Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/135

 DIDACTIC HEXAMETER POETRY. il9 stood conspicuous. Poems of the Homeric character (if so it may be called, though the expresssion is very indefinite,) being confined to one of the great events, or great personages of Gre- cian legendary antiquity, and comprising a limited number of characters, all contemporaneous, made some approach, more or less successful, to acertain poetical unity ; while the Hesiodic poems, tamer in their spirit, and unconfined both as to time and as to persons, strung together distinct events without any obvious view to concentration of interest, without legitimate beginning or end. 1 Between these two extremes there were many gradations : biographical poems, such as the Herakleia, or Thesei's, recounting all the principal exploits performed by one single hero, present a character intermediate between the two, but bordering more closely on the Hesiodic, Even the hymns to the gods, which pass under the name of Homer, are epical fragments, narrating particular exploits or adventures of the god commemorated. Both the didactic and the mystico-religious poetry of Greece began in Hexameter verse, the characteristic and consecrated measure of the epic :' 2 but they belong to a different species, and burst out from a different vein in the Grecian mind. It seems to have been the more common belief among the historical Greeks, that such mystic effusions were more ancient than their narrative poems, and that Orpheus, MUSJBUS, Linus, Olen, Pamphus, and even Hesiod, etc., etc., the reputed composers of the former, were of earlier date than Homer. But there is no evidence to sustain this opinion, and the presumptions are all against it. Those com- positions, which in the sixth century before the Christian era passed under the name of Orpheus and Musa3us, seem to have been unquestionably post-Homeric, nor can we even admit the modified conclusion of Hermann, Ulrici, and others, that the mystic poetry as a genus (putting aside the particular composi- tions falsely ascribed to Orpheus and others) preceded in order of time the narrative. 3 1 Aristot. Poet. c. 17-37. He points out and explains the superior stnic ture of the Iliad and Odyssey, as compared with the semi Homeric and bio graphical poems : but he takes no notice of the Hesiodic, or genealogical. 'Aristot. Poetic, c. 41. He considers the Hexameter to be the natural measure of narrative poetry : any other would be unseemly. 3 Ulrici, Geschichte dcs Griechischen Epos, 5te Vorlesung, pp. 96-1^ G. Hermann, Ueber Homer und Sappho, in his Opuscula, torn, vi ~ e. 8'.