Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/99

 GOLDEN, SILVER, BRAZEN, ETC. RACES 67 are stated to go about and visit the cities of men in various dis- guises for the purpose of inspecting good and evil proceedings. 1 But in the poem now before us, the distinction between gods and daemons is generic. The latter are invisible tenants of earth, remnants of the once happy golden race whom the Olympic gods first made: the remnants of the second or silver race are not daemons, nor are they tenants of earth, but they still enjoy an honorable posthumous existence as the Blest of the under-world. Nevertheless the Hesiodic daemons are in no way authors or abettors of evil : on the contrary, they form the unseen police of the gods, for the purpose of repressing wicked behavior in the world. We may trace, I think, in this quintuple succession of earthly races, set forth by the author of the " Works and Days," the con- fluence of two veins of sentiment, not consistent one with the other, yet both coexisting in the author's mind. The drift of his poem is thoroughly didactic and ethical : though deeply pene- trated with the injustice and suffering which darken the face of human life, he nevertheless strives to maintain, both in himself and in others, a conviction that on the whole the just and labo- rious man will come off well, 2 and he enforces in considerable detail the lessons of practical prudence and virtue. This ethical sentiment, which dictates his appreciation of the present, also guides his imagination as to the past. It is pleasing to him to bridge over the chasm between the gods and degenerate man, by 1 Odyss. xvii. 486. wicked and treacherous rulers, it is not the interest of any man to be just (Opp. Di. 270): Nvv 6rj e) u H^T' avrbf tv uv&pu-noiai 6'iKaio^ Witjv, prjr' tfibf vibq - insi KUKOV OTI 6'iKatov fiei^u ye dinrjv ufiiKurepof l^ei rod' ovnu Kohita. reXelv Am TepiriKepawov. Jn the whole, however, his conviction is to the contrary. Plutarch rejects the above four lines, seemingly on no other ground than sjectiuse he thought them immoral and unworthy of Hesiod (see Proclus ad loc.}. But they fall in perfectly with the temper of the poem: and the rule of Plutarch is inadmissible, in determining the critical question of what is bcruine or spurious.
 * There are some lines, in which he appears to believe that, under the present