Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/20



they accosted the favoured rustic with their heavenly speech, gave him commission to be the bard of didactic, as Homer was of epic, poetry, and in token of such a function invested him with a staff of bay, symbolic of poetry and song. Hesiod's own account of this vision in the opening of his 'Theogony' is as follows:—

The details of this interview, as above recorded, are replete with interest—centred, indeed, in the poet himself, but in some degree also attaching to his reputed works. If the verses are genuine—and that the ancients so accounted them is plain from two allu-