Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/16

 magnetic attraction into the Homeric style and manner of treatment, and became mere echoes of the Homeric voice: in a word, Homer had so completely exhausted the epic genre, that after him further efforts were doomed to be merely conventional. Only the rare and exceptional genius of Vergil and Milton could use the Homeric medium without loss of individuality: and this quality none of the later epic poets seem to have possessed. Freedom from the domination of the great tradition could only be found by seeking new subjects, and such freedom was really only illusionary, since romantic subjects alone are suitable for epic treatment.

In its third period, therefore, epic poetry shows two divergent tendencies. In Ionia and the islands the epic poets followed the Homeric tradition, singing of romantic subjects in the now stereotyped heroic style, and showing originality only in their choice of legends hitherto neglected or summarily and imperfectly treated. In continental Greece, on the other hand, but especially in Boeotia, a new form of epic sprang up, which for the romance and πάθος of the Ionian School substituted the practical and matter-of-fact. It dealt in moral and practical maxims, in information on technical subjects which are of service in daily life — agriculture, astronomy, augury, and the calendar — in matters of religion and in tracing the genealogies of men. Its attitude is summed up in the words of the Muses to the writer of the Theogony: "We can tell many a feigned tale to look like truth, but we can, when we will, utter the truth" (Theog. 26-27). Such a poetry