Chapter V: Section IV: On the Mythology of Hesiod (1)

Diogenes Laertius mentions that Pythagoras feigned to have seen the soul of Hesiod in the infernal regions, bound to a brazen pillar, and howling in torture for his false representations of the Deities: and that of Homer environed with serpents for the same reason. Plato, in a similar feeling, excluded both these poets from his ideal republic. It seems strange that the philosophers should have failed to perceive that Hesiod and Homer repeated merely the popular legends of their age; as is abundantly evident from the style and manner of narration and allusion throughout their poems.

The following passage of Herodotus has been construed to mean that they were the absolute inventors of the Grecian theology; “Whence each of the Gods came; whether all have continually existed, or what figures they severally had, was known but lately; or, if I may so speak, only yesterday; for I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer were older than myself by four hundred years, and not more; these are they who framed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave titles to the gods; distinguishing their honours and functions, and describing their forms.”

Against such an hypothesis several reasons obviously present themselves: 1st, A plurality of gods could scarcely be the production of a single age, much less of one or two individuals: 2dly, It is not likely that Greece, which was visited by Ægyptian and Phœnician colonists at an æra long antecedent to the age of Homer, should have been destitute of a religious system: 3dly, It is not credible that a whole nation, at the suggestion of one or two bards, should have abandoned this received system in order to adopt a whole hierarchy of divinities, of whom they had never before heard.

But the doubt of Herodotus, “whether they have continually existed,” shows that he merely considered Hesiod and Homer in the light of collectors and illustrators of the ancient religion of their country; and Wesseling accordingly interprets ποιησαντες as referring to arrangement and description, not invention. This stupid inference could in fact never have been drawn, had Herodotus been compared with himself: as in a preceding passage he says, “Nearly all the names of the gods have come into Greece from Ægypt; for I have ascertained it to be a fact that they are of barbaric extraction.”

Herodotus, however, seems to have been in error, even as to this position of Hesiod and Homer having first digested the mythology of Greece into a system: and as he could not be ignorant that theogonies were ascribed to poets reputed their elders, such as Musæus and Orpheus, he was reduced to the alternative of making these poets their juniors. “Those poets,” he observes, “who were said to be before them, were in my opinion after them.”

But Cicero (in Bruto, cap. xviii.) sensibly argues, “nor can it be doubted that there were poets before Homer; which may be inferred from the songs described by him as sung in the banquets of the Phæacians and the suitors.” Fabricius makes a comment, that “it cannot be proved from this, that Greek poems, before Homer, were committed to writing, and so handed down to posterity.” As if the poems of Homer himself had been transmitted in any other manner than by oral tradition![18]

The pre-existence of religious rites seems, indeed, to involve that of poetical cosmogonies and mythological hymns. Before the invention of letters there was no other traditionary record, or vehicle of popular instruction, or organ of religious homage and supplication, than verse: the conclusion follows that there were both poets anterior to the age of Homer,[19] and that these poets were also mythologists.

Pausanias mentions Olen of Lycia; who, he says, composed very ancient hymns; and who in his hymn to Lucina, makes her the mother of Love: and he names Pamphus and Orpheus, as succeeding Olen, and as also composing hymns to the mythological Love.

The doubt entertained by Aristotle and Cicero of the personal existence of Orpheus, neither affects the antiquity of the name, nor of that system of theology which bears the title of Orphic. The relics now extant under that name have, indeed, been suspected as the forgeries of Onomacritus, the sooth-sayer, who produced the hymns to the people of Athens: but Gesner is of opinion that he only altered the dialect of genuine Orphic remains, on which he ingrafted his own additions. The fragments which have come down to us appear certainly from internal evidence to contain a theology more ancient than that of Hesiod and Homer; for the nearer it approaches in any of its parts to the religious system of the Ægyptians, the stronger is the presumptive testimony of its antiquity.

[20]The Ægyptians held that the world was produced from Chaos, or Water. They worshipped the Sun, as Osiris, Hammon, and Horus; the Moon, as Isis; the Cabiri or Planets, as symbols of invisible divinities. They had two systems of worship; the one exoteric or popular, the other esoteric or mystical. The adoration of the celestial bodies was literal with the people, and emblematical with the priesthood. They supposed emanations from divinity to be resident in the parts of nature; and thus that the sun, moon, and stars, and the other bodies of the universe, were animated with a divine spirit or virtue; or retained portions of a divine essence from good demons or genii, who dwelt in them: these dæmons had been inclosed in the bodies of virtuous men; and having left them, passed into the stars and planets, which were consequently worshipped as gods. Hence probably the legend of Hesiod, who supposes the spirits of men in the golden age to become holy dæmons; though these dæmons are not sent to the stars, but hover round the earth and keep watch over the actions of humankind.

