Array Anacreon - The Greatest Classics of Ancient Greece

138Such sandals are used to hide their tracks by Avengers of Blood among the tribes of Central Australia.

140This piece of wood is that in which the other is twirled to make fire by friction.

141aOtherwise written and interpreted, “as even now the skins are there,” that is, are exhibited as relics.

141b“Der Zweite Halbvers is mir absolut unverstandlich!”— Gemoll .

144This is not likely to be the sense, but sense the text gives none. Allen, Journal of Hellenic Studies , xvii. II.

153“As if one walked with trees instead of feet.”— Allen .

156The passage which follows (409-414) is too corrupt to admit of any but conjectural rendering. Probably Apollo twisted bands, which fell off Hermes, turned to growing willows, and made a bower over the kine. See Mr. Allen, op. cit .

162aThis passage is a playing field of conjecture; some taking συμβολον = Mediator, or Go-between: some as = pactum, “covenant.”

162bThere seems to be a reference to the caduceus of Hermes, which some have compared to the forked Divining Rod. The whole is corrupt and obscure. To myself it seems that, when he gave the lyre (463-495), Hermes was hinting at his wish to receive in exchange the gift of prophecy. If so, these passages are all disjointed, and 521, with what follows, should come after 495, where Hermes makes the gift of the lyre.

164It appears from Philochorus that the prophetic lots were called thriæ . They are then personified, as the prophetic Sisters, the Thriæ. The white flour on their locks may be the grey hair of old age: we know, however, a practice of divining with grain among an early agricultural people, the Hurons.

168Hestia, deity of the sacred hearth, is, in a sense, the Cinderella of the Gods, the youngest daughter, tending the holy fire. The legend of her being youngest yet eldest daughter of Cronos may have some reference to this position. “The hearth-place shall belong to the youngest son or daughter,” in Kent. See “Costumal of the Thirteenth Century,” with much learning on the subject, in Mr. Elton’s “Origins of English History,” especially p. 190.

170Shielings are places of summer abode in pastoral regions.

180Reading χεισεται, Mr. Edgar renders “no longer will my mouth ope to tell,” &c.

194κλισμος seems to answer to fauteuil , διφρος to tabouret .

196M. Lefébure suggests to me that this is a trace of Phœnician influence: compare Moloch’s sacrifices of children, and “passing through the fire.” Such rites, however, are frequent in Japan, Bulgaria, India, Polynesia, and so on. See “The Fire Walk” in my “Modern Mythology.”

204An universally diffused belief declares that whosoever tastes the food of the dead may never return to earth.

205The lines in brackets merely state the probable meaning of a dilapidated passage.

214This appears to answer to the difficult passage about the bonds of Apollo falling from the limbs of Hermes ( Hermes , 404, 405). Loosing spells were known to the Vikings, and the miracle occurs among those of Jesuits persecuted under Queen Elizabeth.

254There is a gap in the text. Three deeds of Dionysus must have been narrated, then follows the comment of Zeus.

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As the epos of romance and war was personified in 'Homêros,' the bard of princes, so the epos of plain teaching was personified in the peasant poet 'Hêsiodos.' The Hesiodic poems, indeed, contain certain pretended reminiscences, and one of them, the Erga, is largely made up of addresses to 'Persês,' assumed to be the poet's erring friend -- in one part, his brother. We have seen that the reminiscences are fictions, and presumably Persês is a fiction too. If a real man had treacherously robbed Hesiod of his patrimony by means of bribes to 'mandevouring princes,' Hesiod would scarcely have remained on intimate terms with him. 'Persês' is a lay figure for the didactic epos to preach at, and as such he does his duty. Hesiod wants to praise industry, to condemn the ways of men, and especially of judges: the figure must be an idle dog, ignorant of the world and fond of law. Hesiod wants to praise righteousness: the figure must show a certain light-handedness in its dealings with money. We have then no information of what Hesiod was -- only a tradition of what Hesiod was supposed to be. He was born at Kymê, in Æolis; his father migrated to Bœotia, and settled in Ascra, a charming and fertile village on the slopes of Mount Helicon, which the poet describes as " bad in winter, insufferable in summer. " Here he herded flocks on Helicon, till one day the Muses greeted him with the words: " Boors of the wild fields, by-words of shame, nothing but belly! We know how to tell many false things true-seeming, but we know how to speak the real truth when we will. " This made Hesiod a poet. We hear nothing more of him till his death, except that he once went across the channel from Aulis to Chalkis to take part in a competition at the funeral games of Amphidamas, king of Eubœa, and, although much of his advice is about nautical matters, that he did not enjoy the sea. He avoided Southern Greece because of an oracle which foretold that he should die at Nemea; and so he did, at a little sanctuary near Oineon in Locris, which happened to bear that name. He was murdered and thrown into the sea by the brothers of one Clymenê or Ctimenê, who was supposed to have borne a son to the octogenarian poet; but the dolphins brought the body to land, and a stately tomb was built for it at Oineon. The son was the great lyrist Stêsichorus!

Certainly the faith of these legend-makers can move mountains. Yet we can perhaps get some historical meaning out of their figments. The whole evidence of the poems goes to suggest that there was a very old peasantpoetry in Bœotia, the direct descendant in all likelihood of the old Æolian lays of the Achaioi, from which ' Homer' was developed; and that this was at some time enriched and invigorated by the reaction upon it of the full-flown Ionian epic. That is, Ionian poets must have settled in Bœotia and taken up the local poetry. Whether one of those poets was called 'Hêsiodos' is a question of little importance. It does not look like an invented name. At any rate, the Bœotian poetry flourished, and developed a special epic form, based on the Ionian ' Homer,' but with strong local traits.

What of Hesiod's death? We know that the Hesiodic poetry covered Locris as well as Bœotia; the catalogues of women are especially Locrian. The Clymenê story is suggested, doubtless, by a wish to provide a romantic and glorious ancestry for Stêsichorus. Does the rest of the story mean that Locris counted Hesiod as her own, and showed his grave; while Bœotia said he was a Bœotian, and explained the grave by saying that the Locrians had murdered him? As for the victory at the funeral games of Amphidamas, it is a late insertion, and the unnamed rivals must be meant to include Homer. The story of a contest between Homer and Hesiod, in which the latter won, can be traced back, as we saw (p. 6), to the fifth century at least.

Of Hesiod's poems we have nominally three preserved, but they might as well be called a dozen, so little unity has any one of them -- the Theogony, the Works and Days ( Erga ), and the Shield of Heracles.

The Works and Days is a poem on ' Erga, ' or Works of agriculture, with an appendix on the lucky and unlucky Days of the month, and an intertexture of moral sentences addressed to Perses. It is a slow, lowly, simple poem; a little rough and hard, the utterance of those Muses who like to tell the truth. There is no swing in the verses; they seem to come from a tired, bent man at the end of his day's work -- a man who loves the country life, but would like it better if he had more food and less toll. There is little sentiment. The outspoken bitterness of the first 'Gnômê' is characteristic: " Potter is wroth with potter, and carpenter with carpenter; aye, beggar is envious of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel! " So is the next about the judges who rob the poor man: " Fools, they know not how the half is more than the whole, nor the great joy there is in mallow and asphodel. " Mallow and asphodel were the food and flowers of the poor. The moral sentences increase in depth in the middle of the poem, and show a true and rather amiable idea of duty. " Hard work is no shame; the shame is idleness. " " Help your neighbour, and he will help you. A neighbour matters more than a kinsman. " " Take fair measure, and give a little over the measure -- if you can. " " Give willingly; a willing gift is a pleasure. " " Give is a good girl, and Snatch is a bad girl, a bringer of death! " " It is best to marry a wife; but be very careful, or your neighbours may be merry at your expense. There is no prize like a good wife: nothing that makes you shudder like a bad; she roasts you without fire, and brings you to a raw old age. " At the end these sentences degenerate into rules of popular superstition -- " not to put the jug on the mixingbowl when drinking; that means death! " " not to sit on immovable things," and so on. One warning, "not to cross a river without washing your hands and your sins, " approaches Orphism.