On the Theogony. Sii 



(1. 287,) married Callirhoe, a daughter of Ocean ; their offspring (being 

 the third generation of the descendants of Phorcys) were, the triple- 

 headed Geryon, afterwards slain by Hercules ; Echidna, half a black-eyed, 

 fair-cheeked nymph, and half a serpent, vast and dread ; she dwelt in a 

 cave, in the mountains of Arimi, in Cilicia. Impregnated by the whirlwind 

 Typhaon, Echidna became the mother of a large progeny of monsters — 

 Orthrus, the dog of Geryon ; the fifty-headed Cerberus, the dog of Pluto j 

 the Lernaean Hydra, to vanquish which became one of the labours of 

 Hercules j and the Chimaera, a strange compound of lion, dragon, and 

 goat.* This Chimsera found a suitable mate in her brother, the dog 

 Orthrus ; and their progeny were such as might be expected from so well- 

 assorted an union, the Sphinx, fatal to the race of Cadmus, and the 

 Nerasean lion, the cause of another labour of Hercules, between whom and 

 these great grandchildren of Phorcys, a death-feud appears to have pre- 

 vailed. The poet has thus far traced the line of Phorcys and Ceto, through 

 their daughter Medusa, for five generations ; but at the close he returns 

 back to inform us, that the same ancestors were likewise parents of the 

 dragon, who from his den watches over the golden apples of the Hesperides. 

 These wild mythological combinations seem very probably to be derived 

 from the hieroglyphical representations of Egypt, to which country we 

 know that the Sphinx, and the fable of Perseus, and the Gorgons, origi- 

 nally belonged. 



Having thus traced the mythological descendants of the Sea and Earth, 

 tlie poet returns to the family of the Titans, the offspring of the same 

 mother by Heaven, the first generation of whom he had before recounted 

 at the very head of his genealogies, viz. Oceanus, Hyperion, Crius, Coeus, 

 Kronus, (or Saturn,) and lapetus. He now proceeds to the second gene- 

 ration, the offspring of the above. 



1. Oceanus espouses his sister, Tethys (1. 337). In the enumeration 

 of this offspring, physical allegory again prevails for the principal rivers 

 of Greece, and the western portion of Asia Minor, together with tiie Nile, 

 the Eridanus, the Danube, lTpoc,t the Phasis, &c. — We may mention the 

 above as shewing the extent of the poet's geographical knowledge, which, 

 if it may be judged of from this evidence, must have been very limited ; 

 the mighty rivers of Mesopotamia, and a portion of those of India, appear 



• Here two verses from the Homeric description of the Chimsera, 11. Z. 181, have 

 become interpolated in the text of Hcsiod, by the negligence of rhapsodists or tran- 

 Rcribcrg. The two poets, however, somewhat diffei , for Hcsiod assigns the forms of 

 the various animals to her three heads ; Homer to her head, body, and tail. 



t In tliislJKt we find the river of Egypt called the Nile, whereas Homer always names 

 it ;1'2gyptiis : hence the scholiast has drawn an argument, tliat Hcsiod must be the 

 latest of these two poets. Homer never mentions the Danube, or i'hasis. One of 

 Hcsiod's rivers, the Ardescus, said by the scholiast to be somewhere in Scythia, has 

 not been identified with any now known. 



No. 3.— Vol. I. N* 