Jablonski, in his Pantheon Ægyptiorum, considers this stellar theology as resolvable into an astronomical and Niliacal idolatry. The terrestrial Osiris is the Nile: the celestial Osiris the Sun, in his zodiacal progress through the signs that preside over the seasons. Amon, Jupiter, designates the Sun in the constellation of Aries. In the vernal equinox he is Hercules, in the summer solstice Horus or Apollo, in the winter solstice Harpocrates. Serapis was the Nile in its period of fertilization, or the autumnal Sun of the lower hemisphere. Isis was the moon, the mother of multiform nature; the same also as Neitha or Minerva, and the causer of the Nile’s inundations. Tithrambo, Brimo, or Hecate, was Isis incensed, or the maleficent moon. Bubastis, Diana, or Latona, was the titular symbol of the New Moon, and Buto or Latona of the full. The Cabiri, or Seven Planets, were worshipped as appendants of the greater gods; thus the planet Venus was the star of Isis, and the planet Jupiter the star of Osiris. The dog-headed Anubis, or Mercury, was the celestial horizon, the guard of the Sun’s gate, and the follower of Isis or the Moon. The bull Apis was a living symbol of the Nile; but was supposed to have been generated in a heifer by the transmission of celestial fire from the Moon; and was sacred both to that planet and to the Sun. A living goat was the symbol of Mendes or Pan; the generative principle of all nature. These animal types were multiplied; thus a lion figured the Sun; a cow, Isis and Venus; and a hawk, Osiris. Stones were also made typical. An obelisk represented the Sun; and seven columns, such as Pausanias saw in Laconia, the Planets. They worshipped also Night, the supposed creative principle of all things, as Athor, Venus,[21] or Juno; and Pthas, the Vulcan as well as Minerva of the Grecians; the masculo-feminine cause and soul of the world; a pervading infinite spirit, or subtile ethereal fire, superior to the solar and planetary orbs; from which emanated terrestrial souls, and to which they returned. This system may very well be reconciled with the received theology; as it is not at all improbable that the subtile and scientific Ægyptians should have refined upon their original emblems, by connecting with them a secondary astronomical signification. In the explication of certain terms, and the identity and nature of many of the deities, the “Ægyptian Pantheon” agrees with the “New Analysis.”

Proclus (in Timæum, book i.) mentions a statue of Neitha or Minerva in a temple at Sais, in Ægypt, inscribed on the base with hieroglyphical characters to this effect: “I am whatever things are, whatever shall be, and whatever have been. None have lifted up my veil. The fruit which I have brought forth is the Sun.” Notwithstanding the mixed planetary worship, the Sun was considered by the Ægyptians as the king and architect of the universe: who under the name of Osiris comprehended in himself the power and efficacy of all the other material gods. Consistent with this is the Orphic fragment:

Hear me thou! for ever whirling round the rolling heavens on high
Thy far-travelling orb of splendour midst the whirlpools of the sky:
Hear, effulgent Jove and Bacchus! father both of earth and sea!
SUN all-various! golden-beaming! all things teeming out of thee!

In another passage Orpheus identifies with the sun the different deities.

ONE Jove and Pluto; Bacchus, and the SUN;
One God alike in all, and all are ONE.

The cosmogonists of Ægypt represented the Demiurgus or Universal Maker, in a human form, sending forth from his mouth an egg; which egg was the world. They called him Kneph; who was the same as Pthas, the essential pervading energy. Chaos is described by Orpheus, in the manner of Ovid, as an immense, self-existent, heterogeneous mass; neither luminous nor tenebrous; which in the lapse of ages generated an egg; and from this egg was produced a masculo-feminine principle, which disposed the elements, and created the forms of nature. A primæval water or Chaos, and a mundane egg, are found also in the mythology of India.

In the cosmogonic system of Ægypt the world was Deity, and its parts other gods; a doctrine equivalent to the το πᾶν of the Stoics; the inherent divinity of the universe; which Lucan seems to intend in the sentiment of Cato:

Deus est quodcunque vides: quòcunque moveris.

Whate’er we see, where’er we move, is God.

This system is unfolded in the Orphic hymns:

Jove is the breath of all: the force of quenchless flame:
The root of ocean Jove: the sun and moon the same:
Jove is the king, the sire, whence generation sprang:
One strength, one Dæmon, great, on whom all beings hang:
His regal body grasps the vast material round:
There fire, earth, air, and wave, and day and night, are found.

The same physico-theology appears in the Orphean verses,

I swear by those, the generating powers,
Whence sprang the gods that have eternal being;
Fire, Water, Earth, and Heaven, the Moon and Sun,
Great Love effulgent, and the sable Night!

and in another fragment, preserved by Eusebius: (Præparat. Evang. iii. 9.)

Fire, water, earth, and ether, night and day,
Metis, first sire, and all-delighting Love.

Metis is Minerva or Vulcan, the mind of the universe already noticed.

From a general view of the Ægyptian and Orphic theogonies, they would appear to consist in an atheistic materialism; for although they acknowledge a certain divine, or active, principle pervading and animating passive matter, nothing can be inferred from this, superior to a physical operative energy. Jablonski indeed contends that, exclusive of the worship of the signs of the zodiac, and the solar and lunar phenomena, the more ancient Ægyptians recognized an _intelligent_ power, or infinite Eternal Mind, on whose wisdom the operations of the _sensible_ or visible divinities depended. But it may be doubted whether this controlling intelligence were any thing different from the before described emanation of the supposed ethereal spirit of holy dæmons, or deified men.

Hesiod begins his poem on the generation of the gods with certain cosmogonical principles. Chaos first exists; then Earth; and thirdly Love. Erebus and Night spring from Chaos, and generate Ether and Day; and Earth produces Heaven. But we search in vain through the rest of the work for the subtile intelligence of the Orphic philosophy. It has been attempted, indeed, to reduce the whole into a consistent scheme of theogonic physiology, by allegorizing the supernatural battles into volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and earthquakes; but much would still remain incapable of being wrested to a physical sense. On certain crude principles of cosmogonical tradition, and lineal generations of gods, intermingled with the generation of the world, the theogonist has ingrafted ancient legendary histories, and poetical and moral allegories. The historical mythology is alone significant; for every thing respecting the nature of the gods was in Hesiod’s time perverted and misunderstood. The bard was no longer clothed in the robe of the hierophant.

