Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/101

79 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 79 sublime images of a heroic age, and moulds them into forms of sur- passing beauty. That abandonment of the thoughts, with heartfelt joy and satisfaction, to a flow of poetical images, such as came crowding on the mind of Homer — how different is this from the manner of Hesiod ! His poetry appears to struggle to emerge out of the narrow bounds of common life, which he strives to ennoble and to render more endurable. Regarding with a melancholy feeling the destiny of the human race, and the corruption of a social condition which has destroyed all serene enjoyment, the poet seeks either to disseminate knowledge by which life may be improved, or to diffuse certain religious notions as to the influence of a superior destiny, which may tend to produce a patient resignation to its inevitable evils. Atone time he gives us lessons of civil and domestic wisdom, whereby order may be restored to a disturbed com- monwealth or an ill regulated household; at another, he seeks to reduce the bewildering and endless variety of stories about the gods to a connected system, in which each deity has his appointed place. Then again the poet of this school seeks to distribute the heroic legends into large masses ; and, by finding certain links which bind them all together, to make them more clear and comprehensible. Nowhere does the poetry appear as the sole aim of the poet's mind, to which he de- votes himself without reserve, and to which all his thoughts are directed. Practical interests are, in a certain sense, everywhere intermixed. It cannot be denied that the poetry, as such, must thus lose much of its peculiar merit ; but this loss is, to a certain extent, compensated by the beneficent and useful tendency of the composition. This view of the poetry of Hesiod agrees entirely with the description which he has given of the manner of his first being called to the office of a poet. The account of this in the introduction to the Theogony (v. 1 — 35) must be a very ancient tradition, as it is also alluded to in the Works and Days (v. 659). The Muses, whose dwelling, according to the commonly received belief of the Greeks, was Olympus in Pieria, are yet accustomed (so says the Boeotian poet) to visit Helicon, which was also sacred to them. Then, having bathed in one of their holy springs, and having led their dances upon the top of Helicon, they go at night through the adjacent country, singing the great gods of Olympus, as well as the primitive deities of the universe. In one of these excursions they encountered Hesiod, who was watching his flocks by night in a valley at the foot of Helicon. Here they bestowed upon him the gift of poetry, having first addressed him in these words : " Ye country shep- herds, worthless wretches, mere slaves of the belly ! although we often tell falsehoods and pretend that they are true, yet we can tell truth when it pleases us." After these words, the Muses immediately consecrated Hesiod to their service by offering him. a laurel branch, which the Boeotian minstrels always carried in their hand during the recitation of poetry. There is