Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/114

92 92 HISTORY OF THE their relation to the Olympians, who have reserved to themselves alone a constantly equal measure of prosperity, and act jointly in repelling with equal severity the bold attempts of the Iapetids. Although therefore this poem is not merely an accumulation of raw materials, but contains many connected thoughts, and is formed on a well-djgested plan, yet it cannot be denied that neither in the Theogony nor in the Works and Days can that perfect art of composition be found which is so conspicuous in the Homeric poems. Hesiod has not only faithfully preserved the ancient tradition, and introduced without altera- tion into his poetry many time-honoured sayings, and many a verse of earlier songs, but he also seems to have borrowed long passages, and even entire hymns, when they happened to suit the plan of his poem ; and with- out greatly changing their form. Thus it is remarkable that the battle of the Titans does not begin (as it would be natural to expect) with the resolution of Zeus and the other Olympians to wage war against the Titans, but with the chaining of Briareus and the other Hecatoncheires by Uranus ; nor is it until the poet has related how Zeus set free these Hecatoncheires, by the advice of the Earth, that we are introduced to the battle with the Titans, which has already been some time going on. And this part of the Theogony concludes with the Hecatoncheires being set by the gods to watch over the imprisoned Titans, and Briareus, by his marriage with Cymopoleia, becoming the son-in-law of Poseidon. This Briareus, who in Homer is also called iEgaeon, and represents the violent commotions and heavings of the sea, was a being who in many places seems to have been connected with the worship of Poseidon*, and it is not improbable that in the temples of this god hymns were sung celebrating him as the vanquisher of the Titans, one of which Hesiod may have taken as the foundation of his narrative of the batt'e of the Titans. It seems likewise evident that the Theogony has been in many places interpolated by rhapsodists, as was naturally to be expected in a poem handed down by oral tradition. Enumerations of names always offered facilities for this insertion of new verses; as, for examp'e, the list of streams in the Theogony, which are called sons of the Ocean-f. Among these we miss exactly those rivers which we should expect most to find, the Boeotian Asopus and Cephisus ; and we find several which at any rate lie beyond the sphere of the Homeric geography, such as the Ister, the Eridanus, and the Nile, no longer the rfver of Egypt, as in Homer, but under its more modern name. The most remarkable cir- cumstance, however, is that in this brief list of rivers, the passage of Homer which names eight petty streams flowing from the mountains of Ida to the coast, has been so closely followed, that seven of them Cdlled AiyaTos and Aiyaiuv. + v. 338, seq. X Iliad, xii. 26.
 * Poseidon, from uTyis, which signifies waves in a state of agitation, was also