120 
who have taken the word in the same 
sense in their translations of the ‘ Works 
and Days.’ 
Frater ades (says Walla), generoso sanguine 
Perse, 
and Frisius calls him, Perse divine. 
_ What was the station which the father 
held in society we are not certain, but 
that he was driven from Cuma to Ascra 
by misfortunes, we have the testimony of 
Hesiod himself. 
It is extremely difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to ascertain the period when He- 
siod lived. The younger Scaliger, in his 
animadversions on Eusebius,* has ob- 
served that there is a passage in Hesiod’s 
works, which, if some able astronomer 
would be at the trouble of the experi- 
ment, might serve to demonstrate the 
poet’s age within seventy years, because 
he tells us himself, that when he lived, 
the constellation Arcturus rose acrony- 
cally on the 8th of March. He alludes 
to the passage in the EPYA, 
“Etir? ay © tZixolla wel rpsmes nedtoro 
Ketprces exledion Zeve nudla, 2 fa ros" ache 
Ageregos wanimay leooy eboy Nueavoto 
Tewroy wpepatvav, emireraglar angonvedaiog. > 
The Danish-astronomer, Longomonta- 
nus,{ undertook to solve the problem, and 
made the age of Hesiod agree with the 
Arundel Marble, that is, about thirty 
years before Homer Herodotus (I. 2. 
c. 58.) informs us, that Hesiod, whom he 
places in his account before Homer, both 
lived only about four hundred years be- 
fore himself ; and this may be allowed to 
carry some weight with it, if we consider 
it as handed down to us by the most an- 
cient Greek historian. The pious ex- 
clamation against the vices of his own 
times, in the beginning of the iron age, 
and the manner in which the descrip- 
tion of that age is written, the verbs 
being mostly in the future tense, may 
lead us to presume that Hesiod lived 
when the manners had lost much of their 
‘primitive simplicity, and mankind were 
become acyuainted with vice and de- 
pravity. 
For the superior antiquity of Homer, 
* Ad Num. m.ccry, p. 72. Vossius de 
Grec. Poet. Cap. 2. Sect. Ult. p. 11. 
+ But then when sixty winter days have 
run, 
Since Jove turned back the chariot of the sun: 
The great Arcturus leaves old Ocean’s flood, 
And, soaring, spreads his mid-night orb 
abroad. 
= Kennet in Hes. who quotes Longom. 
Sphericorum, Lib. ii, p. 83. » 
Lyceum of Ancient Luerature—Hesiod. 
[March 1, 
there is a curious argument of Dr. 
Clarke’s, in his note on the forty-third 
verse of the second hook of the Iliad, 
founded on the quantity of the word 
ueAos. This word, he observes, is used 
by Homer, in the Iliad and Odyssey, 
above two hundred and seventy times, 
and he has, in every word, made the first 
syllable long; while Hesiod frequentiy 
makes it long, and asoften shert. From 
this alone he would infer, that Hesicd 
could not be contemporary with Homer, 
but much later; and to corroborate this 
opinion, he adduces the authority of 
Cicero.* He says, that the liberty of 
making the first syllable of xeAos short, 
was long after Homer, who invariably 
has it long. The Tonic poets, he also ob- 
serves, had one fixed rule of making the 
first syliable lone; the Attic poets, So- 
phocles, Euripides, and Artstophanes, 
in innumerable places make it short; 
the -Doric poets do the same.- All there- 
fore that can be inferred from this is, that 
Homer always used it in the Ionic man- 
ner, and Hesiod adopted indiscriminately 
the Ionic or the Doric. The argument 
is ingenious, but is productive of no cer _ 
tainty in fixing the age of Homer or He- 
siod, and is in direct contradiction with 
the Chronology of Sir Isaac Newton, 
which fixes the siege of Troy at only 
thirty-four years before Hesiod.“ Troy, 
according to him, was taken nine hun- 
dred and four years before Chirist, and — 
Hesiod flourished eight hundred and 
seventy. From this we may collect that — 
Newton’s opinion was in favour of the 
proximity of the two poets. That he 
has brought them both down so low, may — 
be considered another proof of his fa- 
vourite system, of reducing every thing to 
Scripture chronology. 
We shall just notice the opposite opi- 
nions of two celebrated critics. Justus 
Lipsius, in his notes to the first book of 
Paterculus, observes that there is more 
simplicity, and a greater air of antaquity 
in the works of Hesiod, than of Homer, 
from which he pronounces that he isthe 
earliest writer. Fabricius, on the other 
hand, quotes the following words of 
Ludolphus Neocorus; ‘If ajudgment of 
the two poets is to be formed from their 
works, Homer has the advantage, in the 
greater simplicity and air of antiquity in 
his style; Hesiod is more finished ang 
elegant.’ We have here a curiou 
a ae 
rh 
* Homerus, multis, ut mibi videt 
seculis fuit. Cic. de Senectute. # 
+ Newt. Chron. of Anc. Kings 
74 
