Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/19

 herb was found. Here also the first narcissus bloomed. The ground is luxuriantly decked with flowers, which diffuse a delightful fragrance. It resounds with the industrious murmur of bees, and with the music of pastoral flutes, and the noise of waterfalls." The solution of the apparent discrepancy between the ancient settler's account of Ascra and its climate, and that of the modern traveller, is probably to be found in the leaning of the poet Hesiod's mind towards the land which his father had quitted, and which was then more congenial to the growth of poetry—a leaning which may have been enhanced and intensified by disgust at the injustice done to him, as we shall presently see, by the Bœotian law-tribunals. It is, indeed, conceivable that, at certain seasons, Ascra may have been swept by fierce blasts, and have deserved the character given it in the above verses; but the key to its general depreciation at all seasons is more likely to be hid under strong personal prejudice than found in an actual disparity between the ancient and the modern climate. At any rate, it is manifest, from Hesiod's own showing, that the home of his father's settlement had sufficient inducements for him to make it his own likewise; though from the fact that the people of Orchomenus possessed his relics, that Bœotian town may dispute the honour of his birth and residence with Ascra. The latter place, without controversy, is entitled to be the witness of the most momentous incident of his poetic history—to wit, the apparition of the Muses, as he fed his father's flock beside the divine Helicon, when, after one of those night-dances in which