Part 2
The only complete poem of the genealogical group is the _Theogony_, which traces from the beginning of things the descent and vicissitudes of the families of the gods. Like the _Works and Days_ this poem has no dramatic plot; but its unifying principle is clear and simple. The gods are classified chronologically: as soon as one generation is catalogued, the poet goes on to detail the offspring of each member of that generation. Exceptions are only made in special cases, as the Sons of Iapetus (ll. 507-616) whose place is accounted for by their treatment by Zeus. The chief landmarks in the poem are as follows: after the first 103 lines, which contain at least three distinct preludes, three primeval beings are introduced, Chaos, Earth, and Eros—here an indefinite reproductive influence. Of these three, Earth produces Heaven to whom she bears the Titans, the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants. The Titans, oppressed by their father, revolt at the instigation of Earth, under the leadership of Cronos, and as a result Heaven and Earth are separated, and Cronos reigns over the universe. Cronos knowing that he is destined to be overcome by one of his children, swallows each one of them as they are born, until Zeus, saved by Rhea, grows up and overcomes Cronos in some struggle which is not described. Cronos is forced to vomit up the children he had swallowed, and these with Zeus divide the universe between them, like a human estate. Two events mark the early reign of Zeus, the war with the Titans and the overthrow of Typhoeus, and as Zeus is still reigning the poet can only go on to give a list of gods born to Zeus by various goddesses. After this he formally bids farewell to the cosmic and Olympian deities and enumerates the sons born of goddess to mortals. The poem closes with an invocation of the Muses to sing of the “tribe of women”.
This conclusion served to link the _Theogony_ to what must have been a distinct poem, the _Catalogues of Women_. This work was divided into four (Suidas says five) books, the last one (or two) of which was known as the _Eoiae_ and may have been again a distinct poem: the curious title will be explained presently. The _Catalogues_ proper were a series of genealogies which traced the Hellenic race (or its more important peoples and families) from a common ancestor. The reason why women are so prominent is obvious: since most families and tribes claimed to be descended from a god, the only safe clue to their origin was through a mortal woman beloved by that god; and it has also been pointed out that _mutterrecht_ still left its traces in northern Greece in historical times.
The following analysis (after Marckscheffel) 1108 will show the principle of its composition. From Prometheus and Pronoia sprang Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of the deluge, who had a son Hellen (frag. 1), the reputed ancestor of the whole Hellenic race. From the daughters of Deucalion sprang Magnes and Macedon, ancestors of the Magnesians and Macedonians, who are thus represented as cousins to the true Hellenic stock. Hellen had three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, parents of the Dorian, Ionic and Aeolian races, and the offspring of these was then detailed. In one instance a considerable and characteristic section can be traced from extant fragments and notices: Salmoneus, son of Aeolus, had a daughter Tyro who bore to Poseidon two sons, Pelias and Neleus; the latter of these, king of Pylos, refused Heracles purification for the murder of Iphitus, whereupon Heracles attacked and sacked Pylos, killing amongst the other sons of Neleus Periclymenus, who had the power of changing himself into all manner of shapes. From this slaughter Neleus alone escaped (frags. 13, and 10-12). This summary shows the general principle of arrangement of the _Catalogues_: each line seems to have been dealt with in turn, and the monotony was relieved as far as possible by a brief relation of famous adventures connected with any of the personages—as in the case of Atalanta and Hippomenes (frag. 14). Similarly the story of the Argonauts appears from the fragments (37-42) to have been told in some detail.
This tendency to introduce romantic episodes led to an important development. Several poems are ascribed to Hesiod, such as the _Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis_, the _Descent of Theseus into Hades_, or the _Circuit of the Earth_ (which must have been connected with the story of Phineus and the Harpies, and so with the Argonaut-legend), which yet seem to have belonged to the _Catalogues_. It is highly probable that these poems were interpolations into the _Catalogues_ expanded by later poets from more summary notices in the genuine Hesiodic work and subsequently detached from their contexts and treated as independent. This is definitely known to be true of the _Shield of Heracles_, the first 53 lines of which belong to the fourth book of the _Catalogues_, and almost certainly applies to other episodes, such as the _Suitors of Helen_ 1109, the _Daughters of Leucippus_, and the _Marriage of Ceyx_, which last Plutarch mentions as “interpolated in the works of Hesiod.”