Very different hypotheses have been framed to explain the Greek polytheism. They have failed _because_ they were hypotheses. When the Abbé Banier[22] detects the real characters of profane history in the gods of the Pantheon; and when De Gebelin[23] sees in them only emblematical shadows, personifying the successive inventions of the sciences and arts, we are reminded of the observation of Dr. Reid; (Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:) “that there never was an hypothesis invented by an ingenious man, which although destitute of direct evidence, did not serve to account for a variety of phenomena, and had not therefore an indirect evidence in its favour.” Even the Alchemists have laid claim to the heathen mythology; the pagan stories have been analysed into chemical arcana: the golden fleece becomes a recipe for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone inscribed on a ram’s-skin, and Medea restores her father to life by means of the grand elixir.[24]

But it were an unreasonable scepticism to argue from these visionary theories, that the ancient fabulous philosophy is a mass of inscrutable and unmeaning superstition. The affinity between the different systems of paganism rests on irrefutable proof.[25] This affinity points to a common origin. The light of history directs us to Ægypt. The astronomical genius of that nation led them to symbolize their idols by the celestial signs. These idols were the deified memories of men. As to their individuality, we are assisted by certain resemblances in heathen theology to Mosaic scripture. This parallel may have been urged too closely and too fancifully; as by Huet, in his “Demonstratio Evangelica:” who affirms that all the deities of the Ægyptians, Indians, Americans, Greeks, and Italians, are only Moses in disguise; and by Theophilus Gale, in his “Court of the Gentiles;” who draws a parallel between the god Pan, and the Messias, Abel, and Israel; and who derives not only both the mythic or fabulous, and the physical theology of the heathens, but all human letters and sciences from the Hebrew language and scriptures, and the philosophies of Joseph, Moses, and Solomon. Mistakes may have arisen from trusting too much to a specious analogy; as where Tubal-cain, the artificer of brass and iron, is identified with Vulcan.[26] The conjectures of Hebraic etymologists, also, as of Bochart, in the Phaleg and Canaan of his Geographia sacra, must be acknowledged to be often vague and inconclusive. But so plain are the general traces of corrupted scripture-history, that Celsus, in his books against the Christians, attacks the biblical records as plagiarisms from the pagan mythology; and asserts that Paradise is borrowed from the gardens of Alcinous, and the flood of Noah from that of Deucalion; which Origen refutes by the greater antiquity of the Jewish traditions.

It is not to be supposed that they, who trace these parallels of mythology with scripture, mean that scripture was its immediate source: as the French Encyclopædists seem to think, when they ridicule the idea of the Grecian poets having deduced their fables from the Mosaic books, of which they knew nothing. The religious separation of the Jews renders it improbable, that even the intellectual philosophy of the Greek sages, as Thales and Pythagoras, should have been indebted for the idea of pure incorporeal deity to the sacred oracles: though Dr. Anderson conceives it probable that “the Mosaic scriptures, and other prophetical writings under the Jewish dispensation, could not be unknown to the priests of Ægypt, Chaldæa, and other adjacent countries.” History of Philosophy, p. 88.

But the improbability is greatly increased with respect to the mythological philosophy; nor is it credible that the circumstances of pagan story, on the supposition of their representing the same events as those recorded in the book of Genesis, should have been transferred immediately from the volume of Moses by poets or philosophers into the popular religion. Nations do not borrow vast systems of theology from poets or even from priests. Gale does not suppose that priests or bards imported the Hebrew accounts from the sacred writings; but that they were learnt, through international communication with the Jews, by the Phœnicians; who, in their various nautical enterprizes, carried them to distant countries.

But the temple of heathen mythology rests its pillars in the two hemispheres, and overshadows climes unvisited by the navigators of Phœnicia. Its basis must, apparently, be sought without the circle of Jewish report and scripture, in ancient gentile tradition. Stillingfleet convincingly argues, that, assuming the descent of mankind from the posterity of Noah, the obliteration and extinction of all remnants of oral history concerning the ancient world is utterly inconceivable. He proceeds to show that such fragments were, in fact, so preserved in many nations after the dispersion; that they were appropriated by the Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians, and others to their respective countries; and that portions of Noah’s memory, in particular, were retained in many fables under Saturn, Janus, Prometheus, and Bacchus.

Similar to this is the outline of the Analytic System; in which, however, the dæmon-worship of the patriarchs of mankind is connected with the arkite and ophite idolatry under the types of the sun and moon. The affinities in the pagan sister-mythologies are explained by the general dissemination of these idolatrous mysteries, and the traditions which they were designed to commemorate, through the dispersion of a peculiar people in the early ages; migrating from a central point, and spreading through the extremest regions of the east and west.

“This wonderful people were the descendants of Chus; and called Cuthites and Cuseans. They stood their ground at the general migration of families, but were at last scattered over the face of the earth. They were the first apostates from the truth, yet great in worldly wisdom. They introduced, wherever they came, many useful arts, and were looked up to as a superior order of beings. They were joined in their expeditions by other nations; especially by the collateral branches of their family; the Mizraim, Caphtorim, and the sons of Canaän. These were all of the line of Ham, who was held by his posterity in the highest veneration. They called him Amon; and having in process of time raised him to a divinity, they worshipped him as the Sun; and from this worship they were called Amonians. Under this denomination are included all of this family; whether they were Ægyptians or Syrians, of Phœnicia or of Canaän. They were a people who carefully preserved memorials of their ancestors, and of those great events which had preceded their dispersion. These were described in hieroglyphics on pillars and obelisks.

