in his earthly course. The individual is now occupied with his own cares and sorrows and brief joys. Living in the present, and perforce accommodating his imagination to the prose of human existence, he has forgotten to dream any longer of the past, or to reconstruct in fancy the poetic charm of visionary heroism. It was just this difference between Homer and Hesiod which led the aristocratic Greeks of a later age to despise the poet of Ascra. Cleomenes, the king of Sparta, chief of that proud military oligarchy which had controlled the destinies of decaying Hellas, is reported by Plutarch to have said that, while Homer was the bard of warriors and noble men, Hesiod was the singer of the Helots. In this saying the contempt of the martial class for the peaceable workers of the world is forcibly expressed. It is an epigram which endears Hesiod to democratic critics of the modern age. They can trace in its brief utterance the contempt which has been felt in all periods—especially among the historic Greeks, who regarded labor as ignoble, and among the feudal races, with whom martial prowess was the main-stay of society—for the unrecorded and unhonored earners of the bread whereby the brilliant and the well-born live.
Hesiod, therefore, may be taken as the type and first expression of a spirit in Greek literature alien from that which Homer represents. The wrath and love of Achilles, the charm of Helen and the constancy of Penelope, the councils of the gods, the pathos of the death of Hector, the sorrows of King Priam and the labors of Odysseus, are exchanged for dim and doleful ponderings upon the destiny of man, for the shadowy mythus of Prometheus and the vision of the ages ever growing worse as they advance in time. All the rich and manifold arras-work of suffering and action which the Odyssey and the Iliad display yields to such sombre meditation as a sad soul in the childhood of the world may pour forth, brooding on its own wrongs and on the woes of men around. The climax of the whole, after the justice of God has been querulously arraigned, and the violence of princes has been appealed against with pitiful vain iteration, is a series of practical rules for daily conduct, and a calendar of simple ethics.
Very little is known about Hesiod himself; nor can the date at which the poems ascribed to him were composed be fixed with any certainty. Something of the same semi-mythical obscurity which surrounds Homer envelops Hesiod. Just as Homer was the eponymous hero of the school of epic poets in Asia Minor and the islands, so Hesiod may be regarded as the titular president of a rival school of poets localized near Mount Helicon in Bœotia. That is to say, it is probable that the Hesiodic, like the Homeric, poems did not emanate from their supposed author as we read them now; but we may assume that they underwent changes and received additions from followers who imbibed his spirit and attempted to preserve his style. And, further, the poems ascribed to Hesiod became, as years went by, a receptacle for gnomic verses dear to the Greeks. Like the elegies of Theognis, the ethical hexameters of Hesiod were, practically, an anthology of anonymous compositions. Still Hesiod has a more distinct historic personality than Homer. In the first place, the majority of ancient critics regarded him as later in date and more removed from the heroic age. Then again, he speaks in his own person, recording many details of his life, and mentioning his father and his brother. Homer remains forever lost, like Shakespeare, in the creatures of his own imagination. Instead of the man Homer, we have the Achilles and Odysseus whom he made immortal. Hesiod tells us much about himself. A vein of personal reflection, a certain tone of peevish melancholy, peculiar to the individual, runs through his poems. He is far less the mouthpiece of the heavenly Muse than a man like ourselves, touching his lyre at times with a divine grace, and then again sweeping the chords with a fretfulness that draws some jarring notes.
We learn from the hexameters of Hesiod that he was born at Ascra in Bœotia (Works and Days, line 640). His father was an emigrant from Æolian Kumé, whence he came to Ascra in search of better fortune, "forsaking not plenty nor yet wealth and happiness, but evil poverty which Zeus gives to men: near Helicon he dwelt in a sorry village, Ascra, bad in winter, rigorous in summer heat, at no time genial." From the exordium of the Theogony (line 23) it appears that Hesiod kept sheep upon the slopes of Helicon; for it was there that the Muse descended to visit him, and, after rebuking the shepherds for their idleness and grossness, gave him her sacred laurel-branch and taught him song. On this spot, as he tells us in the Works and Days (line 656), he offered the first prize of victory which he obtained at Chalkis. It would seem clear from these passages that poetry had been recognized as an inspiration, cultivated as an art, and encouraged by public contests long before the date of Hesiod.
Husbandry was despised in Bœotia, and the pastoral poet led a monotonous and depressing life. The great event which changed its even tenor was a lawsuit between himself and his brother Perses concerning the division of their inheritance.[36] Perses, who was an idle fellow, after spending his own patrimony, tried to get that of Hesiod into his hands, and took his cause before judges whom he bribed. Hesiod was forced to relinquish his property, whereupon he retired from Ascra to Orchomenos. At Orchomenos he probably passed the remainder of his days. This incident explains why Hesiod dwelt so much upon the subject of justice in his poem of the Works and Days, addressed to Perses. Μέγα νήπιε Πέρση he always calls this brother, as though, while heaping the coals of good counsel upon his head, he wished to humble his oppressor by the parade of moral and intellectual superiority. Some of Hesiod's finest passages, his most intense and passionate utterances, are wrung from him by the injustice he had suffered; so true is the famous saying that poets
Learn in suffering what they teach in song.
One parable will for the moment serve as a specimen of the poetry which the wrong-dealing of Perses drew from him. "Thus spake the hawk to the nightingale of changeful throat, as he bore her far aloft among the clouds, the prey of his talons: she, poor wretch, wailed piteously in the grip of his crooked claws; but he insultingly addressed her: 'Wretch, why criest thou? Thou art now the prey of one that is the stronger; and thou shalt go whither I choose to take thee, song-bird as thou art. Yea, if I see fit, I will make my supper of thee, or else let thee go. A fool is he who kicks against his betters: of victory is he robbed, and suffers injury as well as insult.'" Hesiod himself is, of course, meant by the nightingale, and the hawk stands for violence triumphing over justice.