Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/17

 from Cyme in Æolia, urged by narrowness of means and a desire to better his fortunes by a recurrence to the source and fountain-head of his race; for he sailed to Bœotia, the mother-country of the Æolian colonies. There he probably gave up his seafaring life, taking to agriculture instead; and there—unless, as some have surmised without much warranty, his elder son, Hesiod, was born before his migration—he begat two sons, Hesiod, and a younger brother, Perses, whose personality is too abundantly avouched by Hesiod to be any subject of question. Though not himself a bard, the father must have carried to Bœotia lively and personal reminiscences and souvenirs of the heroic poetry for which the Æolic coast of Asia Minor was then establishing a fame; and his own traditions, together with the intercourse between the mother and daughter countries, cannot but have nursed a taste for the muse in Hesiod, which developed itself in a distinct and independent vein, and was neither an offset of the Homeric stock, nor indebted to the Homeric poems for aught beyond the countenance afforded by parity of pursuits. The account given by Hesiod of his father's migration deserves citation, and may be conveniently given in the words of Elton's translation of the 'Works and Days:'—