Collection of Hesiod, Homer and Homerica | Page 4

became mere echoes of the Homeric
voice: in a word, Homer had so completely exhausted the epic genre,
that after him further efforts were doomed to be merely conventional.
Only the rare and exceptional genius of Vergil and Milton could use the
Homeric medium without loss of individuality: and this quality none of
the later epic poets seem to have possessed. Freedom from the
domination of the great tradition could only be found by seeking new
subjects, and such freedom was really only illusionary, since romantic
subjects alone are suitable for epic treatment.
In its third period, therefore, epic poetry shows two divergent
tendencies. In Ionia and the islands the epic poets followed the
Homeric tradition, singing of romantic subjects in the now stereotyped
heroic style, and showing originality only in their choice of legends
hitherto neglected or summarily and imperfectly treated. In continental
Greece (1), on the other hand, but especially in Boeotia, a new form of
epic sprang up, which for the romance and PATHOS of the Ionian
School substituted the practical and matter-of-fact. It dealt in moral and
practical maxims, in information on technical subjects which are of
service in daily life -- agriculture, astronomy, augury, and the calendar
-- in matters of religion and in tracing the genealogies of men. Its
attitude is summed up in the words of the Muses to the writer of the
"Theogony": `We can tell many a feigned tale to look like truth, but we
can, when we will, utter the truth' ("Theogony" 26-27). Such a poetry
could not be permanently successful, because the subjects of which it
treats -- if susceptible of poetic treatment at all -- were certainly not
suited for epic treatment, where unity of action which will sustain

interest, and to which each part should contribute, is absolutely
necessary. While, therefore, an epic like the "Odyssey" is an organism
and dramatic in structure, a work such as the "Theogony" is a merely
artificial collocation of facts, and, at best, a pageant. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find that from the first the Boeotian school is forced to
season its matter with romantic episodes, and that later it tends more
and more to revert (as in the "Shield of Heracles") to the Homeric
tradition.
The Boeotian School
How did the continental school of epic poetry arise? There is little
definite material for an answer to this question, but the probability is
that there were at least three contributory causes. First, it is likely that
before the rise of the Ionian epos there existed in Boeotia a purely
popular and indigenous poetry of a crude form: it comprised, we may
suppose, versified proverbs and precepts relating to life in general,
agricultural maxims, weather-lore, and the like. In this sense the
Boeotian poetry may be taken to have its germ in maxims similar to our
English `Till May be out, ne'er cast a clout,'
or
`A rainbow in the morning Is the Shepherd's warning.'
Secondly and thirdly we may ascribe the rise of the new epic to the
nature of the Boeotian people and, as already remarked, to a spirit of
revolt against the old epic. The Boeotians, people of the class of which
Hesiod represents himself to be the type, were essentially unromantic;
their daily needs marked the general limit of their ideals, and, as a class,
they cared little for works of fancy, for pathos, or for fine thought as
such. To a people of this nature the Homeric epos would be
inacceptable, and the post-Homeric epic, with its conventional
atmosphere, its trite and hackneyed diction, and its insincere sentiment,
would be anathema. We can imagine, therefore, that among such folk a
settler, of Aeolic origin like Hesiod, who clearly was well acquainted
with the Ionian epos, would naturally see that the only outlet for his
gifts lay in applying epic poetry to new themes acceptable to his
hearers.
Though the poems of the Boeotian school (2) were unanimously
assigned to Hesiod down to the age of Alexandrian criticism, they were
clearly neither the work of one man nor even of one period: some,

doubtless, were fraudulently fathered on him in order to gain currency;
but it is probable that most came to be regarded as his partly because of
their general character, and partly because the names of their real
authors were lost. One fact in this attribution is remarkable -- the
veneration paid to Hesiod.
Life of Hesiod
Our information respecting Hesiod is derived in the main from notices
and allusions in the works attributed to him, and to these must be added
traditions concerning his death and burial gathered from later writers.
Hesiod's father (whose name, by a perversion of "Works and Days",
299 PERSE DION GENOS to PERSE, DION GENOS, was thought to
have been