FOOTNOTES:

νεηνίῃ ἀνδρὶ ἐοικὼςπρῶτον ὑπηνήτῃ· τοῦπερ χαριεστάτη ἥβη.[28]

A plant of moly is in his hand; and this will be the antidote to Circe's philter. Odysseus's sword and strong will must do the rest. When Circe has once found her match, we are astonished at thebonhomiewhich she displays. The game is over. There remains nothing but graceful hospitality on her part—elegant banquets, delicious baths, soft beds, the restoration of the ship's crew to their proper shape, and a store of useful advice for the future. "There all the days, for a whole year, we sat feasting and drinking honeyed wine; but when the year was full, and the seasons had gone round, moon waning after moon, and the long days were finished, my dear comrades called on me by name, and spake once more of home."

One more female figure from theOdysseyremains as yet untouched; and this is the most beautiful of all. Nausicaa has no legendary charm; she is neither mystic goddess nor weird woman, nor is hers the dignity of wifehood. She is simply the most perfect maiden, the purest, freshest, lightest-hearted girl of Greek romance. Odysseus passes straight from the solitary island of Ogygia, where elm and poplar and cypress overshadow Calypso's cavern, into the company of this real woman. It is like coming from a land of dreams into a dewy garden when the sun has risen: the waves through which he has fared upon his raft have wrought for him, as it were, a rough reincarnation into the realities of human life. For the sea-brine is the source of vigor; and into the deep he has cast, together with Calypso's raiment, all memory of her.

Nausicaa was asleep in her Phæacian chamber when Athene, mindful of Odysseus's need, came down and warned her in a dream that she should bestir herself and wash her clothes against her marriage-day. When the damsel woke, she went straight to her father, Alcinous, and begged him to provide a horse and mules. Like a prudent girl, she said nothing of her marriage,but spoke of the cares of the household. Her five brothers, she said, the two wedded and the other three in the bloom of youth, want shining raiment for the dance, and her duty it is to see that the clothes are always ready. Alcinous knew in his heart what she really meant, but he answered her with no unseemly jest. Only he promised a cart and a pair of mules; and her mother gave her food to eat, and wine in a skin, and a golden cruse of oil, that she and her maidens might spend a pleasant morning by the sea-beach, and bathe and anoint themselves, when their clothes-washing was finished.

