not outward on the deeds of the gods and god-descended men of the past. Here is its especial interest, while a subordinate interest is excited by the consideration that in it we find the model on which Virgil partly framed his Georgics,—another claim for it to the careful perusal of every scholar. Fragments of other works of Hesiod, or the Hesiodic school, epic, astronomic, and didactic, are to be found at the end of the edition of Goettling; and do not need any enumeration here. It remains to mention the editions consulted in the present translation. They are principally those of Goettling, Van Lennep, Robinson, Gaisford, (in the Poeta Minores,) and Vollbehr. The English poetical version of Elton is appended as the best existing, being infinitely more poetical than the miserable attempt of Cook, whilst it is more faithful and literal than that of Chapman. The works of Hesiod have long deserved an English prose version, to facilitate the general appreciation of one whom the ancients deemed not unworthy to rank with Homer. May the present translation pave the way, and lead many future students to the charms of the original. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF CALLIMACHUS. Or a very different date and style is the poet, whose remaining works, chiefly of the Hymnic cast, stand next to those of Hesiod in the following translation. Callimachus was chief librarian of the celebrated library at Alexandria from B. C. 260 to B. C. 240, the date of his death, so that he was a contemporary of Theocritus as well as of Aratus, (cf. Epigr. xxix.,) and like them enjoyed the esteem and patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus. His extant poetry can hardly be mentioned with the poems of Hesiod, except to point out the contrast between the earliest framer of a Greek Theogony, and the diligent compiler at a much later date of what had been added in the interval. The hymns are marked by little else than learning and labour, and do not contain much real poetry, or much of interest to sustain a faith, which was daily becoming weakened by the constant extension of its objects of worship. Callimachus was, as Strabo tells us,(XVII. iii. p. 497,)a member of the powerful house at Cyrene, named, from its founder Battus, the Battiada; and hence he is by Ovid (Ib. 53) called Battiades simply. Born probably at Cyrene, he became in due course a pupil of the grammarian Hermocrates, under whom he worked with so much assiduity that he seems himself to have enjoyed very great celebrity as a grammarian among the Alexandrine school, though of his works in that branch of learning no remains have unfortunately come down He flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and ended his days in that of Euergetes, his son and successor. We learn from Aulus Gellius (xvii. 21) that he lived shortly before the first Punic war, and that his wife was a daughter to us. b of Euphrates of Syracuse. He appears to have had a nephew bearing his own name, (the author, according to Suidas, of an epic poem Tepi vhowv,) of whom Lucian (de conscrib. Hist.) quoted by Spanheim, p. 154, vol. ii. of Ernesti's edition, seems to make mention. (Cf. also Epigram xxii.) If Callimachus was not great in the length or the substance of his works, the first of which positions we may infer from his own Hymn to Apollo, ver. 106-112, where we find him thrusting off a charge seemingly made against him by his former pupil Apollonius Rhodius (see Spanheim ad loc.); while the second is evident from a perusal of his hymns, and from the phrase of Propertius, II. i. 40, "Angusto pectore Callimachus," he is by all accounts free from the charge of want of variety in his subjects. The names or fragments of forty of his works are known to us, and Suidas records that he was the author of 800 works on grammar, history, mythology, and general literature, as well as hymns, elegies, epigrams, and at least one epic. His prose works are completely lost. Six of his hymns remain, or, if we adopt Blomfield's view that the Bath of Pallas is, as its metre indicates, an elegy, five; these are in the Ionic dialect, in hexameters, and are replete with mythical knowledge. The Bath of Pallas is in elegiac verse, and in the Doric dialect. This, and a translation, or imitation, by Catullus of another elegy of Callimachus, "de Comâ Berenices," a poem in honour of the Queen of Euergetes, whose hair had been made a constellation by the astronomers, are