“The deity whom they originally worshipped was the Sun; but they soon conferred his titles upon some other of their ancestors; whence arose a mixed worship. Chus was one of these; and the idolatry began among his sons. The same was practised by the Ægyptians; but this nation made many subtile distinctions; and supposing that there were certain emanations of divinity, they affected to particularize each by some title, and to worship the deity by his attributes. This gave rise to a multiplicity of gods. The Grecians, who received their religion from Ægypt and the East, misapplied the terms which they had received, and made a god out of every title.” _Preface to the Analysis of Ancient Mythology._

FOOTNOTES

[18] We know from Homer (Il. vi.) that when Prætus sent Bellerophon to the king of Lycia he gave him, not a written letter, but σηματα λυγρα, _mournful signs_; (probably like the picture-writing of the Mexicans:) writing could not be common till many centuries afterwards, since the first written laws were given in Greece only six centuries B. C. (Herod. lib. ii. Strab. lib. vi.) DR. GILLIES.

[19] “The Trœzenian histories,” observes Ælian, book xi. ch. 2, “relate that the poems of Oræbantius, a native of Trœzene, were in existence before Homer; and I know they affirm that Dares the Phrygian, whose Iliad is even now extant, lived before Homer’s time. Melisander, the Milesian, likewise, composed the battle of the Lapithæ and the Centaurs.”

[20] Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, tom. i. Homer represents father Oceanus as the generator of all things: and the Chaos of Hesiod is merely the watery element.

[21] So Orpheus:

NIGHT, source of all things, whom we VENUS name.

Night and Chaos, or the aqueous mass, seem reciprocally considered as the source of nature.

[22] La Mythologie, ou la Fable expliquée par l’Histoire.

[23] Monde Primitif.

[24] Wotton’s Reflections on ancient and modern Learning.

[25] See Sir William Jones’s Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India.

[26] The working of metals was not among the ancient attributes of Vulcan: but a diversity of character or attributes is not always an objection. Each god had not only a twofold nature, celestial, and human or heroical, but his history and qualities changed with change of place. Thus Hercules was the Sun; he was also a vagabond hero; but he may have been one person in Greece, and another in Phœnicia. Gerard Vossius, in his treatise “de Origine et Progressu Idolatriæ,” may therefore be right in his conjecture, that among the Phœnicians both Joshua and Samson were commemorated in the Tyrian Hercules. Bacchus was the Sun, and an Indian conqueror. His history also assimilates with that of Noah. He was likewise in all probability Caphtor, the grandson of Ham; the great Ægyptian warrior who dispossessed the Avim of that part of the land of Canaan, afterwards called Philistia. (See Priestley’s Lectures on History, i. 5.) But it is natural that the Phœnicians, who visited Greece when the memory of Moses was still vivid among the Canaanites, should have brought with them miraculous reports of the Jewish lawgiver, which were added to the history of Bacchus. Bacchus is called by Orpheus, Μισης; and by Plutarch (de Iside et Osiride) Palæstinus. Bacchus was exposed in an ark upon a river: a double coincidence with Noah and Moses, which is exactly in the spirit of the old mythologists. Nonnus, in his Dionysiacs, mentions the flight of Bacchus to the red sea, and his battles with the Princes of Arabia; and relates that he touched the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes with his thyrsus, and that the rivers dried up, and he passed through dry-shod. The Indians are in darkness, while the Bacchic army are in light. The ivy-rod of Bacchus is thrown on the ground, and creeps to and fro like a live serpent. Snakes twist themselves about the hair and limbs of Bacchus; which may be a shadow of the fiery serpents in the wilderness. The host of Bacchus, like the multitude led by Moses, is accompanied by women. One of the Bacchæ touches a rock, and water gushes out; at another time wine and honey; and the rivers run with milk. These circumstances are very remarkable. See Stillingfleet, Origines Sacræ, ch. v. Nonnus, Dionysiacs.

The Works and Days.

THE WORKS AND DAYS.

The Argument.

The poem comprehends the general œconomy of industry and morals. In the first division of the subject, the state of the world, past and present, is described; for the purpose of exemplifying the condition of human nature: which entails on man the necessity of exertion to preserve the goods of life; and leaves him no alternative but honest industry or unjust violence; of which the good and evil consequences are respectively illustrated. TWO STRIFES are said to have been sent into the world, the one promoting dissension, the other emulation. Perses is exhorted to abjure the former and embrace the latter; and an apposite allusion is made to the circumstance of his litigiously disputing the patrimonial estate, of which, through the corruption of the judges, he obtained the larger proportion. The judges are rebuked, and cheap contentment is apostrophized as the true secret of happiness. Such is stated to have been the original sense of mankind before the necessity of labour existed. The origin of labour is deduced from the resentment of Jupiter against Prometheus; which resentment led to the formation of PANDORA: or WOMAN: who is described with her attributes, and is represented as bringing with her into the world a casket of diseases. The degeneracy of man is then traced through successive ages. The three first ages are severally distinguished as the golden, the silver, and the brazen. The fourth has no metallic distinction, but is described as the heroic age, and as embracing the æra of the Trojan war. The fifth is styled the iron age, and, according to the Poet, is that in which he lives. The general corruption of mankind in this age is detailed, and Modesty and Justice are represented taking their flight to heaven. A pointed allusion to the corrupt administration of the laws, in his own particular instance, is introduced in a fable, typical of oppression. Justice is described as invisibly following those who violate her decrees with avenging power, and as lamenting in their streets the wickedness of a corrupted people. The temporal blessings of an upright nation are contrasted with the temporal evils which a wicked nation draws down from an angry Providence. Holy Dæmons are represented as hovering about the earth, and keeping watch over the actions of men. Justice is again introduced, carrying her complaints to the feet of Jupiter, and obtaining that the crimes of rulers be visited on their people. A pathetic appeal is then made to these rulers in their judicial capacity, urging them to renounce injustice. After some further exhortations to virtue and industry, and a number of unconnected precepts, the Poet enters on the GEORGICAL part of his subject: which contains the prognostics of the seasons of agricultural labour, and rules appertaining to wood-felling, carpentry, ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, vine-dressing, and the vintage. This division of the subject includes a description of winter and of a repast in summer. He then treats of navigation: and concludes with some desultory precepts of religion, moral decorum, and superstition: and lastly, with a specification of DAYS: which are divided into holy, auspicious, and inauspicious: mixed and intermediary: or such as are entitled to no remarkable observance.