A prettier picture cannot be conceived than that drawn by Homer of Nausicaa with her handmaidens thronging together in the cart, which jogs downward through the olive-gardens to the sea. The princess holds the whip and drives; and when she reaches the stream's mouth by the beach, she loosens the mules from the shafts, and turns them out to graze in the deep meadow. Then the clothes are washed, and the luncheon is taken from the basket, and the game of ball begins. How the ball flew aside and fell into the water, and how the shrill cries of the damsels woke Odysseus from his sleep, every one remembers. The girls are fluttered by the sight of the great naked man, rugged with brine and bruised with shipwreck. Nausicaa alone, as becomes a princess, stands her ground and questions him. The simple delicacy with which this situation is treated makes the whole episode one of the most charming in Homer. Nothing can be prettier than the change from pity to admiration, expressed by the damsel, when Odysseus has bathed in running water, and rubbed himself with oil and put on goodly raiment given him by the girls. Pallas sheds treble grace upon his form, and makes his hair to fall in clusters like hyacinth-blossoms, so that an artist who moulds figures of gilt silver could not shape a comelier statue. The princess, with yesternight's dream still in her soul, wishes hewould stay and be her husband. The girlish simplicity of Nausicaa is all the more attractive because the Phæacians are the most luxurious race described by Homer. The palace in which she dwells with her father is all of bronze and silver and gold; it shines like the sun, and a blue line marks the brazen cornice of the walls. Dogs of silver and gold, Hephæstus's work, which never can grow old through length of days, protect the entrance. Richly woven robes are cast upon the couches in the hall, and light is shed upon the banquet-tables from blazing torches in the hands of golden boys. Outside the palace grows the garden with well-divided orchard-rows, where pears and figs and pomegranates and burnished apples and olives flourish all the year long. The seasons change not in Phæacian land for winter or for summer. The west wind is always blowing. Pear follows after pear, and apple after apple, and grape-bunch after grape-bunch, in a never-ending autumn dance. Vintage, too, is there; and there are the trim flower-beds; and through the garden flow two fountains. The whole pleasure-ground seems to have been laid out with geometrical Greek taste. It is a paradise of neatness, sun-bright, clear to take in at a glance. In this delightful palace dwells Alcinous, a kind old man, among his sons; and much delight they take in dance and song and games of strength. The young men, whose beards are but just growing, leap in rhythmic movement to the flute; the elder and more muscular run or wrestle, and much contempt do these goodly fellows, like English lads, reserve for men who are not athletes. Odysseus has to rebuke one of them, Euryalus, by reminding him that faultlessly fair bodies are not always the temples of a godlike soul. Zeus gives not all of his good gifts to all; for some men owe grace and favor to eloquence, others to beauty, and a man may be like to the immortals in face and form, and yet a fool. Alcinous well describes the temper of his people when he says: "We are not faultless boxers, nor yetwrestlers; but with our feet we race swiftly, and none can beat us in rowing; and we aye love the banquet, and the lyre, and dancing, and gay raiment, and warm baths, and joys of love." It is therefore not without propriety that Demodocus, their blind bard, "whom the Muse loved much, and gave him good and evil—for she reft him of his sight and gave him honeyed song"—sings of Aphrodite tangled with Ares in the net of Hephæstus. From this soft, luxurious, comely, pleasure-loving folk Nausicaa springs up like a pure blossom—anemone or lily of the mountains. She has all the sweetness of temper which distinguishes Alcinous; but the voluptuous living of her people has not spoiled her. The maidenly reserve which she displays in her first reception of Odysseus, her prudent avoidance of being seen with him in the streets of the town while he is yet a stranger, and the care she takes that he shall suffer nothing by not coming with her to the palace, complete the portrait of a girl who is as free from coquetry as she is from prudishness. Perhaps she strikes our fancy with most clearness when, after bathing and dressing, Odysseus passes her on his way through the hall to the banquet. She leaned against the pillar of the roof and gazed upon Odysseus, and said: "Hail, guest, and be thou mindful of me when perchance thou art in thine own land again, for to me the first thou dost owe the price of life." This is the last word spoken by Nausicaa in theOdyssey. She is not mentioned among the Phæacians who took leave of the hero the day he passed to Ithaca.

Before quitting the women of Homer, we must return to theIliad; for without Briseis and Andromache their company would be incomplete. As the figures in a bass-relief are variously wrought, some projecting like independent statues in sharp light and shadow, while others are but half detached, and a third sort offer mere outlined profiles scarcely embossed upon the marble background: even so the poet has obeyed a law of relative proportion in his treatment of character. The subordinate heroes, for example, in theIliadfall away from the central figure of Achilles into more or less of slightness. This does not mean that we can trace the least indecision in Homer's touch, or that he has slurred his work by haste or incapacity. On the contrary, there is no poet from whom deeper lessons in the art of subordinating accessories to the main subject without impairing their real value can be learned. A sculptor like Pheidias knows how to give significance to the least indication of a form which he has placed upon the second plane in his bass-relief. Just so Homer inspires his minor characters with personality. To detach this personality in each case is the task of the critic; yet his labor is no light one; for the Homeric characters draw their life from incidents, motives, action. To the singer's fancy they appeared, not as products of the self-conscious imagination, but as living creatures; and to separate them from their environment of circumstance is almost to destroy them. This is the specific beauty of the art of Homer. In its origin it must have been the outcome, not of reflection, but of inspired instinct; for in the Homeric age psychological analysis was unknown, and the very nomenclature of criticism had yet to be invented. We can draw inexhaustible lessons in practical wisdom from the Homeric poems; but we cannot with impunity subject those delicate creations to the critical crucible. They delight both intellect and senses with a many-toned harmony of exquisitely modulated parts; but the instant we begin to dissect and theorize, we run a risk of attributing far more method and deliberation than was natural to a poet in the early age of Hellas. It is almost impossible to set forth the persons of Homer except in his own way, and in close connection with the incidents through which they are revealed; whereas the characters of a more self-conscious artist—the Medea, for example, or the Phædra of Euripides—can be described without much repetition of their speeches or reconstruction of the dramas in which they play their parts.

