Of Hesiod.
He made use of fables which had for a long time been received in Greece. It is clearly seen by the succinct manner in which he speaks of Prometheus and Epimetheus that he supposes these notions already familiar to all the Greeks. He only mentions them to show that it is necessary to labor, and that an indolent repose, in which other mythologists have made the felicity of man to consist, is a violation of the orders of the Supreme Being.
Hesiod afterwards describes the four famous ages, of which he is the first who has spoken, at least among the ancient authors who remain to us. The first age is that which preceded Pandora—the time in which men lived with the gods. The iron age is that of the siege of Thebes and Troy. "I live in the fifth," says he, "and I would I had never been born." How many men, oppressed by envy, fanaticism, and tyranny, since Hesiod, have said the same!
It is in this poem of "Works and Days" that those proverbs are found which have been perpetuated, as—"the potter is jealous of the potter," and he adds, "the musician of the musician, and the poor even of the poor." We there find the original of our fable of the nightingale fallen into the claws of the vulture. The nightingale sings in vain to soften him; the vulture devours her. Hesiod does not conclude that a hungry belly has no ears, but that tyrants are not to be mollified by genius.
A hundred maxims worthy of Xenophon and Cato are to be found in this poem.
Men are ignorant of the advantage of society: they know not that the half is more valuable than the whole.
Iniquity is pernicious only to the powerless.
Equity alone causes cities to flourish.
One unjust man is often sufficient to ruin his country.
The wretch who plots the destruction of his neighbor often prepares the way to his own.