WORKS.

I.

Come, Muses! ye, that from Pieria raise
The song of glory, sing your father’s praise.
By Jove’s high will th’ unknown and known of fame
Exist, the nameless and the fair of name.
’Tis He with ease [27]the bowed feeble rears,
And casts the mighty from their highest spheres:
With ease of human grandeur shrouds the ray:
With ease on abject darkness pours the day:
Straightens the crooked: grinds to dust the proud;
Thunderer on high, whose dwelling is the cloud.
Now bend thine eyes from heaven: behold and hear:
Rule thou the laws in righteousness and fear:
While I to Perses’ heart would fain convey
The truths of knowledge which inspire my lay.
Two STRIFES on earth of soul divided rove:
The wise will this condemn and that approve:
Accursed the one spreads misery from afar,
And stirs up discord and pernicious war:
Men love not this: yet heaven-enforced maintain
The strife abhorr’d, but still abhorr’d in vain.
[28]The other elder rose from darksome night:
The God high-throned, who dwells in ether’s light,
Fix’d deep in earth, and centred midst mankind
This better strife, which fires the slothful mind.
The needy idler sees the rich, and hastes
Himself to guide the plough, and plant the wastes:
Ordering his household: thus the neighbour’s eyes
Mark emulous the wealthy neighbour rise:
Beneficent this strife’s incensing zeal:
The potters angry turn the forming wheel:
Smiths beat their anvils; [29]almsmen zealous throng,
And minstrels kindle with the minstrel’s song.
Oh Perses! thou within thy secret breast
Repose the maxims by my care imprest;
Nor ever let that evil-joying strife
Have power to wean thee from the toils of life;
The whilst thy prying eyes the forum draws,
Thine ears the process, and the din of laws.
Small care be his of wrangling and debate
For whose ungather’d food the garners wait;
Who wants within the summer’s plenty stored,
Earth’s kindly fruits, and Ceres’ yearly hoard.
With these replenish’d, at the brawling bar
For others’ wealth go instigate the war.
But this thou mays’t no more: let justice guide,
Best boon of heaven, and future strife decide.
Not so we shared [30]the patrimonial land
When greedy pillage fill’d thy grasping hand:
The bribe-devouring Judges lull’d by thee
The sentence gave and stamp’d the false decree:
Oh fools! who know not in their selfish soul
How far the half is better than the whole:
[31]The good which asphodel and mallows yield,
The feast of herbs, the dainties of the field!
[32]The food of man in deep concealment lies:
The angry gods have hid it from our eyes.
Else had one day bestow’d sufficient cheer,
And, though inactive, fed thee through the year.
Then might thy hand [33]have laid the rudder by,
In blackening smoke for ever hung on high;
Then had the labouring ox foregone the soil,
And patient mules had found reprieve from toil.
But Jove conceal’d our food: incensed at heart,
Since [34]mock’d by wise Prometheus’ wily art.
Sore ills to man devised the heavenly Sire,
And hid the shining element of fire.
Prometheus then, benevolent of soul,
In hollow reed the spark recovering stole;
Cheering to man; and mock’d the god, whose gaze
Serene rejoices in the lightning’s blaze.
“Oh son of Japhet!” with indignant heart,
Spake the Cloud-gatherer: “oh, unmatch’d in art!
Exultest thou in this the flame retrieved,
And dost thou triumph in the god deceived?
But thou, with the posterity of man,
Shalt rue the fraud whence mightier ills began:
I will send evil for thy stealthy fire,
[35]An ill which all shall love, and all desire.
The Sire who rules the earth and sways the pole
Had said, and laughter fill’d his secret soul:
He bade famed Vulcan with the speed of thought
Mould plastic clay with tempering waters wrought:
Inform with voice of man the murmuring tongue;
The limbs with man’s elastic vigour strung;
The aspect fair as goddesses above,
A virgin’s likeness with the brows of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill, that sheds
A thousand colours in the gliding threads:
Bade lovely Venus breathe around her face
The charm of air, the witchery of grace:
Infuse corroding pangs of keen desire,
And cares that trick the form with prank’d attire:
Bade Hermes last implant the craft refined
Of thievish manners and a shameless mind.
He gives command; th’ inferior powers obey:
The crippled artist moulds the temper’d clay:
By Jove’s design a maid’s coy image rose:
[36]The zone, the dress, Minerva’s hands dispose:
Adored Persuasion, and the Graces young,
[37]With chains of gold her shapely person hung:
Round her smooth brow [38]the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of spring’s purpureal flowers:
The whole, Minerva with adjusting art
Forms to her shape and fits to every part.
Last by the counsels of deep-thundering Jove,
The Argicide, [39]his herald from above,
Adds thievish manners, adds insidious lies,
And prattled speech of sprightly railleries:
Then by the wise interpreter of heaven
The name Pandora to the maid was given:
Since all in heaven conferr’d their gifts to charm,
For man’s inventive race, this beauteous harm.
When now the Sire had form’d this mischief fair,
He bade heaven’s messenger convey through air
To Epimetheus’ hands th’ inextricable snare:
Nor he recall’d within his heedless thought
The warning lesson by Prometheus taught:
That he disclaim each present from the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise:
But he received; and conscious knew too late
Th’ insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.
On earth of yore the sons of men abode,
From evil free and labour’s galling load:
Free from diseases that with racking rage
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery’s pressure turns the temples gray.
The woman’s hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid; she scatters ills in air.
Within [40]th’ unbroken vase Hope sole remained,
