Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/85

 REJECTED POEMS OF HESIOD 6i There were rejected poems in Hesiod's case as well as in Homer's. The anonymous Naupadia* a series of expanded genealogies, is the best known of them ; but there were Hesiodic elements in some of the Argive and Corinthian collections attributed to ' Eumelus.' His main rival rejoices in the fictitious name of Kerkops (' Monkey- face ') of Miletus. The Erga is Hesiod's Iliad, the only work unanimously left to him. The people of Helicon showed Pausanias, or his authority, a leaden tablet of the Erga without the introduc- tion, and told him that nothing else was the true Hesiod.^ The Bridal of Keyx,* about a prince of Trachis, who entertained Heracles, was probably also an expanded Eoie very like the Shield ; and the same perhaps holds of the Aigimios* which seems to have narrated in two books the battle of that ancestor of the Dorians against the Lapithae. The Descent to Hades'^ had Theseus for its hero. The Melampodia^ was probably an account of divers celebrated seers. More interesting are the scanty re- mains of the Advices of Chiron* to his pupil Achilles. The wise Centaur recommended sacrificing to the gods whenever you come to a house, and thought that edu- cation should not begin till the age of seven. The Erga was known in an expanded form. The Great Erga.* There were poems on Astronomy* and on Augury by Birds* on a fourney round the World* and on the Idcsan Dactyli^ who attended Zeus in Crete. The names help us to realise the great mass of poetry of the Boeotian school that was at one time in exist- ence. As every heroic story tended to take shape in a poem, so did every piece of art or knowledge or ^ Paus. ix. 31, 4.