Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/77

 HESIOD 53 say the poem was in a mixture of heroic and iambic verse, a statement which suggests a late metrical re- furbishment of a traditional subject. It can scarcely be true of the poem which Aristotle regarded as Homer's. Margites must have been more amusing than Hierocles' many of our 'Joe Millers' are taken. Scholasticus was a pure fool, with nothing but a certain modesty to re- commend him. What is meant by calling these poems Homeric ? Only that they date from a time when it was not thought worth while to record the author's name ; and, perhaps, that if you mean to recite a mock epic battle, it slii^htly improves your joke to introduce it as the work of the immortal Homer. Hesiod As the epos of romance and war was personified in ' Homeros,' the bard of princes, so the epos of plain teaching was personified in the peasant poet ' Hesiodos.' The Hesiodic poems, indeed, contain certain pretended reminiscences, and one of them, the Erga, is largely made up of addresses to * Perses,' assumed to be the poet's erring friend — in one part, his brother. We have seen that the reminiscences are fictions, and presumably Perses is a fiction too. If a real man had treacherously robbed Hesiod of his patrimony by means of bribes to ' man- devouring princes,' Hesiod would scarcely have remained on intimate terms with him. 'Perses' is a lay figure for the didactic epos to preach at, and as such he does his duty. Hesiod wants to praise industry, to condemn the ways of men, and especially of judges : the figure must
 * Scholasticus,' the hero of the joke-book from which so