Andromache offers a not inapt illustration to these remarks. She is beautiful, as all heroic women are; and Homer tells us she is "white-armed." We know no more about her person than this; and her character is exhibited only in the famous parting scene and in the two lamentations which she pours forth for her husband. Yet who has read theIliadwithout carrying away a distinct conception of this, the most lovable among the women of Homer? She owes her character far less to what she does and what she says than to how she looks in that ideal picture painted on our memory by Homer's verse. The affection of Hector for his wife, no less distinguished than the passion of Achilles for his friend, has made the Trojan prince rather than his Greek rival the hero of modern romance. When he leaves Ilion to enter on the long combat which ends in the death of Patroclus, the last thought of Hector is for Andromache. He finds her, not in their home, but on the wall, attended by her nurse, who carries in her arms his only son:

Ἑκτορίδην ἀγαπητὸν ἀλίγκιον ἀστέρι καλῷ.[29]

Her first words, after she has wept and clasped him, are: "Love, thy stout heart will be thy death, nor hast thou pity of thy child or me, who soon shall be a widow. My father and my mother and my brothers are all slain; but, Hector, thou art father to me and mother and brother, and thou too art the husband of my youth. Have pity, then, and stay here in the tower, lest thy son be orphaned and thy wife a widow." The answer is worthy of the hero. "Full well," he says, "know I that Troy will fall, and I foresee the sorrow of my brethren and the king; but for these I grieve not: to think of thee, a slave in Argos, unmans me almost; yet even so I will not flinch or shirk the fight. My dutycalls, and I must away." He stretches out his mailed arms to Astyanax, but the child is frightened by his nodding plumes. So he lays aside his helmet, and takes the baby to his breast, and prays for him. Andromache smiles through her tears, and down the clanging causeway strides the prince. Poor Andromache has nothing left to do but to return home and raise the dirge for a husband as good as dead. When we see her again in the 22dIliad, she is weaving, and her damsels are heating a bath against Hector's return from the fight. Then suddenly the cry of Hecuba's anguish thrills her ears. Shuttle and thread drop from her hands; she gathers up her skirts, and like a Mænad flies forth to the wall. She arrives in time to see her husband's body dragged through dust at Achilles' chariot-wheels away from Troy. She faints, and when she wakes it is to utter the most piteous lament in Homer—not, however, for Hector so much, or for herself, as for Astyanax. He who was reared upon a father's knees and fed with marrow and the fat of lambs, and, when play tired him, slept in soft beds among nursing-women, will now roam, an orphan, wronged and unbefriended, hunted from the company of happier men, or fed by charity with scanty scraps. The picture of an orphan's misery among cold friends and hard oppressors is wrought with the pathos of exquisite simplicity. And to the same theme Andromache returns in thevocerowhich she pours forth over the body of Hector. "I shall be a widow and a slave, and Astyanax will either be slaughtered by Greek soldiers or set to base service in like bondage." Then the sight of the corpse reminds her that the last words of her sorrow must be paid to Hector himself. What touches her most deeply is the thought of death in battle:

οὐ γάρ μοι θνήσκων λεχέων ἐκ χεῖρας ὄρεξας·οὐδέ τί μοι εἶπες πυκινὸν ἔπος, οὗτέ κεν αἰεὶμεμνήμην νύκτας τε καὶ ἤματα δακρυχέουσα.[30]

As far as studied delineation of character goes, Briseis is still more a silhouette than Andromache. We know her as the fair-cheeked damsel who was fain to stay with Achilles, and who loved Patroclus because he kept for her a soothing word. In her threnos for Patroclus she exclaims, "How one woe after another takes me! I saw my husband slain before our city, and my three brethren; but you, Patroclus, then comforted me, and said I should be Achilles' wife: you were ever gentle." This is really all we know about her. Yet Briseis lives in our memory by virtue of the great passions gathered round her, and the weighty actions in which she plays her part.

