Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/119

97 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. ^»7 from extant fragments of the continuation of this section of the Eoifc, that in the relation of the exploits of Hercules, the poet frequently re- curred to Alcmene ; and her relations with her son, her admiration of his heroic valour, and her grief at the labours imposed upon him, were depicted with great tenderness *. From this specimen we may form a judgment of the general plan which was followed throughout the poem of the Eoiae. The inquiry into the character and extent of the Eoiae is however rendered more difficult by the obscurity which, notwithstanding much examination, rests upon the relation of this poem to the Karakoyoc ywaiKwv, the Catalogues of Women. For this latter poem is some- times stated to be the same as the Eoiae ; and for example, the fragment on Alcmene, which, from its beginning, manifestly belongs to the Eoiae, is in the Scholia to Hesiod placed in the fourth book of the Catalogue : sometimes, again, the two poems are distinguished, and the statements of the Eoiae and of the Catalogue are opposed to each otherf. The Catalogues are described as an historical-genealogical poem, a cha- racter quite different from that of the Eoiae, in which only such women could be mentioned as were beloved by the gods : on the other hand, the Catalogues resembled the Eoiae, when in the first book it was related that Pandora, the first woman according to the Legend of the Theo- gony, bore Deucalion to Prometheus, from whom the progenitors of the Hellenic nation were then derived. We are therefore compelled to sup- pose that originally the Eoiae and the Catalogues were different in plan and subject, only, that both were especially dedicated to the celebration of women of the heroic age, and that this then caused the compilation of a version in which both poems were moulded together into one whole. It is also easy to comprehend how much such poems, by their unconnected form, would admit of constant additions, supposing only that they were strung together by genealogies or other links ; and it need not therefore seem surprising that the Eoiae, the foundation of which had doubtless been laid at an early period, still received additions about the 40th Olympiad. The part which referred to Cyrene, a Thessalian maid, who was carried off by Apollo into Libya, and there bore Aris- taeus, was certainly not written before the founding of the city of Cyrene in Libya (Olymp. 37). The entire Mythus could only have her son, u rixvav, « f&dXa S*i <rl Trovn^oraroyi kou uoitrrov Z»wj <ri ww?r,g. On the fragments of this part of the Eoiae, see Dorians, vol. i. p. 540, En^i Transl. f For example, in the scholia to Apoll. Rhod. II. 181. Moreover, the part of the Eoia in which Coronis was celebrated as the mother of Asclepius, was in contradiction with the Ka.riit.eyos AsvKiwri'biuv/m which Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus, according to the Messenian tradition, was the mother of Asclepius, as appears from Schol Theogon. 142. n
 * A beautiful passage, which relates to this point, is the address of Alcmene to