Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
by Homer and Hesiod
Contents
PREPARER’S NOTE
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
General
The Boeotian School
Life of Hesiod
The Hesiodic Poems
I. _The Works and Days_
II. The Genealogical Poems
Date of the Hesiodic Poems
Literary Value of Homer
The Ionic School
The Trojan Cycle
The Homeric Hymns
The Epigrams of Homer
The Burlesque Poems
The Contest of Homer and Hesiod
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HESIOD
HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS
THE DIVINATION BY BIRDS
THE ASTRONOMY
THE PRECEPTS OF CHIRON
THE GREAT WORKS
THE IDAEAN DACTYLS
THE THEOGONY
THE CATALOGUES OF WOMEN AND EOIAE
THE SHIELD OF HERACLES
THE MARRIAGE OF CEYX
THE GREAT EOIAE
THE MELAMPODIA
THE AEGIMIUS
FRAGMENTS OF UNKNOWN POSITION
DOUBTFUL FRAGMENTS
THE HOMERIC HYMNS
I. TO DIONYSUS
II. TO DEMETER
III. TO APOLLO
IV. TO HERMES
V. TO APHRODITE
VI. TO APHRODITE
VII. TO DIONYSUS
VIII. TO ARES
IX. TO ARTEMIS
X. TO APHRODITE
XI. TO ATHENA
XII. TO HERA
XIII. TO DEMETER
XIV. TO THE MOTHER OF THE GODS
XV. TO HERACLES THE LION-HEARTED
XVI. TO ASCLEPIUS
XVII. TO THE DIOSCURI
XVIII. TO HERMES
XIX. TO PAN
XX. TO HEPHAESTUS
XXI. TO APOLLO
XXII. TO POSEIDON
XXIII. TO THE SON OF CRONOS, MOST HIGH
XXIV. TO HESTIA
XXV. TO THE MUSES AND APOLLO
XXVI. TO DIONYSUS
XXVII. TO ARTEMIS
XXVIII. TO ATHENA
XXIX. TO HESTIA
XXX. TO EARTH THE MOTHER OF ALL
XXXI. TO HELIOS
XXXII. TO SELENE
XXXIII. TO THE DIOSCURI
THE EPIGRAMS OF HOMER
THE EPIC CYCLE
THE WAR OF THE TITANS
THE STORY OF OEDIPUS
THE THEBAID
THE EPIGONI
THE CYPRIA
THE AETHIOPIS
THE LITTLE ILIAD
THE SACK OF ILIUM
THE RETURNS
THE TELEGONY
HOMERICA
THE EXPEDITION OF AMPHIARAUS
THE TAKING OF OECHALIA
THE PHOCAIS
THE MARGITES
THE CERCOPES
THE BATTLE OF FROGS AND MICE
THE CONTEST OF HOMER AND HESIOD
ENDNOTES
This file contains translations of the following works: Hesiod: _Works
and Days_, _The Theogony_, fragments of _The Catalogues of Women and
the Eoiae_, _The Shield of Heracles_ (attributed to Hesiod), and
fragments of various works attributed to Hesiod.
Homer: _The Homeric Hymns_, _The Epigrams of Homer_ (both attributed
to Homer).
Various: Fragments of the Epic Cycle (parts of which are sometimes
attributed to Homer), fragments of other epic poems attributed to
Homer, _The Battle of Frogs and Mice_, and _The Contest of Homer and
Hesiod_.
This file contains only that portion of the book in English; Greek
texts are excluded. Where Greek characters appear in the original
English text, transcription in CAPITALS is substituted.
PREPARER’S NOTE
In order to make this file more accessible to the average computer
user, the preparer has found it necessary to re-arrange some of the
material. The preparer takes full responsibility for his choice of
arrangement.
A few endnotes have been added by the preparer, and some additions have
been supplied to the original endnotes of Mr. Evelyn-White’s. Where
this occurs I have noted the addition with my initials “DBK”. Some
endnotes, particularly those concerning textual variations in the
ancient Greek text, are here omitted.
PREFACE
This volume contains practically all that remains of the post-Homeric
and pre-academic epic poetry.
I have for the most part formed my own text. In the case of Hesiod I
have been able to use independent collations of several MSS. by Dr.
W.H.D. Rouse; otherwise I have depended on the _apparatus criticus_ of
the several editions, especially that of Rzach (1902). The arrangement
adopted in this edition, by which the complete and fragmentary poems
are restored to the order in which they would probably have appeared
had the Hesiodic corpus survived intact, is unusual, but should not
need apology; the true place for the _Catalogues_ (for example),
fragmentary as they are, is certainly after the _Theogony_.
In preparing the text of the _Homeric Hymns_ my chief debt—and it is a
heavy one—is to the edition of Allen and Sikes (1904) and to the series
of articles in the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ (vols. xv. _sqq_.) by
T.W. Allen. To the same scholar and to the Delegates of the Clarendon
Press I am greatly indebted for permission to use the restorations of
the _Hymn to Demeter_, lines 387-401 and 462-470, printed in the Oxford
Text of 1912.
Of the fragments of the Epic Cycle I have given only such as seemed to
possess distinct importance or interest, and in doing so have relied
mostly upon Kinkel’s collection and on the fifth volume of the Oxford
Homer (1912).
The texts of the _Batrachomyomachia_ and of the _Contest of Homer and
Hesiod_ are those of Baumeister and Flach respectively: where I have
diverged from these, the fact has been noted.
Owing to the circumstances of the present time I have been prevented
from giving to the _Introduction_ that full revision which I should
have desired.
Hugh G. Evelyn-White,
Rampton, NR. Cambridge.
_Sept_. 9_th_, 1914.
INTRODUCTION
General
The early Greek epic—that is, poetry as a natural and popular, and not
(as it became later) an artificial and academic literary form—passed
through the usual three phases, of development, of maturity, and of
decline.
No fragments which can be identified as belonging to the first period
survive to give us even a general idea of the history of the earliest
epic, and we are therefore thrown back upon the evidence of analogy
from other forms of literature and of inference from the two great
epics which have come down to us. So reconstructed, the earliest period
appears to us as a time of slow development in which the characteristic
epic metre, diction, and structure grew up slowly from crude elements
and were improved until the verge of maturity was reached.
The second period, which produced the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, needs
no description here: but it is very important to observe the effect of
these poems on the course of post-Homeric epic. As the supreme
perfection and universality of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ cast into
oblivion whatever pre-Homeric poets had essayed, so these same
qualities exercised a paralysing influence over the successors of
Homer. If they continued to sing like their great predecessor of
romantic themes, they were drawn as by a kind of magnetic attraction
into the Homeric style and manner of treatment, and 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 1101, 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 1102 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 Dius)
was a native of Cyme in Aeolis, where he was a seafaring trader and,
perhaps, also a farmer. He was forced by poverty to leave his native
place, and returned to continental Greece, where he settled at Ascra
near Thespiae in Boeotia (_Works and Days_, 636 ff.). Either in Cyme or
Ascra, two sons, Hesiod and Perses, were born to the settler, and
these, after his death, divided the farm between them. Perses, however,
who is represented as an idler and spendthrift, obtained and kept the
larger share by bribing the corrupt “lords” who ruled from Thespiae