Short is the distance; she dwells very near. But before Virtue the immortal gods have placed toil; Yet when thou reachest the top, it is easy, though rough.' Hesiod in this work retails some of the follies concerning the gods which were current among his people; and though decidedly superior in this matter to Homer, it is possible that (if he knew Homer's works, which is far from certain) he was not aware of his own superiority. When he descends to details of precept, many of his ceremonial laws are superstitious, as might be expected, especially as to lucky and unlucky days. This however was in him thoroughly honest: Virgil must have been above such absurd notions, and it is rather degrading to his genius, that he should have brought them into his Georgics from mere love of imitation. Whether the Theogony was written by the same Hesiod, the professor leaves uncertain. Pausanias states that the Baotians rejected it. The decision is the more difficult, because the subject is so different from that of the Works and Days, as to make it hard to institute a fair comparison. On the whole, we incline to believe that it is from a different author. The story of Pandora is told in each poem, but with considerable variety of manner and of matter. The versification of the Theogony is nearer to that of the Odyssey, and the whole poem more decidedly implies acquaintance with the Homeric Épics than does anything in the Works and Days. Considering also the strong tendency to moralize manifested in the latter, it is hard to conceive the same author so rigidly restraining it in the former. The marked difference of the religion taught in the Theogony from that of Homer, is, that it aims at a philosophical foundation: a great step in principle; yet the immediate result is only to make the fables more tedious and stupid, sometimes more disgusting, the allegory being the excuse for it. Endless 'genealogies, is indeed a true description of these strange speculations but the following remarks of Professor Müller on the subject will be read with interest. : According to the religious notions of the Greeks, the deity who governs the world with omnipotence, and guides the destinies of man with omniscience, is yet without one attribute which is the most essential to our idea of godhead-eternity. The gods of the Greeks were too nearly bound up with the existence of the world to be exempt from the law by which large shapeless masses are developed into more and more perfect forms. To the Greeks the gods of Olympus were rather the summit and crowning point of organized and animate life, than the origin of the universe. Thus Zeus, who must be considered as the peculiar deity of the Greeks, was, doubtless long before the time of Homer or Hesiod, called Cronion or Cronides, which according to the most probable interpretation means, Son of the Ancient of Days.... The idea of creation, of so high antiquity in the east, and so early known to the Indians, Persians, and Hebrews, which supposes the deity to have formed the world with design, as an earthly artificer executes his work, was foreign to the ancient Greeks, and could only arise in religions which ascribed a personal existence and an eternal duration to the godhead. Hence it is clear that theogonies, in the widest sense of the word,-that is, accounts of the descent of the gods, are as old as the Greek religion itself.'-p. 87. The learned professor is of opinion that Hesiod did not absolutely invent his Theogony upon his own abstract physiological speculations; otherwise it could not have met with so ready acceptance. On the other hand it is clear (he argues), that he used skilful selection and arrangement, which indicate that he was guided by certain fundamental ideas, and aimed at a connected system. His most remarkable addition to the Homeric scheme is in the primeval deity Eros (love) proceeding out of Chaos. Harmony rising out of confusion, is signified; but it yields him a machinery for the marriages of Earth and Heaven, and puts him into closer connection with the Egyptian cosmogony. We do not intend to follow our author into the numerous inquiries concerning compositions not extant; for although some of these were very influential in Greek civilization (especially the poems of Simonides), yet in most cases when writers were really much read by the ancients, some at least of their works have reached us: and in the case of those who survive in half a dozen disconnected verses, we should have nothing to do but copy out our author's remarks or conjectures. For this reason we passed over the Ante-Homeric poetry. The Homeridæ, or poets of that same school, are not wholly lost, for what are named the Hymns of Homer' are to be referred to them: they do but imitate their master, of course without equalling him, and they need no further remark here. The next original genius which Greece saw, is the lost poet Archilochus; whom we here mention because Professor Müller has vindicated for his name an eminence which the moderns have seldom given to it. The ancients regarded Archilochus as second only to Homer. He is not merely the inventor of the Iambic measure (a slight thing if it stood alone), but author of a vast change in the whole spirit of poetry, by which it assumed as it were the manly gown. Before his time the system of idle epithets and fixedly recurring clauses, and all the commonplaces of the improvisatore poet, held their places, as was natural or necessary before writing was general. Archilochus first left off to imitate the epic style now obsolete; and set the example of writing tersely, simply, with diction not prosaic yet idiomatic; the power of doing which showed not only a superior mind in the individual, but that the time was arrived for a separation of poetry and prose. As his works have perished, except a few fragments, it is not wonderful that we think of him more as the author of spiteful lampoons than as the originator of a terse and pure style. The date of his writing is assigned by the professor as nearly 688 B.C. His birthplace is said to have been the island of Paros, and his life was passed chiefly at Thasos, another island of the Archipelago. About twenty years later is the era preferred for the poems of Tyrtæus, who sang in Laconia and Messenia. Continental Greece was behind the islands and