Part 14

The other poem attributed to Hesiod or his school which has come down in great part to modern times is _The Theogony_, a work of grander scope, inspired alike by older traditions and abundant local associations. It is an attempt to work into system, as none had essayed to do before, the floating legends of the gods and goddesses and their offspring. This task Herodotus (ii. 53) attributes to Hesiod, and he is quoted by Plato in the _Symposium_ (178 B) as the author of the _Theogony_. The first to question his claim to this distinction was Pausanias, the geographer (A.D. 200). The Alexandrian grammarians had no doubt on the subject; and indications of the hand that wrote the _Works and Days_ may be found in the severe strictures on women, in the high esteem for the wealth-giver Plutus and in coincidences of verbal expression. Although, no doubt, of Hesiodic origin, in its present form it is composed of different recensions and numerous later additions and interpolations. The _Theogony_ consists of three divisions--(1) a cosmogony, or creation; (2) a theogony proper, recounting the history of the dynasties of Zeus and Cronus; and (3) a brief and abruptly terminated heroogony, the starting-point not improbably of the supplementary poem, the [Greek: katalogos], or "Lists of Women" who wedded immortals, of which all but a few fragments are lost.[1] The proem (1-116) addressed to the Heliconian and Pierian muses, is considered to have been variously enlarged, altered and arranged by successive rhapsodists. The poet has interwoven several episodes of rare merit, such as the contest of Zeus and the Olympian gods with the Titans, and the description of the prison-house in which the vanquished Titans are confined, with the Giants for keepers and Day and Night for janitors (735 seq.).

The only other poem which has come down to us under Hesiod's name is the _Shield of Heracles_, the opening verses of which are attributed by a nameless grammarian to the fourth book of _Eoiai_. The theme of the piece is the expedition of Heracles and Iolaus against the robber Cycnus; but its main object apparently is to describe the shield of Heracles (141-317). It is clearly an imitation of the Homeric account of the shield of Achilles (_Iliad_, xviii. 479) and is now generally considered spurious. Titles and fragments of other lost poems of Hesiod have come down to us: didactic, as the _Maxims of Cheiron_; genealogical, as the _Aegimius_, describing the contest of that mythical ancestor of the Dorians with the Lapithae; and mythical, as the _Marriage of Ceyx_ and the _Descent of Theseus to Hades_.

Recent editions of Hesiod include the [Greek: Agon Homerou kai Hesiodou], the contest of song between Homer and Hesiod at the funeral games held in honour of King Amphidamas at Chalcis. This little tract belongs to the time of Hadrian, who is actually mentioned as having been present during its recitation, but is founded on an earlier account by the sophist Alcidamas (q.v.). Quotations (old and new) are made from the works of both poets, and, in spite of the sympathies of the audience, the judge decides in favour of Hesiod. Certain biographical details of Homer and Hesiod are also given.

A strong characteristic of Hesiod's style is his sententious and proverbial philosophy (as in _Works and Days_, 24-25, 40, 218, 345, 371). There is naturally less of this in the _Theogony_, yet there too not a few sentiments take the form of the saw or adage. He has undying fame as the first of didactic poets (see DIDACTIC POETRY), the accredited systematizer of Greek mythology and the rough but not unpoetical sketcher of the lines on which Virgil wrought out his exquisitely finished Georgics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Complete works: _Editio princeps_ (Milan, 1493); Gottling-Flach (1878), with full bibliography up to date of publication; C. Sittl (1889), with introduction and critical and explanatory notes in Greek; F. A. Paley (1883); A. Rzach (1902), including the fragments. Separate works: _Works and Days_: Van Lennep (1847); A. Kirchhoff (1889); A. Steitz, _Die Werke und Tage des Hesiodos_ (1869), dealing chiefly with the composition and arrangement of the poem; G. Wlastoff, _Promethee, Pandore, et la legende des siecles_ (1883). _Theogony_: Van Lennep (1843); F. G. Welcker (1865), valuable edition; G. F. Schomann (1868), with text, critical notes and exhaustive commentary; H. Flach, _Die Hesiodische Theogonie_ (1873), with prolegomena dealing chiefly with the digamma in Hesiod, _System der Hesiodischen Kosmogonie_ (1874), and _Glossen und Scholien zur Theogonie_ (1876); Meyer, _De compositione Theogoniae_ (1887). _Shield of Heracles_: Wolf-Ranke (1840); Van Lennep-Hullemann (1854); F. Stegemann, _De scuti Herculis Hesiodei poeta Homeri carminum imitatore_ (1904); the fragments were published by W. Marckscheffel in 1840; for the [Greek: Agon Homerou] (ed. A. Rzach, 1908) see F. Nietzsche in _Rheinisches Museum_ (new series), xxv. p. 528. For papyrus fragments of the "Catalogue," some 50 lines on the wooing of Helen, and a shorter fragment in praise of Peleus, see Wilamowitz-Mollendorff in _Sitzungsber. der konigl. preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften_, for 26th of July 1900; for fragments relating to Meleager and the suitors of Helen, _Berliner Klassikertexte_, v. (1907); of the _Theogony, Oxyrh. Pap._ vi. (1908).