the only remaining evidence for testing the judgment of Quinctilian, that Callimachus was the most eminent elegiac poet of Greece (i. 58). He was certainly held in high esteem by the Roman poets Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid. See Catull. Ixvi., de Comâ Berenices; Propert. IV. i. 1; V. i. 64, where the poet declares his ambition to be called the Roman Callimachus, &c.; Ov. Ex. Pont. IV. xvi. 32; Trist. ii. 367, 368; and Amor. I. xv. 13, 14, where the poet mentions Callimachus in the same breath as Hesiod, Vivet et Ascræus, dum mustis uva tumebit. Quamvis ingenio non valet, arte valet. The epigrams of Callimachus which have come down to us are seventy-three in number, and of various merit, some of them being among the gems of the Greek Anthology, whilst others are poor and meagre. Of the former we may direct attention to the 2nd, the 5th, the 17th, and the 21st Epigrams, as especially beautiful. Very elegant and faithful translations of these appear in the Greek Anthology, published by Mr. Bohn. Among the lost poems of Callimachus, which are often referred to by later writers, the most famous seem to have been his Atria, an epic poem, (which Propertius calls "nonni flati somnia Callimachi," III. 26, 32, where the word "somnia” is explained by Barth, "Quia Callimachus finxerat, somniasse aliquando se intervenisse Musis, quas postea literis mandavit,") and another epic entitled 'Ekáλn, the hostess of Theseus when he went forth to slay the Bull of Marathon. The fragments which remain of this poem have been collected and arranged with much learning by A. F. Naeke, Bonn. 1845; who shows that this poem, which was spoken of as the only long poem of Callimachus, and supposed to have been written in consequence of his being charged with βραχυλογία, was not after all an extraordinarily lengthy production. Another poem of a satirical character remains to be mentioned,the Ibis, or Stork, an invective against Apollonius Rhodius, who seems to have provoked it by a bitter epigram. This poem was imitated by Ovid in his poem of the same name, which still remains. The editions consulted and used for this translation have been the very complete variorum, edited by Ernesti, Leiden, 1761, based on that of Spanheim, and including his erudite and very valuable commentary, and the edition of Bp. Blomfield, 1815, which, excising much that is superfluous in Ernesti, adds the valuable matter of Ruhnken. Of the two poetic versions of Callimachus, that of Tytler has been preferred for incorporation with this volume. Dodd's has considerable merit; but, all points considered, Tytler seemed most deserving of reproduction. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THEOGNIS. THE celebrated gnomic poet, whose remains are the concluding subject of translation in this volume, was born in the Grecian, not Sicilian, Megara, (cf. Theogn. 781, &c.,) about 570 years before the Christian era. He speaks in the passage just referred to of a visit across the sea to Sicily, and it would seem from the Scholiast on Plato, (Leg. i. 630, A. vol. vi. p. 21, Ast,) that the true interpretation of the philosopher's words in that passage is that Hyblæan Megara had conferred honorary citizenship upon the poet, on the occasion of his visit. It would seem that his life was extended till at least B. c. 490, so that he must have witnessed the commencement of the war with Persia; and there are allusions to the fear of the Median Invasion in ver. 762 and 773. Taking his life as having fallen between B. C. 570 and 490, he must have drawn his first breath amidst the tumults of the contending factions, which from an earlier period than 630 B. C., the date of the beginning of the tyranny of Theagenes at Megara, had been rending that state. The despot Theagenes had ascended to power on the shoulders of the people, after the overthrow of the oligarchy which had held the reins from the period of Megara's emancipation from the yoke of Corinth. The deposition of Theagenes, B. C. 600, by the exiled nobles, aided by the oligarchical Lacedæmonians, served but to pave the way after a brief tranquillity for a wilder and more violent insurrection of the commonalty, who carried their hatred to the rich so far that they banished some and confiscated their property; whilst they intruded into the houses and banquets of others, and even passed a decree "repudiating" their debts to their aristocratic creditors, and requiring the whole in |