Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/153

Rh which leads the poet, in the bitterness of his mood, to overstep the bounds of justice, and to deny all virtue to women. In the Works and Days, too, which afford him frequent opportunities for censure, Hesiod is not deficient in a kind of wit which exhibits the bad and the contemptible with striking vigour ; but his wit is never that gay humour which characterises the Homeric poetry, of which it is the singular property to reconcile the frail and the faulty with the grand and the elevated, and to blend both in one harmonious idea. § 4. Before, however, we come to the consideration of the third stage of the poetical representation of the bad and the despicable, the exist- ence of which we have hinted at in our mention of Archilochus, we must remark that even the early epic poetry contained not only scattered traits of pleasantry and satire, but also entire pictures in the same tone, which formed small epics. On this head we have great reason to lament the loss of the Margites, which Aristotle, in his Poetics, ascribes, according to the opinion current among the Greeks, to Homer himself, and regards as the ground-work of comedy, in like manner as he regards the Iliad and the Odyssey as the precursors of tragedy. He likewise places the Margites in the same class with poems written in the iambic metre ; but he seems to mean that the iambus was not employed for this class of poetry till subsequently to this poem. "Hence it is extremely probable that the iambic veises which, according to the ancient grammarians, were introduced irregularly into the Mar- gites, were interpolated in a later version, perhaps by Pigres the Hali- carnassian, the brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author of this poem*.

From the few fragments and notices relative to the Homeric Margites which have come down to us, we can gather that it was a representa- tion of a stupid man, who had a high opinion of his own cleverness, for he was said "to know many works, but know all badly†;" and we discover from a story preserved by Eustathius that it was necessary to hold out to him very subtle reasons to induce him to do things which required but a very small portion of intellect‡.

There were several other facetious small epics which bore the name of Homer ; such as the poem of the Cercopes, those malicious, and yet merry elves whom Hercules takes prisoners after they have played him many mischievous tricks, and drags them about till they escape from him by

[*] Thus the beginning of the Margites was as follows : —

Concerning Figres, see below, § 18. He also interpolated the Iliad with penta- meters.

[†]

[‡] Eustath. ad Od. x. 552, p. 1669, ed. Rom.