On the subject generally, consult G. F. Schomann, _Opuscula_, ii. (1857); H. Flach, _Die Hesiodischen Gedichte_ (1874); A. Rzach, _Der Dialekt des Hesiodos_ (1876); P. O. Gruppe, _Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen_, i. (1887); O. Friedel, _Die Sage vom Tode Hesiods_ (1879), from _Jahrbucher fur classische Philologie_ (10th suppl. Band, 1879); J. Adam, _Religious Teachers of Greece_ (1908). There is a full bibliography of the publications relating to Hesiod (1884-1898) by A. Rzach in Bursian's _Jahresbericht uber die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft_, xxvii. (1900).

There are translations of the Hesiodic poems in English by Cooke (1728), C. A. Elton (1815), J. Banks (1856), and specially by A. W. Mair, with introduction and appendices (Oxford Library of Translations, 1908); in German (metrical version) with valuable introductions and notes by R. Peppmuller (1896) and in other modern languages. (J. Da.; J. H. F.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Part of the poem was called Eoiai, because the description of each heroine began with [Greek: e oie], "or like as." (See Bibliography.)

HESPERIDES, in Greek mythology, maidens who guarded the golden apples which Earth gave Hera on her marriage to Zeus. According to Hesiod (_Theogony_, 215) they were the daughters of Erebus and Night; in later accounts, of Atlas and Hesperis, or of Phorcys and Ceto (schol. on Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1399; Diod. Sic. iv. 27). They were usually supposed to be three in number--Aegle, Erytheia, Hesperis (or Hesperethusa); according to some, four, or even seven. They lived far away in the west at the borders of Ocean, where the sun sets. Hence the sun (according to Mimnermus _ap._ Athenaeum xi. p. 470) sails in the golden bowl made by Hephaestus from the abode of the Hesperides to the land where he rises again. According to other accounts their home was among the Hyperboreans. The golden apples grew on a tree guarded by Ladon, the ever-watchful dragon. The sun is often in German and Lithuanian legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the nightly heaven, while the dragon, the envious power, keeps the light back from men till some beneficent power takes it from him. Heracles is the hero who brings back the golden apples to mankind again. Like Perseus, he first applies to the Nymphs, who help him to learn where the garden is. Arrived there he slays the dragon and carries the apples to Argos; and finally, like Perseus, he gives them to Athena. The Hesperides are, like the Sirens, possessed of the gift of delightful song. The apples appear to have been the symbol of love and fruitfulness, and are introduced at the marriages of Cadmus and Harmonia and Peleus and Thetis. The golden apples, the gift of Aphrodite to Hippomenes before his race with Atalanta, were also plucked from the garden of the Hesperides.

HESPERUS (Gr. [Greek: Hesperos], Lat. Vesper), the evening star, son or brother of Atlas. According to Diodorus Siculus (iii. 60, iv. 27), he ascended Mount Atlas to observe the motions of the stars, and was suddenly swept away by a whirlwind. Ever afterwards he was honoured as a god, and the most brilliant star in the heavens was called by his name. Although as a mythological personality he is regarded as distinct from Phosphoros or Heosphoros (Lat. Lucifer), the morning star or bringer of light, the son of Astraeus (or Cephalus) and Eos, the two stars were early identified by the Greeks.