To the _Catalogues_, as we have said, was appended another work, the _Eoiae_. The title seems to have arisen in the following way 1110: the _Catalogues_ probably ended (ep. _Theogony_ 963 ff.) with some such passage as this: “But now, ye Muses, sing of the tribes of women with whom the Sons of Heaven were joined in love, women pre-eminent above their fellows in beauty, such as was Niobe (?).” Each succeeding heroine was then introduced by the formula “Or such as was...” (cp. frags. 88, 92, etc.). A large fragment of the _Eoiae_ is extant at the beginning of the _Shield of Heracles_, which may be mentioned here. The “supplement” (ll. 57-480) is nominally Heracles and Cycnus, but the greater part is taken up with an inferior description of the shield of Heracles, in imitation of the Homeric shield of Achilles (_Iliad_ xviii. 478 ff.). Nothing shows more clearly the collapse of the principles of the Hesiodic school than this ultimate servile dependence upon Homeric models.
At the close of the _Shield_ Heracles goes on to Trachis to the house of Ceyx, and this warning suggests that the _Marriage of Ceyx_ may have come immediately after the ‘Or such as was’ of Alcmena in the _Eoiae_: possibly Halcyone, the wife of Ceyx, was one of the heroines sung in the poem, and the original section was “developed” into the _Marriage_, although what form the poem took is unknown.
Next to the _Eoiae_ and the poems which seemed to have been developed from it, it is natural to place the _Great Eoiae_. This, again, as we know from fragments, was a list of heroines who bare children to the gods: from the title we must suppose it to have been much longer that the simple _Eoiae_, but its extent is unknown. Lehmann, remarking that the heroines are all Boeotian and Thessalian (while the heroines of the _Catalogues_ belong to all parts of the Greek world), believes the author to have been either a Boeotian or Thessalian.
Two other poems are ascribed to Hesiod. Of these the _Aegimius_ (also ascribed by Athenaeus to Cercops of Miletus), is thought by Valckenaer to deal with the war of Aegimus against the Lapithae and the aid furnished to him by Heracles, and with the history of Aegimius and his sons. Otto Muller suggests that the introduction of Thetis and of Phrixus (frags. 1-2) is to be connected with notices of the allies of the Lapithae from Phthiotis and Iolchus, and that the story of Io was incidental to a narrative of Heracles’ expedition against Euboea. The remaining poem, the _Melampodia_, was a work in three books, whose plan it is impossible to recover. Its subject, however, seems to have been the histories of famous seers like Mopsus, Calchas, and Teiresias, and it probably took its name from Melampus, the most famous of them all.
Date of the Hesiodic Poems
There is no doubt that the _Works and Days_ is the oldest, as it is the most original, of the Hesiodic poems. It seems to be distinctly earlier than the _Theogony_, which refers to it, apparently, as a poem already renowned. Two considerations help us to fix a relative date for the _Works_. (1) In diction, dialect and style it is obviously dependent upon Homer, and is therefore considerably later than the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_: moreover, as we have seen, it is in revolt against the romantic school, already grown decadent, and while the digamma is still living, it is obviously growing weak, and is by no means uniformly effective.
(2) On the other hand while tradition steadily puts the Cyclic poets at various dates from 776 B.C. downwards, it is equally consistent in regarding Homer and Hesiod as “prehistoric”. Herodotus indeed puts both poets 400 years before his own time; that is, at about 830-820 B.C., and the evidence stated above points to the middle of the ninth century as the probable date for the _Works and Days_. The _Theogony_ might be tentatively placed a century later; and the _Catalogues_ and _Eoiae_ are again later, but not greatly later, than the _Theogony_: the _Shield of Heracles_ may be ascribed to the later half of the seventh century, but there is not evidence enough to show whether the other “developed” poems are to be regarded as of a date so low as this.
