Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/25

 sea voyage was no more than a stretch of forty yards—a span compared with which the Menai Strait, or the Thames at any of the metropolitan bridges, would be a serious business. Emile Burnouf might literally call the Euripus "le canal Eubéen." In the days of Thucydides a bridge had been thrown across it.

But experimental knowledge was reckoned superfluous by one who could rest in the knowledge he possessed of the mind of Jove, and in the commission he held from his daughters,—who, according to his belief, taught him navigation, astronomy, and the rest of the curriculum, when they made him an interpreter of the divine will, and a "vates" in a double sense,—to dictate a series of precepts concerning the time for voyaging and the time for staying ashore. Besides, in the poet's eye seafaring was a necessity of degenerate times. In the golden age none were merchants.—('Works and Days,' 236.)

Yet the even flow of the poet's rural life was not without its occasional and chronic disturbances and storms. The younger brother, to whom allusion has been made more than once, and whom he generally addresses as "simple, foolish, good-for-nought Perses," had, it seems, come in for a share of the considerable property which Hesiod's father had got together, after he exchanged navigation and merchandise for agricultural pursuits. The settlement of the shares in this inheritance lay with the kings, who in primitive ages exercised in Bœotia, as elsewhere, the function of judges, and, according to Hesiod's account, were not superior to bribery and corruption. Perses found means to