Diog. Laert. viii. 1. 14; Cicero, _De nat. deorum_, ii. 20; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ ii. 6 [8].

HESS, the name of a family of German artists.

HEINRICH MARIA HESS (1798-1863)--von Hess, after he received a patent of personal nobility--was born at Dusseldorf and brought up to the profession of art by his father, the engraver Karl Ernst Christoph Hess (1755-1828). Karl Hess had already acquired a name when in 1806 the elector of Bavaria, having been raised to a kingship by Napoleon, transferred the Dusseldorf academy and gallery to Munich. Karl Hess accompanied the academy to its new home, and there continued the education of his children. In time Heinrich Hess became sufficiently master of his art to attract the attention of King Maximilian. He was sent with a stipend to Rome, where a copy which he made of Raphael's Parnassus, and the study of great examples of monumental design, probably caused him to become a painter of ecclesiastical subjects on a large scale. In 1828 he was made professor of painting and director of all the art collections at Munich. He decorated the Aukirche, the Glyptothek and the Allerheiligencapelle at Munich with frescoes; and his cartoons were selected for glass windows in the cathedrals of Cologne and Regensburg. Then came the great cycle of frescoes in the basilica of St Boniface at Munich, and the monumental picture of the Virgin and Child enthroned between the four doctors, and receiving the homage of the four patrons of the Munich churches (now in the Pinakothek). His last work, the "Lord's Supper," was found unfinished in his atelier after his death in 1863. Before testing his strength as a composer Heinrich Hess tried genre, an example of which is the Pilgrims entering Rome, now in the Munich gallery. He also executed portraits, and twice had sittings from Thorwaldsen (Pinakothek and Schack collections). But his fame rests on the frescoes representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the Allerheiligencapelle, and the episodes from the life of St Boniface and other German apostles in the basilica of Munich. Here he holds rank second to none but Overbeck in monumental painting, being always true to nature though mindful of the traditions of Christian art, earnest and simple in feeling, yet lifelike and powerful in expression. Through him and his pupils the sentiment of religious art was preserved and extended in the Munich school.

PETER HESS (1792-1871)--afterwards von Hess--was born at Dusseldorf and accompanied his younger brother Heinrich Maria to Munich in 1806. Being of an age to receive vivid impressions, he felt the stirring impulses of the time and became a painter of skirmishes and battles. In 1813-1815 he was allowed to join the staff of General Wrede, who commanded the Bavarians in the military operations which led to the abdication of Napoleon; and there he gained novel experiences of war and a taste for extensive travel. In the course of years he successively visited Austria, Switzerland and Italy. On Prince Otho's election to the Greek throne King Louis sent Peter Hess to Athens to gather materials for pictures of the war of liberation. The sketches which he then made were placed, forty in number, in the Pinakothek, after being copied in wax on a large scale (and little to the edification of German feeling) by Nilsen, in the northern arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. King Otho's entrance into Nauplia was the subject of a large and crowded canvas now in the Pinakothek, which Hess executed in person. From these, and from battlepieces on a scale of great size in the Royal Palace, as well as from military episodes executed for the czar Nicholas, and the battle of Waterloo now in the Munich Gallery, we gather that Hess was a clever painter of horses. His conception of subject was lifelike, and his drawing invariably correct, but his style is not so congenial to modern taste as that of the painters of touch. He finished almost too carefully with thin medium and pointed tools; and on that account he lacked to a certain extent the boldness of Horace Vernet, to whom he was not unaptly compared. He died suddenly, full of honours, at Munich, in April 1871. Several of his genre pictures, horse hunts, and brigand scenes may be found in the gallery of Munich.

KARL HESS (1801-1874), the third son of Karl Christoph Hess, born at Dusseldorf, was also taught by his father, who hoped that he would obtain distinction as an engraver. Karl, however, after engraving one plate after Adrian Ostade, turned to painting under the guidance of Wagenbauer of Munich, and then studied under his elder brother Peter. But historical composition proved to be as contrary to his taste as engraving, and he gave himself exclusively at last to illustrations of peasant life in the hill country of Bavaria. He became clever alike in representing the people, the animals and the landscape of the Alps, and with constant means of reference to nature in the neighbourhood of Reichenhall, where he at last resided, he never produced anything that was not impressed with the true stamp of a kindly realism. Some of his pictures in the museum of Munich will serve as examples of his manner. He died at Reichenhall on the 16th of November 1874.

