Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/116

94 94 HISTORY OF THE procemium contained the beautiful story above mentioned of the visit of the Muses to Helicon, and of the consecration of Hesiod to the office of a poet by the gift of a laurel branch. Next after this must have fol- lowed the passage which describes the return of the Muses to Olympus, where they celebrate their father Zeus in his palace as the vanquisher of Cronus, and as the reigning governor of the world ; which might be succeeded by the address of the poet to the Muses to reveal to him the descent and genealogies of the gods. Accordingly the verses 1 — 35, 68 — 74, 104 — 115, would form the original procemium, in the con- nexion of which there is nothing objectionable, except that the last in- vocation of the Muses is somewhat overloaded by the repetition of the same thought with little alteration. Of the intervening parts one, viz., v. 36 — 67, is an independent hymn, which celebrates the Muses as Olympian poetesses produced by Zeus in Pieria in the neighbourhood of Olympus, and has no particular reference to the Theogony. For the enumeration contained in it of the subjects sung by the Muses in Olympus, namely, first, songs to all the gods, ancient and recent, then hymns to Zeus in particular, and, lastly, songs upon the heroic races and the battle of the Giants, comprehends the entire range of the Boeotian epic poetry ; nay, even the poems on divination of the school of Hesiod are incidentally mentioned*. This hymn to the Muses was therefore peculiarly well fitted to serve not only as a separate epic song, but, like the longer Homeric hymns, to open the contest of Boeotian minstrels at any festival. But the Muses were, according to the statement of tins procemiumt, celebrated at the end as well as at the beginning ; consequently there must have been songs of the Boeotian epic poets, in which they returned to the Muses from the peculiar subject of their composition. For a concluding address of this kind nothing could be more appropriate than that the poet should address himself to the princes, who were pre- eminent among the listening crowd, that he should show them how much they stood in need of the Muses both in the judgment-hall and in the assemblies of the people, and (which was a main point with Hesiod) should impress upon their hearts respect for the deities of poetry and their servants. Precisely of this kind is the other passage inserted in the original procemium, v. 75 — 103, which would have pro- duced a good effect at the close of the Theogony ; by bringing back the poetry, which had so long treated exclusively of the genealogies of the gods, to the realities of human life; whereas, in the introduction, the whole passage is entirely out of place. But this passage could not remain in the place to which it belongs, viz., after v. 962, because the part relating to the goddesses who were joined in love with mortal men was inserted here, in order that the mortal women who had been loved by gods might follow, and thus the Theogony be infinitely prolonged. Hence, in
 * v 38. v/A,viZft/.i rd r Iovtk t« r 'urpofttva too r Voti-a,, •}• v. 34.