Literary Value of Homer
Quintillian’s 1111 judgment on Hesiod that ‘he rarely rises to great heights... and to him is given the palm in the middle-class of speech’ is just, but is liable to give a wrong impression. Hesiod has nothing that remotely approaches such scenes as that between Priam and Achilles, or the pathos of Andromache’s preparations for Hector’s return, even as he was falling before the walls of Troy; but in matters that come within the range of ordinary experience, he rarely fails to rise to the appropriate level. Take, for instance, the description of the Iron Age (_Works and Days_, 182 ff.) with its catalogue of wrongdoings and violence ever increasing until Aidos and Nemesis are forced to leave mankind who thenceforward shall have ‘no remedy against evil’. Such occasions, however, rarely occur and are perhaps not characteristic of Hesiod’s genius: if we would see Hesiod at his best, in his most natural vein, we must turn to such a passage as that which he himself—according to the compiler of the _Contest of Hesiod and Homer_—selected as best in all his work, ‘When the Pleiades, Atlas’ daughters, begin to rise...’ (_Works and Days_, 383 ff.). The value of such a passage cannot be analysed: it can only be said that given such a subject, this alone is the right method of treatment.
Hesiod’s diction is in the main Homeric, but one of his charms is the use of quaint allusive phrases derived, perhaps, from a pre-Hesiodic peasant poetry: thus the season when Boreas blows is the time when ‘the Boneless One gnaws his foot by his fireless hearth in his cheerless house’; to cut one’s nails is ‘to sever the withered from the quick upon that which has five branches’; similarly the burglar is the ‘day-sleeper’, and the serpent is the ‘hairless one’. Very similar is his reference to seasons through what happens or is done in that season: ‘when the House-carrier, fleeing the Pleiades, climbs up the plants from the earth’, is the season for harvesting; or ‘when the artichoke flowers and the clicking grass-hopper, seated in a tree, pours down his shrill song’, is the time for rest.
Hesiod’s charm lies in his child-like and sincere naivete, in his unaffected interest in and picturesque view of nature and all that happens in nature. These qualities, it is true, are those pre-eminently of the _Works and Days_: the literary values of the _Theogony_ are of a more technical character, skill in ordering and disposing long lists of names, sure judgment in seasoning a monotonous subject with marvellous incidents or episodes, and no mean imagination in depicting the awful, as is shown in the description of Tartarus (ll. 736-745). Yet it remains true that Hesiod’s distinctive title to a high place in Greek literature lies in the very fact of his freedom from classic form, and his grave, and yet child-like, outlook upon his world.
The Ionic School
The Ionic School of Epic poetry was, as we have seen, dominated by the Homeric tradition, and while the style and method of treatment are Homeric, it is natural that the Ionic poets refrained from cultivating the ground tilled by Homer, and chose for treatment legends which lay beyond the range of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Equally natural it is that they should have particularly selected various phases of the tale of Troy which preceded or followed the action of the _Iliad_ or _Odyssey_. In this way, without any preconceived intention, a body of epic poetry was built up by various writers which covered the whole Trojan story. But the entire range of heroic legend was open to these poets, and other clusters of epics grew up dealing particularly with the famous story of Thebes, while others dealt with the beginnings of the world and the wars of heaven. In the end there existed a kind of epic history of the world, as known to the Greeks, down to the death of Odysseus, when the heroic age ended. In the Alexandrian Age these poems were arranged in chronological order, apparently by Zenodotus of Ephesus, at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. At a later time the term _Cycle_, “round” or “course”, was given to this collection.
Of all this mass of epic poetry only the scantiest fragments survive; but happily Photius has preserved to us an abridgment of the synopsis made of each poem of the “Trojan Cycle” by Proclus, _i.e._ Eutychius Proclus of Sicca.
The pre-Trojan poems of the Cycle may be noticed first. The _Titanomachy_, ascribed both to Eumelus of Corinth and to Arctinus of Miletus, began with a kind of Theogony which told of the union of Heaven and Earth and of their offspring the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handed Giants. How the poem proceeded we have no means of knowing, but we may suppose that in character it was not unlike the short account of the Titan War found in the Hesiodic _Theogony_ (617 ff.).
