sacrilegiously waylay the processions to Delphi. It
seems he would have been willing to buy off Apollo's
* Hist. Gr. Lit., i. 132.
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES. 97
wrath by building him at Pagasae an altar of the horns
of captured beasts ; but the god loved his shrine too
well to compound matters so easily, and instead of
doing so, appears to have commissioned Hercules to
exact reparation from the robber. The poem opens
with the approach of the hero, with his charioteer and
kinsman, Iolaus, to the robber's haunt :
" There in the grove of the far-darting god
He found him, and, insatiable of war,
Ares, his sire, beside. Both bright in arms,
Bright in the sheen of burning flame they stood
On their high chariot, and the horses fleet
Trampled the ground with rending hoofs ; around
In parted circle smoked the cloudy dust,
Up-dashed beneath the trampling hoofs, and cars
Of complicated frame. The well-framed cars
Rattled aloud ; loud clashed the wheels, while wrapt
In their full speed the horses flew. Rejoiced
The noble Cycnus ; for the hope was his
Jove's warlike offspring and his charioteer
To slay, and strip them of their gorgeous mail.
But to his vaunts the prophet god of day
Turned a deaf ear : for he himself set on
The assault of Heracles."
E. 81-97.
Kone but Hercules, we are told, could have faced
the unearthly light with which the sheen of the war-
god's armour and the glare of his fire-flashing eyes lit
up. the sacred enclosure and its environs. He, how-
ever, is equal to the occasion. Probably, if we had the
poem as it was written, the hero would not be repre-
sented as in the text, employing this critical moment
in irrelevant speeches to his charioteer to the effect
a. c. vol. xv. ' G
98 HESIOD.
that the labours (in which, by the way, his soul de-
lighted) were all occasioned by the folly of that chari-
oteer's father, Iphiclus. It was an odd time to twit
his comrade and his brother's son with that brother's
errors, when a fight with Ares, the god of war, was
imminent. Iolaus's answer is more to the point. He
bids his chief rely on Zeus and Poseidon for victory in
the encounter, and urges him to don his armour in
readiness for a fray in which the race of Alcseus, to
which Hercules jputatively belongs, shall get the vic-
tory :
" He said, and Heracles smiled stern his joy,
Elate of thought : for he had spoken words
Most welcome. Then in winged accents thus :
'Jove-fostered hero, it is e'en at hand,
The battle's rough encounter : thou, as erst,
In martial prudence firm, aright, aleft,
"With vantage of the fray unerring guide
Areion, huge and sable-maned ; and me
Aid in the doubtful conflict, as thou may'st.'"
E. 157-165. '
It would appear that the horse here mentioned owes
its prominence to being of divine strain, and the off-
spring of the sea-god. The other member of the pair
is not named, because of the transcendent breed of its
yoke-fellow, who is, in the twenty-third book of the
Iliad, said to belong to Adrastus. '
But now the hero begins his war-toilet, donning his
greaves of mountain-brass, the corselet which is Athe-
na's gift, and the sword from the same donor, which
he slings athwart his shoulders. Of the arrows in his
quiver the poet says
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES. 99
" Shuddering horrors these
Inflicted, and the agony of death
Sudden, that chokes the suffocative voice :
The points were barbed with death and bitter-steeped
"With human tears : burnished the length'ning shafts,
And they were feathered from the tawny plume
Of eagles."
E. 177-183.
The heroic spear and helm complete his equipment,
save and except the shield, to which it has been above
noted that all the rest is introductory. This would
seem to have been a circular disc, with a dragon for
centre, and the parts \between it and the outer rim
divided by layers of cyanus or blue steel into four
compartments of enamel, ivory, electrum, and gold.
According to Miiller,* a battle of wild boars and lions
forms a narrow band round the middle. The first con-
siderable band which surrounds the centre-piece in the
circle consists of four departments, of which two contain
warlike, and two peaceable subjects, so that the entire
shield contains, as it were, a sanguinary and a tranquil
side. The rim of the shield is surrounded by the
ocean. An idea of the poem is best gathered from
some of the details of the several parts. Perched in
the centre on the dragon's head
" Stern Strife in air
Hung hovering, and arrayed the war of men ;
Haggard ; whose aspect from all mortals reft
All mind and soul ; whoe'er in brunt of arms
Should match their strength, and face the son of Zeus,
Below, this earth their spirits to the abyss
* Hist. Gr. Lit., i. 132.
100 HESIOD.
Descend ; and through the flesh that wastes away
Beneath the parching Sun, their whitening bones
Start forth and moulder in the sable dust."