In course of years the heroes of the Homeric romances came to be worshipped, not exactly like gods with θυσίαι, but like the more than mortal dead with ἐναγίσματα. They had their chapels and their hearths, distinct from the temples and the altars of the deities. These were generally raised upon the supposed spot of their sepulture, or in places which owed them special reverence as œkists or as ancestors. In the case of Œdipus, the translation of the hero to the company of gods secured for him a cultus in Colonos. It was supposed that heroes exercised a kindly influence over the people among whom they dwelt; haunting the neighborhood in semi-corporeal visitations, conferring benefits upon the folk, and exhibiting signs of anger when neglected. Thus Philostratus remarks that Protesilaus had a fane in Thessaly, "and many humane and favorable dealings doth he show the men of Thessaly, yea, and angerly also if he be neglected."[31]The same Philostratus, whose works are a treasure-house of information respecting the latest forms of Hellenic paganism, reports the actual form of prayer used by Appollonius of Tyana at the tombof Palamedes,[32]and makes the ghost of Achilles complain: "The Thessalians for a long time have remitted my offerings; still I am not yet minded to display my wrath against them." Achilles, who has been evoked above his tomb in the Troad by the prayers of Apollonius, proceeds to remark that even the Trojans revere him more than his own people, but that he cannot restore the town of Troy to its old prosperity. He hints, however, pretty broadly, that if the Thessalians do not pay him more attention, he will reduce them to the same state of misery as the Trojans. The dæmon, it may be said in passing, vanishes, like a mediæval ghost, at cockcrow.[33]

This cultus of the Homeric heroes was, of course, inseparable from a corresponding growth of artistic associations; and here it is not a little curious to compare our own indefinite conceptions of the outward form of the heroic personages with the very concrete incarnation they received from Greek sculptors and painters. The first memorable attempt to express the heroes of Homer in marble was upon the pediment at Ægina; the first elaborate pictorial representation was that of Polygnotus on the walls of theLescheat Delphi. A GreekLeschewas not unlike an Italian or Oriental café, extended to suffice for the requirements of a whole city. What has been discovered at Pompeii, in addition to the full description of the DelphianLescheby Pausanias, inclines us to believe that the walls of these public places of resort were not unfrequently decorated with Homeric pictures. The beautiful frescos of Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes, of Achilles bathed by Thetis in the Styx, of Briseis led forth by Patroclus into the company of the Achaian chiefs, and of Penelope questioning the disguised Odysseus about her husband, which have been discovered in various parts of Pompeii, sufficiently illustrate to modern minds the style of this wall-painting. The treatisesurnamed Εἰκόνες of Philostratus is an elaborate critical catalogue of a picture-gallery of this sort; and from many indications contained in it we learn how thoroughly the heroes of Homer had acquired a fixed corporeal personality. In describing, for example, a picture of the lamentation for Antilochus, he says: "These things are Homer's paintings, but the painter's action." Then he goes on to point out the chief persons: "You can distinguish Odysseus at once by his severe and wideawake appearance, Menelaus by his gentleness, Agamemnon by his inspired look; while Tydeus is indicated by his freedom, the Telamonian Ajax by his grimness, and the Locrian by his activity."[34]In another place he tells us that Patroclus was of an olive-pale complexion (μελίχλωρος), with black eyes and rather thick eyebrows; his head was erect upon the neck, like that of a man who excels in athletic exercises, his nose straight, with wide nostrils, like an eager horse. These descriptions occur in theHeroic Dialogue. They are supposed to have been communicated by the dæmon Protesilaus to a vine-dresser who frequented his tomb. Achilles, on the other hand, had abundant hair, more pleasant to the sight in hue than gold, with a nose inclining to the aquiline, angry brows, and eyes so bright and lively that the soul seemed leaping from them in fire. Hector, again, had a terrible look about him, and scorned to dress his hair, and his ears were crushed, not indeed by wrestling, for barbarians do not wrestle, but by the habit of struggling for mastery with wild bulls.[35]

