] 28 On the Theogony. 



Of earth beneath, and tops of loftiest hills ; 

 The far-spread roots of Ida rich in springs 

 And every summit trembled, and ai'ound 

 The Grecian navy, and the Trojan towers. 

 Trembled the monarch of the shades below 

 And leapt in terror from his throne, and shrill 

 Exclaim'd ; lest Neptune shaker of the earth 

 Should burst its wide foundations, and disclose 

 To th' eyes of men and gods his realms below 

 Dismal and loathsome, which e'en gods detest. 

 So fierce the shock when gods conflicting meet. 



Typhoeus is finally prostrated by t!ie thunder of Jupiter, and driven to 

 Tartarus ; at his fall his lightning-struck corpse communicates its fires to 

 the earth, which flows around like tin or iron in the furnace. The whole 

 of this fable has strongly the appearance of a physical mythos, intended to 

 represent the principle of volcanic action ; and we find the later poets, 

 Pindar and iEschyluSj accordingly describing Typhoeus as overwhelmed 

 by yEtna, and the eruptions of that volcano as the result of his struggle. 

 His descent from the embraces of Earth and Tartarus may, under this 

 view, be explained as indicating that the source of volcanic action origi- 

 nates at the junction of the earth and the iufernal regions. 



In the poem, as it lias been handed down to us by the rhapsodists, 

 another dry genealogical patch, consisting of little more than a list of 

 names destitute of poetical ornament, follows. In this the offspring of 

 Jove, by some dozen of his wives and mistresses are enumerated, but as 

 these must be familiar to every student, and open no sufiicient clue for the 

 explanation of the allegories in which we may suppose them to have ori- 

 giuated, we may well pass them over in silence. We here find also cata- 

 logues of the offspring of Neptune and Amphitrite, and Venus and Mars, 

 with regard to whom we may observe, that as Hesiod appears ignorant of 

 the matrimonial connection between Venus and Vulcan, though familiar 

 to the authors of the Homeric poems, he seems to impute no scandal to 

 their loves ; but though he thus denies to the god of the anvil the queen 

 of beauty, he consoles him with Aglaia, the youngest of the graces. The 

 marriages of Hercules (after the happy accomplishment of his labours) 

 with Hebe, and of Apollo and Oceanine, are then recorded: the muses are 

 next invoked to sing the amours of goddesses with mortals, in which, 

 besides the well known instances of Venus with Anchises, and Thetis with 

 Peleus, we have several si|jnilar cases, but all too briefly and unpoetically 

 treated, and too devoid of any kind of interest, to demand notice. 



The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded, consists of an invocation, 

 to commence a new song concerning the fortunes of illustrious women ; 

 but although we know from the testimony of antiquity, that a poem of 

 Hesiod on this subject once existed, supposed to be the original source 

 which has furnished many of the heroines to the Greek drama, it has long 

 been lost. 