E. 200-208.
Around this central image are grouped the appro-
priate forms of " Bout," " Eailying," " Terror," " Tu-
mult," " Carnage," and " Discord ; " but in close proxi-
mity to the dragon's head came twelve serpent-heads,
freezing with dread all mortal combatants, and endowed,
it should seem, with properties not inherent in the
metal of the shield. The translation is as follows :
"Oft as he
Moved to the battle, from their clashing fangs
A sound was heard. Such miracles displayed
The buckler's held with living blazonry
Resplendent ; and those fearful snakes were streaked
O'er their cerulean backs with streaks of jet,
And their jaws blackened with a jetty dye."
E. 224-230.
But the original seems to imply that the rows of teeth,
with which each serpent was finished, actually gnashed
and clashed while Hercules was fighting. This, as Mr
Paley suggests, may have been a mechanical device
like that in the Theban Shields mentioned in the
' Phoenissse ' of Euripides, v. 11-26 ; or a bit of the mar-
vellous a " Munchausenism," such as ancient poets
affect in enhancing the wonder of some work of the
gods. Whichever it was, a like demand on our
credulity is made in two other passages ; one, where in
another compartment Perseus is represented as seeming
to hover over the shield's surface, like a man flying
low in air, and to flit like a thought :
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES. 101
u There was the knight, of fair-haired Danae born,
Perseus, nor yet the buckler with his feet
Touched, nor yet distant hovered : strange to think ;
For nowhere on the surface of the shield
He rested : so the crippled artist god,
Illustrious, framed him with his hands in gold."
E. 297 302.
The other is where the noise of the Gorgons' feet, as
they tread, is represented as realised in connection
with the sculptured shield :
" Close behind the Gorgons twain
Of nameless terror, unapproachable,
Came rushing : eagerly they stretched their arms
To seize him : from the pallid adamant
Audibly as they rushed, the clattering shield
Clanked with a sharp shrill sound/'
E. 314-319.
Next to the serpent-heads on the shield was wrought
a fight betwixt boars and lions an occasion to the poet
of spirited description :
" Wild from the forest, herds of boars were there,
And lions, mutual glaring : these in wrath
Leaped on each other ; and by troops they drove
Their onset : nor yet these nor those recoiled,
Nor quaked in fear : of both the backs uprose,
Bristling with anger : for a lion huge
Lay stretched amidst them, and two boars beside,
Lifeless : the sable blood down-dropping oozed
Into the ground. So these with bowed backs
Lay dead beneath the terrible lions ; they
For this the more incensed, both savage boars
And tawny lions, chafing sprang to war."
E. 231-242.
102 IIES10D.
Next came tlie battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs,
the names of both races corresponding in the main with
those in the first book of the Iliad. Both bands are
wrought in silver, their arms and missiles in gold.
The Centaurs, it is noteworthy, have not yet assumed
the double form of man and beast, of which the first
mention occurs in Pindar (Pyth. ii. 80), but are hero
the rude monsters we find under the same name in the
Iliad and Odyssey a fact which is of some importance
in fixing the comparatively early date of the shield.
On the same compartment is wrought, the poet tells
us, Ares in his war- chariot, attended by Pear and
Consternation ; whilst Pallas, taking the spoil, spear
in hand, with helmed brow and her aegis athwart her
shoulders, is depicted as she sets the battle in array,
and rushes forth to mingle in the war din.
After a description following next of the material
wealth of Olympus, which has been suspected of
spuriousness, as savouring of post-Homeric style and
ideas, occurs a curious presentment of a harbour and
surging sea, wrought of tin, in which silver dolphins are
chasing the lesser fish, and amusing themselves with
gorging these, and spouting up water, whale fashion.
The little fish are wrought in brass. A later addition
to the picture is obviously interpolated from Theo-
critus (i. 39), namely, the fisherman on a crag
" Observant, in his grasp who held a net,
Like one that poising rises to the throw."
What is needed to complete the picture in the
Alexandrian poet is, however, de trop here.
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES. 103
The description of Perseus, and his encounter with
the Gorgon s, has been partially anticipated, though our
citations did not include the Gorgon's head covering all (
his hack, his silver knapsack with gold tassels, or his
invisible cap, the " helmet of Hades," which occurs in
the fifth book of the Iliad, and has passed into a proverb.
