Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/137

 GKECIAN EPIC. 121 The Titanomachia, the Gigantomachia, and the Corinthiaca, three compositions all ascribed to Eumelus, afford by means of their titles an idea somewhat clearer of the matter which they comprised. The Theogony ascribed to Hesiod still exists, though partially corrupt and mutilated : but there seem to have been other poems, now lost, of the like import and title. Of the poems composed in the Hesiodic style, diffusive and full of genealogical detail, the principal were, the Catalogue of Women and the Great Eoiai ; the latter of which, indeed, seems to have been a continuation of the former. A large number of the celebrated women of heroic Greece were commemorated in these poems, one after the other, without any other than an arbi- trary bond of connection. The Marriage of Keys, the Me- lanipodia, and a string of fables called Astronomia, are farther ascribed to Hesiod : and the poem above mentioned, called JEgi- mius, is also sometimes connected with his name, sometimes with that of Kerkops. The Naupaktian Verses (so called, probably, from the birthplace of their author), and the genealogies of Kinaethon and Asius, were compositions of the same rambling character, as far as we can judge from the scanty fragments re- maining. 1 The Orchomenian epic poet Chersias, of whom two lines only are preserved to us by Pausanias, may reasonably be referred to the same category. 2 The oldest of the epic poets, to whom any date, carrying with it the semblance of authority, is assigned, is Arktinus of Miletus, who is placed by Eusebius in the first Olympiad, and by Suidas in the ninth. Eugammon, the author of the Telegonia, and the latest of the catalogue, is placed in the fifty-third Olympiad, B. c. 566. Between these two we find Asius and Lesches, about the thirtieth Olympiad, a time when the vein of the ancient epic was drying up, and when other forms of poetry elegiac, iambic, lyric, and choric had either already arisen, or were on the point of arising, to compete with it. 3 J See the Fragments of Hesiod, Eumelus, Kinsethon, and Asius, in the collections of Marktscheffel, Diintzer, Gottling, and Gaisford. I have already, in going over the ground of Grecian legend, referred to all these lost poems, in their proper places. 3 See Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, about the date of Arktinus, vcl i. p. S50 VOL. II. 6
 * Pausan. ix. 38, 6 ; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. p. 156.