Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/118

96 96 HISTORY OP THE Pindar, also, in the ninth Olympian ode, celebrates Protogeneia as the ancestress of the kings of Opus. That the poetry of this school was con- nected with the country of the Locrians also appears from the tradition mentioned by Thucydides* that Hesiod died and was buried in the temple of Zeus Nemeius, near Oeneon. The district of Oeneon was bordered by that of Naupactus, which originally belonged to the Locrians ; and it cannot be doubted that the grave of Hesiod, mentioned in the territory of Naupactusf, is the same burying place as that near Oeneon. Hence it is the more remarkable that Naupactus was also the birth-place of an epic poem, which took from it the name of Nau- pactia, and in which women of the heroic age were celebrated! . From all this it would follow that it was a Locrian branch of the Hesiodean school of poets whence proceeded the bard by whom the Eoiae were composed. This large poem, called the Eoiee, or the Great Eoice (fieyaXat 'HoTcu), took its name from the circum- stance that the several parts of it all began with the words ?) o'lrj, aut qualis. Five beginnings of this kind have been preserved which have this in common, that those words refer to some heroine who, beloved by a god, gave birth to a renowned hero§. Thence it appears that the whole series began with some such introduc- tion as the following : " Such women never will be seen again as were those of former times, whose beauty and charms induced even the gods to descend from Olympus." Each separate part then referred to this exordium, being connected with it by the constant lepetition of the words j) o'ir] in the initial verses. The most con- siderable fragment from which the arrangement of the individual parts can be best learnt is the 56 verses which are prefixed as an introduction to the poem on the shield of Hercules, and which, as is seen from the first verse, belong to the Eoiae. They treat of Alcmene, but without relating her origin and early life. The narrative begins from the flight of Amphitryon (to whom Alcmene was married) from his home, and her residence in Thebes, where the father of gods and men de- scended nightly from Olympus to visit her, and begot Hercules, the greatest of heroes. Although no complete history of Alcmene is given, the praise of her beauty and grace, her understanding, and her conjugal love is a main point with the poet ; and we may also perceive J Pausanias, x. 38, 6, uses of it the expression sV?j TsvoiYifi'va I; yvva.7x.st;, and else- where the Hesiodean poem is called re Is ywxTxa.; aoifitvu. From single quotations it appears that, in the Naupactia, the daughters of Minyas, as well as Medea, were particularly celebrated, and that frequent mention was made of the expedition of the Argonauts. § The extant verses (which can be seen in the collection of fragments in Gais- ford's Poetae Minores, and other editions) refer to Coronis, the mother of Asclepius by Apollo, to Anliope, the mother oi' Zethus and Amphion by Zeus, to Mecionice, the mother of Euphemus by Poseidon, and to Cyrene, the mother of Aristams by Apollo. The longer fragment relating to Alcmene is explained in the text.
 * iii. 95. + Paiisan. ix. 38. 3.