Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/108

 detail by fervid descriptions, stirring battle-pieces, noble images, and graceful fancies. Such as it was, it appears to have found extensive circulation and acceptance in Greece, and to have formed the chief source of information amongst Greeks concerning the divine antiquity. This is not the kind of work to admit of a comparison of the so-called Orphic Theogony, which, in point of fact, belongs to a much later date, with that of Hesiod. Enough to state that the former, to use Mr Grote's expression, "contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised." But those who have the time and materials for carrying out the comparison for themselves, will be led to discover in the development of religious belief, in the bias towards a sort of unity of Godhead, and in the investment of the powers of nature with the attributes of deity, which characterise the Orphic worship and theogonies, indirect corroboration of the opinion which assigns a very early date to the simple, unmystical, and, so to speak, unspiritual view of the divine foretime, handed down to us in Hesiod's theogonic system.