What links bound the _Titanomachy_ to the Theben Cycle is not clear. This latter group was formed of three poems, the _Story of Oedipus_, the _Thebais_, and the _Epigoni_. Of the _Oedipodea_ practically nothing is known, though on the assurance of Athenaeus (vii. 277 E) that Sophocles followed the Epic Cycle closely in the plots of his plays, we may suppose that in outline the story corresponded closely to the history of Oedipus as it is found in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_. The _Thebais_ seems to have begun with the origin of the fatal quarrel between Eteocles and Polyneices in the curse called down upon them by their father in his misery. The story was thence carried down to the end of the expedition under Polyneices, Adrastus and Amphiarus against Thebes. The _Epigoni_ (ascribed to Antimachus of Teos) recounted the expedition of the “After-Born” against Thebes, and the sack of the city.
The Trojan Cycle
Six epics with the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ made up the Trojan Cycle—The _Cyprian Lays_, the _Iliad_, the _Aethiopis_, the _Little Iliad_, the _Sack of Troy_, the _Returns_, the _Odyssey_, and the _Telegony_.
It has been assumed in the foregoing pages that the poems of the Trojan Cycle are later than the Homeric poems; but, as the opposite view has been held, the reasons for this assumption must now be given. (1) Tradition puts Homer and the Homeric poems proper back in the ages before chronological history began, and at the same time assigns the purely Cyclic poems to definite authors who are dated from the first Olympiad (776 B.C.) downwards. This tradition cannot be purely arbitrary. (2) The Cyclic poets (as we can see from the abstract of Proclus) were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer. Thus, when we find that in the _Returns_ all the prominent Greek heroes except Odysseus are accounted for, we are forced to believe that the author of this poem knew the _Odyssey_ and judged it unnecessary to deal in full with that hero’s adventures. 1112 In a word, the Cyclic poems are “written round” the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. (3) The general structure of these epics is clearly imitative. As M.M. Croiset remark, the abusive Thersites in the _Aethiopis_ is clearly copied from the Thersites of the _Iliad_; in the same poem Antilochus, slain by Memnon and avenged by Achilles, is obviously modelled on Patroclus. (4) The geographical knowledge of a poem like the _Returns_ is far wider and more precise than that of the _Odyssey_. (5) Moreover, in the Cyclic poems epic is clearly degenerating morally—if the expression may be used. The chief greatness of the _Iliad_ is in the character of the heroes Achilles and Hector rather than in the actual events which take place: in the Cyclic writers facts rather than character are the objects of interest, and events are so packed together as to leave no space for any exhibition of the play of moral forces. All these reasons justify the view that the poems with which we now have to deal were later than the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and if we must recognize the possibility of some conventionality in the received dating, we may feel confident that it is at least approximately just.
The earliest of the post-Homeric epics of Troy are apparently the _Aethiopis_ and the _Sack of Ilium_, both ascribed to Arctinus of Miletus who is said to have flourished in the first Olympiad (776 B.C.). He set himself to finish the tale of Troy, which, so far as events were concerned, had been left half-told by Homer, by tracing the course of events after the close of the _Iliad_. The _Aethiopis_ thus included the coming of the Amazon Penthesilea to help the Trojans after the fall of Hector and her death, the similar arrival and fall of the Aethiopian Memnon, the death of Achilles under the arrow of Paris, and the dispute between Odysseus and Aias for the arms of Achilles. The _Sack of Ilium_ 1113 as analysed by Proclus was very similar to Vergil’s version in _Aeneid_ ii, comprising the episodes of the wooden horse, of Laocoon, of Sinon, the return of the Achaeans from Tenedos, the actual Sack of Troy, the division of spoils and the burning of the city.
