On the Theogony. 83 



included in the list. Deceit and Love are somewhat strangely coupled 

 together, among this progeny, in a line^ (which is however suspected as an 

 interpolation) for the dark falsehoods, sprung from Night, cannot surely be 

 the mere wiles of coquetry. Reproach and misery, old age and death, are 

 introduced as dark and sad privations. And lastly, Strife, has a similar 

 moral character j of this last gloomy principle. Strife, all the fearful pro- 

 geny are then recited. Labor, Oblivion, Famine, Woes, Battles and 

 Slaughters, Wars and Homicides, Quarrels, Lies, Controversies, Anarchy, 

 Injury, and Perjury. 



2. The offspring of Sea and Earth. These were three sons, Nereus, 

 Tiiaumas, and Phorcys ; and two daughters, Ceto, (the wife of her brother 

 Phorcys,) and Eurybia, the latter became the wife of Arius, one of 

 the Titans. The descendants of the three sons are enumerated in the 

 following lines, in an incongruous mixture of various mythical fictions, 

 which, as Wolf well observes, can by no means be referred to a single 

 mode of allegory, and scarcely to a single poet. Some, and these probably 

 the most ancient, have a decidedly physical character ; others are mytho- 

 logical fables, or perhaps perversions of history. Nereus espouses Doris, 

 (line 233,) and from their union spring the vast family of Sea Nymphs or 

 Nereids. It were equally uninteresting and uninstructive to repeat the 

 names of some fifty here enumerated :* we need only observe, that thev are 

 all derivations from the natural features of the ocean or its shores, or com- 

 pounds, like wave-receiving, wave-allaying, ocean-speeding, &c. One of 

 them, 0iXo^£tcjjc, smile-loving, may remind us of that lovely description in 

 iEschylus : — 



\lovTiij)v Tt KVfiariov XvrjpiG^iov yiXatTjia. 



The countless smiles that deck the rippling waves. 



Thaumas (apparently so called from the wonders of the deep) espouses 

 Electra, the daughter of Ocean, (line 2G6,) by whom he has Iris, the rain- 

 bow, and the two Harpies, from npira'Ceiv , the blasts that snatch every 

 thing before them j their names were, Aello, (stormy,) and Ocypetes 

 (swift-flying) : — here every thing is obviously physical. Phorcys marries 

 his sister Ceto, (I. 270,) ; and the poet proceeds to enumerate their de- 

 scendants to the fifth generation, forming as curious a collection of monsters 



• Homer's Iliad, E. 39 to 49, gives us a list of thirty-three Nereids, concluding 

 with, " and all the other Nereids." Two entire lines in the lists of Homer and 

 Hesiod, arc to a word the same, and a majority of the names agree ; hut some ex- 

 hibit different readings, and some are quite different. One or two of Homer's 

 Nereids are recltoncd by Hesiod, in a subsequent list, among the daughters of 

 Oceanus. Pindar, Isth. vi. 8. Euripides, Ion. 1081, and Iphig. in Taur. 274, and the 

 authors of the Orphic Hymns, xxiii. 3. reckon fifty Nereids with Hesiod ; but some 

 other poets carry up the number to an hundred. The list in Apollodorus will afford 

 Bomc various readings ; he omits many of Hesiod's Nereids, and inserts two or three 

 of his Oceanides. 