Beneath the vessel’s rim from flight detained:
The maid, by counsels of cloud-gathering Jove,
The coffer seal’d and dropp’d the lid above.
Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl’d,
And woes innumerous roam’d the breathing world:
With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea,
Diseases haunt our frail humanity:
Through noon, through night [41]on casual wing they glide,
Silent, a voice the Power all-wise denied.
Thus mayst thou not elude th’ omniscient mind:
Now if thy thoughts be to my speech inclin’d,
I in brief phrase would other lore impart
Wisely and well: thou, grave it on thy heart.
When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th’ immortals form’d on earth
Of many-languaged men: they lived of old
When Saturn reign’d in heaven, an age of gold.
Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind;
Free from the toils and anguish of our kind:
Nor e’er decrepid age mishaped their frame,
The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same.
Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow’d by:
[42]Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:
Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem’d to die.
Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil
Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil:
They with abundant goods midst quiet lands
All willing shared the gatherings of their hands.
When earth’s dark womb had closed this race around,
[43]High Jove as dæmons raised them from the ground.
Earth-wandering spirits they their charge began,
The ministers of good, and guards of man.
Mantled with mist of darkling air they glide,
And compass earth, and pass on every side:
And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes
Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise:
[44]Their kingly state; and, delegate from heaven,
By their vicarious hands [45]the wealth of fields is given.
The gods then form’d a second race of man,
Degenerate far; and silver years began.
Unlike the mortals of a golden kind:
Unlike in frame of limbs and mould of mind.
Yet still [46]a hundred years beheld the boy
Beneath the mother’s roof, her infant joy;
All tender and unform’d: but when the flower
Of manhood bloom’d, it wither’d in an hour.
Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe:
Nor mutual outrage could their hands forego:
Nor would they serve the gods: nor altars raise
That in just cities shed their holy blaze.
Them angry Jove ingulf’d; who dared refuse
The gods their glory and their sacred dues:
Yet named the second-blest in earth they lie,
And second honours grace their memory.
The Sire of heaven and earth created then
A race, the third of many-languaged men.
Unlike the silver they: of brazen mould:
With ashen war-spears terrible and bold:
Their thoughts were bent on violence alone,
The deeds of battle and the dying groan.
Bloody their feasts, with wheaten food unblest:
Of adamant was each unyielding breast.
Huge, nerved with strength each hardy giant stands,
And mocks approach with unresisted hands:
Their mansions, implements, and armour shine
In brass; dark iron slept within the mine.
They by each other’s hands inglorious fell,
In freezing darkness plunged, the house of hell:
Fierce though they were, their mortal course was run;
Death gloomy seized, and snatch’d them from the sun.
Them when th’ abyss had cover’d from the skies,
Lo! the fourth age on nurturing earth arise:
Jove form’d the race a better, juster line;
A race of heroes and of stamp divine:
Lights of the age that rose before our own;
As demi-gods o’er earth’s wide regions known.
Yet these dread battle hurried to their end:
Some where the seven-fold gates of Thebes ascend:
The Cadmian realm: where they with fatal might
Strove for the flocks of Œdipus in fight.
Some war in navies led [47]to Troy’s far shore;
O’er the great space of sea their course they bore;
For sake of Helen with the beauteous hair:
And death for Helen’ sake o’erwhelm’d them there.
Them on earth’s utmost verge the god assign’d
A life, a seat, distinct from human kind:
Beside the deepening whirlpools of the main,
[48]In those blest isles where Saturn holds his reign,
Apart from heaven’s immortals: calm they share
A rest unsullied by the clouds of care:
And yearly thrice with sweet luxuriance crown’d
Springs the ripe harvest from the teeming ground.
Oh would that Nature had denied me birth
Midst this fifth race; [49]this iron age of earth:
That long before within the grave I lay,
Or long hereafter could behold the day!
Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs opprest,
Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest.
Still do the gods a weight of care bestow,
Though still some good is mingled with the woe.
Jove on this race of many-languaged man,
Speeds the swift ruin which but slow began:
[50]For scarcely spring they to the light of day
Ere age untimely strews their temples gray.
No fathers in the sons their features trace:
The sons reflect no more the father’s face:
The host with kindness greets his guest no more,
And friends and brethren love not as of yore.
Reckless of heaven’s revenge, the sons behold
The hoary parents wax too swiftly old:
And impious point the keen dishonouring tongue
With hard reproofs and bitter mockeries hung:
Nor grateful in declining age repay
The nurturing fondness of their better day.
[51]Now man’s right hand is law: for spoil they wait,
And lay their mutual cities desolate:
Unhonour’d he, by whom his oath is fear’d,
Nor are the good beloved, the just revered.
With favour graced the evil-doer stands,
Nor curbs with shame nor equity his hands:
With crooked slanders wounds the virtuous man,
And stamps with perjury what hate began.
Lo! ill-rejoicing Envy, wing’d with lies,
Scattering calumnious rumours as she flies,
The steps of miserable men pursue
With haggard aspect, blasting to the view.