Above this group were wrought two cities, one at war,
the other at peace. The details of the former are life-
like ; able-bodied men engaged in fight, women beat-
ing their breasts upon the walls, the elders at the
gates asking help of the blessed gods ; whilst the
Fates with interest survey and fan the work of siege
and slaughter with a prospect to a coming banquet of
blood :
" Hard by there stood
Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos
Somewhat in years inferior : nor was she
A mighty goddess ; yet those other Fates
Exceeding, and of birth the elder far."
E. 346-350.
Had the translator read size for years, Hesiod's ac-
count would have tallied with the evidence of vases and
terra-cottas, which represent Clotho as the tallest, and
Atropos the most decrepit of the weird sisters. Ap-
propriately near this group is seen
u Misery, wan and ghastly, worn with woe,
Arid and swoln of knee, with hunger's pains
Faint falling : from her lean hands long the nails
Outgrew : an ichor from her nostrils flowed.
Blood from her cheeks distilled to earth : with teeth
All wide, disclosed in grinning agony
104 HESIOD.
She stood : a cloud of dust her shoulders spread,
And her eyes ran with tears "
E. 355-362.
The italicised words in the above description recall
a curious image of starvation, " pressing a tumid foot
with hand from hunger lean," in the 'Works and
Days (v. 692), and to some extent point to a kindred
authorship of the two poems.
From this ghastly picture the poet soon carries his
readers to a contrast on the same band of the shield
a city at peace, which has been supposed to be meant
for Thebes. We recognise the towers and the seven
gates, and become spectators of bridal processions to
the sound of the flute, as opposed as possible to the
revels of the war-god in that city in its day of trouble
revels which Euripides described as " most unmusical."
Here is some account of what is passing :
" Some on the smooth-wheeled car
A virgin bride conducted : then burst forth
Aloud the marriage song, and far and wide
Loud splendours flashed from many a quivering torch,
Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls
Preceded ; and the dancers followed blithe.
These with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip
Breathed melody, while broken echoes thrilled
Around them : to the lyre with flying touch,
Those led the love-enkindling dance. A group
Of youths was elsewhere imaged ; to the flute
Disporting, some in dances and in song,
In laughter others. To the minstrel's pipe
So passed they on, and the whole city seemed
As filled with pomps, with dances, and with feasts.**
E. 366-380.
n y
THE SHIELD OF HERCU^^F^^^
A comparison of this passage with its parallel in
Homer's shield of Achilles (II. xviii.), encourages the
theory that hoth poets had a common ideal, though the
representation is more full and prolix in Hesiod. We
quote the Homeric description from an unpublished
translation : *
" Two cities of mankind he wrought. In one
Marriage was made and revelry went on.
Here brides environed with bright torches' blaze
Forth from their bowers they lead, and loudly raise
The nuptial chant ; and dancers blithely spring,
Cheered by the sweet-breathed pipe and harper's string,
And women at their doors stand wondering."
A distinct subject, having nothing to do with the
nuptial procession, though perhaps an accessory illus-
tration of a city at peace, is formed in the operations
of husbandry ; plough ers tucked up and close girt are
making the furrow, as on the Homeric shield, yield
before the coulter. The equipment of these plough-
men carries us back again to the ' Works/ where the
husbandman is advised "to sow stripped, plough
stripped, and reap stripped," if he would enjoy the gift
of Ceres ; and where " stripping " means probably
getting rid of the cloak, and wearing only the close
tunic :
" Next arose
A field thick set with depth of corn : where some
"With sharpened sickle reaped the club-like stalks,
Some bound them into bands, and strewed the floor
For thrashing." E.
* By Mr Richard Garnett.
106 RESIOD.
And in close proximity was the delineation of a vin-
tage; some gathering the fruit, vine-sickle in hand, and
others carrying it away in baskets. By a marvellous
skill in metals, a row of vines had been wrought in
gold, waving with leaves and trellises of silver, and
bending with grapes represented in some dark metal.
Treading the winepress, and expressing the juice, com-
pleted the picture, which is less perfect than Homer's
parallel passage.
But there was room found, it would seem, on this
part of the shield, for athletic and field sports of vari-
ous kinds, the chariot-race being the most elaborate
description of the set :
" High o'er the well-compacted chariots hung
The charioteers : the rapid horses loosed
At their full stretch, and shook the floating reins.
Rebounding from the ground with many a shock
Flew clattering the firm cars, and creaked aloud
The naves of the round wheels. They therefore toiled
Endless : nor conquest yet at any time
Achieved they, but a doubtful strife maintained."
E. 413-420.
Around the shield's verge was represented the cir-
cumambient ocean, girding, as it did in Homer's view^
the flat and circular earth with its boundless flood :
" Rounding the utmost verge the ocean flowed
As in full swell of waters : and the shield
All variegated with whole circle bound.