HESS, HEINRICH HERMANN JOSEF, FREIHERR VON (1788-1870), Austrian soldier, entered the army in 1805 and was soon employed as a staff officer on survey work. He distinguished himself as a subaltern at Aspern and Wagram, and in 1813, as a captain, again served on the staff. In 1815 he was with Schwarzenberg. He had in the interval between the two wars been employed as a military commissioner in Piedmont, and at the peace resumed this post, gaining knowledge which later proved invaluable to the Austrian army. In 1831, when Radetzky became commander-in-chief in Austrian Italy, he took Hess as his chief-of-staff, and thus began the connexion between two famous soldiers which, like that of Blucher and Gneisenau, is a classical example of harmonious co-operation of commander and chief-of-staff. Hess put into shape Radetzky's military ideas, in the form of new drill for each arm, and, under their guidance, the Austrian army in North Italy, always on a war footing, became the best in Europe. From 1834 to 1848 Hess was employed in Moravia, at Vienna, &c., but, on the outbreak of revolution and war in the latter year, was at once sent out to Radetzky as chief-of-staff. In the two campaigns against King Charles Albert which followed, culminating in the victory of Novara, Hess's assistance to his chief was made still more valuable by his knowledge of the enemy, and the old field-marshal acknowledged his services in general orders. Lieut.-Fieldmarshal Hess was at once promoted _Feldzeugmeister_, made a member of the emperor's council, and _Freiherr_, assuming at the same time the duties of the quartermaster-general. Next year he became chief of the staff to the emperor. He was often employed in missions to various capitals, and he appeared in the field in 1854 at the head of the Austrian army which intervened so effectually in the Crimean war. In 1859 he was sent to Italy after the early defeats. He became field-marshal in 1860, and a year later, on resigning his position as chief-of-staff, he was made captain of the Trabant guard. He died in Vienna in 1870.

See "General Hess" in _Lebensgeschichtlichen Hinrissen_ (Vienna, 1855).

HESSE (Lat. _Hessia_, Ger. _Hessen_), a grand duchy forming a state of the German empire. It was known until 1866 as Hesse-Darmstadt, the history of which is given under a separate heading below. It consists of two main parts, separated from each other by a narrow strip of Prussian territory. The northern part is the province of Oberhessen; the southern consists of the contiguous provinces of Starkenburg and Rheinhessen. There are also eleven very small exclaves, mostly grouped about Homburg to the south-west of Oberhessen; but the largest is Wimpfen on the north-west frontier of Wurttemberg. Oberhessen is hilly; though of no great elevation it extends over the water-parting between the basins of the Rhine and the Weser, and in the Vogelsberg it has as its culminating point the Taufstein (2533 ft.). In the north-west it includes spurs of the Taunus. Between these two systems of hills lies the fertile undulating tract known as the Wetterau, watered by the Wetter, a tributary of the Main. Starkenburg occupies the angle between the Main and the Rhine, and in its south-eastern part includes some of the ranges of the Odenwald, the highest part being the Seidenbucher Hohe (1965 ft.). Rheinhessen is separated from Starkenburg by the Rhine, and has that river as its northern as well as its eastern frontier, though it extends across it at the north-east corner, where the Rhine, on receiving the Main, changes its course abruptly from south to west. The territory consists of a fertile tract of low hills, rising towards the south-west into the northern extremity of the Hardt range, but at no point reaching a height of more than 1050 ft.

