Greeted from the inner shrine as one “held in honour high by the immortal Muses,” as one “whose fame shall reach as far as is spread the light of morn” (this use of one of Homer’s own and fairest lines[192] was no doubt intended as the highest possible tribute to his victor), Hesiod is then warned, “But beware of the fair grove of the Nemean Zeus, for there lies thy fate of death.”
Alas! for the poet, who to escape the well-known temple of Nemean Zeus in the Peloponnese hurried off to stay at Oinoë in Locris, never to discover that there too was a place sacred to the same god and called by the same name.
At Oinoë he abode with his hosts, until suspecting that he had debauched their sister (Hesiod seems to have been endowed with superhuman powers, for according to Proclus and Suidas he was a youth twice!), they slew him and threw him into the sea. But on the third day his body was borne back to land by dolphins. On hue and cry for the murderers being raised the brothers seized a fishing boat and set sail for Crete.[193] But they found not favour in the “pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging” Zeus, who thundered and sank them. “But the maiden, their sister, after the rape hanged herself.” To conclude in the words of the Ἀγών,
“So much for Hesiod!”
CHAPTER IV
THE DOLPHIN—HERODOTUS—THE ICHTHYOPHAGI—THE TUNNY
The Shield of Heracles, now rarely attributed to Hesiod the poet nearest in time to Homer, gives us pictures, similar if more ornate in style to those in Homer’s “The Shield of Achilles.”
The Shield of Heracles would probably not have been written had not Homer’s “Shield of Achilles” existed. It differs from the older poem in the presentation of mythological scenes and a scene of fishing, but is perhaps the most complete illustration from fisher life extant before Theocritus.
“there appeared A sheltering haven from the untamed rage Of ocean. It was wrought of tin refined And rounded by the chisel; and it seemed Like to the dashing wave; and in the midst Full many dolphins chased the fry, and show’d As though they swam the waters, to and fro Darting tumultuous. Two of silver scale Panting above the wave, the fishes mute Gorged, that beneath them shook their quivering fins In brass. But on the crag a fisher sate Observant: in his grasp he held a net Like one that, poising, rises to the throw.”[194]