Some of the women of Homeric story, Helen for example, and Iphigenia, received divine honors, together with suitable artistic personification. But women were not closely connected with thegenealogical and gentile foundations of the Greek cultus; only a few, therefore, were thus distinguished. What has here been said about the superstition that gave form and distinctness to the creatures of Homeric fancy may be taken as applying in general to the attitude assumed by ancient art. The persons of a poem or a mythus were not subjected to critical analysis as we dissect the characters ofHamletor ofFaust. But they were not on that account the less vividly apprehended. They tended more and more to become external realities—beings with a definite form and a fixed character. In a word, through sculpture, painting, and superstition, they underwent the same personifying process as the saints of mediæval Italy. To what extent the Attic drama exercised a disturbing influence and interrupted this process has been touched upon with reference to the Euripidean Helen.

FOOTNOTES:[17]I take this occasion of calling attention to the essay on Helen considered as an allegory of Greek Beauty, by Paul de St. Victor in hisHommes et Dieux.[18]"Not true is that tale; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, or come to towers of Troy."[19]She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate,Made frantic by their city's fate,Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,The vengeance of her injured lord:She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,Sat cowering, by the altar screened.—Conington.[20]Worsley'sIliad, iii. 17. The other quotations are from the same version.[21]"Thy own soul, gazing at him, became Kupris; for Aphrodite, as her name denotes, is all the folly of mortals."[22]Quite another view of Helen's character is developed in theHelena, where Euripides has followed the Stesichorean version of her legend with singular disregard for consistency. Much might be said on this point about the license in handling mythical material the Attic dramatists allowed themselves.[23]Eastward was my glance directed,Watching for the sun's first rays;In the south—oh, sight of wonder!Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze.Thither was my eye attracted;Vanished bay and mountain height,Earth and heaven unseen and all things,All but that enchanted light.—Anster.[24]"The home of my wedded years, exceeding fair, filled with all the goods of life, which even in dreams methinks I shall remember."[25]"I know well that Penelope is inferior to thee in form and stature, to the eyes of men."[26]"Of a truth my goodliness and beauty of person the gods destroyed what time the Argives went up into Troy town."[27]"For the nymph pleased him no longer. Nathless, as need was, he slept the night in hollow caverns, beside her loving him who loved her not."[28]"Like to a young man when his beard has just begun to grow, whose bloom is then most lovely."[29]Hector's only son, like unto a fair star.[30]"For, dying, thou didst not reach to me thy hand from the bed, nor say to me words of wisdom, the which I might have aye remembered night and day with tears."[31]Ἡρωϊκός, 680.[32]Life of Apollonius, 150.[33]Ibid.153, 154.[34]Εἰκόνες, 820. (By Kayser, Zurich, 2d ed.)[35]Ἡρωϊκός, 736, 733, 722. For the curious detail about Hector's ears compare Theocr. 22, 45, where athletes are described τεθλαγμένοι οὔατα πυγμαῖς. Statues of Hercules show this.

[17]I take this occasion of calling attention to the essay on Helen considered as an allegory of Greek Beauty, by Paul de St. Victor in hisHommes et Dieux.

[18]"Not true is that tale; nor didst thou journey in benched ships, or come to towers of Troy."

[19]She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate,Made frantic by their city's fate,Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,The vengeance of her injured lord:She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,Sat cowering, by the altar screened.—Conington.

[19]

She, shrinking from the Trojans' hate,Made frantic by their city's fate,Nor dreading less the Danaan sword,The vengeance of her injured lord:She, Troy's and Argos' common fiend,Sat cowering, by the altar screened.—Conington.

[20]Worsley'sIliad, iii. 17. The other quotations are from the same version.