Lesches or Lescheos (as Pausanias calls him) of Pyrrha or Mitylene is dated at about 660 B.C. In his _Little Iliad_ he undertook to elaborate the _Sack_ as related by Arctinus. His work included the adjudgment of the arms of Achilles to Odysseus, the madness of Aias, the bringing of Philoctetes from Lemnos and his cure, the coming to the war of Neoptolemus who slays Eurypylus, son of Telephus, the making of the wooden horse, the spying of Odysseus and his theft, along with Diomedes, of the Palladium: the analysis concludes with the admission of the wooden horse into Troy by the Trojans. It is known, however (Aristotle, _Poetics_, xxiii; Pausanias, x, 25-27), that the _Little Iliad_ also contained a description of the _Sack of Troy_. It is probable that this and other superfluous incidents disappeared after the Alexandrian arrangement of the poems in the Cycle, either as the result of some later recension, or merely through disuse. Or Proclus may have thought it unnecessary to give the accounts by Lesches and Arctinus of the same incident.
The _Cyprian Lays_, ascribed to Stasinus of Cyprus 1114 (but also to Hegesinus of Salamis) was designed to do for the events preceding the
## action of the _Iliad_ what Arctinus had done for the later phases of
the Trojan War. The _Cypria_ begins with the first causes of the war, the purpose of Zeus to relieve the overburdened earth, the apple of discord, the rape of Helen. Then follow the incidents connected with the gathering of the Achaeans and their ultimate landing in Troy; and the story of the war is detailed up to the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon with which the _Iliad_ begins.
These four poems rounded off the story of the _Iliad_, and it only remained to connect this enlarged version with the _Odyssey_. This was done by means of the _Returns_, a poem in five books ascribed to Agias or Hegias of Troezen, which begins where the _Sack of Troy_ ends. It told of the dispute between Agamemnon and Menelaus, the departure from Troy of Menelaus, the fortunes of the lesser heroes, the return and tragic death of Agamemnon, and the vengeance of Orestes on Aegisthus. The story ends with the return home of Menelaus, which brings the general narrative up to the beginning of the _Odyssey_.
But the _Odyssey_ itself left much untold: what, for example, happened in Ithaca after the slaying of the suitors, and what was the ultimate fate of Odysseus? The answer to these questions was supplied by the _Telegony_, a poem in two books by Eugammon of Cyrene (_fl_. 568 B.C.). It told of the adventures of Odysseus in Thesprotis after the killing of the Suitors, of his return to Ithaca, and his death at the hands of Telegonus, his son by Circe. The epic ended by disposing of the surviving personages in a double marriage, Telemachus wedding Circe, and Telegonus Penelope.
The end of the Cycle marks also the end of the Heroic Age.
The Homeric Hymns
The collection of thirty-three Hymns, ascribed to Homer, is the last considerable work of the Epic School, and seems, on the whole, to be later than the Cyclic poems. It cannot be definitely assigned either to the Ionian or Continental schools, for while the romantic element is very strong, there is a distinct genealogical interest; and in matters of diction and style the influences of both Hesiod and Homer are well-marked. The date of the formation of the collection as such is unknown. Diodorus Siculus (_temp_. Augustus) is the first to mention such a body of poetry, and it is likely enough that this is, at least substantially, the one which has come down to us. Thucydides quotes the Delian _Hymn to Apollo_, and it is possible that the Homeric corpus of his day also contained other of the more important hymns. Conceivably the collection was arranged in the Alexandrine period.
Thucydides, in quoting the _Hymn to Apollo_, calls it PROOIMION, which ordinarily means a “prelude” chanted by a rhapsode before recitation of a lay from Homer, and such hymns as Nos. vi, xxxi, xxxii, are clearly preludes in the strict sense; in No. xxxi, for example, after celebrating Helios, the poet declares he will next sing of the “race of mortal men, the demi-gods”. But it may fairly be doubted whether such Hymns as those to _Demeter_ (ii), _Apollo_ (iii), _Hermes_ (iv), _Aphrodite_ (v), can have been real preludes, in spite of the closing formula “and now I will pass on to another hymn”. The view taken by Allen and Sikes, amongst other scholars, is doubtless right, that these longer hymns are only technically preludes and show to what disproportionate lengths a simple literacy form can be developed.
The Hymns to _Pan_ (xix), to _Dionysus_ (xxvi), to _Hestia and Hermes_ (xxix), seem to have been designed for use at definite religious festivals, apart from recitations. With the exception perhaps of the _Hymn to Ares_ (viii), no item in the collection can be regarded as either devotional or liturgical.