Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
You cannot tell good from bad: you miss the writer's general drift, you miss his subtle arrangements of words: the chaste elegance of a pure style, the false ring of the counterfeit, 'tis all one to you. Are we to understand that you possess literary discernment without the assistance of any study? And how should that be? perhaps, like Hesiod, you received a laurel-branch from the Muses?
Tell me, O Muse, what never was And never yet shall be. Hesiod answered readily and extempore in this wise: When steeds with echoing hoof, to win The prize, shall run amain; And on the tomb of lofty Jove Their chariots break in twain. For this reply he was infinitely commended and got the tripod.
People soon returned to Shakespeare's uncouth but captivating aberrations. One knows well enough what antiquity has said of this shameful passion, and what the moderns have repeated. Hesiod is the first classic author who speaks of it. I think that Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," was the first to try to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful passion.
Hesiod, not speaking from hearsay, but coming fresh from the sight of the Muses' morning dance, has this high tribute to them in the beginning of his poem: Their dainty feet round the dark waters dance, about the altar of Zeus. My dear sir, your onslaught upon the dance is little short of blasphemy.
On the contrary Aristides, by his poverty, made justice odious, as if it were the pest and impoverisher of a family and beneficial to all, rather than to those that were endowed with it. Yet Hesiod urges us alike to just dealing and to care of our households, and inveighs against idleness as the origin of injustice; and Homer admirably says:
Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather have their children than ordinary ones? Who would not emulate them in the creation of children such as theirs, which have preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory? Or who would not have such children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours not only of Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say?
"Take away the measure of these verses, consider only the sentiment, and you will fancy that you hear, not some part of Hesiod, but a prophecy of the administration of Demosthenes; for true it is, that both fleets and armies, and whole cities, have been completely destroyed by his administration.
And yet, when his imagination is not actually at work to heighten and ennoble the portrait of a hero, real Greek life of his own times does not fail sometimes to obtrude on him. So he lets in bits now and again that belong to the state of things Hesiod describes, and confirm the truth of Hesiod's dismal picture.
In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy is still regarded as a group of islands. On the other hand, in all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the Hellenes.
The myths and traditions of this ancient people were adopted by Hesiod, Homer, and the later poets, although not without some misunderstanding of them, and they were finally preserved in the Mysteries, and became subjects of investigation for the philosophers.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking