THE WORKS OF HESIOD, CALLIMACHUS, AND THEOGNIS. LITERALLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH PROSE, WITH COPIOUS NOTES, BY THE REV. J. BANKS, M, A., HEAD MASTER OF LUDLOW SCHOOL. TO WHICH ARE APPENDED THE METRICAL TRANSLATIONS OF ELTON, TYTLER, AND FRERE. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLVI. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF HESIOD. "HESIOD and Homer," writes the father of history, (Herod. ii. 53,) "lived, as I consider, not more than four hundred years before my time." It has been argued that this statement must be taken as relating only to the author of the Theogony, while to the author of the Works and Days, (see Pausan. ix. 31, § 4,) belongs a date perhaps not less than one, hundred and twenty years later. It is therefore inexplicable how Herodotus can have spoken of the Hesiod of the Works and Days (on whose non-identity with the author of the Theogony modern writers of weight are agreed with the Boeotians of old) as contemporary with Homer. But even the Theogony is nowise to be deemed of the same age with the Iliad or Odyssey, whether we consider its more advanced and systematized mythology, (an argument strongly urged by Mr. Grote, in his History of Greece,) its extended geography, or the general testimony of ancient authors. Amidst great uncertainty, it is perhaps safe to assign the date of the Theogony to the same period as the Works and Days; leaving the question open whether the author was the same Hesiod, or some composer of the Hesiodic school, a mode of solving the difficulty which has been suggested by the German commentators. In what way to reconcile the statement of Herodotus with all that is ascertained with reference to Hesiod's age, it is difficult to determine: for by his computation Homer and Hesiod must have contemporaneously flourished 884 years before Christ: whereas, as has been observed, the difference of date between the two may be easily detected from an ordinary examination of their poems. Perhaps it may be assumed that Herodotus is speaking of Homer generally as representing the beginning, and Hesiod as the close, of |