Asiatic Greece in cultivation, and nearly a century passed after Archilochus, before the Iambic was introduced at Athens. Tyrtæus was probably unacquainted with Archilochus, and it is not wonderful that his poetry shows no trace of the latter. Yet a new spirit other than that of Homer animated him, which would ill express itself in the Homeric metre. English readers will perhaps inadequately appreciate the connexion of so accidental a thing as metre, with the substantial qualities of poetry. Yet it is observed, that modern poets who adopt Walter Scott's four foot metre, become involuntarily his imitators; those who write in the heroic couplet, find it hard to get rid of Pope's cadences, and fall into his style one who adopts the Spenserian stanza, readily admits the antiquated diction natural to its stiff and pompous dignity. Like causes were more powerful among a people with whom music and emotion, acting strongly by association, chiefly inspired poetry. It was then a significant fact, when the Elegeiac measure (known to schoolboys as Hexameter and Pentameter) was introduced. In our author's opinion, the epic stood its ground as long as the old royal families were grand enough to deserve and to repay the attentions of bards; but with the republican movements another sort of verse arose, of which the earliest specimen extant is given by Tyrtæus. An ambitious republic and a despotic monarchy, may be to their neighbors equal curses; if indeed the former be not worse. But in their effects on the citizens themselves, and on the progress of truth, the difference is vast. In Homer's day, as now, nothing was expected from the arbitrary chief but selfish violence: it was not criticized, any more than fierceness in a wild beast. The vindictive conduct of Achilles is avowedly from mere personal pique; his ungovernable sallies of fury have no pretence of patriotism to screen them. Tyrtæus may indeed have thought with Pericles, that bravery in behalf of one's country covers a multitude of sins, but the only bravery which he extols is that which is consecrated by the public cause. The Dorian freeman was haughty and injurious to the poor Helot, but compared with the hero of the Iliad, he could lay claim to intelligible virtue. While the songs of Tyrtæus retain the Homeric cadences, and many well known junctions of words, they have lost the pomp, the ornament, and the stuffing (so to say) of the monarchal bard. The writer is too much in earnest to seek for ornament; his soul breathes forth in military ardor, and of necessity assumes a severity of style, from which the most chastised Attic taste in later years would find nothing to prune down. As writing must assuredly have been used in the age of Tyrtæus, it is not wonderful that the excrescences of the epic style were no longer tolerated, and that elegeiac verse is destitute of commonplace. The poems of this sort extant which next draw our attention, are those of Solon and Theognis. It is generally believed, that verses of the former have been mingled and confused in a long series called by the name of the latter. In a large part of them, the writer is an exile, driven from his possessions, and bitterly feeling the misery of poverty in a foreign land; disappointed in expectations from his friends, and from time to time not slow to heap invective or even curses on his enemies. Such are the undoubted productions of Theognis the Megarian. Chiefly because the ancients esteemed his proverbial sayings as a treasure of instruction, we select a few of the more striking passages for our readers : I 1. Never reproach a man, O Cyrnus, in thy anger For Jupiter inclines his scales, now this way, now that; Speak not, O Cyrnus, a haughty word; for no man knoweth Many have dastard minds, but a good Genius, And what seemeth to be evil, turneth for their good: But some with good counsel and an evil Genius Toil; and no result follows their deeds. 2. Loved Jupiter, I adore thee; for thou rulest over all, Well knowest thou the mind and soul of each man, Whether a man's heart turn to virtue, or to the violence Why is no judgment set forth on the part of the divinity to mortals, Nor the road, by following which, one may please the gods? 3. Once upon a time I took my course to Sicily, I took my course to the vineclad plain of Euboea, Yet no delight from them entered my bosom ; 4. Never may aught else hereafter engage my heart, Than the pursuit of lovely wisdom; ever holding this, Let me delight myself with the lyre, the dance, and the song, Nor any native; but be thou just, And so, follow thine own pleasure: then of ill-natured citizens The last passage does not appear to us to be from Theognis. The writer is no exile, but a student of wisdom, living among his own citizens. The sentiments are eminently Athenian, and may naturally be ascribed to the great Athenian lawgiver. Quite different in kind were the institutions and influence of Pythagoras; an extraordinary man, of whom it would seem that we ought to know more. His moral precepts, his ceremonial enactments, his political position in Italy, the connexion of his followers with the Orphic priests, so called, combine to make him remarkable. We can here only notice the morality and the mythology taught in the Pythagorean schools. The most beautiful specimen extant of the former is the piece entitled The Golden Verses: which is not so well known as it deserves; for schoolboys read it without intelligence, and afterwards it is cast aside. We cannot afford space to translate so long a piece, and we should do it injustice by curtailing it. Its authorship is unimportant, if it be admitted to be an early production used among the Pythagoreans; and should the elevated tone of some parts suggest the thought that it is the late production of a Christian, this is checked by the strongly marked Pythagoreanism of others. We do not know whether Professor Müller has doubts of its antiquity, when we find that he does not particularly notice it. The learned Fabricius considers its claims to be beyond dispute, and is ready to believe Empedocles the author. The connexion of this school with the Orphic priests and Eleusinian mysteries, and the nature of the mythology taught, are explained at full by our professor. After an eloquent and interesting description of the moral improvement in Greek |