[21]"Thy own soul, gazing at him, became Kupris; for Aphrodite, as her name denotes, is all the folly of mortals."

[22]Quite another view of Helen's character is developed in theHelena, where Euripides has followed the Stesichorean version of her legend with singular disregard for consistency. Much might be said on this point about the license in handling mythical material the Attic dramatists allowed themselves.

[23]Eastward was my glance directed,Watching for the sun's first rays;In the south—oh, sight of wonder!Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze.Thither was my eye attracted;Vanished bay and mountain height,Earth and heaven unseen and all things,All but that enchanted light.—Anster.

[23]

Eastward was my glance directed,Watching for the sun's first rays;In the south—oh, sight of wonder!Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze.Thither was my eye attracted;Vanished bay and mountain height,Earth and heaven unseen and all things,All but that enchanted light.—Anster.

Eastward was my glance directed,Watching for the sun's first rays;In the south—oh, sight of wonder!Rose the bright orb's sudden blaze.

Thither was my eye attracted;Vanished bay and mountain height,Earth and heaven unseen and all things,All but that enchanted light.—Anster.

[24]"The home of my wedded years, exceeding fair, filled with all the goods of life, which even in dreams methinks I shall remember."

[25]"I know well that Penelope is inferior to thee in form and stature, to the eyes of men."

[26]"Of a truth my goodliness and beauty of person the gods destroyed what time the Argives went up into Troy town."

[27]"For the nymph pleased him no longer. Nathless, as need was, he slept the night in hollow caverns, beside her loving him who loved her not."

[28]"Like to a young man when his beard has just begun to grow, whose bloom is then most lovely."

[29]Hector's only son, like unto a fair star.

[30]"For, dying, thou didst not reach to me thy hand from the bed, nor say to me words of wisdom, the which I might have aye remembered night and day with tears."

[31]Ἡρωϊκός, 680.

[32]Life of Apollonius, 150.

[33]Ibid.153, 154.

[34]Εἰκόνες, 820. (By Kayser, Zurich, 2d ed.)

[35]Ἡρωϊκός, 736, 733, 722. For the curious detail about Hector's ears compare Theocr. 22, 45, where athletes are described τεθλαγμένοι οὔατα πυγμαῖς. Statues of Hercules show this.

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.—TheogonyandWorks 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 introducedinto 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 actionwhich theOdysseyand theIliaddisplay 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 theTheogony(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 theWorks 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 theWorks 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.

In verse and dialect the Hesiodic poems are not dissimilar from the Homeric, which, supposing their date to have been later, proves that theIliadhad determined the style and standard of epic composition, or, supposing a contemporary origin, would show that the Greeks of the so-called heroic age had agreed upon a common literary language. We may refer theTheogonyand theWorks and Days, after the deduction of numerous interpolations, to Hesiod, but only in the same sense and with the same reservation as we assign theIliadand theOdysseyto Homer.[37]Unlike the heroic epos, they were recited, not to the accompaniment of the cithara,but by the poet standing with a laurel staff, called ῥάβδος or σκῆπτρον, in his hand. Hesiod, at the opening of theTheogony, tells us how he had received a staff of this kind from the Muse upon Mount Helicon. Either, then, the laurel ῥαβδος had already been recognized in that part of Greece as the symbol of the poet's office, or else, from the respect which the followers of Hesiod paid to the details of his poem, they adopted it as their badge.