Swans of high-hovering wing there clamoured shrill,
Who also skimmed the breasted surge with plume
Innumerous : near them fishes 'midst the waves
Frolicked in wanton leaps,"-
E. 424-429.
THE SHIELD 0I< HERCULES. 107
so like the life, the poet adds, as to exact the admira-
tion of even Zeus, the artificer's sire and patron.
So much for the shield : what remains concerns the
combat betwixt Hercules, and Cycnus with the war-
god to help him. The odds are partially balanced by
the aid of the blue-eyed Pallas to the hero, who by
her counsel forbears to dream of " spoiling the steeds
and glorious armour of a god," a thing which he finds
is against the decrees of fate. Nor does the goddess
stop at advice, but vouchsafes her invisible presence
in the hero's car. As the combatants come to close
quarters Hercules resorts to mock civilities, and with
taunting allusions asks free passage to the court of
Ceyx, king of Iolchos, the father-in-law of Cycnus.
As a matter of course the permission is denied. Her-
cules and Cycnus leap to the ground, and their chariot-
eers drive a little aside to give free scope for the tug
of war :
u As rocks
From some high mountain-top precipitate
Leap with a bound, and o'er each other. whirled
Shock in the dizzying fall ; and many an oak
Of lofty branch, pine-tree, and poplar, deep
Of root, are crashed beneath them ; as their course
Rapidly rolls, till now they reach the plain ;
So met these foes encountering, and so burst
Their mighty clamour. Echoing loud throughout
The city of the Myrmidons gave back
Their lifted voices, and Iolchos famed,
And Arne, and Anthea's grass-girt walls,
And Helice. Thus with amazing shout
They joined in battle : all-consulting Zeus
Then greatly thundered : from the clouds of heaven
108 HESIOD.
He cast forth dews of blood, and signal thus
Of onset gave to his high-daring son."
E. 506-522.
The simile of the dislodged rocks reminds us of
Hector's onslaught in the thirteenth book of the
Iliad ; but the poetical figure of the cities re-echoing
the din and clamour of the conflict, and the portent of
the bloody rain-drops, are due to Hesiod's own ima-
gination. Close following upon these comes a tissue
of similes, so prodigally strewn that they strike the
critical as later interpolations. The issue of the fight
is conceived in a more genuine strain :
" Truly then
Cycnus, the son of Zeus unmatched in strength
Aiming to slay, against the buckler struck
His brazen lance, but through the metal plate
Broke not. The present of a god preserved.
On the other side, he of Amphitryon named,
Strong Heracles, between the helm and shield
Drave his long spear, and, underneath the chin
Through the bare neck smote violent and swift.
The murderous ashen beam at once the nerves
Twain of the neck cleft sheer : for all the man
Dropped, and his force went from him : down he fell
Headlong. As falls a thunder- blasted oak,
Or perpendicular rock, riven with the flash
Of Zeus, in smouldering smoke is hurled from high,
So fell he."
E. 558-573.
Hercules, so far victorious, awaits the onset of the
bereaved war-god with a devout heedfulness of his
assessor's injunctions. She from her seat at his side
interposes to apprise Ares that any attempt at revenge
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES. 109
or reprisals must involve a conflict with herself. But
the god, sore at his bereavement, heeds not her word,
and with violent effort hurls his brazen spear at the
liuge shield of his antagonist. In vain; for Pallas
diverts the javelin's force. Ares rushes upon Hercu-
les, and he, having watched his opportunity,
" Beneath the well-wrought shield the thigh exposed
Wounded with i.ll his slrtiigth, bud thrusting rived
The shield's large disk, and cleft it with his lance,
And in the midway threw him to the earth
Prostrate."
E. 624-628.
a curious denouement, wherein an immortal is in bit-
ter need of a Deus ex machina. The author of the
' Shield/ however, has provided for the contingency.
Pear and Consternation had sat as helpers in the
chariot of Cycnus, as Pallas in that of Hercules.
They hurry the vanquished god into his car, and,
lashing the steeds, transport him without more ado to
Olympus. Here the poem should have ended; but a
later chronicler seems to have felt, like many a modern
novelist, that the minor dramatis personce must be
accounted for. And so we have a few lines about the
victor spoiling Cycnus, whose obsequies were after-
wards duly performed by his respectable father-in-law
Ceyx at lolchos. But the tomb erected over the
brigand and fane-robber was not suffered to remain in
honour. In requital for repeated sacrilege
u Anaurus foaming high with wintry rains
Swept it from sight away. Apollo thus
110 HESIOD-
Commanded : for that Cycnus ambushed spoiled
By violence the Delphic hecatombs."
