Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/33

 leave mankind who thenceforward shall have "no remedy against evil." Such occasions, however, rarely occur and are perhaps not characteristic of Hesiod's genius: if we would see Hesiod at his best, in his most natural vein, we must turn to such a passage as that which he himself — according to the compiler of the Contest of Hesiod and Homer — selected as best in all his work, "When the Pleiades, Atlas' daughters, begin to rise..." (Works and Days, 383 ff.). The value of such a passage cannot be analysed: it can only be said that given such a subject, this alone is the right method of treatment.

Hesiod's diction is in the main Homeric, but one of his charms is the use of quaint allusive phrases derived, perhaps, from a pre-Hesiodic peasant poetry: thus the season when Boreas blows is the time when "the Boneless One gnaws his foot by his fireless hearth in his cheerless house"; to cut one's nails is "to sever the withered from the quick upon that which has five branches"; similarly the burglar is the "day-sleeper," and the serpent is the "hairless one." Very similar is his reference to seasons through what happens or is done in that season: "when the House-carrier, fleeing the Pleiades, climbs up the plants from the earth," is the season for harvesting; or "when the artichoke flowers and the clicking grass-hopper, seated in a tree, pours down his shrill song," is the time for rest.

Hesiod's charm lies in his child-like and sincere naïveté, in his unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all that happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those pre-eminently of the Works and Days: the literary virtues of the Theogony are of a more technical character, skill in xxvii