Of the two poems ascribed to Hesiod, theTheogonyand theWorks and Days, the former—though its genuineness as a Hesiodic production seems to have been disputed from a very early period—was, perhaps, on the whole, of greater value than the latter to the Greeks. It contained an authorized version of the genealogy of their gods and heroes, an inspired dictionary of mythology, from which to deviate was hazardous. Just as families in England try to prove their Norman descent by an appeal to the Roll of Battle Abbey, so the canon of theTheogonydecided the claims of god or demi-god to rank among celestials. In this sense Herodotus should be interpreted when he says that Hesiod joined with Homer in making their Theogonia for the Greeks. But though this poem had thus a unique value for the ancients, it is hardly so interesting in the light of modern criticism as theWorks and Days. TheWorks and Days, while for all practical purposes we may regard it as contemporaneous with theIliad, marks the transition from the heroic epic to the moral poetry of the succeeding age, and forms the basis of direct ethical philosophy in Hellas. Hesiod is thus not only the mouthpiece of obscure hand-workers in the earliest centuries of Greek history, the poet of their daily labors, sufferings, and wrongs, the singer of their doubts and infantine reflections on the world in which they had to toil; he is also the immediate parent of gnomic verse, and the ancestor ofthose deep thinkers who speculated in the Attic age upon the mysteries of human life.

The first ten verses of theWorks and Daysare spurious—borrowed, probably, from some Orphic hymn to Zeus, and recognized as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias. The poem begins with these words: "Not, as I thought, is there only one kind of strife; but on the earth there are two, the one praiseworthy, the other to be blamed." It has been conjectured that Hesiod is referring to that passage of theTheogony[38]in which Eris, daughter of Night, is said to have had no sister. We are, therefore, justified in assuming that much of his mythology is consciously etymological; and this should be borne in mind while dealing with the legend of Prometheus. The strife whereof he speaks in his exordium is what we should now call competition. It rouses the idle man to labor; it stirs up envy in the heart of the poor man, making him eager to possess the advantages of wealth; it sets neighbor against neighbor, craftsman against craftsman, in commendable emulation. Very different, says the poet, is this sort of strife from that which sways the law-courts; and at this point he begins to address his brother Perses, who had litigiously deprived him of his heritage. The form of didactic poetry, as it has since been practised by the followers of Hesiod, was fixed by the appeal to Perses. Empedocles, it will be remembered, addressed his poem on Nature to the physician Pausanias; Lucretius invoked the attention of Memmius, and Virgil that of Mæcenas; the gnomes of Theognis were uttered to the Megarian Cyrnus; Poliziano dedicated hisSilvato Lorenzo de' Medici, Vida hisPoeticsto the Dauphin, Fracastorio his medical poem to Bembo, and Pope theEssay on Manto Bolingbroke. After this preface on competition as the inducement to labor, and on strife as the basis of injustice, the poet proceeds to the mythus of Prometheus,which is so artificially introduced as to justify the opinion that it may be an interpolation by some later craftsman of the Hesiodic school. Work, he says, is necessary for men, because Zeus has concealed and hidden far away our means of livelihood; so that we are forced to toil and suffer in the search for sustenance. This grudge Zeus owed mankind because of the sin of Prometheus. In theWorks and Daysthe account given of the trick played upon Zeus is brief; Hesiod only says, "seeing that Prometheus of crooked counsel deceived him." We may, however, supplement the story from theTheogony.[39]In old days the human race had fire, and offered burnt sacrifice to heaven; but Prometheus by his craft deceived the gods of their just portion of the victims, making Zeus take the bones and fat for his share. Whereupon Zeus deprived men of the use of fire. Prometheus then stole fire from heaven and gave it back to men. "Then," says Hesiod, "was cloud-gathering Zeus full wroth of heart, and he devised a great woe for all mankind." He determined to punish the whole race by giving them Pandora. He bade Hephæstus mix earth and water, and infuse into the plastic form a human voice and human powers, and liken it in all points to a heavenly goddess. Athene was told to teach the woman, thus made, household work and skill in weaving. Aphrodite poured upon her head the charm of beauty, with terrible desire, and flesh-consuming thoughts of love. But Zeus commanded Hermes to give to her the mind of a dog and wily temper. After this fashion was the making of Pandora. And when she had been shaped, Athene girded and adorned her; the Graces and divine Persuasion hung golden chains about her flesh, and the Hours crowned her with spring blossoms. Zeus called her Pandora, because each dweller on Olympus had bestowed on her a gift. Then Pandora was sent under the charge of Hermes toEpimetheus, who remembered not his brother's words, how he had said: "Receive no gift from Zeus, but send it back again, lest evil should befall the race of men." But as soon as Epimetheus had housed her he recognized his error. Before this time men had lived upon the earth apart from evils, apart from painful toil, and weariful diseases which bring death on mortals. The woman with her hands lifted the lid of the great jar where all these bad things were shut up, and let them loose into the air. Hope alone remained behind—for the lot of humanity is hopeless; but a hundred thousand woes abode at large to plague the race of men. Earth is full of them; the sea is full; and sickness roams abroad by night and day, where it listeth, bearing ills to mortals in silence, for Zeus in his deep craft took away its voice that men might have no warning. Thus not in any way is it possible to avoid the will of God.

