On the Theogony. 123 



example of gallantry or poetry, but as a curious illustration of that rude 

 and uncultivated period of poetical taste, which could thus tolerate the 

 blending of a rude strain of coarse satire into the substance of a religious 

 poem. 



Oq Kt ya/iov ^tvyuv, km ^epfitpa tpya yvvaiKuiv, &c. 603. 



He who th' anxieties of wedded life 



And women's ways perplexing, fain would shun, 



Must lose, when worn by age, the tender care 



That best supports its weakness ; and his wealth, 



If wealth be his, must fall to distant heirs 



That wait his funeral, to divide the prize. 



He who, by rare felicity, has found 



A faithful bride, of well-condition'd soul, 



But gains at best a checker'd life, half good, 



Half evil. He again whose cruel fate 



Has bound him to an ill-starr'd yokefellow 



Of mind deprav'd, folds to his breast through life 



A weary wasting curse ; his heart and soul 



Consuming, by an ill without a cure.* 



Hesiod, having thus traced out the legends connected with the children 

 of lapetus, reverts in line 617 to the subject which in 507 had been broken 

 off by the introduction of this genealogical episodejf namely, the deliver- 

 ance by Jupiter of Briareus and his hundred-handed brethren, from the 

 captivity in which Kronus had detained them, in order that they might 

 assist him in his struggle against their old oppressor and the other Titans. 

 Jupiter, having refreshed them with a banquet of nectar and ambrosia, ad- 

 dresses to tliem his request ; and Cottus replies with warm expressions of 

 his gratitude and readiness to join " arevei re vo(o, kui aiocppovi jSsXt/," "with 

 intent mind and prudent counsel," against the Titans as the common 

 enemy ; and as they rush to the field, each bearing massive rocks in all his 

 hundred hands, and overshadow the enemy with three hundred darts dis- 

 charged at once, they must have proved formidable allies. The description 

 of the battle which ensues is undoubtedly among the most powerful 



• This may perhaps remind us of a quaint but striking passage in Jeremy Taylor's 

 Marriage Ring. "The wife of a bad husband is indeed in bad case, for her tormentor 

 hath a warrant of prerogative. And the husband of a bad wife sighs while he 

 sitteth abroad with his neighbours, for he remcmbereth that his objection lieth in 

 his bosom." 



fThe manner in which these disjointed fragments are huddled together, seems 

 to belong much more to the palcftwor/c system of the pa-n-Ttov ineiov Aotdoi than to 

 any thing wliich can be conceived to have been an originally regular composition, 

 and the whole episode of Prometheus appears singularly mutilated and incomplete. 

 We have no account of the nature of his connection with the race of men, nor can 

 wc discover whether the legend, which ascribed the origin of that race to his ani- 

 mated clay statues, had already been received in the age of Hesiod. 