Till those fair forms in snowy raiment bright
[52]Leave the broad earth and heaven-ward soar from sight:
Justice and Modesty from mortals driven,
Rise to th’ immortal family of heaven:
Dread sorrows to forsaken man remain;
No cure of ills: no remedy of pain.
[53]Now unto kings I frame the fabling song,
However wisdom unto kings belong.
A stooping hawk, crook-talon’d, from the vale
Bore in his pounce [54]a neck-streak’d nightingale,
And snatch’d among the clouds: beneath the stroke
This piteous shriek’d, and that imperious spoke:
“Wretch! why these screams? a stronger holds thee now:
Where’er I shape my course a captive thou,
Maugre thy song, must company my way:
I rend my banquet or I loose my prey.
Senseless is he who dares with power contend:
Defeat, rebuke, despair shall be his end.”
The swift hawk spake, with wings spread wide in air;
But thou to justice cleave, and wrong forbear.
Wrong, if he yield to its abhorr’d controul,
Shall pierce like iron in the poor man’s soul:
Wrong weighs the rich man’s conscience to the dust,
When his foot stumbles on the way unjust:
Far diff’rent is the path; a path of light,
That guides the feet to equitable right.
The end of righteousness, enduring long,
Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.
[55]The fool by suffering his experience buys;
The penalty of folly makes him wise.
With crooked judgments, lo! the oath’s dread God
Avenging runs, and tracks them where they trod:
Rough are the ways of Justice as the sea;
Dragg’d to and fro by men’s corrupt decree:
Bribe-pamper’d men! whose hands perverting draw
The right aside, and warp the wrested law.
Though, while corruption on their sentence waits,
They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates;
Invisible their steps the virgin treads,
And musters evils o’er their sinful heads.
She with the dark of air her form arrays
And [56]walks in awful grief the city-ways:
Her wail is heard, her tear upbraiding falls
[57]O’er their stain’d manners, their devoted walls.
But they who never from the right have stray’d,
Who as the citizen the stranger aid;
[58]They and their cities flourish: genial Peace
Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase:
Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,
Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war.
Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey;
Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day:
Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost trees
With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees.
Burthen’d with fleece their panting flocks: the race
Of woman soft [59]reflects the father’s face:
Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;
The fruits of earth are pour’d from every plain.
But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove of wide-beholding eyes
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise:
And oft the crimes of one destructive fall:
The crimes of one are visited on all.
The god sends down his angry plagues from high,
Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die.
He smites with barrenness the marriage-bed,
And generations moulder with the dead:
Again in vengeance of his wrath he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls:
Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,
And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.
Ponder, oh judges! in your inmost thought
The retribution by his vengeance wrought.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst, and bend th’ all-seeing eye:
The men who grind the poor, who wrest the right,
Awless of heaven’s revenge, stand naked to their sight.
For thrice ten thousand [60]holy demons rove
This breathing world, the delegates of Jove.
Guardians of man, [61]their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways.
A virgin pure is Justice: and her birth,
August, from him who rules the heavens and earth:
A creature glorious to the gods on high,
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.
Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat
In lowly grief at Jove’s eternal feet.
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend:
[62]So rue the nations when their kings offend:
When uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill,
They bend the laws and wrest them to their will.
Oh gorged with gold! ye kingly judges hear!
Make straight your paths: your crooked judgments fear:
That the foul record may no more be seen,
Erased, forgotten, as it ne’er had been!
He wounds himself that aims another’s wound:
His evil counsels on himself rebound.
Jove at his awful pleasure looks from high
With all-discerning and all-knowing eye;
Nor hidden from its ken what injured right
Within the city-walls eludes the light.
Or oh! if evil wait the righteous deed,
If thus the wicked gain the righteous meed,
Then may not I, nor yet my son remain
In this our generation just in vain!
But sure my hope, not this doth Heaven approve,
Not this the work of thunder-darting Jove.
Deep let my words, oh Perses! graven be:
Hear Justice, and renounce th’ oppressor’s plea:
This law the wisdom of the god assign’d
To human race and to the bestial kind:
To birds of air and fishes of the wave,
And beasts of earth, devouring instinct gave
In them no justice lives: he bade be known
This better sense to reasoning man alone.
Who from the seat of judgment shall impart
The truths of knowledge utter’d from his heart;
On him the god of all-discerning eye
[63]Pours down the treasures of felicity.
Who sins against the right, his wilful tongue
With perjuries of lying witness hung;
Lo! he is hurt beyond the hope of cure:
Dark is his race, nor shall his name endure.
Who fears his oath shall leave a name to shine
With brightening lustre through his latest line.
Most foolish Perses! let the truths I tell,
Which spring from knowledge, in thy bosom dwell:
Lo! wickednesses rife in troops appear;
[64]Smooth is the track of vice, the mansion near:
On virtue’s path delays and perils grow:
The gods have placed before [65]the sweat that bathes the brow:
And ere the foot can reach her high abode,
Long, rugged, steep th’ ascent, and rough the road.
The ridge once gain’d, the path so rude of late
Runs easy on, and level to the gate.
Far best is he whom conscious wisdom guides;
Who first and last the right and fit decides:
He too is good, that [66]to the wiser friend
His docile reason can submissive bend:
But worthless he that reason’s voice defies,
Nor wise himself, nor duteous to the wise.
But thou, oh Perses! what my words impart
Let mem’ry bind for ever on thy heart.
[67]Oh son of Dios! labour evermore,
That hunger turn abhorrent from thy door;
That Ceres blest, with spiky garland crown’d,
Greet thee with love and bid thy barns abound.
[68]Still on the sluggard hungry want attends,
The scorn of man, the hate of heaven impends:
While he, averse from labour, drags his days,
Yet greedy on the gain of others preys:
Even as the stingless drones devouring seize
With glutted sloth the harvest of the bees.
Love ev’ry seemly toil, that so the store
Of foodful seasons heap thy garner’s floor.
From labour men returns of wealth behold;
Flocks in their fields and in their coffers gold:
From labour shalt thou with the love be blest
Of men and gods; the slothful they detest.
Not toil, but sloth shall ignominious be;
Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee;
Shall view thy growing wealth with alter’d sense,
For glory, virtue walk with opulence.
Thou, like a god, since labour still is found
The better part, shalt live belov’d, renown’d;
If, as I counsel, thou thy witless mind,
Though weak and empty as the veering wind,
From others’ coveted possessions turn’d,
To thrift compel, and food by labour earn’d.
[69]Shame, which our aid or injury we find,
Shame to the needy clings of evil kind;
Shame to low indigence declining tends:
Bold zeal to wealth’s proud pinnacle ascends.
[70]But shun extorted riches; oh far best
The heaven-sent wealth without reproach possest.
Whoe’er shall mines of hoarded gold command,
By fraudful tongue or by rapacious hand;
As oft betides when lucre lights the flame,
And shamelessness expels the better shame;
Him shall the god cast down, in darkness hurl’d,
His name, his offspring wasted from the world:
The goods for which he pawn’d his soul decay,
The breath and shining bubble of a day.
Alike the man of sin is he confest,
[71]Who spurns the suppliant and who wrongs the guest;
Who climbs, by lure of stolen embraces led,
With ill-timed act, a brother’s marriage bed;
Who dares by crafty wickedness abuse
His trust, and robs the orphans of their dues;
Who, on the threshold of afflictive age,
His hoary parent stings with taunting rage:
On him shall Jove in anger look from high,
And deep requite the dark iniquity:
But wholly thou from these refrain thy mind,
Weak as it is, and wavering as the wind.
With thy best means perform the ritual part,
Outwardly pure and spotless at the heart,
And on thy altar let unblemish’d thighs
In fragrant savour to th’ immortals rise.
Or thou in other sort may’st well dispense
Wine-offerings and the smoke of frankincense,
Ere on the nightly couch thy limbs be laid;
Or when the stars from sacred sun-rise fade.
So shall thy piety accepted move
Their heavenly natures to propitious love:
Ne’er shall thy heritage divided be,
But others part their heritage to thee.
Let friends oft bidden to thy feast repair;
Let not a foe the social moment share.
Chief to thy open board the neighbour call:
When, unforeseen, domestic troubles fall,
The neighbour runs ungirded; kinsmen wait,
And, lingering for their raiment, hasten late.
As the good neighbour is our prop and stay,
So is the bad a pit-fall in our way.
Thus blest or curs’d, we this or that obtain,
The first a blessing and the last a bane.
How should thine ox by chance untimely die?
The evil neighbour looks and passes by.
[72]If aught thou borrowest, well the measure weigh;
The same good measure to thy friend repay,
Or more, if more thou canst, unask’d concede,
So shall he prompt supply thy future need.
Usurious gains avoid; usurious gain,
Equivalent to loss, will prove thy bane.
[73]Who loves thee, love; him woo that friendly wooes:
Give to the giver, but to him refuse
That giveth not; their gifts the generous earn;
But none bestows where never is return.
Munificence is blest: by heaven accurst
Extortion, of death-dealing plagues the worst.
Who bounteous gives though large his bounty flow,
Shall feel his heart with inward rapture glow:
Th’ extortioner of bold unblushing sin,
Though small the plunder, feels a thorn within.
If with a little thou a little blend
Continual, mighty shall the heap ascend.
Who bids his gather’d substance gradual grow
Shall see not livid hunger’s face of woe.
No bosom-pang attends the home-laid store,
But rife with loss the food without thy door:
’Tis good to take from hoards, and pain to need
What is far from thee: give the precept heed.
When broach’d or at the lees, no care be thine
To save the cask, but [74]spare the middle wine.
To him the friend that serves thee glad dispense
With bounteous hand the meed of recompense.
Not on a brother’s plighted word rely,
But, [75]as in laughter, set a witness by;
Mistrust destroys us and credulity.
Let no fair woman tempt thy sliding mind
[76]With garment gather’d in a knot behind;
She [77]prattling with gay speech inquires thy home;
But trust a woman, and a thief is come.
One only son his father’s house may tend,
And e’en with one domestic hoards ascend:
Then mayst thou leave a second son behind:
For many sons from heaven shall wealth obtain;
The care is greater, greater is the gain.
Do thus: if riches be thy soul’s desire,
By toils on toils to this thy hope aspire.

II.