Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/31

 extent is unknown. Lehmann, remarking that the heroines are all Boeotian and Thessalian (while the heroines of the Catalogues belong to all parts of the Greek world), believes the author to have been either a Boeotian or Thessalian.

Two other poems are ascribed to Hesiod. Of these the Aegimius (also ascribed by Athenaeus to Cercops of Miletus), is thought by Valckenaer to deal with the war of Aegimius against the Lapithae and the aid furnished to him by Heracles, and with the history of Aegimius and his sons. Otto Müller suggests that the introduction of Thetis and of Phrixus (frags. 1-2) is to be connected with notices of the allies of the Lapithae from Phthiotis and Iolchus, and that the story of Io was incidental to a narrative of Heracles' expedition against Euboea. The remaining poem, the Melampodia, was a work in three books, whose plan it is impossible to recover. Its subject, however, seems to have been the histories of famous seers like Mopsus, Calchas, and Teiresias, and it probably took its name from Melampus, the most famous of them all.

Date of the Hesiodic Poems.—There is no doubt that the Works and Days is the oldest, as it is the most original, of the Hesiodic poems. It seems to be distinctly earlier than the Theogony, which refers to it, apparently, as a poem already renowned. Two considerations help us to fix a relative date for the Works. (1) In diction, dialect and style it is obviously dependent upon Homer, and is therefore considerably later than the Iliad and Odyssey; moreover, as we have seen, it is in revolt against the romantic school, already grown decadent, and while xxv