The area and population of the three provinces of Hesse are as follow:

+-------------+------+---------------------+ | | Area.| Population. | | +------+----------+----------+ | |sq. m.| 1895. | 1905. | | +------+----------+----------+ | Oberhessen | 1267 | 271,524 | 296,755 | | Starkenburg | 1169 | 444,562 | 542,996 | | Rheinhessen | 530 | 322,934 | 369,424 | +-------------+------+----------+----------+ | Total | 2966 |1,039,020 |1,209,175 | +-------------+------+----------+----------+

The chief towns of the grand duchy are Darmstadt (the capital) and Offenbach in Starkenburg, Mainz and Worms in Rheinhessen and Giessen in Oberhessen. More than two-thirds of the inhabitants are Protestants; the majority of the remainder are Roman Catholics, and there are about 25,000 Jews. The grand duke is head of the Protestant church. Education is compulsory, the elementary schools being communal, assisted by state grants. There are a university at Giessen and a technical high school at Darmstadt. Agriculture is important, more than three-fifths of the total area being under cultivation. The largest grain crops are rye and barley, and nearly 40,000 acres are under vines. Minerals, in which Oberhessen is much richer than the two other provinces, include iron, manganese, salt and some coal.

The constitution dates from 1820, but was modified in 1856, 1862, 1872 and 1900. There are two legislative chambers. The upper consists of princes of the grand-ducal family, heads of mediatized houses, the head of the Roman Catholic and the superintendent of the Protestant church, the chancellor of the university, two elected representatives of the land-owning nobility, and twelve members nominated by the grand duke. The lower chamber consists of ten deputies from large towns and forty from small towns and rural districts. They are indirectly elected, by deputy electors (_Wahlmanner_) nominated by the electors, who must be Hessians over twenty-five years old, paying direct taxes. The executive ministry of state is divided into the departments of the interior, justice and finance. The three provinces are divided for local administration into 18 circles and 989 communes. The ordinary revenue and expenditure amount each to about L4,000,000 annually, the chief taxes being an income-tax, succession duties and stamp tax. The public debt, practically the whole of which is on railways, amounted to L19,097,468 in 1907.

_History_.--The name of Hesse, now used principally for the grand duchy formerly known as Hesse-Darmstadt, refers to a country which has had different boundaries and areas at different times. The name is derived from that of a Frankish tribe, the Hessi. The earliest known inhabitants of the country were the Chatti, who lived here during the 1st century A.D. (Tacitus, _Germania_, c. 30), and whose capital, Mattium on the Eder, was burned by the Romans about A.D. 15. "Alike both in race and language," says Walther Schultze, "the Chatti and the Hessi are identical." During the period of the _Volkerwanderung_ many of these people moved westward, but some remained behind to give their name to the country, although it was not until the 8th century that the word Hesse came into use. Early Hesse was the district around the Fulda, the Werra, the Eder and the Lahn, and was part of the Frankish kingdom both during Merovingian and during Carolingian times. Soon _Hessegau_ is mentioned, and this district was the headquarters of Charlemagne during his campaigns against the Saxons. By the treaty of Verdun in 843 it fell to Louis the German, and later it seems to have been partly in the duchy of Saxony and partly in that of Franconia. The Hessians were converted to Christianity mainly through the efforts of St Boniface; their land was included in the archbishopric of Mainz; and religion and culture were kept alive among them largely owing to the foundation of the Benedictine abbeys of Fulda and Hersfeld. Like other parts of Germany during the 9th century Hesse felt the absence of a strong central power, and, before the time of the emperor Otto the Great, several counts, among whom were Giso and Werner, had made themselves practically independent; but after the accession of Otto in 936 the land quietly accepted the yoke of the medieval emperors. About 1120 another Giso, count of Gudensberg, secured possession of the lands of the Werners; on his death in 1137 his daughter and heiress, Hedwig, married Louis, landgrave of Thuringia; and from this date until 1247, when the Thuringian ruling family became extinct, Hesse formed part of Thuringia. The death of Henry Raspe, the last landgrave of Thuringia, in 1247, caused a long war over the disposal of his lands, and this dispute was not settled until 1264 when Hesse, separated again from Thuringia, was secured by his niece Sophia (d. 1284), widow of Henry II., duke of Brabant. In the following year Sophia handed over Hesse to her son Henry (1244-1308), who, remembering the connexion of Hesse and Thuringia, took the title of landgrave, and is the ancestor of all the subsequent rulers of the country. In 1292 Henry was made a prince of the Empire, and with him the history of Hesse properly begins.