Such is the mythus of the Fall, as imagined by the early Greeks. Man in rebellion against heaven, pitted in his weakness at a game of mutual deception against almighty force, is beaten and is punished. Woman, the instrument of his chastisement, is thrust upon him by offended and malignant deity; the folly of man receives her, and repents too late. Both his wisdom and his foolishness conspire to man's undoing—wisdom which he cannot use aright, and foolishness which makes him fall into the trap prepared for him. We are irresistibly led to compare this legend with the Hebrew tradition of the Fall. In both there is an act of transgression on the part of man. Woman in both brings woe into the world. That is to say, the conscience of the Greeks and Jews, intent on solving the mystery of pain and death, convicted them alike of sin; while the social prejudices of both races made them throw the blame upon the weaker but more fascinating sex, by whom they felt their sterner nature softened and their passions quickened to work foolishness. So far the two myths havestrong points of agreement. But in that of the Greeks there is no Manichæism. The sin of Prometheus is not, like the sin of Adam, the error of weak human beings tempted by the power of evil to transgress the law of good. It is rather a knavish trick played off upon the sire of gods and men by a wily gamester; and herein it seems to symbolize that tendency to overreach which formed a marked characteristic of the Hellenes in all ages. The Greek of Hesiod's time conceived of the relations between man and god as involving mutual mistrust and guile; his ideal of intellectual superiority, both in Prometheus and in Zeus, implied capacity for getting the upper hand by craft. Again, the Greek god takes a diabolical revenge, punishing the whole human race, with laughter on his lips and self-congratulation for superior cunning in his heart. We lack the solemn moment when God calls Adam at the close of day, and tells him of the curse, but also promises a Saviour. The legend of Prometheus has, for its part also, the prophecy of a redeemer; but the redeemer of men from the anger of God does not proceed from the mercy of the deity himself, who has been wronged, but from the iron will of Fate, who stands above both god and man, and from the invincible fortitude of the soul which first had sinned, now stiffening itself against the might of Zeus, refusing his promises, rejecting his offers of reconciliation, biding in pain and patience till Herakles appears and cuts the Gordian knot. This is the spectacle presented by Æschylus in hisPrometheus Bound. To deny its grandeur would be ridiculous; to contend that it offers some features of sublimity superior to anything contained in the Hebrew legend would be no difficult task. In the person of Prometheus, chained on Caucasus, pierced by fiery arrows in the noonday and by frosty arrows in the night, humanity wavers not, but endures with scorn and patience and stoical acceptance. Unfortunately the outlines of this great tragic allegory have been blurredby time and travestied by feeble copyists. What we know about the tale of Prometheus is but a faint echo of the mythus apprehended by the Greeks anterior to Hesiod, and handled afterwards by Æschylus. Enough, however, remains to make it certain that it was the creation of a race profoundly convinced of present injustice in the divine government of the world. If the soul of man is raised by the attribution of stern heroism, God is lowered to the infamy of a tyrant. But neither is the Hebrew legend on its side theologically flawless. Greek and Jew fail alike to offer a satisfactory solution of the origin of evil. While in the Greek mythus Zeus plays with mankind like a cat with a mouse, the Hebrew story does not explain the justice of that omnipotent Being who created man with capacity for error, and exposed him to temptation. The true critique of the second and third chapters of Genesis has been admirably expressed by Omar Khayyam in the following stanzas:

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