E. 681-654
Thus ends our sole sample extant of the short epiv*
which antiquity attributes to Hesiod. With all its
repetitions and interpolations, there is in it a residuum
of genuine poetry which is happily rescued from the
spoils of time. Even as a " fugitive ballad," which
Mure has designated it, it is too good to be lost ; and
though we may not venture to attribute it confidently
to Hesiod, the l Shield ' has its place in classical
literature, if we can even accept it as " Hesiodian."
CHAPTEK VI.
IMITATORS OF HESIOD.
Although it would be impossible to point to any
direct imitation of Hesiod in poetry subsequent tc
Virgil's, and though even his is only imitation within
certain conditions, it seems incumbent on us to notice
briefly the influence, for the most part indirect and
unconscious, which his poetry, especially his didactic
poetry,, has had upon later poets. Those shorter epic
scraps, of which the ' Shield of Hercules ' is a sample,
have their modern presentment, if anywhere, in idyls
and professed fragments ; but the differences here
betwixt the old and the new are so considerable as to
make it unsafe to press the likeness. For the 'Theo-
gony ' we have one or two modern parallels, though it,
too, has served rather for a mine into which Christian
apologists might dig for relics of heathen mythology,
than as a type to be reproduced at the risk of that
endlessness which is associated with genealogies. But
as regards Hesiod's ' Works and Days,' there can be
no question that its form, and its union of practical
teaching with charm of versification, possessed an
112 HESIOD.
attraction for subsequent generations of poets, and,
having "been more or less borrowed from and remod-
elled, according to the demands of their subjects, by
the poetical grammarians of Alexandria, was handed
over as an example to the Alexandrianising poets
of Eome. " The ' Phenomena ' of Aratus," writes
Professor Conington, in his introduction to the
' Georgics ' " found at least two distinguished trans-
lators : Lucretius and Manilius gave the form and
colour of poetry to the truths of science ; Virgil and
Horace to the rules of art ; and the rear is brought up
by such poets as Gratius, Nemesianus, and Serenus
Sammonicus." But the 'Phaenomena' of Aratus, and
its Poman parallel, the * Astronomica' of Manilius,
though conversant with a portion of the same topics
as Hesiod's didactic poem, essay a loftier flight of
admonitory poetry ; and in them the advance of time
has substituted for the simplicity and directness of
Hesiod, rhetorical turns and artifices, and the efforts of
picturesque description. It is the same with Ovid's
contemporary, Gratius Faliscus, if we may judge of
him by his fragmentary ' Cynegetica.' In carrying
out his design of a didactic poem on the chase and its
surroundings, he barters simplicity for a forced eleva-
tion of moral tone, and spoils the effect of his real
insight into his subject by a fondness for sententious
maxims "in season and out of season." Nemesianus,
who wrote two centuries or more after Gratius, seems
to have so completely made Virgil his model that the
influence of Hesiod is imperceptible in his poetry,
which is diffuse and laboured, and instinct with exag-
IMITATORS OF HESIOD. 113
gerated imitation of the Augustan poets. On the
whole, it is only between Hesiod and Virgil that solid
ground for comparison exists ; and such as institute
this comparison will be constrained to admit Mr
Conington's conclusion, that the ' Works and Days'
as distinctly stimulated Virgil's general conception
of the Georgics, as the Idyls of Theocritus that of
his Bucolics, or the Iliad and Odyssey that of his
iEneid. Uncertainty as to the extent of the frag-
mentariness of the model undoubtedly bars a confident
verdict upon the closeness of the copy. Propertius
may have had other and lost works of Hesiod in his
mind's eye when he addressed his great contemporary
as repeating in song the Ascraean sage's precepts on
vine-culture as well as corn-crops (iii. 26, v. 77). Yet
enough of direct imitation survives in the large portion
of the first book of the Georgics (wherein Virgil
treads common ground) to show that, with many
points of contrast, there are also many correspondences
between the old Boeotian bard and his smoother Roman
admirer ; and that where Virgil does copy, his copying
is as unequivocal as it is instructive for a study of
finish and refinement. Each poet takes for his theme
the same " glorification of labour " which Dean Meri-
vale discerns as the chief aim of the Georgics, the
difference consisting in the homeliness of the manner
of the Greek poet and the high polish of that of the
Roman. Each also recognises the time of man's